The AI Backlash Could Get Ugly
theatlantic.comPeople like Altman and Musk are saying that Universal Basic Income will be necessary once AI has fully automated away most jobs, but at the same time they aggressively fight against any kind of tax policy that would allow UBI to function.
I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving; they're trying to convince us that there will be a solution to the destruction of the economy as we know it, so that we'll just let them do whatever they want.
It isn't the backlash against AI that will get ugly, it will be the backlash against the ten people who suddenly own the entire world's money supply
It's the same "give me a lot of money and everything will be great for everyone!" pitch that rich guys have been running for the history of humanity.
> "give me a lot of money and everything will be great for everyone!"
or a hostage negotiation
It is almost like the interconnectedness the internet has given us has laid bare the fact that human institutions aren’t to be trusted. That the longer an institution exists the further it drifts from whatever its stated purpose. That they all tend towards corruption, aggregation of power, and actions that are by most people’s definition evil.
Or something :)
> It is almost like the interconnectedness the internet has given us has laid bare the fact that human institutions aren’t to be trusted. That the longer an institution exists the further it drifts from whatever its stated purpose. That they all tend towards corruption, aggregation of power, and actions that are by most people’s definition evil.
Careful with that. I think that kind of perfectionist, all-or-nothing thinking is an echo of the propaganda meant to help the rich guys' pitch. Basically: "doesn't the government suck because it's not perfect? Kill it! (BTW, it's also the only thing powerful enough keep the rich guys under control, so increasing distrust sets them free)."
I think the reality is human institutions require work to function, and if the common people are either too lazy or too busy to do that work, they get corrupted. Also, a certain level of unity is required, and maintaining that unity has been extremely unfashionable for many decades.
> Careful with that
Fair point -- none of us want to be in the situation where all our current institutions have failed and there's nothing to replace them. That is chaos and anarchy and a true mess. Even the most hardened ideologues put in that environment would want a more orderly society. "Order" is another word to be careful of.
> I think the reality is human institutions require work to function, and if the common people are either too lazy or too busy to do that work, they get corrupted. Also, a certain level of unity is required, and maintaining that unity has been extremely unfashionable for many decades.
We agree on this as well. We currently don't put in the work to make a good and just society. I don't think it's that we're too lazy en masse, but too busy rings true. Too distracted as well.
Our "elites" have set about breaking up our unity, fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed. The "fashion" is definitely to denigrate anything and everything that would build unity. Judge the other. Accuse the foreigner. Demonize those who look different.
But that interconnectedness has woken many people up. The people are starting to see clearly now that what has been required for much of human history may no longer be required. And so we see the existing power structure panic, and try and double down on whats worked in the past: violence, divide and conquer, rule through force.
Obviously I can't know the outcome. But it feels like we're all at a moment in history where major change is coming, which might be great or might be a new level of living hell.
I'm glad I'm around to watch what happens :)
> Our "elites" have set about breaking up our unity, fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed. The "fashion" is definitely to denigrate anything and everything that would build unity. Judge the other. Accuse the foreigner. Demonize those who look different.
Yes, but I think your more specific examples are more liberal-coded, and leave a false impression. Liberals aren't immune. I'd say the biggest example of "fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed" is political polarization. There are a lot of liberals that are unsalvageably deep into that, reject finding common ground (even in obviously self-defeating ways), and who seem to be able to only conceive of unity as being total domination of their other.
> But that interconnectedness has woken many people up. The people are starting to see clearly now that what has been required for much of human history may no longer be required. And so we see the existing power structure panic, and try and double down on whats worked in the past: violence, divide and conquer, rule through force.
Can you be more specific about who's been woken up?
> Yes, but I think your more specific examples are more liberal-coded
Struggling with this statement. Liberal vs Conservative is a false dichotomy and precisely the sort of divide we could do without. Frankly I don’t know what “liberal coded” even really is supposed to convey. Perhaps you mean to say my implicit bias skews towards liberals? You’ve made no mention of conservatives, who are also unsalvageably deep into that. Trying to discuss anything regarding these two specific groups is a HUGE DISTRACTION and plays into the divide. How would you phrase it differently?
> Can you be more specific about who's been woken up?
Oh yes, since 2020 and Covid I think there is a chunk of the populace that had implicit faith in our institutions. Covid showed that faith was misplaced. My impression is that more and more people are just done with all this and are patiently waiting for the next thing. I sort of doubt that makes sense — it feels a bit woowoo to me tbh. But as it happens I also think most of those people were “liberals” and what we’re seeing now from that group is mostly cognitive dissonance.
I haven't decided which word I like best to describe it but if the citizens are not on the same team or if there isn't a team anymore everything goes to shit. Collective/community/unity etc
Maybe "social capital"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital
"Anarchy" seems appropriate
'Teeth suck because if you don't keep them maintained they degrade over time'
Isn't like the basic of reality that everything drifts? If you want to keep order it is a constant task, not a onetime creation be it an institution or a house?
It certainly may be that this is a basic tenet of our reality. But how many people are asleep to reality? How many more have woken up to that specific reality as our old institutions crumble? Yes its obvious but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be said out loud.
I keep warning people that promising UBI and not delivering UBI both serve the same end, undermining opposition.
By the time you find out that their promises of UBI are empty it’s too late to do anything about it.
I don't know. A nationwide (global?) promise of UBI that just evaporates is likely to bring on a French Revolution kind of moment.
The difference between then and now is that the have nots don’t have much leverage.
At least during the French Revolution, they had strength in numbers.
The people who control the capital are building autonomous armament to protect themselves against both foreign and domestic enemies.
If you sell labour for money, you should be worried.
> The people who control the capital are building autonomous armament to protect themselves against both foreign and domestic enemies.
Rich people can build all the fortified bunkers they want, but they still need to get their food, water, and air from somewhere. It would be very easy to cut them off or smoke them out.
(I'm not advocating for violence in any way, I'm just pointing out that nobody's invincible, no matter how obscenely wealthy they are).
> I'm not advocating for violence in any way
God, I hate this.
"Guys, there is an ugly but working solution to many of our problems, but hey, I am so well-tamed I automatically need to emphasize I don't condone choosing this option"
Imagine a split between two factions, one that wants UBI and one that doesn't. The most talented people will go to the faction that doesn't offer/impose UBI. That's why UBI is impossible, the incentive to defect is immense.
What makes you think that?
Why would “the most talented” necessarily side with the oppressors?
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving; they're trying to convince us that there will be a solution to the destruction of the economy as we know it, so that we'll just let them do whatever they want.
This is exactly it. Also, even if UBI is implemented:
1) It's probably going to be just enough to let one scrape by as a member of a permanent underclass. You will not be comfortable on it.
2) I doubt it will be permanent, there will be a rug-pull once said underclass has been politically neutered. They'll kill off the UBI deprivation, mainly because they just don't care about those people.
So you're saying we'll all live on "Reservations".
Aren't you excited?
What wealthy celebrities say has no relation to what they will say later, or what they actually think now, regardless if they are speaking about businesses they are directly involved in, or how those businesses or policies integrate with public policies.
So much of the world is discussing what celebrities say, and it's incredibly pointless to take them at face value. They are not trying to convey their current or future thinking, they are trying to shape discourse.
Given how resistant American voters and politicians are against any sort of welfare or social assistance I doubt UBI would ever be possible here. Remember the backlash against "ObamaPhones" and "welfare queens!" We can't even get mandatory paid parental leave approved; UBI would be a non-starter.
Americans are fine with low taxes for billionaires and don't mind high inequality as one of their core beliefs is that upward class mobility is achievable and they might also get rich.
When the checks had trumps name on them during the pandemic they loved it. They don’t hate welfare on principle, they hate it when the propaganda tells them to hate it.
They love programs that benefit them, and hate programs that benefit the "wrong" people. Also, the definition of "wrong people" is very easy to guess.
The irony is when political advertising manages to convince people that a policy that would benefit them (because they're poor) would benefit someone they dislike (because they're racist), and they vote against their own self-interest.
See: poor Republicans supporting cuts to ACA
You do have to imagine the political environment where unemployment is rapidly climbing among the middle class rather than the current status quo if your intent is to accurately predict the future.
I'm skeptical. Even during the great depression FDR was only able to get work programs approved that assigned jobs like Conservation Corps, Public Works and WPA rather than just handing out cash.
And even then amongst bank collapses, failed farms, starving people and catastrophic unemployment there was STILL heavy opposition to any government assistance programs because there is a very deep fear entrenched in the American psyche that government aid creates dependency and weakens individual responsibility. There is a widespread false narrative that any sort of government help is leftist socialism and communism.
The majority of people agree that taxes to pay for schools, hospitals, roads and the like are a good idea. The majority of people also don't want to pay more tax personally. I don't think there's any great contradiction there.
Taxing the ten people won't happen because they choose it. It may happen because the majority of the population will vote in a government that does that.
Most of the changes - AI getting better, changes to the tax and economic system, are kind of inevitable regardless of Musk, Altman or whatever other figureheads get involved. Human level AI was predicted perhaps most famously by Turing who thought it might take 50 years but it's actually been more like 75. Tax revenue as a % of gdp has gone in the UK from about 10% in 1900 to near 45% now and those trends will probably also continue. (tax graph https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew-Dilnot/publicati...)
It is just handwaving. They're billionaires. The only thing they're capable of saying is the thing that's going to lead to the best outcome for them.
They found out that 'UBI' is a collection of sounds that's apparently popular with the detractors. Crucially, the task of turning this acronym into real policy will never fall on them, and no one will blame them if it never comes. So, when faced with criticism about the bleak world they want to force on us, they can just recite the UBI warding spell, reassuring people that even if they make the worst version of reality happen, surely there will be someone else to help the commoners out - anyone but them.
What’s an example where they took a side on taxes?
Elon's companies famously pay very little in taxes, he spent last year attempting to gut the federal government, he complains constantly about how much he pays in taxes, and he's been very vocal about California's recent efforts to tax very wealthy people.
The California Billionaire Tax is a bad idea. It's not that wealth taxes can't work (most of the US taxes property just fine), it's that taxes need to be fair and predictable. The phase-in is too narrow and its implementation is too arbitrary. Why $1B? Why $5%? Why won't CA voters hit up billionaires again?
I feel like every opposition I read to wealth taxes is someone saying that we shouldn't do it, because it won't be perfect. Without offering an alternative to the status quo, which is nothing.
We can iterate on taxes if they're ineffective, but it's unforgivable to not try and do something in the face of so much inequality.
I sort of implied that it needs to be predicable (annual) and less arbitrary (bracketed). A one-off tax sends the message that you can be taxed whenever and for whatever. Unpredictable policy sends a message that somewhere isn't a stable place to live or do business.
This is not my reaction to just you. This is my reading of "any time a wealth tax is brought up." My recommendation to you, given you seem to be acting in good-faith:
Make it clear "What you want a wealth tax to look like instead" But also, it's easier to destroy than it is to create, so I think any state setting the grounds for how they're going to try this, is worth supporting and iterating on.
Maybe, maybe not, but it's an example of Elon taking a side on taxes, per the original post.
"Why $1B? Why $5%?"
You have some numbers that are less arbitrary?
Why is my tax rate 30-40%? Why are billionaires like 0.1%? Why won't the U.S. and state governments hit me up every single paycheck, year after year?
Like holy smokes, who amongst these rich men will not be harmed!
A few days ago he tweeted something along the lines of:
“Bitches Money No Taxes Party”
I think he deleted it afterwards
Support for Trump, or even Republicans writ large, means support for reducing taxes (both estate and income) on the wealthy, while increasing them on consumers (via tariffs). Musk has been an ardent supporter of Trump.
While I don't disagree with your conclusion, this line of reasoning makes no sense in a two party state where each party offers a menu of positions. Supporters are forced to make tradeoffs and pretending otherwise just gives you an incoherent picture of reality.
In which states does the Republican party support increasing taxes?
"Two party state" as in a government where politics are bifurcated. In a one party state, a citizen's voting history isn't informative whatsoever about their beliefs. In a direct democracy, their votes give you a complete map of the positions on any issue that came up. In the US, we only know that an R voter prefers the entire set of R policies over the entire set of D policies. Maybe they're pro-taxes, pro-welfare, anti-immigrant, pro-life, and pro-gun, and they weight these positions such that it makes sense to sacrifice the taxes and welfare to get the rest. So, while the party is anti-taxes, everyone who supports it may not be.
Just because a hypocrite says something doesn't mean that thing is wrong. If a drug addict tells you not to use drugs, they're still right about that. UBI is the solution, isn't it? Capitalism both requires everyone to have a job while at the same time providing no guarantee that jobs are available. The idea doesn't get tainted just because the words left the mouths of a few rich hypocrites. We have to do it despite them.
UBI is an "entitlement". Just look at how well a certain slice of the powerful view other "entitlements" like Obamacare or Social Security.
I like the idea of UBI, but the biggest problem with UBI is that it relies on the government to fund it, and the government can be controlled and subverted. UBI might go away, get held up by government shutdowns, not be indexed to inflation, etc - there's a ton of ways things that could go wrong if peoples' entire livelihoods are under the control of one entity.
UBI is not solution. Not even in theory. A system where majority is powerless will be the system where majority is oppressed and that is what it will be.
It is a lie pushed by people who go out of their way to be cruel whenever they can.
> but at the same time they aggressively fight against any kind of tax policy that would allow UBI to function.
Because that isn't the UBI they're thinking of.
Altman runs an eyeball-scanning crypto startup and Musk wants to replicate WeChat to create a panopticon paradise for surveillance capitalism. In their world, UBI looks like something that even Black Mirror writers would reject as too unrealistic:
a) Free housing, but it's right next to a datacenter with its 24-hour noise. If you develop health problems from drinking the water or living near power lines, you get mandatory arbitration before an AI judge, with your legal representation provided by Grok.
b) Free money, but it's all in Worldcoin, and can only be spent at company-owned stores built around the datacenter. X.com charges a 30% fee if you try to convert it to USD.
Scrip.
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving
Well, they are sociopaths so that checks out. What I find even more horrible is that they still somehow have an almost religious following, but it's also becoming clear they may be helping to flood the internet with bots that bolster their talking points against any push back. They especially have an audience here that defends them while they push an agenda to de-power and bury the working class.
Haven't really paid attention to Altman, so can't comment there, but on the Musk file I will say it is insane that anyone relies upon his future benevolence. And they do rely upon it given that America is 100% a plutocracy now and is run in the service of the ultra-rich who hold complete and utter control over government.
Musk's entire history on this planet betrays him to be a profoundly selfish individual with perilously little regard for anyone else. Musk and his ilk (Trump, Bezos, Page, Ellison, Thiel, etc) are more likely to see you ground up into Soylent Green than to offer largess like UBI.
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving
I mean yeah, obviously. You can’t trust a word out of either of their mouths.
UBI is a scapegoat, an easy answer to handwave the question about the job losses. People can't just live like that doing nothing and they won't. Before the current AI evolution the pro-UBI crowd would claim that in this utopia people would not need to work and they could create art. Now AI can create art and we see that with infinite supply it loses any kind of value.
> Already, as many as a quarter of Americans seem accepting of violence as a tool for achieving political change.
I'm surprised it's only a quarter: violence as a tool for achieving political change is the entire point of the right to bear arms.
EDIT: I'm not arguing for or against political violence, just noting an apparent inconsistency between Americans' views and one of the documents that they talk about as though it's holy writ.
I don’t condone it but I’m also expecting it to escalate. I grew up extremely poor and remained so until I dug myself out (through an absolutely ridiculous amount of work that no one should have to do this is not pro bootstraps).
Every week was a struggle to eat and the cost of living has significantly increased since then.
I guess the question is what is the terminal percentage of people who can’t afford to exist?
It's 100% accurate to say that the history of the United States is filled to the brim with political change via violence.
Some friends and I read "A People's History of the United States" a while back and were surprised at how true this is. US classroom history textbooks hold civil disobedience up as the One True Way to bring change, but it's alarming how often the backdrop of famous acts of civil disobedience was in fact incredible violence.
Our conclusion in our impromptu book club was that made sense: why would the state schools give students lots of examples of how violence against the state was an effective negotiating tool? It was extremely jarring to reconcile with the image of US history we'd been imbued with up to that point, which of course was also a reflection of our socioeconomic status at the time.
As a counterpoint, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" is also taught in schools, so it's possible I'm just selectively remembering things.
Tomas Rick's Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement 1954-68 should be required reading at this point
https://www.amazon.com/Waging-Good-War-Military-1954-1968/dp...
Ricks kinda beats a dead horse as he goes over and over again that non-violence is not unaggressive. It is typically quite militant when done well.
Non violence is a tactic, one that is typically better at achieving results than violence, as it tends to change the other side that is violent to adjust down to non violence as well. Like getting a drunk to be quieter by whispering to them (Note: that is a poor analogy).
Rick's book is just so very good and my poor internet comment can't possibly do it justice. He convinced me that the Civil Rights movement is so big because it gave the US a brand new tool in conflicts. It's not just violence or submission anymore.
Your "poor internet comment" got me to check the book out, so I'd say it's a pretty good comment!
A truly fantastic book. I'm glad to hear of more people checking it out.
Here in the UK, political violence has had its moments. My go to example is the Suffragettes who had to resort to violence (letter bombs if I recall) to effect change and get votes for women.
I often think that people will always criticise protests for not protesting the "correct" way, but it's exactly the violent and/or disruptive protests that tend to work.
However, I think the current U.S. political problems can be better addressed with economic disruption such as general strikes.
And you can extend that to the history of the world. Change via non violent means is a historical aberration. We hold those examples up because they are so rare.
What percentage of people "seem accepting of violence as a tool" when they're starving to death?
The right to bear arms is more of a last resort against tyrants and invaders. You don't want to be shooting people for everyday politics.
It’s 25% increase…for every meal missed.
Civilisation is three meals away from anarchy
I find the backlash kind of saddening.
As an engineer, as most of you are, I am as blown away by the achievement that is the LLM in a way not too dissimilar to how I feel about the Apollo Moon program. And furthermore, I have found it wildly useful for me (if used within contexts that play to its strengths).
But I think that kind of gets to the point perhaps of the schism. I like the tech and like using it. I enjoy "testing" its capabilities—finding its boundaries…
In absolutely no way am I scheming on how I might leverage it to shut down whole industries. I use it, for personal use, not unlike I used the first personal computer as a tool—dare I say, "A bicycle for my mind…"
The people hating AI (and I'm looking at my entire family, ha ha), I think hate AI as it is wielded as a tool by corporations. They hate Musk, Bezos, the whole lot of them—and, perhaps rightly so, they lump AI in with all that lot.
Perhaps my diplomatic stance then is that AI may turn out to be empowering for the individual, might be used in a way crippling to society.
It sounds like you're championing labor using ai. But capital will also use it and leverage it more.
There's no mechanism for only labor to exploit a technology, apart from common ownership at a world level. Achieving this is left as an exercise to the ambitious.
"In absolutely no way am I scheming on how I might leverage it to shut down whole industries"
I don't think even the ultra rich who own the technology are directly scheming to do that. But they do accept it as a side effect of them getting more money and power.
Yes, the technology is a tool, it's an impressive tool but we cannot ignore who wields it and what they incentives are.
My main problem is this:
- If (big If) AI actually replaces workers, then we have a problem, because lots of folk lost their jobs
- If AI doesn't replace workers, then we have a recession, because a lot of the US economy now sits on top of corporations betting on it. And this will tank the economy and lots of folk will lose their jobs
It feels that the only path forward is a narrow one where AI removes some jobs, but not too many, but still enough so that the (immense, disproportionate) hype that was put on it does not come with a vengeance and the house of cards falls.
I don't think it an either / or. The current AI models, as they are, improve productivity quite a bit. They're just super expensive but the expense is being subsidized so it appears reasonable.
An alternative possibility is that the models become much cheaper and their use becomes more ubiquitous which would be helpful.
You're ignoring historical experience. The owners of the means of production have perfected their ability to nab all the upsides of productivity gains, while the workers' best hope is wage stagnation. Combined with the promise of "we'll put everyone out of work" it's just mass poverty and death from hunger and exposure. And if it doesn't pan out, then it's still very few companies that will own the remaining market of LLM use. That's a new quality we haven't seen before, where both success and failure will have catastrophic consequences.
If one of both cases happens you can be sure the people most responsible will be the least affected. That is why this can get ugly. Honestly they deserve for it to get ugly. We can keep giving the Musks, Zuckerbergs, Altmans and co the benefit of the doubt
If your competitor is cutting jobs because of AI you can either race them to the bottom or you can use the humans you already have to leverage AI to expand your product offering, become more competitive, tackle more work, deliver better quality results etc. I don't see a world where AI does the work and humans sit around poor and idle.
Basically the whole point of existence for St. Sam is make sure that his corpo is too big to fail. So either he strikes gold, or he is bailed out by the taxpayer money a-la "investments".
There is a third and, to me, so much more likely outcome that it's not even worth talking about the other two: AI makes workers more productive and unlocks more economic activity.
In life it's important to consider when our personal opinions might be incorrect and what the consequences may be.
Its probably a combination of both. Also, the "lots of folk" in the two scenarios are probably different orders of magnitude.
Fixed pie fallacy.
Infinite pie fallacy.
> They want to replace workers
A simple question none of the ai-doomsayers can answer... who buys anything when nobody has a job cos robots do everything?
You're asking a question that only applies to rational actors.
Corporations exist for one purpose: to get as much money as possible. Side concerns, which can range from "not destroying the environment" or "not destroying the economy," are objectively not their goal, nor do they consider them their responsibility. Those are things "someone else" should worry about.
AI destroying all jobs is similar to a nuclear arms race; these companies don't want to eliminate everyone's ability to buy things, but they don't want to be the only entity without that ability, so ...
That is mostly true but a bit of a simplification. They exist to do what the people who have power want them to do which is not always strictly profit maximization.
A ceo may realize rto will decrease profits but do it anyway because it increases the power delta between him and the workers.
"not always strictly profit maximization."
Maybe in the short-term but public companies with shareholders won't allow this in any sort of long-term way right?
Not allow it? They insist upon it!
The controlling votes are all part of the same social class. They would gladly give up a small amount of profit to keep the distance between them and the workers as large as possible.
To the extent it doesn't negatively impact the stock price sure but you would agree the CEO and any sort of power-trip they have is ultimately beholden to that right?
If he goes against what they want absolutely. If he introduced a 4 day work week for example he would be in big trouble.
The true AI doomsayers believe in some sort of technological singularity, which means a point after which things become so strange that the world is radically transformed.
Things like "jobs" and "careers" are so integral to society that we can't really imagine what society would be like in a world where people don't have any clear purpose. That's why you won't get a definitive answer. The whole idea of a singularity is that people don't have the faintest clue what day to day life would look like after.
We often to choose to believe that a singularity can't happen, because we don't know what that even means. We can't answer the simple question. So it definitely better not happen, that would be very inconvenient.
I’m always amazed that when I tell people I intend to retire in my 50s, they tell me that I can’t possibly mean that and actively wonder how I could possibly fill my time. It’s as if we could not possibly function as humans without meaningless shifting of tangible/intangibles from one place to another.
Society is so hellbent on the idea that we need our job to be our identity, they lack the imagination for another other reality.
It’s ridiculous.
Sure working sucks, but have you tried not working? I think this is from lived experience because I've gone for stretches of not working (intentionally). It can be challenging to find a sense of fulfillment. I know it seems counter-intuitive but if you do succeed in your dream of retiring in your 50's I think you'll understand what I mean when you get there.
I think this varies wildly from person to person. I've also intentionally gone long stretches without working and those are the times when I've had a dramatically increased sense of purpose and fulfillment. Working for others reduces those things for me.
I'm in the age group where a lot of the people around me have retired. Some of them have fared very poorly, some have straight-up blossomed.
Ok but one of the great things about retiring when everyone else does is you have a community. If you stop working when you're young, everyone else in your network is probably still working.
I'm not against early retirement. One of my points was that, in general, it's harder to find fulfillment as a working age adult outside of work. Not impossible, just more challenging.
It's harder for -you- to find fulfillment outside of work. This is not a true statement for most or "in general".
I think you need to do better at not working. It's great actually.
I have tried not working and it's great.
Sorry, but your comment isn't really responding to OP's main point.
> It can be challenging to find a sense of fulfillment.
If you actually get fulfillment from work, then great, continue to work. The critical thing that drives people to retire earlier than the average person is that their work doesn't give them a sense of fulfillment. It's literally just a way to fill out the day. Some people do have things that are more fulfilling than letting an employer tell them how to spend their day.
Yes, it was responding. One of my points was that it has nothing to do with society's expectations but people's lived experiences and observations.
You seem to think I'm advocating for working your entire life. I'm just trying to share my lived experience so please take it easy.
There is some bitterness that's coming across in your response.
It is indeed ridiculous. People saying they're going to let someone else tell them what to do with their time, energy, and calendar, even if they hate doing it. The only explanation I have is that they have been letting the wrong people program them.
>can't really imagine what society would be like in a world where people don't have any clear purpose
Do people have clear purpose now? We have a lot of examples of people who don't have to work like the British landed gentry of times past. Maybe we'll be Bertie Woosters with AI Jeeves?
I believe that AI will continue to progress. I believe that we’re going to see a fast takeoff.
That said, some people are now discussing a “societal singularity” wherein society breaks before the actual emergence of AGI. I believe this is the trajectory we are on. The question is what happens to the unemployed. Democracies will not tolerate mass permanent unemployment, as we’ve seen over and over again.
UBI is a scam, many middle class folks would be worse off under UBI than they are under the current system. They will fight to defend the economic status quo.
In the end, I think capitalism is incompatible with the emergence of AGI, and I think an aligned ASI will smash the capitalist system simply out of pure egalitarianism. (Note: I was previously a proponent of capitalism.) I think many people will die trying to defend capitalism. We’re at the beginning of the AI wars.
My sentiments are fairly similar.
In the US at least the middle class was already being hunted to extinction and it seems reasonable. This is just accelerant on that already burning fire.
The capitalist system is kind of a tool to provide prosperity by people making stuff and so remains because people like prosperity. If AI can make the stuff it may become redundant and fade in importance without needing to be smashed.
Like there was kind of an A B test of capitalism vs socialism in Germany but East Germany got less prosperity and so they had to build walls with machine guns to stop people escaping the socialist side. But if AI was providing abundance in the east that might not have been needed? Like in the future if you have two societies, one dysfunctional capitalism where Musk and Altman have everything and the other a kind of AI socialism where everyone has abundance of most things, people may voluntarily choose the later.
It can't happen. For one - if it did happen it would mean all domains reach singularity at once, but we know the capability curve is jagged. Each domain advances at its own speed.
Second - the more you make progress, the harder it gets, exponentially harder. Maybe Newton could advance physics observing an apple fall, today they need space telescopes and billion dollar particle accelerators. The more tech advances, the harder it is. Will AGI be so "super" to cancel out exponentials?
And third - the AI progress is tied to learning signal, and we have exhausted the available data. In the last 1-2 years we have started using verified synthetic data (RLVR) but exponential difficulty is a barrier. Other domains don't even have built in verifiability like math and code. So there the progress will be slower. Testing a vaccine to be safe takes 6 months for 1 bit of information - that is how slow and expensive it can get in some domains. AI can't get the learning signal it needs across all domains fast enough.
Why would the doomsayers be the ones who need to answer that? That’s kind of their point! It’s the AI boosters who need to answer that, and so far it’s just a big collective shrug + silence.
Nobody can answer that?
There are jobs AI can't easily come for... not always nice ones, but either too physically fiddly or too cheap to bother automating.
But jobs go "extinct" all the time. My ancestors going back generations were sugarhouse labourers. That job's gone, but the lineage isn't: we just do different things now.
The pattern seems pretty consistent: raise the floor (dishwashers, CNC machines, laundry), and people tend to climb to higher levels of abstraction. The real question is who captures those productivity gains; and historically, it isn't the workers.
Shoes are the classic example. Automation made them cheaper and accessible to everyone. Then, once the market was captured, mid-tier became the ceiling and anything above it got expensive again. Nobody won except the owners.
> My ancestors going back generations were sugarhouse labourers. That job's gone, but the lineage isn't: we just do different things now.
Same will happen with the jobs AI takes
> Shoes are the classic example. Automation made them cheaper and accessible to everyone
Like you said, cobblers just do different things now
There will still be jobs. Manual jobs, the kind that break our backs and have us breath various stuff we shouldn't (dust, fumes). Robots are difficult and maybe not so economically viable when everyone is desperate for any job at any cost.
The consumer economy only exists to extract value from common people and funnel it up the wealth ladder. If robots and AI take over all the production, you don’t need a consumer economy, the robots produce and their output directly goes to the top. The rest of us are left to starve.
Eh, no? If everything goes to top, then economy of scale just don't work and whole automation is pointless, because you can make the goods in artisan way.
We shouldn't be surprised people have a negative view of AI when Altman et al. have stated on stage that the goal is to replace everyone.
Because it's not even logically possible, let alone practically
Maybe the Altmans and Amodeis should stop saying otherwise all the time then.
When a sizeable percentage of people are replaced, who buys all the products that A.I. produces? The whole system just collapses.
It's bizarre that some of the doomsayers are AI stakeholders. It's like they don't realize that most people don't have net worth in the 7-8 figures.
I console myself with the fact that without a functioning economy, AI will implode since capital will dry up. Then all of the investment in data centers, R&D, etc. will never be recovered. Then we'll be back to rational thinking? Maybe?
Yeah, but it doesn’t implode all at once - it’s not distributed evenly.
Something like over half of the US consumption is done by the top 10%, or something insane like that. This leads me to believe that a lot more people will eat shit, before enough feel real pain.
Yes, it will take longer but all value comes from labor, so the consumption of the wealthy is literally produced by the working class. The rich can't eat money.
Also, data centers, chips, and energy require massive working-class supply chains, and enterprise AI revenue depends on customers whose own revenue depends on regular consumers.
They realize it, and they don't care.
Fully automated luxury space fascism doesn't really need buyers. A risk of high automation/post-scarcity is that abundance exists but remains under the control of people who are not interested in justice or equality or freedom. Lots of people feel that describes the leadership of most AI tech companies.
If they don't need your labor, and they don't need you as a customer, and they don't care about you as a person... where does that leave you?
[to be clear, I think post-scarcity, even in knowledge work, is a lot further off than most ai-doomsayers or ai-worshipers who take statements from people like Altman and Musk at face value]
But that also assume that peasants do not have agency and won't trigger another French Revolution.
> But that also assume that peasants do not have agency and won't trigger another French Revolution
Look at the median age of French society during the French Revolution and the current one.
Who is going to trigger another French revolution? Old people coughing their lung out?
They may they may not. The nobility has learned a lot in the past 200+ years. Powerful propaganda machines, powerful weaponry, and a small group of loyalists have proven extremely effective at controlling large populations.
They won’t say it in public, but I imagine they’re betting on swarms of automated slaughterbots protecting them when things truly go to shit.
I saw a talk by Brian Merchant (https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/) a while back where he talked a lot about the Luddites and their revolts against automation. He's definitely not a fan of AI, but it was very interesting to hear the comparisons of AI resistance now to Luddite resistance to automation in the 1800's.
There was unfortunately no Q&A in the lecture, as probably the one question I would have asked him was this: What if the Luddites had gotten their way? What do you imagine our society and world would be like right now?
It's not meant to be a trick question or a "gotcha" question. Society would indeed have been different. Maybe it would be all wonderfully Star Trek utopia and we'd have found a win-win for everyone. Or maybe we'd just be not nearly as technically advanced as a society as we are now.
There's one important difference: Automation worked and was affordable. Whether slop generation by LLMs is a useful instance of automation and how any productivity achieved stacks up against real, non-subsidized costs is currently a matter of (highly propagandized) opinion at best.
> Automation worked and was affordable.
Steam engines weren't affordable to the average person when they were invented. Same as ai
And like steam, AI does some types of work quicker and easier than was previously possible.
Ai produces slop no doubt, but at the very minimum I can safely say it's here to stay for agentic coding, and I suspect it's the same for quite a few other industries as well. I won't lose my job to an AI agent, but I will lose to it to a human using an AI agent. That's technology,deal with it
Take any econ 101 course, and you'll realize that this isn't a factor in the capitalist system. Capitalism is simply concerned with maximizing profit, and in this case, returning shareholder value. It's just simply not in the purview of the system to think about what happens when you completely get rid of your labor force.
Envisioned another way, the future of labor might look the way it did for laborers over 100 years ago, before major industries unionized; making 'Amazon-bucks' that can only be redeemed at the 'Amazon company store'.
> what happens when you completely get rid of your labor force.
Youre hysterical
No wages -> Nobody buys stuff and services -> Companies are going bankrupt -> No taxable income from consumers nor companies -> States are going bankrupt.
You can either go through UBI taxing automated work by 90%+ and pretend that capitalism is still a thing, or just nationalize everything and go with communism.
Henry Ford understood this problem with his Model T and realized that if he wants to sell it, he also needs to pay workers to be able to afford it.
> States are going bankrupt.
States (or their rule-of-the-strongest successors) always have means to not go bankrupt. They will simply pillage the survivors.
the answer to every question: Agents, of course! With GPU-collaterized credit or some other idiocy.
If you paint it rose-colored enough, you can even eat hot air. And rose-colored hot air will shelter you from the cold.
The robots will tell you what to do, you will own nothing, and you will be happy. I think that is the plan?
Almost, but also don't forget the part where "you vill eat ze bugs."
If you have a magic robot that builds everything you want you don’t need anyone to buy anything.
Jfc this site is the worst. Use your words instead of drive by downvoting.
Then all you have to do is magically convince the owners of the magic robot to give all their products away for free.
They already have way more than they could ever use and still try to take more.
Where do the raw materials for the thing it's building (or the robot itself for that matter) come from?
From the earth. Maybe in the future space.
Finite natural resources are by their very nature, limited.
Yes finite things are finite. Glad we cleared up it.
Finite means not free. Who will pay?
If your magic robot is magic enough you own anything you want. You pay with the oldest currency in the world. Might.
How have you gone from Transformer based AI to a magic robot that can fabricate absolutely anything (somehow)?
I don’t think pillaging the earth’s natural resources (even more than we already do) is going to go down well.
Agreed.
Ignoring CEO predictions, can anyone point to any major revolutionary technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life and employment statistics? AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable. Revolutions like this do create widening inequality while also increasing long run productivity. Yes inequality rises but what you should care about is your quality of life and that will also improve over time. There will be suffering during transition and there will be many that don’t fare well but…this happens during every major revolution—electricity the internet etc. so why do people treat AI like it’s a uniquely damaging phenomenon?
Don't ignore the transient.
The industrial revolution created a hell on Earth for workers for the better part of a century.
Or as the article puts it:
"Over the long run, it’s true that the Industrial Revolution radically boosted economic growth. But living through it was another matter entirely. Many people saw their wages stagnate and working conditions deteriorate as factory owners and industrialists came into immense wealth. (Just read a Charles Dickens novel, and you’ll get the idea.) This led to riots and, occasionally, attacks on the industrialists themselves."
> There will be suffering during transition and there will be many that don’t fare well
Yeah, and the people suffering are not going to like that. If people are afraid of being in that group, then they will not be very happy about it.
If you put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from AI, how comforting do you think your observations here are?
Not comforting at all, in fact I would find it aggravating. Yet to imply that means this is somehow a cold and callous take is what I take an issue with because it ignores the vast majority on the other side of the fence, and the economic windfall and quality of life improvement for the majority. The last thing you want to be is like Europe or any other country that is regulating their way out of the loop. You think there will be suffering if AI continues to roll out? imagine if we stop. You want Xi to chuckle at your naïveté and build out enough power to leverage the entire global economy to bend to its will?
I didn't imply anything. I just called out the emotional reality. There are a lot of externalized pain in the world today, and little recourse to addressing it. You can try telling people that they are naive and need to look at the big picture, but you might not see much success at getting your point across.
Very fair. My goal isn’t to say pain doesn’t matter, it’s to say policy to change course that would disadvantage more people than it would help is doing more damage than good. We shouldn’t let our empathy cloud judgement as hard as that is as humans. Addressing pain, like people fighting to do data centers right (sans people trying to simply stop any data center construction) and ensure impact to local life is not made worse are good efforts because it imperils nothing. Companies will just optimize within regulatory framework (for the most part) and so grassroots movements to change the things we can are great.
Even if some tech were presented, people would just nitpick and quibble, saying the tech wasn't actually revolutionary, didn't truly have a net negative impact on quality of life, didn't truly have a net negative impact on employment, or the timeframe of the latter two.
Personally, I'd nominate gunpowder, DDT, leaded gasoline, and nuclear fission.
You are confusing the macro view with the personal. Try losing your job and being told "don't worry, your quality of life will improve over time!" Would you respond positively?
My point is: you can say the exact same thing for any other major technological revolution. Would you have preferred we stopped making the internet because some people didn’t fare well in the transition? The genie is out of the bottle so what do people want to happen here?
Yes? Life was almost certainly better before the internet.
Ok so you’re the most powerful person in your country in 1995, what’s your strategy? “I’m going to fight as hard as possible to legislate away the infra buildout and internet companies” and tank your country’s economy while other countries eat your lunch?
You originally asked if there was any technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life. Now you are arguing that is inevitable. Which may be true but it is a different argument.
That being said I am not convinced a society who decided not to allow the internet would have been worse off.
That’s a fair point to the first part, but if you look at the numbers it’s also just not true. Poverty went from 38% to 10%, scientific progress was enormous (imagine doing a lit review in 1980). Internet destroyed old media yet aggregate employment didn’t collapse. Developing economies got access to global markets. Yea I mean ok I’m glued to my phone now, that’s bad, but to your point and to make a second argument (which I sort of blended into my original comment): this is inevitable. It’s inefficient not to have done the internet. The idea of “if <country> had somehow avoided connecting their society to the internet they would have been just fine” is just not logical: they would be completely disconnected from the entire world economy and their economy would be incredibly inefficient and stagnant. You would have rioting in the streets. Do you think life in Iran without the internet is better?
Similarly for AI: yea there will be serious downsides not least of which you doing this will be surveillance and centralized state power and suffering for people ill positioned to navigate the transition. It would be more damaging to not let AI develop fully and to engage in the global competition that the US is strategically winning at this point (though China will probably figure out how to get around their compute starvation in the next ~5 or so years).
For who?
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Machine-Origins-Rebellion-Again... Has some pertinent examples.
Industrial revolution made lives of many people into a hell. In the long term we gained, but only after those people went through periods of violence and fights.
> AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable.
At this point, a lot of AI is hot water rather then powerful shift in our way of life.
We treat it as uniquely damaging, because it's touted as uniquely enhancing, or even uniquely revolutionary. "AI is not just any tool" is often the response to some asking to exercise choice in the tools they use. "You don't have to use AI in your work, but if you don't, you'll work for someone who does".
Unique it is in terms of the technology and the particular scent of this revolution, but I don’t see how it’s unique in the broader sense of “this is yet another major technological/economic paradigm shift”
> You don't have to use AI in your work, but if you don't, you'll work for someone who does
I think there may be some cases where this is not true but it is definitely true the majority of the time. It’s like someone today being like “I just don’t use email” (I have worked for this person). It slowly but surely becomes more and more ridiculous and impactful for the company you work for not to adapt.
Agriculture for starters. The internet. The automobile.
1. If AI is like other technologies, there will be job displacement and temporary upheaval after which new jobs will be created and prosperity increases - this is by far the only good way to increase prosperity
2. If AI is so good that it is a proper superset of humans and can do all jobs humans can do, this is a huge deal and we don’t even have the vocabulary to express what would happen
I don’t foresee a third option.
the fact no one can actually describe these "new jobs" makes #2 appear increasingly more probable.
You can’t have predicted that an SDE 6 in Google working on ad tech using Google spanner and optimising for SEO at 1989.
That’s why you can’t say how jobs can be created now.
They could though. They could see job creation occurring AS the internet grew. I saw Netscape become an actual company. Saw CISCO grow. Saw tons of startups that employed people and saw the kinds of jobs it was bringing.
AI proponents says 'jobs appeared in the past after X, therefor they will magically appear in the future after Y' ignoring the industrial revolution started in the late 1700s and the lifestyle they brag about it delivering didn't come along until the late 1940s/1950s.
Plenty of people certainly seem to have desires to make it ugly.
> Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders don’t agree on much ...
Actually they kinda do. Anyone else notice that both extremes have the same policies? (well, Bernie Sanders isn't half as extreme as the other guy of course, but I also don't know anyone better to represent the left. But he's not extreme left by any stretch of the imagination)
But both extreme left and extreme right want very radical actions taken in support of the same goals (like housing, crime, ...), while the center fights them (what the US laughingly calls 2 parties). Only the exact actions differ, and even there, only somewhat. But both (almost all) democrats and (almost all) republicans, for example, defend property rights going so far as NIMBYism.
> Anyone else notice that both extremes have the same policies?
They absolutely 100% do not. What are you even on about?
Let’s hope so