If it can be automated, it will be, and there is no avoiding it, since the people with the robots and the automation care only about profit, nothing more.
We, little people, are merely annoyances, and the sooner they can be done with us, the better.
The reality is that it'll probably turn into Idiocracy.
How depressing. If we're distressed at the thought of liberation then the bars of containment exist within our own minds. The door is open, we just have to step out.
JFC, if AI replaces work wholesale right now billions of people will die before society is reshaped accordingly. More people need to think of immediate systemic impacts instead of the high-fantasy post-work future the AI folk are selling.
Don't worry, the economists will slap the label "natural readjustment of labour supply levels" on this phenomenon, and it will make everything morally better.
Let owners/exploiters suppress the wages they pay workers in the name of efficiency.
Encourage owners/exploiters to relentlessly raise the prices workers pay owners/exploiters in the name of shareholder value.
Then say "there is no alternative", our civilization is predicated on systematic exploitation to survive, and if you try to change it now "everyone will die".
The owner/exploiter class is going to replace labor with capital like they always have.
The worker's enemy isn't the automation that eliminates work, the worker's enemy is is the owner/exploiter who weaponizes automation in their class war.
See: the rapid drop in cost of food, manufactured goods, etc as automation took over those sectors. No one starved when we automated farming; they got fat.
"If AI replaces all jobs, none of us will have to work!" Alright, let's extrapolate a bit.
Society is currently organized around working to survive. AI suddenly replaces all work. How do people survive?
"Well everything will just be free now" Will it? Will the Capitalists who built these systems and replaced that labor now suddenly just give away product? Housing? Food? Care?
"Well, we'll just have to reconfigure society!" I mean, yeah, sure, obviously that'll have to happen. Will the Capitalists who empower the current systems of governance now cede said power when work is no longer available but still necessary to survive?
"Oh, well, people need to cooperate then, speak up for themselves, take action now." I don't disagree, and I think these sorts of Op-Eds, the "AI Doomers" making pleas for decency and civility in comments sections, the artisans demanding compensation for the theft of their work, and the myriad of folks who recognize the pace we're on will get people killed - nevermind the folks highlighting AI's disproportionate use in mass surveillance, genocide, and inflicting harm on "undesirables - are doing exactly that: speaking up, taking action, and attempting proactive reform.
"But they're hindering AI!" That's the fucking point you colossal numpty. The point is to slow it down so we have time to adapt.
Like...jesus, I expected more/better from folks who digest mathematical proofs and Arxiv papers for funsies, yet so many people here just cannot think critically about complex issues that involve people other than themselves.
Moreover it's possible to use military power to lock things down so hard that the people don't even have a chance to revolt. For example North Korea, or any other despotic regime in the world.
If you think the musks and zuckerbergs are going to ever give anyone anything think again!
The post scarcity post work future means complete poverty for the majority of the worlds people. (So in fact the complete opposite, lots of work and lots of scarcity)
...and also to try to pry it loose from the fingers of the capitalists, so we have a hope of being able to share in the prosperity it brings.
The Guardian opinion piece is sad to me, in that the view of humanity freed from work is seen as a problem. I prefer to think that we could adjust our economic goals from 'high employment' to more wholesome metrics about mental health and happiness.
Hate to break it to you, but the real hard problems are in the humanities.
People who LARP about digesting mathematical proofs and Arxiv papers for funsies.
Automation being the end of work would be an unambiguously good thing. Machines can be far more productive than humans ever can, and it would free us up to do whatever we want. We might have to rework the social and economic order a little bit, but we probably needed to do that anyway.
Nobody's disagreeing with your latter line, just vehemently screaming that there's no need for willful harm.
1. Economic change drives social change. The political will to create something like UBI will not exist unless there is mass unemployment.
2. Right now we need people to work, in order to create the things they need to live. It will not be possible to allow willful unemployment until machines can actually do most jobs.
3. We don't actually know if 100% automation will happen. Past automation has tended to create new jobs, and we've maintained full employment at higher wages. We should see if this happens again before we start panicking.
We just have to jump ahead with automation and figure out the rest as we go.
Get that accelerationist fatalism outta my face. Just because you personally have no qualms with harming others in the name of some facsimile of progress, doesn't mean it's the only option available to us. Slowing things down through regulations, through employment mandates, through pleas for cooperation instead of immediate replacement, all of those and more are ways of gradual reform and adaptation.
We're proposing letting the organism (humanity) adapt to traditional work and employment being wholesale eliminated in a society that demands work for basic survival through gradual and continuous reforms as circumstances change. Your proposal is the functional equivalent of telling an endangered species, "lol get gud bruv".
We are not the same.
We've done lots of automation before, and we all benefited immensely. Just chill and deal with problems as they come up.
I'm 100% with stego-tech that I think we should address the major, glaring concerns that come with greater automation before that happens.
Because I care about my fellow human beings, and do not want them to suffer.
Be careful not to create a permanent future of mandatory makework.
Speak for yourself! For me, and in my experience many others, work is a necessary evil. I’ve experienced more indignities in the workplace than anywhere else (though fortunately not as consistently as some people), and the thought of work being my life’s purpose is too bleak to entertain. I’m very happy for those who have a more positive experience, but some of us don’t fit so well.
But "work", in the sense that AI can, in theory, replace humans in, is about more than just jobs. It's about many of the things that humans do—including many that we do for pleasure as well as for money, like painting, writing, and other forms of art.
In that sense, it absolutely does bring dignity and purpose to people's lives. Very few people can feel fulfilled without some form of work in their lives, whatever that looks like for them.
Humans were never meant to work to line the pockets of billionaires who see us as mere speed bumps on the path to their personal success.
Work is an obscene use of intellect.
'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Mechanization of construction meant the end of shoveling shit and dirt. Road workers for example, are often found sitting in the air conditioned cubicles of machinery manipulating hydraulic levers, gaining tremendous leverage.
Sure, sometimes they go outside witg the shovel and dig around fragile stuff - old pipes, or the odd archaeological find.
With AI, we gained “hydraulic levers for knowledge work”.
What will the comfy air conditioned cabin look like in that analogy?
My days involve watching the computer type code, making zero typos and zero mismatched variable names. When it refactors it also keeps the comments updated, making that industry truism for the first time, a lie. In my codebase 100% of the comments are true and up to date.
For $100/mo (Anthropic) I don’t have to code by hand to build my product and can focus on whether I’m building what customers want and need.
resfirestar•1h ago
The article does not mention the workplace as the editorialized title would imply. It's primarily about trade unions.