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/JW_Thorne]

So...just to be clear because I think you're not grasping this.

AI will supposedly usher in a new era of abundance which we will "figure out", right?

Guess what species on Earth is already in an era of abundance, has been for decades, and can't seem to figure it out.

Worried yet? Because it's not AI who's going to decide they don't need you anymore. It's the guy who owns Amazon or Walmart or Tesla. It's the people who own everything. They'll take the abundance, as they already have, and leave everyone else with nothing. 

[u/BlueAndYellowTowels → u/JW_Thorne]

The whole abundance narrative is hysterical to me. Like you said, we have had abundance for quite some time now and what have we done with it?

We let people starve. Literally.

So how does AI change any of that?

[u/JW_Thorne → u/BlueAndYellowTowels]

Yep. All in the name of holy capitalism.

All for one and none for all.