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I don't want to compete with AI. I want AI to create efficiency and wealth so I can relax and have a leisure lifestyle. This shows that work-a-holic CEO culture

I don't want to compete with AI. I want AI to create efficiency and wealth so I can relax and have a leisure lifestyle. This shows that work-a-holic CEO culture is only about margins and gains and not improving lifestyle and quality of life. Automation should be improving our lives not adding anxiety to compete with it, which we will ultimately lose. We're probably in for another 1880's labor movement as automation keeps eating jobs. We either decide to benefit from it via strict regulation or we somehow try to compete with it which is greatly lower the value of our labor and only enrich the owners of automation.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
I don't want to compete with AI. You don't have an option. Said another way, in the long run you either merge with AGI or go extinct.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Did 1880s people have to merge with assembly lines? I think you're being fairly dramatic and too "/r/futurology" here. The whole point of technology is to create tools to make our lives easier, not to become tools. People won't desire this and pushing this kind of pressure on people seems like a recipe for revolt against the capitalist system that has thus far provided so much wealth. The assembly line works for us, we don't want to become an assembly line ourselves and its ludicrous to think such reasoning will lead to extinction. This is a bit like saying that the Olympics will be nothing but a steroids showcase event because everyone will take steroids. If anything, dissuading people from standing up for their liberty and basic humanity seems to be the best route toward extinction to me.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    No, but like with any other performance enchanting utility it's going to be effectively peer pressure. If AI+human will be better than just AI people will "merge" with it at that point if it's a true AI you might as well be a different species to them as you'll likely won't be able to even communicate with them after a while.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ajmurmann 10y ago
      Yes, having have to get a brain-machine connection implant before we've had a long time to observe safety and side effects has been a fear of mine for many years.
    - red75prime 10y ago
      Mysterious superintelligent AIs, which are too smart to communicate with baseline humans. I think this is just a plot device for post singular fiction. You just can't write superAI explaining its own behavior, because you aren't smart enough. The best you can do is write about mysterious AI, which can't communicate with you or can't explain its own actions because they are too complex to explain. Returning to your post, I think that human-AI hybrids will be perfectly able to communicate or explain their plans to baseline humans (merging with AI should enhance communication capabilities, not hamper them). They could have problems explaining their feelings, thought processes, perceptions, as those things may not correspond to anything baseline human experiences. They could have no reasons to talk to baseline humans at all. But it is not inability to communicate.
  - gervase 10y ago
    He did specify "in the long run", which I think is probably true as the timescales get longer. I doubt anyone would argue that humanity would live lives relatively unchanged from the present say, 3000 years from now. So it's really just a matter of arguing about 'when' and not 'if'. I'd also like to point out that although we didn't "become" the assembly line, employees certainly have become more replaceable in many of the jobs impacted by the assembly line. Depending on the job, some employees have become the metaphorical "cog in the machine", and can be replaced by other employees with minimal training, as compared to the artisan-based system that predated mass production. I certainly see your point, however, and I truly hope that we can maintain our liberty and humanity as technology increases, instead of regressing into a kind of dystopian neo-feudalism.
  - Banthum 10y ago
    We kind of do merge with our technology, though. People are fuzzy-bounded; we're part of our environment and it's part of us, especially in the mental domain. In the physical domain glasses, notebooks (offloaded brain memory), telephones (merged voice) are physically merged technologies. In the mental sphere I feel I can say that Wikipedia and the Internet are in some sense merged parts of my mind. They are part of my thought processes and they were an essential ingredient in forming my thought processes too. Take away all my writing and reading and I really would be a different entity, mentally.
comboy 10y ago
So basically you want AI to enclose you in a simulation where you feel fulfilled and happy?
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  No, I want it to create value that will be given back to me via taxation.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    First I read: "No, I want it to create value that will be given back to me via television."
  - shshhdhs 10y ago
    Could you be more clear on the economic mechanics of your scenario?
  - comboy 10y ago
    You said you want AI to provide wealth. But now you say you want to create value. It looks like you may need to compete after all.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    Why would it consent to you leeching onto its productivity?
    - HeavenBanned 10y ago
      Because we would build in those restraints into the programming of the AI and make damn well sure they can't be skirted around. It's not impossible to create barriers within the context of AI.
cannonpr 10y ago
Not everyone wants to be human for ever, some people take joy in their work and want to continue doing it and contributing in a meaningful way, etc, etc. Nothing to do with being a workaholic or the rest. I hate to say it, but 'leisure' gets boring awfully quickly.
- cafebabbe 10y ago
  You realize that leisure could be any kind of work you want. The distinction is not leisure vs work. It's freedom vs. constraint.
  - cannonpr 10y ago
    I appreciate that, however I feel constraints give meaning to a task, you might argue that I can self impose them, I will argue that I wish those constraints to be imposed by society or by the conditions needed to advance science. To do that, eventually as AI's come online, I will have to stop being human.
    - eon1 10y ago
      So everyone should suffer, because you enjoy it?
      - davidrusu 10y ago
        That's not fair. The argument you seem to be advocating for is that we can make people happier by reducing scarcity, they are offering you a counter example. 'happy' is hard, it could very well be that suffering is an important part of happiness... who knows, but it's a valid line of argument.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > 'leisure' gets boring awfully quickly Not for me, as long as I get to keep all the toys in my garage. The list of projects I want to complete is probably an order of magnitude too big to finish in one lifetime as long as I have a full time job.
pizza 10y ago
David Brin said something once that I found interesting: "as long as I'm still in charge of the desiring, let the damn AI take care of the execution!"
doktrin 10y ago
> I don't want to compete with AI. I want AI to create efficiency and wealth so I can relax and have a leisure lifestyle. This shows that work-a-holic CEO culture is only about margins and gains and not improving lifestyle and quality of life. I suspect, though I'm not 100% sure, that when Musk speaks about AI "competition" there's an implication of existential danger. If true, then from his POV it would not so much about "I want to min-max my CEO experience" but "I'd rather we not go extinct within my children's lifetime"
- rspeer 10y ago
  And that's why he's talking about nuclear disarmament, right? No? Seems that Musk wants to be a superhero that saves humanity, but villains that actually exist aren't cool enough for him.
  - whiskers08xmt 10y ago
    Nuclear weapons disarmament is a political problem, and Musk primarily works within the realm of engineering. Besides, game theoretic arguments can be made against nuclear weapons not being much of a threat at all.
pippy 10y ago
Sadly it's a quirk of human nature that we get more defensive over our things when work gets tough. It tends to push us to more neoliberal policies. If work gets hard to find; Gen Z and the baby boomer generation would rather keep millennials renting, as opposed to massive social spending. Unless there's a massive shift towards the left we'll only see widening inequality due to the insurgence of AI on the job market. This is more of a cynical outlook, but in the last three decades in politics across the globe there's been no progressive popular movements.
- ExactoKnight 10y ago
  Yeah it's not like Ben Sanders almost beat Hillary Clinton, and did better with millennials than she did...
ci5er 10y ago
I wouldn't look to a workaholic to invent new ways to eliminate work. You might have to figure that one out on your own.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

I don't want to compete with AI. You don't have an option. Said another way, in the long run you either merge with AGI or go extinct.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Did 1880s people have to merge with assembly lines? I think you're being fairly dramatic and too "/r/futurology" here. The whole point of technology is to create tools to make our lives easier, not to become tools. People won't desire this and pushing this kind of pressure on people seems like a recipe for revolt against the capitalist system that has thus far provided so much wealth. The assembly line works for us, we don't want to become an assembly line ourselves and its ludicrous to think such reasoning will lead to extinction. This is a bit like saying that the Olympics will be nothing but a steroids showcase event because everyone will take steroids. If anything, dissuading people from standing up for their liberty and basic humanity seems to be the best route toward extinction to me.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  No, but like with any other performance enchanting utility it's going to be effectively peer pressure. If AI+human will be better than just AI people will "merge" with it at that point if it's a true AI you might as well be a different species to them as you'll likely won't be able to even communicate with them after a while.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    Yes, having have to get a brain-machine connection implant before we've had a long time to observe safety and side effects has been a fear of mine for many years.
  - red75prime 10y ago
    Mysterious superintelligent AIs, which are too smart to communicate with baseline humans. I think this is just a plot device for post singular fiction. You just can't write superAI explaining its own behavior, because you aren't smart enough. The best you can do is write about mysterious AI, which can't communicate with you or can't explain its own actions because they are too complex to explain. Returning to your post, I think that human-AI hybrids will be perfectly able to communicate or explain their plans to baseline humans (merging with AI should enhance communication capabilities, not hamper them). They could have problems explaining their feelings, thought processes, perceptions, as those things may not correspond to anything baseline human experiences. They could have no reasons to talk to baseline humans at all. But it is not inability to communicate.
- gervase 10y ago
  He did specify "in the long run", which I think is probably true as the timescales get longer. I doubt anyone would argue that humanity would live lives relatively unchanged from the present say, 3000 years from now. So it's really just a matter of arguing about 'when' and not 'if'. I'd also like to point out that although we didn't "become" the assembly line, employees certainly have become more replaceable in many of the jobs impacted by the assembly line. Depending on the job, some employees have become the metaphorical "cog in the machine", and can be replaced by other employees with minimal training, as compared to the artisan-based system that predated mass production. I certainly see your point, however, and I truly hope that we can maintain our liberty and humanity as technology increases, instead of regressing into a kind of dystopian neo-feudalism.
- Banthum 10y ago
  We kind of do merge with our technology, though. People are fuzzy-bounded; we're part of our environment and it's part of us, especially in the mental domain. In the physical domain glasses, notebooks (offloaded brain memory), telephones (merged voice) are physically merged technologies. In the mental sphere I feel I can say that Wikipedia and the Internet are in some sense merged parts of my mind. They are part of my thought processes and they were an essential ingredient in forming my thought processes too. Take away all my writing and reading and I really would be a different entity, mentally.

comboy 10y ago

So basically you want AI to enclose you in a simulation where you feel fulfilled and happy?

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
No, I want it to create value that will be given back to me via taxation.
- jacobush 10y ago
  First I read: "No, I want it to create value that will be given back to me via television."
- shshhdhs 10y ago
  Could you be more clear on the economic mechanics of your scenario?
- comboy 10y ago
  You said you want AI to provide wealth. But now you say you want to create value. It looks like you may need to compete after all.
- ci5er 10y ago
  Why would it consent to you leeching onto its productivity?
  - HeavenBanned 10y ago
    Because we would build in those restraints into the programming of the AI and make damn well sure they can't be skirted around. It's not impossible to create barriers within the context of AI.

cannonpr 10y ago

Not everyone wants to be human for ever, some people take joy in their work and want to continue doing it and contributing in a meaningful way, etc, etc. Nothing to do with being a workaholic or the rest. I hate to say it, but 'leisure' gets boring awfully quickly.

cafebabbe 10y ago
You realize that leisure could be any kind of work you want. The distinction is not leisure vs work. It's freedom vs. constraint.
- cannonpr 10y ago
  I appreciate that, however I feel constraints give meaning to a task, you might argue that I can self impose them, I will argue that I wish those constraints to be imposed by society or by the conditions needed to advance science. To do that, eventually as AI's come online, I will have to stop being human.
  - eon1 10y ago
    So everyone should suffer, because you enjoy it?
    - davidrusu 10y ago
      That's not fair. The argument you seem to be advocating for is that we can make people happier by reducing scarcity, they are offering you a counter example. 'happy' is hard, it could very well be that suffering is an important part of happiness... who knows, but it's a valid line of argument.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> 'leisure' gets boring awfully quickly Not for me, as long as I get to keep all the toys in my garage. The list of projects I want to complete is probably an order of magnitude too big to finish in one lifetime as long as I have a full time job.

pizza 10y ago

David Brin said something once that I found interesting: "as long as I'm still in charge of the desiring, let the damn AI take care of the execution!"

doktrin 10y ago

> I don't want to compete with AI. I want AI to create efficiency and wealth so I can relax and have a leisure lifestyle. This shows that work-a-holic CEO culture is only about margins and gains and not improving lifestyle and quality of life. I suspect, though I'm not 100% sure, that when Musk speaks about AI "competition" there's an implication of existential danger. If true, then from his POV it would not so much about "I want to min-max my CEO experience" but "I'd rather we not go extinct within my children's lifetime"

rspeer 10y ago
And that's why he's talking about nuclear disarmament, right? No? Seems that Musk wants to be a superhero that saves humanity, but villains that actually exist aren't cool enough for him.
- whiskers08xmt 10y ago
  Nuclear weapons disarmament is a political problem, and Musk primarily works within the realm of engineering. Besides, game theoretic arguments can be made against nuclear weapons not being much of a threat at all.

pippy 10y ago

Sadly it's a quirk of human nature that we get more defensive over our things when work gets tough. It tends to push us to more neoliberal policies. If work gets hard to find; Gen Z and the baby boomer generation would rather keep millennials renting, as opposed to massive social spending. Unless there's a massive shift towards the left we'll only see widening inequality due to the insurgence of AI on the job market. This is more of a cynical outlook, but in the last three decades in politics across the globe there's been no progressive popular movements.

ExactoKnight 10y ago
Yeah it's not like Ben Sanders almost beat Hillary Clinton, and did better with millennials than she did...

ci5er 10y ago

I wouldn't look to a workaholic to invent new ways to eliminate work. You might have to figure that one out on your own.