Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either.
Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he will be replaced by a machine fully; imagine that taxi driver thinking that there are slick graduates from top schools who wake up everyday (waymo, tesla, zoox) with one goal in mind - let's automate this taxi driver.
The anger against AI/Tech is just starting really.
This argument alone doesn't really work because literally billions of peoples jobs and livelihoods have been replaced throughout history from the explicit development of technology that replaces the need for human labor.
The question should not be whether the technology replaces people by machines, it should be whether it provides a net benefit overall. You could use this argument to say we should have never invented the printing press if you only thought of the people who used to manually transcribe books and documents.
What was true with previous automation, that some jobs disappear, but new ones are created in their place, will not be true of AI, because AI is a general purpose technology capable of doing the new jobs it creates just as well as the old ones it displaces.
Whereas in this case most of the top brass of AI do push it as something more akin to "we think this will replace practically all human labor". And without the availability of human labor, at least given the current economic system its hard to see how that'd lead to anything but mass suffering.
I do think the argument still holds. If we were able to see it as a net benefit to all, it would still be worth it. Its just that with the level of replacement we're talking about the net benefit would need to be massive (however we define "benefit") The problem is there is plenty of research showing it is still net negative in many cases, especially (in my opinion) when it comes to cognitive ability and early stage development for children/youth.
The closest similarity may be the development of the personal computer or something along those lines.
That's just treating the very real, living people, who exist right now, and can read your words, as if they're already dead.
> You could use this argument to say we should have never invented the printing press
So, what displaced person will you swap your livelihood with? After all, if it's just about the general arc of progress, and the individual lives don't matter, why not sacrifice yours for that of someone else? The same could be said to those who say "there will always be inequality", life is unfair, etc... it all sounds great but it's really just more words for "fuck you, got mine" IMO.
So yes, I do agree it sucks for lots of people living in the moment.
I mention in some other comments that yes, AI "visionaries" make the level of replacement seem to be on a scale almost never before seen and so the "benefit" for the majority would have to be absolutely massive (however we define benefit). And currently its hard to see how it could reach that level. I was just noting we cannot "only" see it through the lens of replacement. If for example billionaires (trillionaires now?) did actually spread the benefit and we overhauled the economic systems in much of the world for humanity it _might_ actually be a benefit. Its just hard to see this ever happening given history.
I definitely have not "gotten mine" like the billionaires pushing AI. But other inventions in hindsight have very clearly benefited humanity as a whole even with the unfortunate effects on the people of the time.
This argument alone works just fine. If you explicitly threaten billions of people that you will make them redundant then you better focus on building a guillotine proof neck.
"throughout history" - go look at the time it took to replace those jobs. how those jobs were replaced. A trillion dollars will be put into investment this year to put AI in everything. People who's companies those money is going to are actively saying there will be 20-30% job loss.
>>The question should not be whether the technology replaces people by machines, it should be whether it provides a net benefit overall.
Define 'net benefit overall'. Does overall include people who's job is getting automated? How skewed the benefit is towards some b(t)illionaires?
And yes, "net benefit" is hard to measure for an unrealized/developing product.
So I don't disagree with you. In the current economic system where we need human labor (in the majority of the world) to make a living, its hard to see the current vision of AI by those in charge to lead to anything but mass suffering.
AI will quickly turn the world into an even greater disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots" with its current vision.
I like this framing.
But I wish more people would acknowledge that genAI offloads thinking in ways that the printing press, the loom, the calculator, and the computer never did.
I find a net benefit to be extremely unlikely, but the devil's in the details. We'd have to define "benefit" and that's already a big kettle of worms.
And it entailed social unrest every time.
I don't care if my current job is being replaced or the whole industry I am working in vanishes. But as an individual, if the new technology says it aims to wipe out all the possibilities of my future career, it is not net benefit for me.
Just saying "net benefit" "overall" sounds like some collectivism propaganda.
> Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines??
Because arms race.
Game dynamics and incentive structures don't cease to exist just because someone notices them.
If SW devs who worked on ride sharing apps didn't leave, why would you think these folks would?
If SW devs who worked on airline ticket search engines didn't leave, why would you think these folks would?
And on and on and on. The SW industry has been heavily involved in replacing jobs since its inception.
The irony is, they are building their own competitor...
Yeah, we get that nobody can trust China/Russia/USA/Shady cabal of too-rich-people, but we stopped the atom bomb because it was MAD (mutually assured destruction).
We need a similar treaty to ban any use of AI in this fashion, because all that will happen is creation of weapons that are inevitably turned on their owners.
And then, yes, as a coalition, declare war on any country that violates this.
I hate to be a proponent for war, but one's coming either way. I'd prefer a relatively peaceful resolution to some of our problems, not a "oh my god the robots have rebelled, and we are losing" scenario.
Say, you wouldn't happen to write software for a living, would you?
The general vibe of the internet at least for the last 20 years has been "Work sucks, play is fun, give whatever technology minimizes my need to work and maximizes my wealth and free time"
All these same guys have also talked about the need for UBI, so they basically have been promising the dream of the liberal internet: No work, free money, do whatever you want in your life.
The viability of this dream is pretty debatable, but it definitely checks all the boxes of the internet hivemind as of ~3-4 years ago.
The people that have won are not the lazy ones. It's the preppy work-hard-not-smart guys high on ADHD medication that feel like gods having a dozen machines spew out millions of lines of code per day, instead of just sitting on a hammock and thinking the easiest way to achieve the goal, with the least amount of effort.
That said, the shift away from 'the best engineer is the lazy engineer' ethos has happened a decade+ ago.
Cal Newport calls this "Doom-Trolling" — there was an NYT article, he has talked about it on his youtube channel and there was an actually really great, long discussion with Ed Zitron about it where Ed covered a lot more topic ground than he has been focussed on lately.
He makes the case that this fear-based marketing is causing real harm and unnecessary anxiety and is basically despicable.
There is a lot of money to be made in the destruction of civilisation.
