> The question should not be whether the technology replaces people by machines, it should be whether it provides a net benefit overall.

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.

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Jcampuzano2 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Nowhere in my argument do I contend it may not affect myself. In fact I have basically already accepted its very likely I'll be replaced due to AI in the very near future. Thats just the unfortunate reality of things at the individual level.

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.

	▲	customguy 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I definitely have not "gotten mine" like the billionaires pushing AI. Yet your whole comment is about them "not being all that", with no answer for the "taxi driver facing his family knowing he will be replaced by a machine fully" (emphasis mine). Are you in this situation? Anywhere close? "Having accepted it's very likely" is a far off from that, unless that means "so I threw all my possessions into the dumpster and started living on the street, because it's a foregone conclusion". > 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. "Okay family, we all starve to death now, but just think: if it was different, it would be different!" No, that doesn't work either. > other inventions in hindsight have very clearly benefited humanity as a whole even with the unfortunate effects on the people of the time But we know that the productivity gains of the last few decades haven't gone to "humanity", already. And that was even before the raw hatred of the vulnerable we see on display now. How many inventions and tools simply improved life as people adopted them at their own pace, without it being this situation where people get herded into giving up all direct, deterministic access to the machinery they need to communicate, work, live, with the added benefits of cheap mass surveillance, cheap mass manipulation, and displacement of labor on a scale that will require the aforementioned to keep people in check? This is not about other inventions, it's about what this actually is, not about penicillin or the plow.