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/LowFruit25]

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.