A specific part of GP’s comment keeps getting overlooked:
So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income.
Nobody is saying robots should replace human connection and expression
Edit: tone
Sure, humans relying on jobs for income is a problem with transitions. But people finding purpose in jobs is a problem, too.
Right now how we get there is being "forced to' -- and indeed that's a bug. But if we transition to a future where it's pretty hard to find useful work, that's a problem, even if the basic needs for survival are still being met.
I haven't had to work for 25 years. But I've spent the vast majority of that time employed. Times when I've not had purposeful employment as an anchor in my life have been rough for me. (First 2-3 months feels great... then it stops feeling so great).
Just to be clear, are you saying the only life work that you can find fulfillment in is work that can be perfectly automated and handled by AI? Do you have an example of what you mean?
No. I'm not saying that applies to me, but it may be getting dangerously close to many people. During my career, I've done CS, EE, controls, optics, and now I teach high school.
I do worry about CS in particular, though. If one's happy place is doing computer science, that's getting pretty hard.
LLMs feel to me like a 60th percentile new college grad now (but with some advantages: very cheap, very fast, no social cost to ask to try again or do possibly empty/speculative work). Sure, you can't turn them loose on a really big code base or fail to supervise it, but you can't do that with new graduates, either.
I worry about how 2026's graduates are going to climb the beginning of the skill ladder. And to the extent that tools get better, this problem gets worse.
I also worry about a lot of work that is "easy to automate" but the human in the loop is very valuable. Some faculty use LLMs to write recommendation letters. Many admissions committees now use LLMs to evaluate recommendation letters. There's this interchange that looks like human language replacing a process where a human would at least spend a few minutes thinking about another human's story. The true purpose of the mechanism has been lost, and it's been replaced with something harsh, unfeeling, and arbitrary.
But I want to be -useful-, too. I enjoy helping and working with kids in my current job more than I enjoy filling my time in empty ways (well, up to a point: summer sure feels nice, too :).
Money gave me the freedom to define the relationship with work in the way that works best for me; and it turned out that's more valuable to me than the ability to escape work entirely.
The technology proposes a source of labor for the elites so abundant that they will not need to trade their wealth with the eaters.
However much resources you consume, it will be too much to buy for your labor. You will be priced out of existence.
The evidence for this is all around us. As automation of manufacturing has brought former luxuries into reach for middle-class families, those with means move on to consuming items that require more and more labor to produce. "Handmade" scented soaps. "Artisanal" cheeses. Nobody with money wants their wedding invitation to arrive at a destination with machine-canceled postage. It's tacky. Too automated, too efficient. In fact, I bet the ultra-wealthy don't even use postal mail for delivering their invitations, because it's not labor-intensive enough to be tasteful. Private couriers are probably the move. You can see this pattern over and over again once you know what to look for.
There will always be a demand for human labor, because value is a human construction. That said, the rate at which the economy will change because of AI (if the True Believers are to be believed) is probably too fast for most workers to adapt, so you may not be entirely wrong in your conclusion depending on how thing shake out, but the way you got there is bogus imo.
Automation results in centralization of power. It transforms labor-intensive work to capital-intensive work and reduces the leverage of the working class.
You could have a system that distributes wealth from automation to the newly-unemployed working class, but fundamentally the capital-owners are less dependent on the working class, so the working class will have no leverage to sustain the wealth distribution (you cannot strike if you don't have a job). You are proposing a fundamentally unstable political system.
It's like liebig's law of the minimum or any other natural law. You can try to make localized exceptions in politics, but you are futilely working against the underlying dynamics of the system which are inevitably realized in the long term.
Note that the stench of inevitability likes to sneak into these discussions of systemic problems. Nothing is set in stone. Anyone telling you otherwise has given up themselves. The comment section attracts all kinds of life outlooks, after all. The utility of belief in some sort of agency (however small) shouldn’t be surrendered to someone else’s nihilistic disengagement.
just because humans can't "outdo" technology doesn't mean we should "blame" "the elite". that's literally how the great catastrophes of socialism, communism, Marxism, etc started
Humans aren't "forced" to do anything, (depending on how you look at it). You could just lay down, "live" in your own excrement until you starve to death. That seems reasonable! Liberate the proletariat! Why doesn't everyone else work for me?!