I would like to take the time to follow up to some of your points. I don't think you are wrong, or are invalid, just offering other thoughts to your thinking.

I would like to take the time to follow up to some of your points. I don't think you are wrong, or are invalid, just offering other thoughts to your thinking. >Automation is an absolute necessity to end poverty. I have found that the people who are biased towards automation being society's silver bullet are the only one's who think this. > Do you really think stone age people could have ended their abject poverty by just "fixing" their society? I suppose that's one way to look back at history, quite revisionist, however. Great nations were united under great causes. Alexander the Great build the most diverse empire on this principle. Russia is currently being (mostly) united under its renewal of it's Orthodox roots, that were suppressed during the Atheistic regime that crippled it prior. Value systems can be provably shown to improve the well-being of societies. Obviously the problems arise when different value systems clash, which is why I am against the current era of globalization, but that's another story. (I think it's okay that different people be different). The other side of your point here I think is the technology. Yes the technology helped the stone age folks, but so did education -- sharing knowledge. The tools, in my opinion, always had one purpose in mind: better the fellow man. Our current tools we are building have lost this purpose long ago, or it's ends are highly questionable, at best they are being built with this utopian view in mind, without considering the great tragedy that will happen in between then, which was my original point. The rich oligarch caveleaders didnt oppress the other lesser pleblean cavepeople when they invented the hammer or fire, or keep it to themselves. It immediately improved everyone's situation. > It is the immense wealth create through increased automation which has allowed the general well being of most people in the western world today. I am really glad us fortunate to live in the western world are benefiting. By the way, as it relates to the overall population, the "western world" is miniscule. > E.g the years bad blood between blacks and whites in America can't be changed by merely passing a set of laws. I would 100% agree. We have to get the people who promote this worldview of separation out of positions of power. Here's what some people will consider a cooky view: Both sides of that issue are financially incentivized to keep racisim alive and well. > It is likely much faster to develop an advance AI system than getting blacks and white American to trust each other I take the symbolism as us having a black president for 8 years with generally good favorability ratings, and an excellent impact on the country overall as a sign things can improve much faster than you give it credit for. Cognitive systems, on the other hand, I think is much further away.