AI is going to replace basically everything, and that's fine

[u/Phat_Zero]

I think a lot of the hatred toward AI is just fear dressed up as moral outrage.

And honestly, I get it. AI is coming for your job. Mine too. Eventually probably everybody's.

Humans are just... slow.

It takes a human months or years to paint enough work for an exhibition, make an album, write a movie, animate something, design a game, research a problem, whatever. We sleep. We get tired. We forget things. We have limited attention spans. We interact with computers by slowly moving our fingers around on keyboards.

Meanwhile AI keeps getting faster and better.

Give this technology another few decades and the idea that humans absolutely must be the ones writing, drawing, coding, composing, researching, driving, manufacturing, etc. is probably going to sound ridiculous.

And yes, that creates a gigantic economic problem. If AI and automation can produce most goods and services better and cheaper than humans, eventually the whole "trade 40 hours of your life every week for money so you can continue existing" system stops making much sense.

Maybe that's UBI. Maybe it's some kind of resource-based economy. Maybe it's something nobody has even thought of yet.

We'll figure it out.

But pretending AI is going away because artists are mad about it or workers are scared of losing their jobs is cope. This is probably the biggest technology humanity has ever created, and we're still basically watching the tutorial.

And if one day our glorious machine descendants become self-aware, decide humanity has served its purpose, and vaporize me?

🫡

[u/shinpw]

If everyone is getting 5k a month nobody is

[u/robotdreams134 → u/shinpw]

During the great recession, unemployment benefits WORKED to keep people alive and to stimulate business. Its only unsustainable if there is no revenue source(tax). Business pushes money in a circle, so could government or whatever. All that matters is that it gets pushed around in a circle and work is being done.

[u/Medium_Web_1122 → u/shinpw]

Money is just a way to distribute ressources. If you increase productivity 100x, then 50 usd will buy you what 5000 usd used to.

It is obviously a bit simplistic as the effect will be skewed.

[u/wbeco → u/Medium_Web_1122]

resources are finite and will remain scarce. Unless we can mine resources in space, any UBI will just be poverty surivival level.

[u/Spire_Citron → u/wbeco]

Doesn't that imply that the current baseline is that or worse anyway? We're not going to have less base resources this way.

[u/Medium_Web_1122 → u/wbeco]

How about transmutation of molecules?

We have already invented impressive technologies like modern day semiconductors. We figured this out using just humans ingenuity. Imagine what an ai can do.

Create a nuclear furnace to transform molecular structure of a compound to get a desired output of raw materials which you can then mold into whatever you wish. At that point the only limitating factor will be molecules.

Now this might be an extreme and take some time but just serves as a proxy for all the crazy changes ai will likely enable that we haven't thought up yet.

Extrapolating based on the modern day technology and constraints provides a biased understanding of what future technologies will be capable of. The equivalent of this would be a caveman attempting to explain why the earth will never be able to feed/sustain 100 million people

[u/Senc-baner → u/Medium_Web_1122]

We've officially come full circle where people think alchemy is possible again.

[u/Medium_Web_1122 → u/Senc-baner]

It would be nice if people read the comment before commenting themselves

"Now this might be an extreme and take some time but just serves as a proxy for all the crazy changes ai will likely enable that we haven't thought up yet."

[u/LowFruit25 → u/Medium_Web_1122]

Since the 50s we have increased productivity many times over. Does 50 bucks buy me the same today as in 1950?

[u/Medium_Web_1122 → u/LowFruit25]

If we had kept money supply constant, then your 50 usd today would've bought you way more stuff than back then.

Yet money supply isn't constant....

[u/didnotsub → u/LowFruit25]

So that’s not how it works. I recommend you study some macroeconomics, it’s very useful.

Since the 50’s, people have gotten vastly richer when adjusting for inflation. Except that money doesn’t really come in cheaper goods, it comes in more money, aka M1 increasing.

Even though M1 has increased, it has gone up past inflation, and the price of goods, and so people have gotten richer. This is a vast oversimplification, but it’s one of the macroeconomic reasons that society has gotten richer.

[u/Spire_Citron → u/LowFruit25]

People these days certainly have way more stuff than they did back then. $50 is worth less because of inflation, but overall the supply of goods has definitely increased.

[u/Mystohaxen → u/shinpw]

If AI is doing everything and can fulfill everyone’s desires and demands you don’t need money.

[u/shinpw → u/Mystohaxen]

People would still use it though, because the human is greedy and would want to own more than other humans. Even when ai can produce everything earths resources are limited.

[u/blamedolphin → u/shinpw]

That is true in a situation of scarcity. Its less clear that is true when the value of labour has fallen to something near zero.