This was posted a week ago and I'll just reiterate what I said there..
As an American why should I believe a word of this, when our country's Overton window ranges from "lip service" to "open contempt" for the unemployed? How can I feel confidence for my economic future when, in less than a decade, the frontier AI labs have abandoned any semblance of caution and are embracing a lobby for fewer guardrails? When "move fast, break things" is applied to the "mass cognition replacement machine"?
Filing this entire article under "I'll believe it when I fucking see it". The pollyannic nonsense is willfully ignorant and only serves to excuse more concentration of wealth and the mass theft of leverage from the average worker.
The point of the article isn't that we will have no need to work; that remains an open question. The body of the article is exploring previous societies or segments of society in which no one needed to have a job, and how they lived their lives, as a way of pondering what a post-work world would look like. It's not particular pollyannic in tone once you get past the opening paragraphs.
If the author wanted to write a purely historical essay she is more than welcome to. Instead she chose a framing device of a post-work society thanks to AI that I think undermines the whole article.
"Aristocrats are (typically) rich, which we certainly will be if we have robots capable of all normal nonrelational labor." ...okay
I think this framing device was unnecessary. This was interesting historical food for thought without tying it to AI. I think its relevant to a mass-unemployment, economic depression scenario too, and others.
calldacopsidc · · focus · HN ↗
As an American why should I believe a word of this, when our country's Overton window ranges from "lip service" to "open contempt" for the unemployed? How can I feel confidence for my economic future when, in less than a decade, the frontier AI labs have abandoned any semblance of caution and are embracing a lobby for fewer guardrails? When "move fast, break things" is applied to the "mass cognition replacement machine"?
Filing this entire article under "I'll believe it when I fucking see it". The pollyannic nonsense is willfully ignorant and only serves to excuse more concentration of wealth and the mass theft of leverage from the average worker.
wduquette · · focus · HN ↗
calldacopsidc · · focus · HN ↗
"Aristocrats are (typically) rich, which we certainly will be if we have robots capable of all normal nonrelational labor." ...okay
jfil · · focus · HN ↗