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This is exactly right, but a lot of people have motivated reasoning about it. I can’t really blame them, the kind of shifts that AI is looking like it will brin

This is exactly right, but a lot of people have motivated reasoning about it. I can’t really blame them, the kind of shifts that AI is looking like it will bring are unprecedented, and usually when people claim big, world changing things will happen, they don’t, so most people are primed not to believe it. However as you say, we already have the evidence about this one, and it would require some unknown wall to exist where AI could suddenly not improve further, and I’m just not seeing it. Most likely it will get more capable and cheaper as time goes on, and then every industry will be impacted the way software currently is.

My_Name 3mo ago
I think for some people, it's partly that they think that, unlike physical work, work that involves thinking is somehow special, and humans are the only beings capable of it. In the 40s, the argument was that computers will never think because they are made of matter, Turing rebutted this by saying that brains are made of matter and introduced The Turing Test, which was then replied to by Searle with his famous 'Chinese Room', which to my mind just made all consciousness suspect, even humans. At every stage, though, computers have outpaced the predictions for their capabilities, and as you say, the unknown wall that blocks this march is yet to be seen.
- Chance-Device 3mo ago
  Yes, also the whole motivated reasoning part, where people are quite reasonably terrified of losing their jobs and having no income and so deny the possibility. I think we tend to downplay the potential positives though. We may come to a point where we look back at the concept of work and see it as some kind of indentured servitude; the idea that you have to spent the majority of your waking hours serving someone else just to be able to have food and shelter is naturally repugnant. Sure, many of us are fortunate enough to have jobs we enjoy, but everyone I’m sure has memories of jobs they hated and perhaps couldn’t leave because they needed the money. I hope we end up in a world where this is seen as a relic of a barbaric past.
  - supriyo-biswas 3mo ago
    Such a utopian future is unlikely to materialize however. The salary that one gets paid is backed by the generated (and perceived) value of the work they did, and if people do not have anything to offer in form of labor, then it will create pressures to reduce any UBI style wages paid out, as well as provoke internal conflict as people try to come up with justifications for why they should have a larger share of said basic wages, etc.
    - My_Name 3mo ago
      You seem to not know what UBI is. The U stands for Universal, meaning everyone gets the same. Universal Basic Income, a fixed amount of money everyone gets whether they work or not. Nobody gets 'a larger share' Unlike work, where your wages are theoretically matched to your output, UBI is not.

My_Name 3mo ago

I think for some people, it's partly that they think that, unlike physical work, work that involves thinking is somehow special, and humans are the only beings capable of it. In the 40s, the argument was that computers will never think because they are made of matter, Turing rebutted this by saying that brains are made of matter and introduced The Turing Test, which was then replied to by Searle with his famous 'Chinese Room', which to my mind just made all consciousness suspect, even humans. At every stage, though, computers have outpaced the predictions for their capabilities, and as you say, the unknown wall that blocks this march is yet to be seen.

Chance-Device 3mo ago
Yes, also the whole motivated reasoning part, where people are quite reasonably terrified of losing their jobs and having no income and so deny the possibility. I think we tend to downplay the potential positives though. We may come to a point where we look back at the concept of work and see it as some kind of indentured servitude; the idea that you have to spent the majority of your waking hours serving someone else just to be able to have food and shelter is naturally repugnant. Sure, many of us are fortunate enough to have jobs we enjoy, but everyone I’m sure has memories of jobs they hated and perhaps couldn’t leave because they needed the money. I hope we end up in a world where this is seen as a relic of a barbaric past.
- supriyo-biswas 3mo ago
  Such a utopian future is unlikely to materialize however. The salary that one gets paid is backed by the generated (and perceived) value of the work they did, and if people do not have anything to offer in form of labor, then it will create pressures to reduce any UBI style wages paid out, as well as provoke internal conflict as people try to come up with justifications for why they should have a larger share of said basic wages, etc.
  - My_Name 3mo ago
    You seem to not know what UBI is. The U stands for Universal, meaning everyone gets the same. Universal Basic Income, a fixed amount of money everyone gets whether they work or not. Nobody gets 'a larger share' Unlike work, where your wages are theoretically matched to your output, UBI is not.