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I don't think so. I think in the future we will be living pretty similarly but instead of just doing the work manually we'll be using AI to be more efficient. J
by jerojero 4y ago
I don't think so. I think in the future we will be living pretty similarly but instead of just doing the work manually we'll be using AI to be more efficient. Just like what the original post on reddit was referring to.
He was not fired or anything, his bosses just told him "now you need to do 10 times the work you were doing before because you got the AI". Although in the past it was okay for him to do 1/10th of the work, now with the AI, that has become unacceptable.
Why would the socio-economic system change? We've been automating work for a while now and people don't really get fired over it; they are just tasked with producing more. Remember that the computer itself was a huge productivity enhancer. When excel came out suddenly one accountant could do the work of 10 but most people weren't liberated from their tedious manual algebraic works, instead, we simply started to produce significantly more than before.
Of course, I would love to live in the world that you dream of, I'm pretty sure that's what post-scarcity communism looks like. I just don't really see any indicators in terms of public policy or business attitude that indicates that will be the case. Seems to me like our societies are more geared towards growth rather than improving quality of life.
- steveshurley44 4y agoThe one word answer for why you are wrong to not be concerned is entropy.
- tlocke 4y agoCan you elaborate on that?
- tlocke 4y ago> Of course, I would love to live in the world that you dream of, I'm pretty sure that's what post-scarcity communism looks like. I just don't really see any indicators in terms of public policy or business attitude that indicates that will be the case. That's true, but let me give an example of something I've experienced in my own lifetime. In about 1996 I heard about Open Source software and after wrestling with the idea for a bit I became a convert and threw out Windows and installed a Linux distribution on my home machine. At the time, when I talked to people about Open Source software, there was a near universal reaction of, 'nice idea, but it'll never catch on' and they would go on to give me many reasons why this utopian idea would fail. Now, 25 years later, Open Source is a great success. As a postscript, I got into making contributions to Open Source and I still do. Maybe one day my mind will be too addled to code, or perhaps an AI will do it better than me, but until that day I fully intend to carry on with Open Source contributions.
- quonn 4y agoBut as an utopia it failed. There was a time when you could „live“ inside the open source idea or community like in a house. That was around 2002 plus minus 4 years. Open Source later succeeded but it doesn‘t feel like that anymore.
- jerojero 4y agoI'm all for Open Source. And Linux is a great example. But look at what Open Source is turning into, it's being swallowed by corporations anyway. I guess I'm just not so positive, it's really hard to go against the grain and I think a world where corporations do open source is better than one where they don't. But Open Source has not changed the underlying structures of the world in any significant manner. I mean, I think this is ultimately a political question, you don't really solve political questions with this kind of technology. We need better social and political technologies, much like when we went from having kings and feuds to having liberal democracies. I see that as a social technological advancement, what's next? I recommend you read the book "Open Democracy" by Helene Landemore to get an idea of what I think maybe could be a good way of changing the political structures that are basically constraining us right now. And I do think Open Source plays a part in that.