It's wild how much weight "they're destroying jobs" has.
I dare say that car manufacturers are aware of their impact on the horse and buggy industry. Calculator manufacturers wrecked the livelihood of mathematicians and accountants.
Technology is in the business of putting people out of work, by inventing better ways of doing things. Or rather, any time you invent a better way of doing things, that's fundamentally going to disrupt all the businesses built around older technologies.
I can't speak for the OP, but I'd personally prefer we spent a lot more energy figuring out how to help people whose livelihoods are disrupted by technological change than trying to hold back technological change (or argue about its merits) because it affects people's livelihoods. I mean, "computer" used to be a job title before it meant "machine that replaced people's livelihoods" and yet computers have ultimately created whole new categories of jobs while simultaneously destroying countless other jobs.
There's no real reason to think that AI is unique among all the livelihood destroying technologies that have come before in that it will destroy jobs without opening new ones in their place. It seems to me fighting the march of technology is akin to fighting the tides. Yes, you can build sea walls, and in the modern age, we literally can hold back the tides. But at the cost of ever increasing expenditures of time, resources and/or money. We could spend our resources trying to preserve livelihoods whose time has come and gone, but why specifically these jobs and not say, coal miners, farriers, lamp lighters, whalers, operators, computers, thread spinners or any of the multitudes of other jobs that technology is obsoleted? If we think on all the jobs that have been lost to technology over the decades, how many of those jobs do we think would have left the world in a net better place had we eliminated the technology that obsoleted the job and kept all the people employed in those positions where they were. Are people scared for their livelihoods because the technology will destroy the job, or because societies tend to spend all their energy trying to fight the technology instead of helping people find new jobs and livelihoods and the technology always eventually wins?
- “help people whose livelihoods are disrupted by technological change”
vs.
- relentless pursuit of AGI/ASI/etc. in break neck speed, destroying environment and promised to imminently capture all white collar and soon after, blue collar work in a short amount of time.
Real world, we’re talking about real world with actual people in it. Only one of the above scenarios is happening.
> Real world, we’re talking about real world with actual people in it.
In the real world, never once has the march of technology been successfully stopped, no matter how many jobs it crushed. Even the luddites who are enjoying a historical "re-evaluation" today still lost. And we've been through society spanning destruction of livelihoods before too and didn't stop it then either, just look at how much of the population used to be employed in farming and agriculture and compare it to now. Automation came and destroyed all of those livelihoods too.
In the real world, we can't even stop countries from pursuing, developing and improving nuclear weaponry despite the fact that we know it is an existential threat, and nuclear weaponry has no uses at all outside of nuclear annihilation. If we can't stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, what makes you think we have even a snowball's chance in hell of stopping AI development when AI actually has non-world ending uses and benefits to people?
I'm happy to talk about the "real world" and in the real world, we're repeating the same mistakes of the past thinking "surely this time will be different" instead of learning from those mistakes and trying something new.
Do you have an actual response to my point and the scale of what’s supposed to be happening, or is it just the same words, rinse and repeat, like the leaf node of a dialogue tree?
I would ask you the same thing. Do you have a proposal to address your concerns and the "scale of what's supposed to be happening" that is't support for the same type of failed attempts to stop the march of technology that have failed time and time again all throughout history? Do you at least have a theory for why this time it would turn out differently if we tried it again? Or do you just prefer to throw out insults and vague accusations that I'm an AI/bot?
> vague accusations that I'm an AI/bot
Funny enough, that never occurred to me. Nowadays an LLM probably would’ve addressed my point about speed, scale, etc. instead of this hastily condensed script of farriers and lamplighters layered with some good history revisionism where the consequences and effects of those transitions are somehow memory holed, just to falsely equivocate what we’re doing with inevitable forces of nature while hiding behind the empty rhetorical shield of “we should help people instead”. Typical hard techno determinism. Regurgitated dime a dozen in social media.
handoflixue · · focus · HN ↗
I dare say that car manufacturers are aware of their impact on the horse and buggy industry. Calculator manufacturers wrecked the livelihood of mathematicians and accountants.
Technology is in the business of putting people out of work, by inventing better ways of doing things. Or rather, any time you invent a better way of doing things, that's fundamentally going to disrupt all the businesses built around older technologies.
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
It’s wild how much people are scared for their livelihood. What a sad thing to read here.
tpmoney · · focus · HN ↗
There's no real reason to think that AI is unique among all the livelihood destroying technologies that have come before in that it will destroy jobs without opening new ones in their place. It seems to me fighting the march of technology is akin to fighting the tides. Yes, you can build sea walls, and in the modern age, we literally can hold back the tides. But at the cost of ever increasing expenditures of time, resources and/or money. We could spend our resources trying to preserve livelihoods whose time has come and gone, but why specifically these jobs and not say, coal miners, farriers, lamp lighters, whalers, operators, computers, thread spinners or any of the multitudes of other jobs that technology is obsoleted? If we think on all the jobs that have been lost to technology over the decades, how many of those jobs do we think would have left the world in a net better place had we eliminated the technology that obsoleted the job and kept all the people employed in those positions where they were. Are people scared for their livelihoods because the technology will destroy the job, or because societies tend to spend all their energy trying to fight the technology instead of helping people find new jobs and livelihoods and the technology always eventually wins?
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
- “help people whose livelihoods are disrupted by technological change”
vs.
- relentless pursuit of AGI/ASI/etc. in break neck speed, destroying environment and promised to imminently capture all white collar and soon after, blue collar work in a short amount of time.
Real world, we’re talking about real world with actual people in it. Only one of the above scenarios is happening.
tpmoney · · focus · HN ↗
In the real world, never once has the march of technology been successfully stopped, no matter how many jobs it crushed. Even the luddites who are enjoying a historical "re-evaluation" today still lost. And we've been through society spanning destruction of livelihoods before too and didn't stop it then either, just look at how much of the population used to be employed in farming and agriculture and compare it to now. Automation came and destroyed all of those livelihoods too.
In the real world, we can't even stop countries from pursuing, developing and improving nuclear weaponry despite the fact that we know it is an existential threat, and nuclear weaponry has no uses at all outside of nuclear annihilation. If we can't stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, what makes you think we have even a snowball's chance in hell of stopping AI development when AI actually has non-world ending uses and benefits to people?
I'm happy to talk about the "real world" and in the real world, we're repeating the same mistakes of the past thinking "surely this time will be different" instead of learning from those mistakes and trying something new.
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
tpmoney · · focus · HN ↗
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
Funny enough, that never occurred to me. Nowadays an LLM probably would’ve addressed my point about speed, scale, etc. instead of this hastily condensed script of farriers and lamplighters layered with some good history revisionism where the consequences and effects of those transitions are somehow memory holed, just to falsely equivocate what we’re doing with inevitable forces of nature while hiding behind the empty rhetorical shield of “we should help people instead”. Typical hard techno determinism. Regurgitated dime a dozen in social media.