Comment by ctoth
12 hours ago
What are jobs for?
Should we have them?
Should they be mandatory?
What does it mean to have to work to eat, is this a good setup?
Does everyone have to work?
Should they?
12 hours ago
What are jobs for?
Should we have them?
Should they be mandatory?
What does it mean to have to work to eat, is this a good setup?
Does everyone have to work?
Should they?
Who do you think will be answering these questions in a future in which these AI companies visions become a reality? Because they already have a huge influence on society and that will only increase as the tech improves.
The most optimistic answer I can think of is that they will eventually agree to share their wealth under credible threats of violent revolution. That's the most optimistic outcome I see, they concede to threats of violence rather than needing actual violence.
> Who do you think will be answering these questions
Yes, this is the conversation we should probably be having! Thoughts?
Given that this is what is happening, given that we aren't going to stop physics, getting a handle on this indeed seems like one of the more important things we can do. If it will have any chance of working at all. If we don't get paperclipped.
But this is at least a much ... (forgive me) less wrong conversation to have compared to the one where everybody assumes we've already lost.
What do you think we should do? What powers do we still have where we is general humans who just want a pretty good life?
What do we do about the inherent centralization that big models seem to require, but how do we trade that off at the same time from everybody being able to synthesize the next Covid by asking their cell phone a question? What does it mean when most if not all white collar work actually can be automated?
Do we all end up playing VCs in our underwear swiping left/right on ideas our agents have to make money? Are we still competing in the market with the AIs?
Is there a class war? Is there some other weird thing? I don't know but man ... I sure would like to have those conversations.
Need work involve money? By far the most important work I do involves volunteer leadership roles above and beyond the things I do for money. Indeed, the whole edifice of modern tech rests on elements of FOSS that are, to within a rounding error, “volunteer”-built and -led. Elon’s an idol, but so is Linus.
The Biggest And Richest have Mythos. But does that diminish the utility, to me personally, of my open-weights model? Or even my humble-individual-grade Opus subscription? Relative to what I could do three years ago, computationally speaking?
Does a pretty good life have to involve controlling more material relative to members of a specific class, rather than just… deciding what’s enough, materially speaking; and stopping there?
> The most optimistic answer I can think of is that they will eventually agree to share their wealth under credible threats of violent revolution. That's the most optimistic outcome I see, they concede to threats of violence rather than needing actual violence.
Or they all figure out how to just bugger off to some Elysium-like stronghold, isolating themselves from and leaving the rest of society economically irrelevant.
At a guess, one of the unspoken reasons why there is so much interest in robot armi^H^H^H^H factory automation.
These are the right questions to ask. I think about stuff like this often, and just as often people I discuss this with think I'm off my rocker. I, on the other hand, think some can't see past what they have been programmed to see. It's sad really, our lives are finite and much is wasted on a less than optimal layout.
I'd answer: No, we should not have to work to eat, they should not be mandatory, and no not everyone has to work.
But those problems need solved first before completely upending the current system. The system does need changed, but that change must happen before mass unemployment, not after the fact.
The system won't change until there is massive chaos and destruction. Why would it otherwise? The people with the means to gently and voluntarily change things are living like gods. They have no incentive to help. In fact, a sick and unhealthy society keeps competitors weak. No, I'm afraid to say there will be no fixing things.
How exactly are the superrich today living like gods? They use the same phones, have access to the same entertainment, same internet, same information. Most spend a lot more time stressed out and working. The poor today live better (or, at the very least more "preferenced") lives than ever in human history.
Big houses, yachts, nice cars I guess?
4 replies →
> we should not have to work to eat
It takes time and effort and resources to produce the food you eat. If you aren't expending that time and effort and resources yourself, either to produce the food, or to produce something you can trade for it (or trade for money you use to buy it), who will?
If the answer is "other people", why should other people have to work to produce the food you eat while you don't?
If the answer is "machines", then it takes time and effort and resources to produce the machines, and we're right back to the same question.
There are no other answers.
There is no magical way to let people eat (much less have all the other things besides food, clothing and shelter that we all want to make our lives richer, such as the medium in which we're having this conversation) without work being done. Ignoring that fact of life is a recipe for disaster.
Fair enough, we are no where near post-scarcity levels of automation yet despite what frontier lab marketing says.
But still, there are more people on the planet than necessary for all of the "meaningful" work of providing for society. It would be a good thing, with the proper safety nets and protections in place (something like UBI) to have a lot of the "bullshit" jobs automated away. That leaves us into a situation like I said that "no, not everyone has to work" nor should we just force everyone to work my effectively making up roles. If half or more of the population finds themselves unemployed due to AI/Automation, the answer shouldn't be make-work "dig a ditch then fill it back up" it should be use our new found productivity and surplus to just take care of everyone's needs without it being tied to employment.
1 reply →
You give the answer then skip past it.
We are looking at a foreseeable future where machines do all the work.
You are saying all the benefits from those machines should go to those who invested their capital to create them, forever. And those without capital to invest in those machines will have nothing.
Why is that a good system?
2 replies →
How much do you trust the current US administration to guide us into a future where no one needs a job in order to get health care, food, shelter, etc?
Maybe figure out the answers to that before forcing everyone into an economy where they still need to work to make money, but any worthwhile jobs have been automated away.
The other question, of course, is what happens to the political power of the newly disposable?
Brother, I'm trying to. Any thoughts?
Also, what's a "worthwhile" job?
Have you read Player Piano?
Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs?
If we can automate musclejobs so people don't have to die in the heat and we can automate brainjobs so people don't have to lose their sanity in offices, wouldn't that be a better world?
Note: it probably won't be, because of what I like to call the "Enterprise High" effect, but here we are. Basically once the only thing people have to compete over is status, shit gets nasty quicklike, think PG's high school essay but for everything and forever. Everything goes into rivalrous goods like who's sleeping with who.
Star Trek as soap opera where all their needs are met and the only concern is purely social.
But this is probably better than a world where people don't actually have material needs met?
I legit don't actually know. Would love to figure it out though, what do you think!
> Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs?
Try answering that without your brain.
We're trying to build a world where there's no advantage to having one, so start living in the future you want to build.
No, but what are the odds of the robust welfare state that would be required to actually enable some sort of post-work society taking shape here in America? I'd truly like to be optimistic but, politically we have been moving in the opposite direction ever since the end of the New Deal, and the oligarchs who control the technologies are not exactly benevolent.
No. But capitalism requires them. I'm down to end capitalism, but maybe we should figure that out before we destroy the thing that kinda-sorta made it work?