self-driving cars isn't a reality besides in a few controlled environments and I empathize that near-human AIs being used as an excuse to lower wages and fire people isn't something to get excited about.

▲

tomjen3 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

If you had told yourself at age 20 that in that $NUMBER_OF_YEARS you would be able to sit in a car that drives itself, while talking to an AI researching babylonian grammar, it would have blown your mind.

As we got older, we can shift the goalposts and get used to things the way they are. And we need to step back, look and see HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS WILD.

▲

stickfigure 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"In theory" you can imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios that will make you depressed.

In practice you can ride in a real self-driving car in a dozen major metro areas in the US. I have and they are fantastic.

In practice you can fire up an LLM today and use it for research or writing code or organizing your finances or any of a million incredibly useful things.

At present, the downsides are theoretical and the upsides are practical. The article says more about the author than the state of the world.

	▲	brazukadev 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In theory, you can pretend that the experience of one afluent person in a metro area in the US is enough to make the dystopian situation we are heading to looks fantastic. In practice, most people are fighting to keep their jobs if they have one, CEOs of corporations are talking daily about AI-driven layoffs and some of them even come to this forum to do exactly the same while talking about how this new era is bright and great. They make money through making other people hopeless and dependent.