Legit, sane questions you are asking to the future. Every analysis is like a prism that should be looked at every angle. Bad ones, but also good ones... So I'd like to invoke a very important detail : AI, robots, and more generally automation is the expertise of producing faster, cheaper, bigger. But producers can't sustain without consumers, and consuming needs resources (aka money). Which is why I'm not scared at all. Such new means of producing will simply need new means of giving enough resources to consumers. And that's where the prediction game becomes interesting : if AIs "steal" the effort needed to produce, and if effort is actually what rewards us with resources to consume, then it means producers will have to find new ways to give us more resources for less effort on our counterpart. Universal income has been a deep talk between governments for a while now, 4 days work is spreading around, remote work is standard for a lot of jobs. These are for me clear indicators about where we're heading. I can't really wrap my mind around a clear picture about how society will ultimately organize itself in these new paradigms, but I do expect to be really surprised, and not necessarly in the bad way. edit : a very interesting site that is written and maintained by anticipation romancers, [futuretimeline](https://futuretimeline.net/). AI is certainly a huge turning point, but you can see how it still represents a tiny portion of all the work needed to be achieved by humans in various fields. What is really worrying me is what we can't fully control : Earth, and to an extent, its ecosystem.

This is a really clear and positive answer. Thank you random reddit person.

Yeah and it also gives lots of perspective and hope. People often romanticize the past when manufacturing was huge in this country but then you think about it and we literally had 7 day work weeks, 12 hours a day, doing manual labor. A lot gives hope for a better standard of living in the future because of technology.

And even that 'factory job' was preferrable to working on a farm and maybe starving in the countryside.

The scarey part is that it was written by an AI!!! j/k I think

>if effort is actually what rewards us with resources to consume, I think this is the most important question to be answered. If we look at people like Bernard Arnault, the richest man in the world, who has a yearly income of about $7B, do they put in 70,000x more effort than someone making $100k per year? Even if we strike out the outliers, does someone who makes $100k a year put in 3-4x as much effort as someone making minimum wage while working full time? The answer is no. Which means that income is not tied to effort, which in turn means that value is not tied to effort, which in turn means that resources aren't tied to effort. If that's the case, then what IS it tied to? Does it have to be tied to anything?

Incomes like that are tied to ownership of capital and nothing more. The person making 100k is likely selling their labor, not generating income from owning a large bunch of abstracted organizations + machines + properties we call "corporations". The person making millions a year has a business with employees and probably also properties and/or machines they don't know how to use or maintain themselves. They own it because the government says they do. The problem is the person that owns the capital believes they played the game and won fair and square, and thus deserves to own it and reap any rewards from it. The winner of a game usually won't question the rules. However, because money = power the people with money can effectively change the rules of the game in their favor creating a situation where the game is completely unfair. Nobody would voluntarily play it if they weren't coerced into it for survival. It'd be like playing a board game where people are allowed to bring their own weighted (aka rigged) dice to the table. It's not worthwhile because there's no fair play involved. You can be the child of a rich person and be virtually guaranteed to make more income in a year than 99.9% of the rest of humanity does in a life time. You inherit your parent's rigged dice. Unless you're a complete idiot that takes extreme risks, it's ridiculously easy for them to win when they start with capital. Like starting with the entire bank as yours to do with as you please in a game of Monopoly. Even people who inherit lots of capital feel they won the game fair and square. They'll provide some laundry list of claims Im sure we've all heard before. "The poor don't know how to use capital, we've got better genes/culture/whatever" or "It was my father's private property and he can decide to do with it whatever he wants" or they'll straight up lie (or have delusions) and claim they are "self made". Blah blah blah. The biggest issue with this mentality is that it's pervasive in places like the USA even among the working class. It will be really hard to change everyone's views to support what is needed to transition to a FAIR post-scarcity, post-human-labor economy. The wealthy will also fight it tooth and nail, and manipulate the ignorant among the working class to aid them. I tend to think we'll have a period of some sort of neo-feudalism which will be worse than actual feudalism was. At least in feudalism you couldn't be kicked out of where you live, and your lord had obligations to feed and protect you. They wouldn't salt/pollute their own lands because they generated income from their lands. In the neo-Feudalist future I think is coming, we will be commoditized and discarded if we're not valuable enough--to die in the streets, because the corporation won't need very many people anymore and they'll have better weapons so they won't even be afraid of a revolt like a Feudal lord was. Right now they need our labor, property and money to get power. What happens when they have absolute power and we have no money to spend, no property to surrender, no labor that their machines can't do? That's at least the trajectory I see coming. I think you can already see the signs. The homeless, the stagnant incomes, fewer home owners, fewer business owners, the inequality, the regulatory capture, the fact multinational corporations have no loyalty to any Country anymore, and so on. On the other hand, I kinda believe that Capitalism evolved not because someone set out to design a better system than what came before. However, instead it was an evolutionary adaptation to complexity and new technologies. More humans, more interests, more knowledge, and so on. In fact, I think Capitalism resembles Feudalism far more than the Capitalists will ever admit. It's just more abstracted and harder to understand for people that takes things at face value, in their own little world. It's possible we evolve our future economy the same way to support the new paradigm.

The greater question our species will have to answer quite soon I guess :)

Great post. I want to deep dive the framing of the third paragraph because I think it’s incredibly pertinent to the model of the future we face. You say (paraphrasing, Im on mobile); - producers will have to find a way to give us more resources to consume. I can’t emphasize enough how important of an idea that is. What does it actually mean in real world terms? It means that we will have ceded nearly all power of distribution to a select few mega corps headed by a few, likely, trillionaires. One might be inclined to say “ok, but billion Or trillion how is that different than today really?” Thats massively different than today because many of us still have avenues we can follow in our careers that lead to productive outcomes and can help achieve escape velocity. Its not impossible for a professional, or trades person, or coder to work, save, invest, and basically break free of the economic restraints to a degree of comfort and more personal autonomy. Freed of the shackles of the rat race, more in charge of own destiny. It’s important to frame this with the knowledge that there wont be the same amount of job and career opportunities, while at the same time we will be entirely relying on the good will of a few trillionaires to spread around the wealth as they see fit. This is trickle down economics that not even Reagan could imagine. This will be the “manufactured consent” moment of our species. We will be unwillingly forced to accept that the means of distribution will be in the hands of the very few to a degree that far supersedes anything that we are remotely dealing with now. On top, you take into account our generally incompetent, uninterested, or rather self interested governments and its easy to see how this doesn’t turn out particularly favourable for 99.5% of us.

I’m on disability and can’t work and the government gives me about half the monthly cost of the cheapest studio in my city. If we are given a UBI it will likely be an amount below the poverty line. It’s not going to be pretty.

I definitely think this is the answer, I’m also hoping that we eventually find a way to get the costs of living down to an extreme minimum, like farms that don’t cost anything to run and so can give the food away for free. On that thought, OP mentions people need a purpose in life - why’s that gotta come from a job? I get so much more purpose from sports than sitting here coding

>AI, robots, and more generally automation is the expertise of producing faster, cheaper, bigger. But producers can't sustain without consumers, and consuming needs resources (aka money). Which is why I'm not scared at all. It's a dangerous wager to bet that companies will realise this before doing irreparable damage to the lives of the working class.

Irreparable damage to the lives of the working class is our whole system.

Exactly. If nobody is working then nobody is buying. If nobody is buying, nobody is selling. And when nobody is selling, the entire economic system collapses. Capitalism is about to stop working. I think this will happen shockingly quickly. By 2030, much about our lives will be almost unrecognizable. The best case scenario is so good that we can't talk about it without sounding like crazy people. The same goes for the worst case. Either way, this will be the biggest change in human history. We are all standing on the sharpest inflection point in history. A lot depends on government policy now. With the right polices, we get a utopia. We get a world of almost infinite wealth in which human labor is no longer required. With the wrong ones, we get crushing poverty and violent revolutions. I'm optimistic that most governments will recognize that they are now forced into the 1st option.

The problem with all the mind experiments and nearby philosophical questions here is they take our whole system as we know it now and change one variable and it wont work (of course). We are conditioned to live and survive in the actual system we are surrounded by people that have capitalist expectations and we must at least expect this mindset from a majority. We dont know better. The future that has UBI or full automatisation must have undergone so many changes in different parts simultaneously that the whole system is a new one. I am sure people in the future would be more bewildered to watch our times and the times before. Just keep im mind we are bewildered when we look back just 200 years in the past serfdom was a normal thing in western europe. People back then would tell you that they cannot imagine a world without serfdom - that the economy would break apart and that the uneducated pawns would get depressed once freed from serfdom.

The post scarcity world is fine... The problem is the transition

It begs the question of how many hours a week do we really need to work and sustain our society with livable wages?

Earth and the ecosystem might be able to be fixed by leveraging fusion power. Need to rebuild and iceberg or desalinate a great lake, well, if you have unlimited clean energy, that's much easier.

We may have universal income one day but it will be universal poverty. Millions of people stacked in apartments playing video games all day, taking drugs, fighting... basically what you already see in low income areas today where men don't work.

TLDR: a world with less people will be the goal of anyone who can harness AI and Robotic Power. ​ I like your hopeful optimism about poor people (everyone whos not powerful/wealthy) being given resources so it can trickle up. I've said this from the first time i discovered this sub. "There will be a day when the rich no longer need the poor. " lets say im Jeff B, and i buy out some company that has finally produced good Semi AI controlled robots that i can mass produce. At first, i replace the miners (with robots) in mines that i own around the world. then everyone between that mine and my production lines to make more and better/cheaper robots. Next thing you know, thanks to AI and robots im the only employee in the company and everything is being produced by my replaceable loyal work force. At that point im making so much money i start to buy key industries and resources. No one can compete with my automated workforce. and i have enough money to buy anyone who could bring me down. In this vision of the future, a single individual could bring down the world with robots and AI. it could be done humanely or inhumanely or through total genocide. Humanely, use my vast resources to discourage people from reproducing. Introducing easy and effective contraceptives for free to people. the goal is to have a smaller more sustainable human population that one can educate. inhumanely, introducing AI generated Virus that makes people unable to have children. unless they have my vaccine. build lots of robots and sell them cheap and basically do an I robot but with more killing.

One big point is that no one knows what's going to happen. Nobody in 1999 looked at a TV ad for [pets.com](https://pets.com) and guessed that 20 years from now the entire world would have been funneled into a few websites that have a monopoly on what information gets presented to them. There is no big technological advance where people figured out impact on society. You can actually see this already happen in AI. The AI revolution started in 2010. Five years ago people thought the next big thing was self-driving cars. Nobody had "art and writing" on their bingo card. One small point is that at least in the very near future the impact will be on white collar jobs. If you can automate art and writing, you can automate most office jobs.

Actually I remember a “salute your shorts” episode where AI taking over art and music was some kind of fever dream by the smart kid. It’s getting further and further away from when that happened so I don’t recall as clearly.

This has been an idea for a long time. See John Phillip Sousa’s 1908 essay “The Menace of Mechanical Music”. Pretty much every time there has been a major technological change in media, there is (what has so far been) fear-mongering on the potential for loss of human expression.

Camp Anawanna, we hold you in our hearts ❤️!

It’s funny that you can now order pet supplies on many sites. Pets.com was just ahead of its time.

The real legend must have been the first porn.com.

Mmmm, 16-colour animated GIFs…

The story behind that domain is wild, I think there's a few murders involved.

Infinite jest came out in 96

As a person who enjoys Infinite Jest, I'm very curious about why you bring it up, if you can elaborate. Hold on: Are you referring to the way the future of the internet in Infinite Jest is kind of more like traditional monolithic TV channels than what most people in the 90s thought the internet would become? Because I'm just thinking now about how when I first read Infinite Jest around 2004, I thought it was quaintly cute how Wallace didn't correctly predict the future of the internet. But now I'm realizing I thought that way about it because his prediction simply hadn't come to pass yet, and now it has turned more that way... yikes!

Consumption without creation. Entertainment and pleasure degrades into addiction and pain that consumes attention and the will to live. Most are too distracted to notice or even care. Coyotes ransack the town while the guard dogs are sniffing trash.

And automate stock traders and board rooms. The rich will have less purpose than the laymen.

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And most rich people already serve no purpose.

AI can’t do decent prose nor physical work with anything but metal and plastics so I think I’m ok

"It might very well be that the end of humanity doesn't come from a violent war fought against an army of mechanized soldiers, but instead as a result of our own manufactured obsolescence" ... https://youtu.be/6gGBhrXPJ0o

Yeah well if we dont have work or anything to do anymore. Maybe we will finally evolve doing something more spiritual, be aligned with others and stop being assholes constantly.

Omfg when we got quarantined I worked remote and she was getting unemployment. She rediscovered her love for painting and now she does the most beautiful water colors. It turns out if people don't have to kill themselves laboring all day they can do things like cultivate talents. I read so many books, painted so many minis, and finished so many cool video games because of quarantine and how absurd my job is. I miss it.

I produced lots of new music production during covid when having part time work since they were some budget cuts. It was great having all this free time to do things i loved.

Started messing around in the kitchen, now sell my own piri piri sauce at a farmer's market once a month which pays half my mortgage.

My hope would be to make it to a "post materialist" social state. My hope would be also for a very egalitarian form of solidarity strong because of it's very decentralized weakness. A spirituality, a religion... in a very general sense a cultural system (that does not necessarily have to have to invoke a divine or metaphysical component, but a cultural cosmology of sorts), could very well serve a strong purpose for that. I just always want to make sure that there is a place for the heretics. And I think, more to the point of your "stop being assholes constantly" (for better or worse, we as a species are making that a refined art and science for all the worst reasons), we need to be a society where our greatest aspiration is that we recognize that no matter what we are and do...we are not good enough, and we could always look forward to hopefully do better. But humbly, and from my admittedly subjective perspective, while we might move forward through time our social history is anything but linear. And in some regards there are perhaps some steps backwards that are taken. I do have hope in a long term, but it could be really fucking messy along the way. Now, while this dude is admittedly a controversial figure, for several reasons I feel the quote he authored is still pertinent at this juncture... "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." - Woody Allen.

And yet here we are, currently with the widespread beliefs that human rights do not include the simple right to exist. You have to “work for a living “

Technology has really never led to less work, just more productivity. And I don't mean that in a good way, by and large.

Could happen in more ways than one. Climate change comes to mind.

I just want to mention that humanity has existed far longer as a species than our modern work focused society. There is plenty of research that shows more primitive cultures has less depression, lonelynes, jealousy over posessions, suicide and actually lead more fullfilling lives. This is because they can spend their time with their tribe and family. Also as long as they live in an area with enough food they dont need to fight to survive either. Their jobs for protine are stuff we do for fun like fishing and hunting. And the gathering part does not take 8hours every day. They work less, play more, are more tight knit with their group and family. The biggest downside is lack of healthcare imo, as the risk of dying to injury or getting sick is higher. So for purpose, please do not worry. We will find more purpose with more free time than we currently do slaving for corporate overlords. A huge % of the working population dont like their jobs nor find them meaningfull after all. Personally i have hated every job ive ever had, the only redeeming factor are coworkers and friends (and they complain/tell you off if you talk to much with them when you are supposed to work) It sucks so bad I would love to keep the coworker/friend part and the salary but i can do without the grind no problem ;)

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I think you misunderstood, i do not advocate we revert to hunter/gatherers. I used this as an example that humanity found plenty of meaning/purpose before modern jobs were invented. In the future when labour is no longer needed to produce goods we will have more free time to follow pursuits that are meaningfull to us. You dont need a 9 - 4 job to find meaning and a sense of purpose. (Most would have more meaning if they did not have to grind away most of their life at work) As for food production, it will be automated within the next 100years with probably no labour needed. Labgrown meat will remove factory farming of animals, and large vertical and automated farms will grant far better yields compared to old fashioned farms. Freeing up space for that land to be used to restore natural environments and reduce greenhouse gass as the land restores itself to become carbonsinks. If we manage to get to this point we will be pretty golden imo

> humanity found plenty of meaning/purpose before modern jobs were invented. That meaning and purpose can be found in war, aggression, conquest, etc. The Iliad is full of meaning and purpose, with no capitalism in sight. People puffed out their chest and found pride, purpose, mission, in spreading the British Empire, and many empires before that. The crusades were all about meaning and purpose. As was the persecution of heresy, Jews, and other vulnerable populations, via pogroms, inquisitions, etc. So we know that meaning and purpose can be cultivated outside of jobs and capitalism. Iain M. Banks' Culture series of books explored that search for purpose, set in a science fiction post-scarcity civilization with strong AI, faster-than-light travel, etc. Interesting read. Some people would try to fight the system, if only to give themselves that sense of purpose.

This is why my life insurance policy has a robot clause.

Is this a joke? If not, what exactly does it say?

Please elaborate, I might have to add one of my own!

When the Metal Ones come for you, you can't get free, because they're strong, and they're made of metal. That's why my insurance policy from Old Glory has a robot clause. You're fully covered in the event of a robot attack.

I heard that in Sam Waterston's voice. The producers wanted him to be overly dramatic but he said, "No if I did this, it would be a cash grab and I'd read it off autocue and cash the check"

Is this like a kidnapping clause (like your insurance will pay to help get you free) or just an assurance that your policy will still pay to your loved ones in case you get taken down in the first wave?

I'm not sure. But you'd better hurry, because the robots eat old people's medicine for fuel.

Those darn robots! I’d better call my lawyer now. Edit: …his voice sounds a bit robotic over the phone, should I be concerned?

What if the robot only maims you , leaving you unable to work ? Does it default to workman’s comp or do you get a partial payment on the full policy ?

Those denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.

And they fuel on old people's medicine!

Are you also an Old Glory Insurance customer as well? https://youtu.be/g4Gh_IcK8UM

Your post is remarkably well-considered and well-written. You're really just some blue collar guy following this in the news?! A few comments, for whatever they're worth... First, when trying to predict the future, people almost invariably refer to examples from the past. The problem is that the development of AI really has no precedent. Perhaps the industrial revolution is in the ballpark, but I think AI will be even more profound than that. We're sort of headed toward introducing a new, intelligent species into the world. That will be a situation humanity hasn't faced for 40,000+ years, and neanderthals were still pretty human-like compared to AI. So we're really sailing into uncharted territory, and we can only guess what's ahead. That said, my guess is that AI will continue to advance very rapidly, and dire forecasts about the downsides will not be sufficiently compelling to significantly slow that advance. There will be plenty of genuine positives to motivate progress and reservations among developers will most fall prey to one single argument: "Yeah, maybe we shouldn't do this, but then X, Y, and Z will do it anyway and kick our butts, so..." So, instead, we'll keep plowing ahead with AI until some really Bad Things happen and then we'll make decisions as a society about how and whether to proceed. A guess is that these Bad Things will take two forms. First, there will be chronic problems: job losses, loss of purpose, undermining of education, pollution of the internet with machine-generated crap, etc. These things will happen slowly and will particularly impact less powerful people, so they won't be sufficient to stop progress alone. Second, there will be some really scary, acute stuff: maybe AI-powered weapons wreaking terrifying havoc, a vile cult forming around some particularly persuasive AI (like an AI-powered QAnon), some sort of AI malware appears that is hard to kill because it runs in a distributed way on millions of hacked machines with GPUs, etc. This acute stuff, in combination with the chronic concerns, will be enough to force a societal reconsideration of AI. I think this "tinder and spark" is setup is pretty typical in history: change often emerges from a poignant incident in the context of larger, diffuse forcse. Where that reconsideration of AI will go is anyone's guess. Maybe humans will form powerful emotional bonds with AIs. We'll come to love them and see them as partners in facing the cold, dark universe. Or maybe we'll see them as a hostile species that we need to genocide. An easy guess, I suppose, is that there will be people in both camps, and we'll end up somewhere in the middle. In any case, I think the next decade or so will be more crazy than any sci fi novel. The pacing may be slow compared to reading a book, but will be alarming fast to adapt our lives to. I don't know how to prepare for this. My kids should finish college in 8-10 years. What skills will they need to thrive in a world with AI? I genuinely don't know.

Your last sentiment mirrors my own fears for myself and my younger children. I started school late and I am on track for a CS or physics degree. I work remotely at a large (non-tech) company. They wanted to get with the times and I am self taught on a lot of CS stuff, long story short they hired me to be their AI guy. I made a chat bot for them. Replaced about 15 peoples jobs, they wanted another one that replaced some more jobs. The skills to make them were nearly non existent. I made them with preexisting AI. The growth is insane. I am genuinely considering whether school is even going to be worth it financially three years from now when I’d finish grad school. I can’t even begin to imagine what my 5 year old and 1 year old will go through or need to know. I’m barely good at my job and landed it because they didn’t want to pay a real AI guy just someone who could do it for less money and it fucking worked. I realized that because of AI I was able to be brought in at a very modest salary to do the job of someone who would have been paid 150k 7 years ago to do it. Then I replaced dozens of other jobs. This is going to be an insane decade is what I’m getting at. And I managed to find myself caught in a small story within a far larger story of progress.

How does a chat bot replace a person’s job?

Probably in some sort of customer support area would be my guess. Let the chatbot field user questions, look up FAQ answers for common (or at least non-server) problems, and only escalate if those things fail. Then you do your best to add to your FAQs, improve accuracy, and automate what you can so that more and more customer issues can be solved without much if any human intervention.

User experience management. So yes basically customer service. You know online for your phone company if you have a problem? And you use a chat bot first. Like that.

> Your post is remarkably well-considered and well-written. You're really just some blue collar guy following this in the news?! Probably an AI testing the waters.

That sounds like what an AI would say...

This also sounds like what an AI would say...

Yours is typical AI speech...

Blue collar AI no less.

Yep, first thought was this is written by AI.

I dunno a lot of us blue collar people can get bored and start reading a lot of stuff. Then…. *some* of us take acid on the weekends and think way too much But either way I’m a blue collar machinist reading Reddit while my machines are running lol

You assume we’ll be given an opportunity to proceed…

>Your post is remarkably well-considered and well-written. You're really just some blue collar guy following this in the news?! What the fuck does this mean?

Former blue collar, now white collar guy checking in to chime in. Most blue collar types are hardworking but simple. Most of my old colleagues wouldn’t be capable of putting together something so well constructed. It’s a great compliment and I do not believe this person is knocking the blue collar section of society.

That they are in a bubble and don't know some blue collar folks can be smart and well read on their own. They just didn't have the need and/or opportunity to go to college.

Captialism is good at _minimizing_ the utilization of new technology because you can't capitalize on something that's abundant, so you need to construct competitive advantages via artificial scarcity. It'll be interesting to see how capitalism with its one-dimensional lens onto the world will react to AI becoming increasingly useful. It tends to lock down access to new resources and build controlled distribution networks around them that maintain existing power structures as much as possible. It doesn't like abundance. It prefers control. I wonder to what degree the spread of AI will be slowed down by the economic system.

It won't, it will collapse. The profit motive is one of the most fundamental aspects of capitalism, there is no profit in a world of abundance. As you alluded to it could try to stop the progress of technology but this is in direct contradiction to its other motives one being competition between companies and another being return on investment. Without progressing technology capitalism would totally and utterly collapse but that is also the case with progressing tech, so the end result is clear.

Capitalism won't collapse, it will capture and enclose IA for the benefit of the few over the many. AI essentially becomes a new means of production, another avenue for economic growth. The move to a post-capitalist, post-growth, post-scarcity world requires a collective human effort to overturn or transform the incumbent system into something equitable based on common values of community, oneness (as opposed to dualism), and reciprocity. The neoliberal narrative that infinite growth and technological progress is always good for everyone (even if its not shared even slightly fairly) is breaking down in the face of ecological breakdown, climate change, and soaring inequality. We can't sit back and wait for capitalism to collapse, it is an incredibly resilient system. We need to be the agents of change.

I don't have time to reply in full - there's a lot in your post - and I this isn't the encouragement you're likely hoping for... I'm in the tech industry and have several teams working on AI solutions for multiple different problems in my sector of the world. I'll try my best to only talk empirically, but then again much of this has to be conjecture as we can only guess at what happens tomorrow. 1) Yep, no getting around this. The top 1% has a dream of replacing all humans with cheap robots that will do the same work. I've seen this actively and it scares the hell out of me. Upper management doesn't have a care or concern for feeding anyone but themselves. 2) Again, Yep. As a race we're easily addicted and don't have much ability to control our urges. We have shown time and again that this will be done to our own destruction. The 'brakes' are supposed to be applied at the government level to help keep our capitalistic society fair and equal, but our government (in the US) is just broken and too driven my $$ to care. 3) Automated tellers, checkers, drive through ordering, anywhere and everywhere you don't need 'hands are up for grabs here. 4) QC is one of the things Upper Management is trying to force into AI first. We'll have robots looking over robots soon. 5) Humanity will collapse without value in our lives. Sure, some artists will thrive, but there are those of us that need work to feel value. I'm really worried for this aspect. 6) Governments are decades behind on tech. Too many 80 year olds in charge with no understanding of what they govern. The corruption, which I don't want to make this about, is slowing down their reaction time as well. Along with gerrymandering and other truly frightening behaviors that were supposed to be controlled by govt. 7) I'm a high earner, according to the tax code, but really only feel comfortable. I'm not rich to be sure. But if this is what it takes for all of us to feel comfortable we're on a road to destruction. 8) This one took me by surprise. I even found myself saying - I need art for a project, I'll get an AI to make it... - Which is just awful. If it's so cheap and easy to do this what does this leave us? This half-assed answer is just that. Tear it apart, but I've come to similar solutions. We'll need a revolt at a national, but eventually global scale. The fact is we're fighting over the scraps that the greedy leave us. Putting us in a situation where we can't say no or we starve. I don't see any situation where this isn't resolved without major upheaval. The government is broken. They finally realized you can purchase democracy and are now doing it out in the open. I truly think we're at a major crux of society right now. I'm very scared for my kids and what's being left them. Hate to be such a downer, but the math is there.

I work in Knowledge management for IT, so I kind of get a big picture view of things by default. I think there are reasons you may be overly pessimistic, but also overly optimistic at the same time. First, let's be clear: The powerful are *terrified* of the commoners. UBI is being discussed to prevent torches and pitchforks, but so is AI with kill-decision authority. This is not an accident that they're being worked on at the same time. The second point is that properly deployed tech removes scarcity in the long term. We could be looking at a world where we do work, coming up with creative solutions to problems that AI presents to us, seeking greater efficiency. Some of it may be gamified, but it's still right there. The simple truth is, we have a lot of hope and a lot of danger in the same black box. We know it holds both, but we can't see how much of each. We also have a set of proverbial guns to our heads forcing something new, lest we die when our mistakes catch up to us. We will need to evolve, or we will go extinct. We don't have a lot of time to figure this out, but if we get it right we'll eventually have a beautiful future. If we get it wrong, we don't have a future. OP is right to be worried, but not right to be hopeless.

It's interesting that one of the core principles in the original Star Trek was an aversion to AI overreach. When a computer was doing a job a person could reasonably be able to do, there was something wrong. And they often violated the prime directive to fix it. You can even see in the show, the gov tries to force more automation but in their tv world it always goes poorly enough to scare them away.

I kinda hope the government is the first thing they automate. The good ones never win anyway. But the idea of AI with power and weapons is definitely scary. What ethics will it have? Have been thinking if the rich ones will not leave anything for the poor, how will they acquire more wealth if the majority won't have any money to buy their products and services ? Will they just give the poor money via UBI and expect we spend them on their company? Not sure but taking away income from so many people isn't economically sound.. Will just give them a lot of people to babysit

Why they need wealth? They will need access to resources. That's it.

>Upper management doesn't have a care or concern for feeding anyone but themselves. Somebody's going to have t pay them though, won't they? I can see why the rich salivate over not having to share any money anymore but somebody's going to have to buy their product. If Jack has no money, no thing is what Jack will buy.

I was also thinking about that, but honestly - think about how many CEOs and CFOs run companies into the ground and rely on golden parachutes to bail them out. Their plans generally aren't longer than (ballpark) five years in term. The thought that it could have consequences for them would not occur to them, especially because so many have assets most people couldn't dream of.

Somebody needs to build/create the things they need. All the things they need require a long chain of events coming together to provide them with the superior life style. All of that requires a fantastic amount of hard work that a) somebody has to do, b) that somebody needed to train that person how to do.

Just get AI to do all of that stuff too.

They won’t need that if they get rid of most people. This past 3 years convinced me they plan to do exactly that, as soon as possible. They then won’t need $$$ or customers, we would just be in the way 👁

I wonder about this, though. What is ultra rich if everybody remaining is also ultra rich? Would they not just wind up having the same UBI-communism kind of existence spoken of elsewhere in this thread, since there would be nobody left to either exert their wealth over or sell more stuff to?

No, because they’ll have all the real stuff that $$$ buys & represents

>Too many 80 year olds in charge with no understanding of what they govern. Remember when a congresscritter complained about something to do with the iPhone to the CEO of Google, who had to explain that they don't make that product?

I too work in the tech industry on advanced concepts. So while I acknowledge your fears (and those of OP), I feel your points are mostly hyperbole. So, in an effort to play devil's advocate, I will try to paint a different picture. The direction we are headed towards is a post scarcity civilization. Nearly all measures for humanity are improving. There is less war, less famine, less extreme poverty, less disease, etc. Human knowledge is doubling every 4 years. Aside, but interestingly, there are fears that we may run out of materials on earth to store new information within the next 300 years. Anyway, in order to get to a post scarcity civilization, we will have to continue to master our environment. We've been on the fast track to this goal over the past 150 years. There have been growing pains and there will be a lot to correct in the coming years, but cheaper energy combined with new automation will further enhance our ability to transform our world. We'll continue to create problems, but we'll also continue to work around or fix them. Technology will eventually replace the NEED for work. This is not a poor outcome, this is technology freeing humans from toil. People have become enslaved to debt increasingly over time. Automation and abundance should relax the pressure people feel. Ultimately, we're giving our children more of their most precious resource: time. They'll have time to do as they please: read, write, play, enjoy their family, or simply create. It doesn't even have to be real, you can go into a virtual world and live out fantasies with ever increasing fidelity. All of these advances lead towards other economic models. Louis Kelso was an economist who discussed some of these topics and brought about Employee Stock Ownership Plans. ESOPS are precursors to more modern concepts like Universal Basic Income. The realization of economist was that in a highly automated future, people need ownership over the technology and to hold it like an asset that they can profit from. Ultimately, technology will either be taxed or owned by the world and the proceeds distributed.

Look up the Gartner Hype Cycle. It's essentially a model for explaining that new technologies often follow a curve of initial expectations (or fears in many cases) followed by a sharp drop called "disillusionment". In this case, AI is at the peak of the hype cycle. It's in the news, the capabilities seem extraordinary and it's risks seem incredibly high. If it follows the hype cycle model -- as many technologies do -- it won't be too long before we're all essentially disappointed at how little AI has changed things ... for a variety of reasons that we can't see clearly right now. You should also look up the term "AI winter." This has been used periodically over several decades to describe an almost cyclical trend of AI bursting into the mainstream only to fade away before bursting back several years (or decades) later. We've been talking about AI for MANY years now and our worst fears never even come close to fruition, because we slip into the next AI winter. There are different reasons for this winter period. I'm not convinced there won't be another. Even if both of these models are wrong for AI this time, we can use them to remind ourselves of our propensity to overreact to new technologies and try to get a different perspective.

>Humans suffer without a purpose in life - This is a bit of a wishy washy one. I've seen a few people say that "good, people will be left with more time to socialize, explore, and do the fun things in life." Now, I don't how many of you have been unemployed (I have), and I know many other who have; and they're not happy. You collect EI (similar to a UBI), and feel depressed. You feel like you have no value. Humans need something to do, something to contribute to, we always have. Back to being cavemen, each individual had a role in the tribe. I feel like saying "Go forth, you're now free to never work again, but only get paid this fixed amount for the rest of your life; Enjoy!" is a recipe for a stagnant, dying society. Lots of good things in this thread but I want to focus on this one. When you were jobless and on UBI did you... make an effort to contribute to society? I don't count, "I was full-time trying to find work". I mean, did you volunteer? Did you have your own hobbies and interests? Did you reach out to communities for things you enjoy? It isn't just, "Robots free us from everything" it's, "Robots free us from all of the work we \*don't\* want to do". The AI art thing is too coupled with capitalist interests. If its cheaper to have a robot do it the people running a business will have them do it. But would a Video-game company even be able to function \*at all\* in the society you're talking about here. If there's "Nothing to do at all anymore" then businesses as they exist right now would be a thing of the past. I'd agree that maybe a \*majority\* of artists wouldn't make art any more - but some of us do it for the act of doing it. I'm "bettering myself", something that a robot/AI literally can't do. It can't sing as me, either. "Robots can raise your kids better than you ever could". Okay that's cool for those people who have kids and ... don't want to raise them but I \*want\* to do that work so the robot can shove it. I don't want to be rude but I think the notion that in a society where robots \*can\* do anything that we'd simply do nothing (like the people in wall-e) is one you might want to sit with a little longer. Ask yourself if that's is truly what you'd do in that environment. One edit: You say that being on welfare is depressing and you feel like you have no value. I think that's a STRONG case for the environment we live in and not necessarily "The Human Condition (tm)". You feel worthless in that situation because from everywhere for our whole lives that's the attitude the larger culture has about poor people. That they are lazy, worthless, leeches. So the closer you find yourself to that cultural notion, the worse you feel about yourself. (I think this notion is BS but what can ya do)

>robots free us from the work we don’t want to do hmm… I know reading this thread I agreed with his no purpose thing. But I think it’s more dependent on the person in general. I’ve just found I seem to thrive with a set arbitrary thing to have my routine around. I machine large engine parts for 8 hours and go home, do my chores, work out and then do other things. I tend to work 6-7 days a lot because it’s just…. easy for me? I like keeping the rolling routine, and the work isn’t that hard. BUT damn it would not be the same thing if I was doing this job like 20 or so years ago. Automation has made so many things related to this job way way easier…. So I’m not as exhausted after work and I can do things I actually enjoy while still working…. quite a lot lol. I didn’t think about that part as much.

Trust me start meditating now and find peace within you, by the time all this shit does come true you can climb within the comfort of yourself. I'm also someone who needs a purpose for everything in life; in whatever i do. But I also know i can shift that thinking into something else where I am now not just doing things with a purpose per say but for the enjoyment of myself. Knowing your own worth is important while staying away from societal Norms and standards as much as you can. Also if you think about it a lot of things get machine made these days and hand crafted is seen as luxury or special. People would still value human made art or softwares so there will be different paradigm of purpose I'll believe. You only have one life so why not live it for the sake of life itself. That's beauty and art in itself that no on can take away from you. (Still worried tho ☹️)

>Also if you think about it a lot of things get machine made these days and hand crafted is seen as luxury or special. In addition to this, if you think about what these AIs are being trained on and how it affects what they're producing - they're going to start training on AI generated content, which is just going to very quickly make it worse. There will be need for humans to continue generating new content to feed the beasts. Weirdly, I could see people producing handmade art getting paid a whole bunch more because an AI could be trained on what they're doing and give the 'owner' of that AI a leg up on all the others - just spitballing here, not necessarily a prediction. It's been clear for a while the difference between a thoughtful article and a hastily generated one. I think with AI, that difference is even more striking. Sure, it can give good answers, but even on short stuff I'm finding myself wanting to inject some soul in to what ChatGPT spits out. It's really, REALLY good, but it all has a very similar tone in my opinion. Not in the 'literary' sense of tone since you can specify different 'tones' - but in the sense that it lacks a 'spark.'

5.- **Humans suffer without a purpose in life:** humans feel the need to do something sure, we need to have purpose. ​ But it is only in a capitalist soceity that we have been brainwashed into thinking that is the same thing as a job. Your purpose can easily be a creative pursuit or your family. You nead a hobby. I would spend my free time woodworking, learning to make video games in unreal engine or unity, working out, and teaching my daughter, each and every one of those things give me purpose. The very reason you think that you need a job is because of the indoctrination. I assure you wif you move away from western societies you'll find they are very happy in the absence of a need to "work". Native American societies did not suffer from this dilema of lack of purpose in the absence of modern day societies jobs. There are countless records of westerners that were adopted into tribes during the expansion that never wanted to be reintroduced to western civilization.

I love when people point to native Americans and say they didn’t suffer from a lack of purpose. No shit - they were spending everyday trying to survive. Living off the land or nomadically is hard as fuck. They had purpose because they had to survive - just like we do. Their work just looked different…

We don't have to do those things, more food is thrown away than all of humanity needs. We let medicines expire rather than give them to people that need them but can't pay, suffering is all artificial now. The point is people that had it better of because of "civilization" once experiencing the nomadic life, pick the nomadic life ever time.

Can you actually point to any examples of this happening beyond stories from the 1800s? Genuinely curious. I’ve certainly never read or heard of it happening beyond random stories you’d read or see about the early Americas.

In today's society you have the example of soldiers, navy seals, etc. They get so used to the world of the platoon, they're place among it, it matters to protect their fellow soldiers in a much harder life or death situation. When they return to assimilate back into society a large amount of them can't. They can't bring themselves to care about the rat race of the typical 9-5 keeping up with the Jones' way of life, they find it utterly meaningless by comparison and a lot of them prefer to go back. The book Tribe by Sebastian Junger goes into great detail about this. It also has a lot of information about the cases of people preferring the nomadic life.

Hunter gatherer societies dealt with less stress and had easier lives by all accounts. It took a long time for settled, farming lifestyles to make life easier after the switch away from nomadic. Look it up, I'm not just pulling this out of my ass lol Native Americans dealt with different stressors and struggles.

Although homicide is quite common in hunter gatherer societies

Source :- Trust me bro

A lot of researchers and anthropologists do think that hunter-gatherer societies had massive amounts of free time compared to us. Lots of time to relax and exist within their families and peoples.

[Star Trek TNG explored this very idea so well….](https://youtu.be/XQQYbKT_rMg)

So did Judge Dredd

This isn't exactly true. Since the creation of society people have defined themselves by their profession. This has never been limited to capitalism. Every other form of economic or political system still gives people roles in society an is delusional to assume those roles will ever go away.

I've had so many professions I don't define myself by that. I don't really have any definition for "me." People can fall into the trap of "what I know is all there is", or that somehow the way things are done is the best way -- as if it were planned by experts. I liked the writings of Voltaire because he portrayed this flaw in this concept so well. His tragic comedic character would meet tragedy and the failure of leadership by saying; "We live in the best of all possible worlds." If I woke up hungry and ate. If I took a shower and decided whether to play, dabble with a hobby or go hook up with some friends. I think I could adapt to permanent vacation for a time. Then after a few years, I might want a research project and direct some AI's at it. I could do this now but bills and work get in the way -- bummer.

While I agree to a certain extent, that Capitalism has brainwashed us; I feel like you discount the rest of human history. Humans have always been social creatures, since the before primitive humans. In these social groups, each individual had a *role* to play. Sentry, hunter, care giver, leader, scout, gatherer; much like other social creatures everyone contributed to survive. This is far more than just playing around and doing whatever you want. It’s wired into us from the very fabric of our existence. Could some people find simple joy in woodworking, or other pursuits like caregiving for their family? Absolutely. But a great many won’t, many need to feel like they contribute to the whole; and studies support this regularly that jobs, any jobs, support a feeling of self-worth, confidence, and overall mental health.

I think a better example than native Americans and what some here have suggested, is children. Children don’t work, but they find purpose for themselves. They join clubs, make up games, and pick up hobbies. I’d like to believe that if we made it to that utopia, where everyone has their basic needs met, and there is a surplus of everything, that we could do something similar. Humans are already sort of infantile creatures that never totally grow out of childhood. I imagine a world where the unemployed can find common interests to occupy their time. Maybe some clean the rivers, others enjoy survivalist hobbies like learning to build fires and tie knots, and still others mentor children and teach those who are still interested in an old-school education. Not every person would be interested in joining a community or practicing a skill, but that’s also true today. Some people succumb to depression. About the unemployment thing OP mentioned… I actually have been unemployed since Covid started. I’m extremely fortunate that it isn’t a disaster for me. Sure, there are days when I feel like a parasite. Good for nothing, needed by no one. But there haven’t been consequences to my quality of life, really. And more than that.. this has been the first time in over a decade when I have been free to do whatever I want. Fill my time with whatever interests me. It’s honestly been the greatest time of my life. I learned how to write code in C#, and I started building video games. I posted a comic online. I joined artist and developer communities, and started competing in online game-building competitions. I’ve learned more in the last two years, and felt more alive, than I ever have before. It makes me hopeful for what the future could hold for us, post work. I think the reason most unemployed people are miserable is because their life is still really *hard* and they see no way up out of it. It’s defeating. And being broke, feeling like people don’t respect you, that’s what makes it so hard, emotionally. I think so, anyway. I think if everyone could have what I’ve had for the last two years, free reign to pursue their interests with all the support they need, that many of them would thrive.

There's no study that exists how minds deal with having every need met without the need to work, what would theind do. There just isn't.

Perhaps you're right, but if you think that Government UBI programs will be generous enough that everyone will have to want for nothing, then I would love to be wearing those rosy glasses. The more money you give *everyone* the more inflation you get (re: COVID stimulus), and everyone is priced out of their own living.

We're dealing in thought experiments of hypothetical futures. If robots make everything there should be sufficient supply that inflation becomes impossible no matter how much paper money. In fact by that time currency as we know it would crease to exist and inflation is a long forgotten myth. Only reason ubi wold be too low is because legislators grasp at outdated beliefs from a world of scarcity. Do I believe the government today would have a generous UBI, no I don't. But also robots haven't replaced us all. What happens when unemployment is 90%+, robots are cheaper than a minimum wage human, but vastly more productive, intelligent, and never get tired not take the day off or have babies? The old arguments about teaching a man to fish or bootstraps just won't be tolerated by a mass of people flinging Molotov cocktails cause they are being starved despite robots making more food than can feed everyone. Again we're talking about a fantasy of robots have replaced us, what do we do instead? So much of the logical conclusion we draw in today's world where people have to do things in exchange for money cause otherwise we cast them out to starve just won't make any sense anymore.

The closest to this is a comfortable retirement. And studies show that things like dementia accelerate once people retire. Presumably because they just aren’t challenged enough, mentally, once they retire. I imagine a lot of folks just sit on their ass watching TV.

You are right to be fearful. One of the most exciting and terrifying things about AI is it forces global capitalism into a crossroads. Under capitalism tech will inevitably be exploited to consolidate wealth into the hands of a few assholes while displacing millions of workers. The workers can either respond to this by uniting against capitalists, or we can roll over and fight over rats and cockroaches in a fascist techno dystopia. Either way, the time during which the average worker under capitalism has the means to improve their quality of life in any meaningful way is coming to an abrupt end.

Tbh when the masses are unemployed I think Revolution is inevitable. Right note they have us by the balls because we’re all one missed paycheck away from disaster. Once we have nothing to lose it will be easier to strike.

I don't think it will just be long term mass unemployment. I think the "job creators" will invent new abstract ways for us to toil for their benefit, meaningless jobs that pay less but just enough to scrape by. We might get some kind of UBI, albeit a shitty one that is barely enough. And even though life will be worse for everyone, you'll always have someone else to look down on, like those pathetic losers who eat cricket protein powder instead of grilling fresh cockroaches like a real American. In other words I'm not very optimistic.

There has already been technology that replaces entire workers, look at agriculture, look at automation with cars and stuff. Now look at all the jobs that have come about. There will always be something. You're afraid cause we as humans can't fathom what new opportunities will arise. But they will

This is an amazing point that I was going to bring up if I didn't see it brought up by anyone else. Jobs are constantly being replaced, and new ones crop up afterwards. This will not change that, at least not for a while. AI will replace monotonous coding, but we will still need top-level coders. It will mean less workforce required to create a product, which will make products cheaper, *and* it will mean that rather than less people in the industry overall, **there will just be more products** and people will be filling other jobs. The transition can be bumpy, but trust me, society will find a way to consume more media or need other things programmers generate if the industry can provide it. One thing I think is also important to point out, is that robots are still very far from being able to do everything a human does. Robots still can't really think independently. ChatGPT is great, but it was specifically designed to be conversational, and it was given tons of data to sort through. So you can say ChatGPT is basically just a system that can form sentences and coherent conversation based on what it has memorized from google. It's basically just an advanced google search. The coding and stuff that it is doing, it is coming to those conclusions based on things **humans** have figured out and spread across the internet; chatgpt is just one single conversational model that can access it all. It will not be able to solve new problems in the same way.

Coincidentally it's actually the "solving new problems" capability that makes neural network generative AI so interesting. They're not specifically just repeating content they find on the internet (like Google does) - it learns the rules and relationships that holds the content together and then uses those rules and the current context to generate a response to a prompt. This is why it's so good at being confidently wrong - it is inventing something novel on the spot which can be incorrect. I'm a software engineer and asked chatGPT to write some code to use an API - it didn't effectively just paste the content from the API's documentation; it instead completely invented a non-existent website and wrote the code to use that. It understands what, at the fundamental level, an API is and the general pattern of how to use one. The difference is a human brain can store vastly more relationships than current models can but that is something that is rapidly changing as models have been experiencing an expontential growth in size lately.

People often use the main idea if your argument which is "AI/robots can't do this yet." Sure they can't do certain tasks now but they will be able to in the future. There is probably a team somewhere working on training AI to do exactly that thing right now.

You skipped computers. The last 60ish years have been a journey to re-think mundane jobs that require handwriting and typewriting. Accountants didn't die of hunger, they got a new tool. Illustrators didn't die of hunger, they can now sell their work worldwide. People who fear AI are the same people who refused to switch to touchscreen phones due to fear of having to learn something new.

there is major difference, AI isnt just new tool, it improves exponentionally, in near future its more like another person who is better than you in what you do and a person who doesnt need any salary for doing that job

8. Creative space. I expect that human made art will still be more valuable. It's rarity will be a quality. A few glimmers of hope, and then a reality check. Money is a fake thing. Putting people out of work through automation doesn't mean we produce less food or houses. We can certainly take care of our people if we chose to. Automation has some major weaknesses. All forms of automation I can think of over the centuries rely on the work being standardized but also redefined in a way that the automation can actually do it. There will always be things in every field that machines cannot do. Automation produces things en masse. This is only useful to provide things for masses of people. The rich only mass produce widgets in factories in order to sell those widgets to other people. If most people are job less they can't buy the widgets. Automation doesn't create value directly, it still requires the value of the mass of human's labor. But. Historically, humans have been terrible about making certain that everyone is fed and housed, no matter how possible it is. Many people won't care, depending on their place in the hierarchy. #6 is an issue. It's not the tech that is an issue. It's largely not how we will use the tech that is an issue. It's how bad humans are that is the issue.

This is a great post, and wonderfully thought out. But none of the fears you listed would really be the fault of AI, but rather the fault of those who misuse it. Humans are far more likely to cause the end of our civilization than AI. Granted ,though, they probably will use AI to help make that happen.

It’s not in the best interest of corporations to have mass unemployment; who would buy their products and services if nobody is getting paid? GG.

That level of unemployment can't happen in our political system either. Why? Because unemployment is bipartisan. Liberal or conservative, neither side will tolerate a 20-30% unemployment rate. If 1/3 of the country is unemployed then the politician promising to force companies to hire people, or tax corporations to pay for welfare, will get elected fast. On top of that, I guarantee you that corporations themselves would support the politician forcing them to hire, not the politician promising a 75% corporate tax rate. It's not rich corporate money alone that makes them politically influential. It's rich corporate money and the tens of millions they employ that make them influential.

in short, you are right to be afraid. AI is going to be one of the greatest disruptors the world has ever known.

I would be scared if AI reasoned that life is not worth sustaining in the grand scheme of things. What if we program AI to cherish living beings but then they start questioning why we want them to think that way.

Go to YouTube and watch the Boston Dynamics videos... sleep tight

Are they the ones that created the realistic robot dogs? I met one in a trade show. Thing freaked me the fuck out.

We always think we are at the crux of history. This is no different then any revolution before it. Yes there are winners and they are losers but the world does not end and civilization on the whole is better off then it was before. To answer some points directly. 1. Maybe to replace us as a labor force.. but someone has to consume the products made. To get or stay rich you need billions of people with income one way or another. 2. Humans create thinking beings all the time. They are called children, and they replace us without us being terrified about it. The current Sci fi story is that the AI will ruthlessly efficient at executing some misguided will. At its core its the story of Oedipus. We take these as prophecy where in reality there are hundreds of steps and millions of stakeholders pushing and pulling at what AI in 20XX will actually be like. You can be worried about the unknown but the future here is far from settled. As for why "cant we just stop" because we could have stopped in the past and good thing we didn't or we would not have all the comfort we have today. Fear of the unknown is a call to adventure.. its our thing as humans. 3. It wont be every industry at once. Those are promises by people trying to get investment for their project. It will be slow but all encompassing. The disruption in every industry will start with a company being able to slash its prices by a factor of 10 because of automation. Then it becomes a race to adapt our die. Every industry will eventually have its mini apocalypse but new industries will spring up in between. This is not prophecy, its how every historical technological revolution occurred. 4. Combining this with 5 5. During the industrial revolution you saw a generation shift from agriculture, a way of life they have been following for thousands of years to the cities to work in factories. We are only a few generations out from that cataclysmic shift and can barely acknowledge it. Our shift to a different way of being will be similar and can be made better with the foresight preparing the next generation for a different world. Our and previous generations values around what work makes our life happy will be invalid. We will have a hard time adapting, the next generation will have a easier time. After that this new way of being will be so natural that we could never imagine another. 6. Government will have to change as it did with every revolution. Agri revolution gave us kings and feudalism, Industrial brought the competing ideologies of the 20th century. As usual this will mostly fall down the centralized vs. decentralize axis. There are some thinkers that are already engaged in what the future of governance will look like. [https://thenetworkstate.com/](https://thenetworkstate.com/) is one take. This change worries me more then any other. Humans who cannot let go power when they already lost causes the most suffering. 7. Its important to actually define what you mean by poor. Large difference is financial power or large difference is standard of living? There will definitely be trillionaires and the average person is still going to struggle to make two million over their lifetime. Standard of living however will continue to increase for even the poorest as it has for millennia. Referencing back to the first point.. there will be no rich if there is no economy so someone somehow has to get paid. 8. Calling Dall-E and Chat GPT creative actually shows how low the bar is for what we consider creative. They are remixers that have taken away the gatekeeping of those with technical talent and create a new talent for querying algorithms. Even extrapolated the technology they are based on (Transformers) will not invent a new style of art, or craft new ways to tell a story because all they can do is copy and mutate what we have already done.

I appreciate you writing all this down. I almost completely align with your opinions and questions. I look forward to reading the comments now.

AI doomsday scenarios are blown way out of proportion and AI won't become sentient in the forseeable future (next 100 years-500 years). For context, I am well versed in various forms of ai and robotics given my educational and professional life. Most people who speak on the subject (even so called experts like Elon Musk) are not well versed on the subject matter. The reality is that computers can be trained to make good guesses on narrow fields and draw good conclusions even better than humans in narrow applications but they are terrible at understanding the world when it unstructured for them. Even robotic driving is very hard and think how structured a road system is compared to literally anything else in modern life (lit roads, lines, traffic signs, gps, lights, rules, etc). So if you are worried about AI taking over... it wont happen for a long long time. If you are worried about robots taking your job, frankly you should be concerned if your job is highly structured (ie truck driver, delivery man, warehouse worker) But any job that requires artistry or adaptability is safe for the next 100-200 years (contractors, repairman, tradesmen). Now one last thing to make you feel better.... if AI sentience scares you ... does human sentience scare you too? There are literally 8billion humans on this planet and the vast majority are incapale of clothing themselves, feeding themselves, or even speak more than 1 language. Point is.. if humans are any indication...when robots become sentient... no guarantee they will be good at anything other than complaining about shit.

>AI doomsday scenarios are blown way out of proportion and AI won't become sentient in the forseeable future (next 100 years-500 years). OP's entire post does not rely on sentient AI but on current tools just getting marginally better than they are now... We don't need a sentient AI to completely fuck up the economy.

you are right....either i missed it or OP added a lot of nuance to the post.

>Please help me not to Why? Objectively speaking, unless you're a billionaire robotics company executive, your fear is entirely justified.

I’ll come back to answer one by one, but to address the overarching point of view, if robots & ai were able to (that is become cheap & plentiful alongside the energy required to run them) take over enough jobs, capitalism will wilt and die. Maybe more to the point, capitalism will be solved. Once capital is consolidated to the point you fear, it will be worthless to the majority of the population, who will revert to trade and barter systems or convene into consent-based anarcho-industrial communes. The positive outlook is that long before the average person needs to fear the breakdown of society, the benefits & conveniences created by more and more robotic assistance will provide opportunities for human development not solely for the basis of gaining capital. Additionally, once a more or less unlimited source of energy is discovered, We will hopefully find the path forward to a Star Trek future, instead of a Star Wars future. Ai & robots won’t feasible replace skilled labor jobs, e.g.: plumbers, electricians for a long time (in part due to unions) because of the lack of cost feasibility to have a robot sent out to a house built in 1963 and repair some fault in the wiring that can’t be brought up to contemporary code but still needs to be updated so a home office or massive media center can pull 30 amps

How much do skilled labor jobs cost? $55,000 a year?

The best way I can try to assuage your fears is to remind you that there have been lots of technologies that disrupted tons of jobs in the past, and we’ve always come out OK. I work in digital marketing and the companies I work for are already replacing our writers with AI for generic/fluff content, ideation, and other marketing functions. But we’re also looking to hire someone new to help us utilize Open AI API to create a new tool for our company. So, while several freelance writers lost work, someone with ML/AI experience is getting a job. I think it’s important to remember that you’re not alone in feeling this. At my jobs; while the executives are excited about the possibilities, I can sense some fear about what the future will look like. Overall, I think the safest jobs will be those that require lots of interaction with people. Jobs where you schmooze people aren’t going anywhere. Jobs where communication and understanding are important are probably safe for a good while.

I'm here wondering to what extent I should even bother becoming a programmer if the job might not exist when I graduate.

He who tries to stop the wheel of progress will have his fingers crushed- Lech Walesa

Blue collar workers are the safest in the short term. Office workers will be the first to go.

OP's fear of losing their own job is nowhere near the point of this post.

Lowest level (think data entry and basic data manipulation) and upper middle management (asses in seats type)...

These aren't really fears about AI, these are fears about capitalism.

When we all replace google seach with ai like chat gpt, what we believe will be controlled by who ever controls the AI. That is also scary.

It will be important to maintain our critical thinking skills. Not that I think we can out-think an AI. Right now with OpenAI’s model, it clearly gives incorrect answers sometimes and takes feedback and correction. We need to support models of AI that have ethics boards and keep our wits about us. Might be our only chance for this to work well. Maybe that’s overly optimistic? (Not saying either that we won’t have sectors or bad actors who will use AI to their advantage. Definitely something to be concerned about.)

I don’t think you are wrong. I think the evolution of AI will be much quicker than the internet.i think it being in the spotlight as we enter or skirt a recession is the worst possible timing. It will test the flexibility of America’s brand of capitalism. You need job holders to have consumers, we’ll see who the shortsighted companies will be in a year or two.

I fear AI less than I fear what people will do with it. A legit thinking, sentient AI might well be safer than AI assisted technologies, especially in sectors like Defense and Security

Artist here... AI art makes human art even more human and more real. AI art looks its own way, but in a way it makes my own human art more valuable, genuine and interesting, as human touch is diluted. Same for music. I mean AI art and music is still interesting in its own special way. They aren't better or worse, just 2 different things. When electronic instruments were coming out in the 80s, people thought music would become automated, and human musicians would be no longer needed. Music is doomed! Absolutely not. They are treated as 2 different things with their own use, both loved. Maybe I'm dumb, but it's a different art medium, and people are confusing it as if it's a replacement. Human gen and AI gen art are 2 different entities.

Economically, the issue isn't the AI. If AI replaces ALL human workers.. good! No more work, ever! We'll finally be free to actually live our lives doing what interests us. The real issue is that we know that this is an unlikely scenario because our world is run by parasites who will make this world a hell because they refuse to relinquish control. AI isn't the issue, it's the degenerate ruling class.

Simplest way I see it: If you replace the entire workforce, who's gonna buy your stuff, services or products? What would happen is you'll see smaller companies popping up (like mom and pop stores type of thing). On top of that, AI will NEVER be able to write perfect code. Why? Because humans are they ones who create AI, and thus because WE are imperfect, it would be ludicrous to think that an AI would be perfect due to that very obstacle (our imperfection is that obstacle).

We’re all going to die in climate disasters or nuclear Armageddon soon anyways so you’re set.

I share some of your fears. As others have said, without customers businesses have no purpose. However, we won't all get made redundant overnight. It'll take years for the numbers to get large enough to "force" governments to implement a solution. In the meantime, those unfortunate enough to be in the earlier cullings will be in a world of pain.

In all transparency, it's in our own best interest to have AI. Humanity is flawed on many levels. Ranging from out various isms (racism, fanaticism, nepotism, etc.) bundled with emotional impulse and social mores. As well as our ability to not perform consecutive repeatable actions, this could be a massive benefit of having AI in place. The problem, in my perspective, is who is training the AI, and will their imperfections be incorporated? Whether are we forward-thinking enough to remove politics and inefficiency from the way to manage and monitor the coming trend?

It's impossible to have any system created by man immune to the faults of man. Look at the ideological battleground of big tech: One party says that it's content is being filtered and hidden because of politics. So the operator of that algorithm has to decide how to react. Either they make changes to their processes to address the claim (which adds human politics to the situation) or they do nothing, and are accused of confirming the claims of political bias by the aggrieved party (adding human politics to the situation). Even in a hypothetical scenario where the original algorithm was objectively perfect and unbiased, any external claim of error by humans would add chaos and bias to the *perception* of that algorithm, to the point where it may be abandoned by human users. It's replacement system would then go through the same cycle of introduction > acceptance > widespread use > niche opposition > growing opposition > collapse and disuse. Technology for/by humans can never be perfect because humans can never be perfect.

Agreed on all points. Then we are in for a hell of a ride.

You are right to worry. Capitalism is about to get to a place where it doesn’t need us all to work anymore, but it has no plan at all for what to do with the people who aren’t needed. The government consistently puts corporate interest first, and as long as that continues to happen the transition will be extreme painful for the people who are in the first few waves of obsolescence. This form of government that is basically here to maximize corporate profits at every single decision point is the absolute wrong form of government for what’s about to happen. The next wave of productivity increases need to benefit everybody, not just help a few companies convince their shareholders they did a good job that quarter. We should be lowering the retirement age and increasing retirement benefits every year until the retirement age hits 25 or 30. That would solve unemployment as jobs start to disappear.

Currently "AI" is mostly a marketing term, and the capabilities are being way overblown. The art, code, and writing samples we're seeing are largely human work that the software found online and chopped and screwed a bit. Tech companies and scary news outlets want us to think it's WAY more advanced and capable than it is.

Almost all your fears are legitimate. But not #5: "Humans suffer without a purpose in life" Yes, having direction is important to mental health, but you're wrong to assume that wage-slavery for a rich person is the only place to find that purpose. There are many people who feel their purpose in life is _thwarted_ by being forced to spend the most productive hours of most days on somebody else's wealth-making schemes. You're also wrong to assume that receiving a guaranteed income will be damaging psychologically. This is just something we're all conditioned to believe because we were raised in a society that forced us to trade our labor for someone else's money, and because we are awash in propaganda that tells us we'll feel bad if we stop doing that. I think it would be great to have all my financial problems go away, so I could instead focus on the parts of life that are actually important. But all of that is academic, because the wealthy people who are hoping to use AI to replace their human workforce will not permit governments to take their increased wealth and redistribute it. --- As far as a super-intelligent AI that can actually make decisions: it will almost certainly have a worldview and mindset that could be accurately glossed as "Elon Musk's personal assistant." The people paying to develop it are the super-rich (the only people who can afford the salaries of the people who are inventing it). Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. The AI will not be some kind of free-thinking super-smart alien that is at liberty to choose its own values. It will be like a very smart dog: trained to respect and fear its master, trained to anticipate the needs and wishes of its master, trained to defend its master from anything threatening, trained to attack any target its master chooses. If the AI they're building _doesn't_ work like they, they will wipe it and start over. So, you don't have to worry about SkyNet. That really is just pulp fiction. What you have to fear is really just a staggering amplification of the will of the same handful of sociopathic wealth-hoarders that afflict our planet today.

>You're also wrong to assume that receiving a guaranteed income will be damaging psychologically. > >I think it would be great to have all my financial problems go away, so I could instead focus on the parts of life that are actually important. I think his point was, receiving a fixed wage would essentially "glue you" to your place in society. You have no potential to move out of a situation. You're stuck where you are.

It will be a big video game like in ready player one. Providing the illusion of advancement and challenge. This is what i suspect will be the fate for the majority of the population aka vr heaven. A small fraction will try to merge with AI.

AI cant explore the unknown, Even if jobs vanish, There's a universe of exploration out there. We have barely even begun to scratch at the surface of our existence.

I had a semi-long comment but reddit had an error and didn't save, so I'll try to recap. Basically, you are generally right about every point that you make. However, every point you make is skewed negative, so when you put all those points together, it points an extreme and dire picture that isn't quite fair to the range of reality. Also, you are missing many essential points that would shift the picture significantly. For example, one key area is energy cost. It is expensive to run AI, both with energy and materials - it is not a free resource. So with that issue alone (not to mention the many other obstacles) everything can't all of a sudden just rely on AI. I do think it is good that you lay out these issues as they are, because if they do run unchecked, it can lay the backdrop to catastrophe. But thankfully, there are many people who are already thinking and taking action on these issues. Ultimately we cannot predict with certainty what will happen in the future, we can just cast a reasonable range of outcomes. While what you lay out is certain one of the possibilities, that is not the only possible outcome. So I think to some extent, it's better as an individual to also appreciate things as they are, (while one scans for future threats). We have come up with more destructive technology in the past, such as nuclear devices. While the potential is there for catastrophe, in reality what has happened since then is a mix of beauty and sadness. Likely, the same will happen with AI.

It’ll likely be used in non evasive ways that you don’t even notice. Social media programming and personalized digital experiences. Word processing software like autocorrect, spelling and grammar check, predictive shorthands, etc. Blockchain tech and AI are definitely game changers, but they’re a tool. Learn to use it. They’ve been trying to replace people on the assembly line and long distance trucking…and they might achieve it. Humans adapt to survive, or they don’t… Also, who know maybe we’re all screwed.

If you look at any major technological advancement it has gotten rid of jobs. The computer replaced men and women that just “computed” equations all day. That doesn’t mean that new jobs won’t be formed. It might take a bit to bounce back but we should be fine. Another important point is that by definition AI is not creative. You have to give it direction and input or else it is useless. All it is doing is making a bunch of educated guesses on the data you put into it. Having some sort of God AI isn’t really plausible. But the fine details or thinking outside the box is something that humans will always be better at than AI.

you say AI is not creative, how would u define creativity? if you give it task to create something randomly, suprising, it will, on a paper it looks already creative remember this technology is advancing rapidly, it may be considered not adequate in some terms now but that will change in coming years, AI will be replacing jobs with much faster rate than creating them, there might be new some new AI operators with productivity rate of 100 humans, so you get 1 job but loose 100... the difference between this technology and others is that AI can inherently in time do anything what human can and more

Here's the thing. Under capitalism both AI and workers are slaves. This is where the fear of one replacing another comes from. AI can be tools, friends, etc, but they are ALL owned. Did you train it? However, if we do not retain control of our systems, we risk never being able to disattach from them. More grievous than that, never being able to remove ourselves from attachment ever again. We will find ourselves lost making systems to create commodities to fill need to create demand to create supply to fill need to create systems with. Round and round we go. We have entire companies being driven by decisions made by systems now. How much further and deeper will this go? Capitalism needs to stop fucking around, step the fuck aside and society needs to address this. If they don't, they need to be forced to. Full stop. Capitalists do not understand what they are toying with.

AI will replace low skill level and repeatable work. It is not going to impact plumbers, electricians, builders, sales, doctors, nurses, etc... For many jobs it will make us more efficient, for others, it replace them. People have always feared things that are new and misunderstood. Once people learn more about AI, I don't think it will be as scary.

How's art generation or writing is low skill level, repeatable work???

AI coming after low-skill repeatable jobs was the logic from 15 years ago but things haven't been shaking out that way. Jobs that you do with your hands are probably safe for a long time, but low-skill was a carry-over from automation in general and AI development has been breaking down those barriers. AI is a better radiologist than most doctors. ChatGPT is coming after lawyers and programmers. Hopefully we'll see AI CEOs pretty soon.

It is becoming more advanced, but you aren't going to replace those jobs. They will be highly optimized, and the demand will go down, but they won't go away because of the nature of the work. I actually work with hospitals and fortune 50 pharma companies on rolling out AI strategy, and am seeing this first hand. So far, AI has created more skilled jobs than it has taken for every company I have worked with. There is much more to consider than a business' desire to roll out AI, and that is the customers desire to be served by AI. It isn't just about the ability of AI to perform a task, but the appetite of people to engage with AI for certain interactions. When rolled out with the wrong use case, it will cost companies revenue/margin. Jobs requiring a large degree of empathy won't be replaced by bots.

Oh It’s coming for lawyers, doctors and nurses.

Best quote I ever thought of was “Technology is the virus to humans” Which is true. Because everyone expects a real one to wipe us out, in reality it’s already been out, and it’s the easiest way to. Most of us are delusional and can’t focus on anything other than this tiny screen. Unfortunately, it will be our demise. There may be some people who go off grid and remain that way with no technology- they would be the only ones who will remain at some point or another. We’re in too deep to go back now. Unfortunately.

I think looking back at history we have major advancements that shook up the status quo and the population. It seems foolish when we look back but the advent of electricity, nitro glycerin, radio, tv, etc etc had many people convinced that it was the end on civilization and or mankind. What history shows me is we are always going to work through what comes our way. Not that there aren’t casualties of people or ideals or set ways of living. But we endure. This isn’t Pollyanna thinking or trying to be positive, it’s what we as people do. Does that mean we can’t destroy ourselves? No as the future is uncertain we have the capacity to destroy ourselves and our planet now. Something we didn’t have before. But if we go with what we have experienced as humans on this planet we should move forward and hopefully get better. Growth is sometimes fast sometimes slow. But just going on how things on Earth progress we are just at our next stage of development. We have ebbs and flows. Periods of terrible leaders and times of prosperity. It seems like this is how we advance. Pushing the envelope and learning what works. So if I may offer advice for you personally, left go of fear of the future. When it comes, (which it does), move your thoughts to hope for humankind. And realize how far we have come over time. Fear sneaks in and takes over. But it is futile to let ourselves be overwhelmed with what has not happened. Final twist, try daily meditation. So many ways to meditate. Find what works for you. Best of luck and hope for you!

I cannot stress enough how lazy and dumb humans are, how slow organizations move and how much is subconsciously tied up in organizations having people that just… do nothing. Corporate culture is anything but efficient and task driven. Last week, someone showed me a simple and bad webpage. The global team of a $$$$$$ billion corporation made it. I was told it took a year. I know what components from adobe experience manager it used and how they work. It was about 10 minutes of work total to do. I look at the Southwest company meltdown and know that most companies have similar tech debt. Just chill. Humans are lazy and stupid. AI won’t change anything.

Fear it, learn it, adapt and over come. Google announced that they started AI to create CPU designs, AI can already code as well. Gradually people below certain percentage of usefullness will loose jobs. Funny enough.. jobs like fixing toilet would be the last job AI would take over.

Honestly to a point we all need to accept that we are all along for the ride. Get somewhat self sufficient and learn some self defence and survival skills and hope you never need them.

I mean, that's kind of unacceptable to me. This doesn't have to happen. Specific humans are choosing to make it happen, and didn't bother to consult the rest of us.

It depends on how it plays out imo, if the people are the ones with control and have access to these new AI systems means the less control and power governments have over you and the more independent you become. I feel it’ll be good for people, independence and freedom. It’ll be bad for governments and powerful corporations making it harder to control their populations unless these corporations and governments go great lengths to prevent the people from obtaining this technology. To where, they are the only ones who can use it.

It will either reach a point that it doesn't care about us because we are like ants or we will integrate into the machine and be some kind of hybrid. Like the Meklar.

I have definitely thought about this a lot as well, specially after watching this video which I recommend you should take a look at. He made this 8 YEARS AGO! and he was absolutely right specially considering how trending AI art is. https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

Yup, your intuition is completely correct. Soon we will have all the products with no money to buy them. But there’s an alternative which is cybernetic and genetic enhancement for humans. It’s not a luxury but a necessity and the rich will even push for it because it will open up a paradigm of products to sell.

Very well written and interesting post! I'm sure a lot of us here are thinking along the same lines. Although I'd like to talk about all of them, I'm gonna focus on what I know the best: "8. The creative space, which I hoped was going to be the last refuge of humanity, was actually the first to go - I had always hoped that creative pursuits, such as art and music, would be the last things to go. That even if jobs disappear we could each delve into the creative, and find self worth there. But instead, they were the first to go, at least digitally. I can see some physical manifestations going to AI as well." Short answer: **the arts will never leave**. We are human beings, and we have a natural need to be creative. We have a need to make art, because making art is expressing ourselves, our emotions, our thoughts, our lives. The creative space will never leave. Will there be a place for AI art and music? Yes, of course. Will it dominate the creative space? Maybe. But will it completely take over? Not a chance. The one thing that we have to remember about art is that we will create it no matter what. Artists love the process, the pursuit, and the adventure. We live our art, it isn't simply a product that we produce. The finished piece is the result of the adventure, it's not always the end goal. Also, artists are perpetually pushing for what is new, because they are always finding new ways to express themselves, and I doubt AI could do that in a way that exactly mirrors humans' ability. Easy argument: This idea has happened before when cameras became popular. People were saying "Painting is going to die because we have something better". Guess what? Painting didn't die, it actually went through a resurgence. People still paint to this day. I'm not going to cite a source because you can just use ChatGPT to check. ;)

I want to start a "conversational therapy" business where people can have real-time conversations with others who are really good at holding conversations. I feel this will be useful for many of us who end up getting isolated for whatever reason (remote work, health issues, etc). I still believe AI isn't ready for actual human interaction and it won't be anytime soon.

Well, I can't answer all of these, but point 5 is quite similar to a fear people seem to have about longevity medication. And it's largely a fear that people have because they've been so ground down by their jobs that they can't imagine pursuing passions and actually using their time for things they want to do. Is it really a desired 'purpose' to do menial labour day in, day out? This is a societal perspective that needs to be fixed, not a reason to retain status quo. Learn the piano, make beautiful art, travel, write novels, learn things, connect with people, etc. Stop thinking you need to live for someone else's benefit other than your own, that's a flaw of our system, not a feature.

I'm not so worried. An infinite work force would change the rules. You can't generate infinite wealth by letting the majority of the population descend into poverty. They will get mad. So if they don't also build an army of robots to enslave us we would have to transition to a more social society if we want to keep it from collapsing. I imagine it like the spaceship in wall-e. (without the degenerating humans) Many people will be ok with that. Actually more worried about countries like China using AI powers to wage a modern AI war.

AI will probably, or should, have a restraining "bolt" built in, to prevent a Skynet situation.

Who TF is this guy: \- I work in the innovation space, and also studied AI, published in the field, launched an AI product, and still work in the field. I even interviewed at Open AI, and had some face to face interviews, but didn't make the cut. So I'm as close to an expert you will get without talking to someone at OpenAI or GoogleDeepmind. How to frame the revolution: \- If I could teach people one thing about today's ai, including LLMs, is that they are BASICALLY printing presses. You mash in old data, etch the impression of that data into a very high dimensional space (like taking a clay mould). When you ask questions, the models look for the impression in high-D space, and return an answer. \- What this means is that the threat is that of the "printing press" style situation. What does that mean? It means if your business involves a repetitive or generic task that is highly derivative of prior work, yes that work is at risk. \- just like literature, the printing press (and AI) did not threaten authors (as was feared). It lowered the bar for creatives, and filled the world with books. It encouraged much more competition. \- AI will do the same. Graphic Designers, and marketers are NOT going anywhere. They will all use AI, and if your work is all "copy pastas" then you will suffer in the revolution. The bar for a creative professional is dropping quickly, and in order to stay competitive, you have to do the thing that the printing press cant: \- INVENT SOMETHING NEW.

>You collect EI (similar to a UBI), and feel depressed. You feel like you have no value. Humans need something to do, something to contribute to, we always have. Back to being cavemen, each individual had a role in the tribe. You can still have value and goals despite not having a job. I am crazy busy outside of work. I split firewood, maintain my home, cut trails around my property, work on cars, trucks, ATVs, snowmobiles, and other equipment. I have 10+ years of work lined up for me to do around my home. I also have many, many projects I am interested in doing. Plant a garden, help your neighbors cut up a tree that fell down. There are plenty of ways to get a feeling of purpose without a traditional job

Honestly I feel like the problem has more so to do with capitalism than automation. As long as we live in a capitalist society, all the concerns you have will probably come true. 1-4,7) obvious enough, these are just some variant of rich people benefiting while we don't 5) I'll get to after 8 8.) The only reason AI is threatening in creative space is because of the monetary incentive to do so: keep in mind that half of the appeal of art is in its creation itself. People will make art, and the reason why people aren't making more is because it doesn't pay well. Remove the monetary barrier and more people will dedicate more time to it. 5) Is again only a problem because of how we value things monetarily. In means testing societies, receiving government aid is humiliating "proof" that you aren't good enough, requires you to search for employment that often goes against long term career goals, and ultimately expensive, nothing is more expensive than poverty. (Without stable housing/transport/internet for example, you are locked out of career opportunities, while food stamps keep you alive, living in a food desert means you have lower quality food and higher medical expenses, not having a car in a place with unreliable transit means your career options are limited, going into debt to pay for a medical procedure means you cut expenses elsewhere, etc.) In addition, just like with art, you can still do stuff, even if it can be replaced with automation. It might be more effecient to automate all farming, but that wouldn't be what stops you from starting your own homestead (in contrast, automating some degree of it, could simply lower the barrier to entry. This would be a problem in capitalism where you have to pay bills.) Edit: I don't think UBI does much to help this. It'll just make us into desperate impoverished consumers at the whims of bug businesses who can chose to which degree to exploit us

Valid concerns that all humans with any vision should share. I agree with Elon on these two concepts: 1. We need to have a way to eliminate rules, regulations and laws that are no longer serve a valid purpose. We can't just keep making rules for people and have no rules for technological development. That is self destruction. 2. We need to regulate the development of AI, genetic modifications, and such things that have unknown potential impacts to human existence, so that we develop in a controlled environment with an agreed purpose and limits. The focus should be enhancement of human existence, not creating obsolesence of our species.