just-a-dreamer- t1_ja6xeuw wrote
Reply to comment by Yuli-Ban in Some companies are already replacing workers with ChatGPT, despite warnings it shouldn’t be relied on for ‘anything important’ by Gold-and-Glory
If you expect fairness in the capitalist system, you are in the wrong place.
You are nothing but a unit of production calculated against a unit of revenue. Firing white collar workers is the most logical thing a business can do, for they cause the highest expense.
Yuli-Ban t1_ja6zght wrote
I'm not saying you're wrong, not one bit.
I'm just saying that, while this made sense historically, we're approaching a point where this mindset is likely going to cause civilizational disruption— and not the good kind (if there even is such a thing as "good" civilizational disruption)
And not because "white collar workers are important" or anything. I mean the prospect of double digit unemployment, with the intent on reaching triple digit unemployment, and thinking that everyone will be all for this if we pay them $1,000 or so every month (or maybe even $2,000 if generous) is outrageously psychotic and sheltered thinking
Like, to everyone on this subreddit who says "I can't wait for robots to take all our jobs!" Just.... I almost want to say "Fuck off, you don't understand what you're asking." It's not as simple as "I hate my job, let a robot do it so I can use VR and synthetic media all day." Maybe that's what it means to you. That's not what it means to 90% of society. What Average Joe is hearing is "A robot's taking my job, in fact my whole career and the life ahead of me that I planned is now obsolete. I might get something that isn't even minimum wage to subsist upon, or I might get Soviet communism instead. Also, my grandchildren are going to be turned into nonhuman digital intelligences inside of a computer, and no, I don't have any say in it because some incredibly techno-optimistic tech elites decided to create Skynet."
You'd have to actually be deeply, profoundly autistic or socially retarded to think that the massive, overwhelming reaction to this isn't going to be "Fuck that, I'm getting my gun and shooting up the data centers." Not by some lone wolf. Not by some small group of Luddites. I mean by, you know, the 50% to 70% of society you just unemployed.
It could be good. It could genuinely play out well. But we've taken precisely zero steps towards such a positive outcome.
Lawjarp2 t1_ja78q97 wrote
Exactly. But even scarier is the fact that initial set of people who will lose jobs will go from high paying to not even UBI yet. Without UBI this will be chaos in just 5-6 years.
Yuli-Ban t1_ja7a4co wrote
It's not just the people in high paying jobs. You can add creative jobs to that too. And that's important because of our cultural insulation over what creativity is and how it's a "human" thing. We already saw a fierce protest against AI art simply over still images. Imagine what it's going to be like when it's full storytelling, multimedia projects, and music.
A combination of white collar and creative work being automated in such short order is disastrous. But I'm going a step further to say that even a lot of blue collar jobs will be getting automated in a few short years once robotics pick up. Not all of them, surely, but enough that the general unemployment rate should be around 50% to 70%.
UBI is not enough.
Even communism is not enough.
This is not a problem that can be fixed just by throwing money at it. It's a cultural, psychological, and behavioral issue as well. We're going to tell hundreds of millions of people still living a decade or even two decades in the past "You're out of a job, you're of a career, and your grandchildren are going to be posthumans."
What exactly does this sub think is going to happen? Really, honestly. What do Singularitarians seriously think is going to happen? Everyone shrugs and says "Okay, good"?
If so, then I might actually need to leave this sub for good.
just-a-dreamer- t1_ja73evy wrote
I hope people shoot the elites, not the data centers. I see no problem in that. Intelligent people are more efficient fighters.
In simple terms, in capitalism people fear about their jobs getting automated. In socialism people celebrate the reduction of labor through automation.
The eradication of the capitalist system is a an accomplishment in itself, the height of human civilization.
Besides, what other system than socialism could distribute the fruits of AI labor across civilization? At some point in time next to no human being will be able to "work for a living".
Even if you try hard to be the best you can be, it won't be good enough. The capitalist system has nothing to offer to you.
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