> 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?

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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'.

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.

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]

the answer to every question: Agents, of course! With GPU-collaterized credit or some other idiocy.

The robots will tell you what to do, you will own nothing, and you will be happy. I think that is the plan?

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.