"They haven’t seen the latest models that quietly chew through documents, write code, design websites, summarize legal contracts, and generate decent strategy decks faster than a middle manager can clear their throat.
They haven’t seen a model hold a complex conversation, remember context, suggest workflows, generate visuals, write scripts, and debug itself in one continuous flow."
You're absolutely right! I haven't seen these.
sevensor 2 days ago [-]
Hogwash. Find me a “lights out” factory. They don’t exist.
All your stuff is made by people. Often people with fancy machines, but people nonetheless. And the higher the degree of automation, the more non fungible skills you require of those people.
The pump in a vat of yogurt is cavitating. You can’t slow it down without endangering food safety. You can’t adjust the mix without affecting the final product. Somebody who understands all that needs to install a new impeller.
Stamped aircraft parts are coming off the line 500 microns thick. Somebody has to recognize that there’s a problem with the hydraulic cushion and fix it.
I could go on and on and on. There are few things I get ranty about on the internet, but pretending that physical world problems are solved by automation is one of them. You’re replacing a hard problem with another hard problem, with a side effect of higher productivity. Pretending Morlocks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away.
kevlened 1 days ago [-]
> Find me a “lights out” factory. They don’t exist.
Seriously? They show people on the floor within the first 30 seconds of the video. I guess it’s technically “lights out” if you make people work in the dark, but I meant, and the article implied, production without jobs.
AbstractH24 1 days ago [-]
Your job won't be replaced by AI, it'll be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI.
There is still a whole market for clothing; its just not led by people who use a loom.
_DeadFred_ 1 days ago [-]
Huh? The facilities guy at the local nationally distributed yogurt based product company just swaps out impellers when told by the machine as it identifies there is an issue. He has less skill than your typical HVAC guy, and zero interests in the nuance and zero input about 'best yogurt cavitating' practices.
The aircraft part is measured by Faro or some other tool. The person wielding the Faro just follows the QA instructions and marks if things are red/green. Another FARO type product measures the fixtures/etc for compliance. If they don't match, a fixtures consultant is brought in to make them match.
Other than those that happened to do the initial setup/machine/fixture construction, the people in the actual plant don't really have much non-fungible skills in your example, and they definitely don't have power/permission to go tweaking things using their personal non-fungible skills.
sevensor 1 days ago [-]
I’m confused about how you’ve characterized factory work. It’s nothing like the factories I’ve been in, so I’m assuming this is an imagined future state? Hope do you propose we get there?
_DeadFred_ 1 days ago [-]
My experience if anything is dated and historical 2010s era.
mid-kid 2 days ago [-]
This post is AI sludge and by the third bullet list I couldn't keep reading. This is stuff I deeply resonate with but jesus christ please respect my time and don't drown me in extremely verbose prose goop.
frizlab 2 days ago [-]
Jokes on the article, I open it in Safari reader and use the Summarize (with AI) button.
hellisothers 2 days ago [-]
What indicates that to you?
aoeusnth1 2 days ago [-]
Lots of "it's not X. It's Y."
Bullet points I can forgive, it's a common blog post writing style. But the ranty prose here definitely has a whiff of silicon.
marcus_holmes 2 days ago [-]
taps the sign:
"Humans do not exist to be economic assets. The economy exists to provide for humans"
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
The economy is an abstraction over humans interacting with eachother.
deepfriedchokes 2 days ago [-]
Not according to our current economic system.
In Capitalism, the economy exists to provide for Capital.
marcus_holmes 2 days ago [-]
We can fix that. The usual method is war and/or revolution. See Piketty [0] for details.
The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
BobbyJo 2 days ago [-]
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
I think this completely ignores the role of government in the economy. By virtue of being born today, you are forced to participate in the economy. The government spends tax dollars in the economy, which it either collects from you, or spends on you, and the voting body has decided that, to some degree, the economy is indeed a charity.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves.
I'd disagree with the first part of that statement. Most people see themselves as good, and therefore see some level of responsibility for helping those that cannot provide for themselves.
> As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
Again, this ignores that the economy is, at least partially, structured by a government.
ausbah 2 days ago [-]
sorry i was born disabled, or purposely excluded from the economy due to societal discrimination
fpia 2 days ago [-]
disabled how? you clearly can read and write
majormajor 2 days ago [-]
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
The problem that this has run into throughout history has been the existence of those who don't take kindly to rules that appear to be there just to push them aside.
An economy that chooses to exclude the majority of the population as "no longer needed" as so much dystopian AI-true-believer babble these days does is going to lead to some major issues when the excluded decide they don't want to simply be excluded.
Society historically does not help those that the economy leaves behind exclusively out of the goodness of its heart - it also does it for self-preservation.
You want a world where the streets are safe and clean, not choked with homeless people and corpses thereof. So, this “tough love” bullshit is not going to fly.
The slums of Mumbai are just a taste of what’s to come in America, at this rate.
Billionaires, take heed.
jonahbenton 2 days ago [-]
Yeah, jobs suck, and AI can do all kinds of things, but this really misunderstands...just about everything.
Pluribus is a more interesting meditation.
OgsyedIE 2 days ago [-]
The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
This article misses the key problem with the end of jobs. How else are 98% of the human population going to get income? With the coming of drones and old-timey 1900s chemical weapons they are probably no longer equipped as a class to win a military contest over redistribution against the asset holders.
Much like replacing religion with nothing has turned out, replacing jobs with nothing is going to be bad at best.
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
palmotea 2 days ago [-]
>> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
> As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
That's not a counter-example, it's just nit-picking on the phrasing and missing the point: the lawn-care people get their income from "those who do own appreciating assets," just with a middleman or two in between.
garbawarb 2 days ago [-]
Who needs jobs if you have food and internet entertainment in abundance?
bluSCALE4 2 days ago [-]
What food? You mean ultra processed garbage that will kill you?
majormajor 2 days ago [-]
A whole shit-ton of people in developed countries would not be happy with that, demonstrated by those:
1) choose not to simply coast on the social safety net, and seek out jobs for status and additional things than those. why do they do those when by historical standards they could be wildly comfortable without the bullshit work?
2) do coast (opting to just go on disability, say) but are generally extremely unhappy about it in ways that frequently cause problems for the rest of the people
3) opt out entirely from the social safety net and chose to try to live on the streets instead, whether for a desire for some sort of freedom or because of poor impulse control caused by addiction or similar (which also frequently leads to problems for the rest of the people)
2 days ago [-]
s3r3nity 2 days ago [-]
Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.
These don't magically appear - people have to create / store / distribute those things, and/or develop the science / engineering to do so.
Squeeze2664 2 days ago [-]
Can you imagine someone willing to do those things because of some reason other than monetary gain, as it would be in OP's world?
How many people currently stuck in Jobs would work toward accomplishing these things with the idea of ending world hunger, because they _want_ to do it, instead of having to do it because they have student loans and bills to pay?
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
I don't think there's anyone out there working on solving world hunger because they have loans and bills to pay. It isn't a monetarily profitable endeavor.
OgsyedIE 2 days ago [-]
People have to have the buying power to support the chain you describe. If the buying power of a population vanishes, such as by being made superfluous, they get a large population reduction whether they like it or not.
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
And eventually all this will be primarily automated, with a few humans contributing because they love to develop things in science, engineering, etc.
goatlover 2 days ago [-]
Who is paying for the food (including delivery or transportation) and various streaming services?
nextworddev 2 days ago [-]
Internet entertainment will be abundant on purpose.
Not sure about quality food.
garbawarb 1 days ago [-]
Who said anything about quality? Preserved and processed foods are necessarily lower-quality but they sure are economically efficient.
nextworddev 1 days ago [-]
Sufficient for you maybe
2 days ago [-]
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2 days ago [-]
Their point is there is not "nothing"
As an analogy imagine you had a 6 hour driving commute each day (3 each way)
Imagine if now you move next to the office.
Will it be bad you get those 6 hours back?
If 15->9 is good then 9->0 is even better!
The problem is adjusting to that at scale. Will we get addicts or people who never leave the home? Maybe.
OgsyedIE 2 days ago [-]
That's a completely incorrect mischaracterisation of the analogy.
I'm not talking about replacing a block of time with nothing, people will still have 24 hours in the day. My worry is about replacing income with nothing, because most people don't have the power to seize any income that isn't freely available.
The public takes what they're offered and can't have anything that isn't on offer. If the offer of access to food is withdrawn, the public has no recourse.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2 days ago [-]
Right lack of income has to be dealt with UBI, or worse handouts from big companies. Why do big companies hand out? Well... we get to a point where that is ther smarter thing to do than lose consumers altogether. The incentive to be rich is to have your ideas forfilled rather than to own a home and have security (as that can be provided for all).
If you think this is madness, the analogy (yes another) is you are playing uno with people you met. They have no money. You can say well never mind we wont play. Or you can just deal the cards because they are so cheap it costs you nothing just to do that. And that is more fun. This is what post scarcity could look like.
jh00ker 2 days ago [-]
It's kind of like at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when some in the US were saying that the US government should just forgive mortgage payments so the landlords could forgive everyone's rent. Instead the US government gave businesses loans so they could pay their employees (even though they weren't able to work) so those employees could then pay their rent and buy food, etc. It was (perceived to be) better to inject the money into the system to keep the current system running, rather than turn off / forgive the major parts of the system.
b3ing 2 days ago [-]
PPP loans were the biggest scam and giveaway ever. Many “businesses” bought cars and houses
OgsyedIE 2 days ago [-]
Under the K-shaped economy it's been reported extensively already that the consumption market share of the public is trending downwards with no side of stopping. The consumption numbers can be kept up entirely off a market adjustment for less food and water and more yachts.
Post-scarcity requires a political choice. Everybody with political power, regardless of affiliation or nation, stands to benefit from reducing the political power of others who may stand to make demands. The economically surplus humans can't make those demands upon the powerful if they aren't around.
sbinnee 2 days ago [-]
I actually believe that the era of lives will come. But I can't wait for UBI. Nobody can't. Even if the era of jobs ends, for us who are living in this era, the event is not going to be a period but an ellipsis. I can't wait to see how it unfolds. Yet, I doubt that I would see the end happening in my lifetime.
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
This really hits, solidifies and expands on thoughts I've been having for a while now. So many refuse to see or acknowledge it, but we're quickly approaching a point of reckoning which will require a major overhaul of the current dominant economic system.
The labour for wage model is rapidly becoming obsolete for the many, and a way forward that doesn't necessitate people working in order to gain access to the necessities of - modern - living needs to be paved. Otherwise it'll be grim for the vast majority when global automation of value creation gets upwards of say 85%. It's already pretty grim for an appreciable, though still relatively limited, number.
jleyank 2 days ago [-]
Can’t read the article due to bandwidth. If the era of jobs is over, what’s going to support the masses of people who consume? Without those people, there’s no profit from making stuff. Star Trek looks great, but there’s a whole lot of time, politics and physics that has to occur to get there.
itake 2 days ago [-]
its not though... there is literally an infinite amount of work. If humans become 10,000x more efficient, then we still have infinite amount of work to do.
BobbyJo 2 days ago [-]
Not necessarily true. There are non-human bottlenecks to productivity, like energy, land area, available raw materials, etc. You're assuming humans can find ways to meaningfully contribute that do not bump up against any of those constraints. R&D is probably the only area not bottlenecked by one of the above out of the gate, and most humans are ill suited for that line of work.
9rx 1 days ago [-]
> most humans are ill suited for that line of work.
Based on what? Certainly there are humans with crippling disabilities that remove them from pretty much any kind of work, but of the "normally functioning" population?
Most lack the necessary attention directed towards R&D as they're too busy living out other lives in other jobs. If that's what you mean, that is a fair point. But if those jobs went away as suggested earlier, they'd have nothing else to do but turn their attention towards R&D. That current world model wouldn't apply anymore.
BobbyJo 1 days ago [-]
> Based on what?
Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc. I get the argument that "the whole world would be different, so present data isn't applicable", but, if that's your argument, then it's totally unfalsifiable.
9rx 1 days ago [-]
> Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc.
Right. That much was obvious. But what does that mean in more detail? If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
BobbyJo 22 hours ago [-]
> If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
Don't we run that experiment on every moderately wealthy child on the planet? I can tell you that the hit rate there is definitely not 100%.
9rx 20 hours ago [-]
I don't know. You're the one who has studied the data, not me. What's the answer?
If you are asking about what I've seen anecdotally, which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us who is the subject matter expert between us, all those who were moderately wealthy children that I know have grown up into having success with R&D in at least some limited capacity. They haven't all dedicated their lives to R&D, but they've had no trouble being able to invent things when the situation necessitated it.
If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop. But, again, you're the expert among us here. I don't know much about it — that is why I'm asking you.
Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
BobbyJo 9 hours ago [-]
> which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us
Not sure why the snark is necessary. Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status. I'm not an expert, but the line for rich kids doesn't go to 100%.
> If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop.
Because not everyone is a bottomless pit of ambition. Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
> Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
I'm speaking in generalities. Research is generally a race, and the smartest and hardest working generally win the race. Even if everyone's IQ and ambition shot up, there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
After that last paragraph, it isn't clear to me that you disagree with my core premise of "not everyone should do research".
9rx 8 hours ago [-]
> Not sure why the snark is necessary.
Not sure why you think a computer screen is giving you snark, but you do you.
> I'm not an expert
You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
> Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status.
It may be, but no need to waste time sauntering off on another, rather uninteresting, subject. We're talking about R&D, not academic achievement. Stay focused, by friend.
> Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
R&D is the leisure activity of many people. We'll leave your data sources to quantify exactly what that means, but it is clearly large enough to be a recognizable set of the population.
> Research is generally a race
It can be where you are trying to be first to build a moat around something that scales massively. But not all R&D scales, or even wants to scale. Despite your unquantified "generally" claim, it remains unclear if most R&D is even trying to scale. There are a lot of hobbyists out there carrying out R&D with no plans for it beyond doing something for themselves.
> there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
There is seemingly no end to how much R&D is possible. I guess at some point there is a pinnacle of human achievement, but it seems highly unlikely that we'll reach that point in the next thousand years. Humans are pretty shortsighted — the people from the year 1200 would have never imagined digital computers being a thing — but when the time comes we always find something new to immerse our thoughts in.
So what if someone is smarter and harder working?
BobbyJo 7 hours ago [-]
> You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
Okay. You seem upset, so I'll disengage. Have a great day!
9rx 7 hours ago [-]
Now you are under the impression that a computer screen is able to become upset? That's a new one.
BobbyJo 6 hours ago [-]
Are you claiming to be a computer screen now? Hard to believe, but you're the expert on computer screens I guess.
9rx 6 hours ago [-]
Perhaps it was wrong to assume. How about you describe what you see and then, from that, we can decide what it is that you are interacting with.
BobbyJo 5 hours ago [-]
No thank you.
9rx 4 hours ago [-]
Embarrassed to admit that it does, in fact, look like a computer screen, huh?
BobbyJo 2 hours ago [-]
> Ackchyually, I am a computer screen. lololol
Okay bud.
itake 2 days ago [-]
Jobs functions will change over time. Not everyone will be able to do research roles, but robotics is far away from replacing human hands in any meaningful way. Humans need plumbers, home construction, healthcare professionals [0], teachers, judges, relationship driven roles (sales, account managers).
[0] - if robotics/ai can replace healthcare, healthcare costs would drop to zero...
BobbyJo 2 days ago [-]
1) Everything you've listed has finite demand, so cannot provide the 10,000x.
2) Robotics cannot drive costs to zero. Robots cost money and require maintenance.
itake 22 hours ago [-]
we don't see 10,000x efficiency increases in those job categories.
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
It's not about the existence of work. It's about decoupling work from access to necessary resources.
mothballed 2 days ago [-]
Sure but at some point if literally everything tangible and essentially every imaginable commercial service can be done by robots and also designed by AI better than a human, humans are basically relegated to what kind of work? Something like being the exotic dancer or baby factory for a robot factory heir, or maybe a meat sacrifice on a Ukraine-esque battlefield to fight the other group of capital holders.
marcus_holmes 2 days ago [-]
UBI appears to work, in small-scale trials at least. We should try that out.
Avicebron 2 days ago [-]
Has anyone figured out how to avoid everything mysteriously being repriced to account for UBI?
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
Increase Total Factor Productivity so that there's still just as much stuff to go around even with fewer people putting in less work to make the stuff.
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
Forget UBI and implement UBS instead. Income is an unnecessary artifact in accessing services.
akramachamarei 1 days ago [-]
Who or what will provide the services and how do you incentivize them or it?
skeledrew 7 hours ago [-]
AI+Robots. They need as much incentive as your laptop or phone to do as asked.
braebo 1 days ago [-]
In this hypothetical, AI / robotics automation I suppose.
9rx 2 days ago [-]
Every basic income trial I come across ends up being GBI rather than UBI. Which UBI trials are you looking at?
marcus_holmes 21 hours ago [-]
tbh I'm not sure of the difference between UBI and GBI.
Does it change the point? If we say "GBI appears to work, let's try that" is that different?
9rx 20 hours ago [-]
UBI sees everyone receive an income, typically with a clawback mechanism. GBI sees an income paid to only those who need the support (means-based). The difference is subtle, I suppose, but could have a dramatic effect on what the studies show — or maybe not, I don't know. The key takeaway here is that I've never been able to find a UBI study to contrast the numerous GBI studies I am familiar with against. You spoke of UBI studies so I was hoping you'd be able to share. But, it seems not.
I don't understand the questions you are asking at the end. Apologies for not having a good answer.
raincom 2 days ago [-]
Whatever people make goes to rent/mortgage, health insurance, auto insurance, etc. The zoning rules and strict enforcement in the West make it hard to start shanty towns across countries. What is left?
GeoAtreides 2 days ago [-]
>Camus talked about imagining Sisyphus happy. Maybe the point now is to take away the rock and see what he does when he’s no longer condemned to push it. Does he climb the mountain just for the view? Does he build an observatory? Does he lie in the grass and finally sleep?
Removing jobs is not like taking away the rock, it's more like making the rock way heavier.
Only God can make the rock disappear. And God is dead.
palmotea 2 days ago [-]
> Democratize the machines. Public or cooperative ownership of major AI and robotics infrastructure.
If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.
> We can choose to be the last generation that spent its best hours under fluorescent lights, pretending this was the height of civilization.
> Or we can be the first generation that looked at the robots walking onto the factory floor, looked at the models spinning up in the cloud, and said:
>> “Good. Take the work. We’ll take the world back.”
This article is stupid. How would Mr. Economically Irrelevant Former-worker "take the world back?" He just lost whatever power over that world that he had.
This is 15 pages of trying to put lipstick on a pig.
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
> If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.
Way I see it, there isn't really a choice here. Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die. And the fewer the survivors, the less relevant the purpose of said means. The means will always "need" people to validate its continued existence.
palmotea 1 days ago [-]
> Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die.
And that's the part that the AI optimists in these discussions skip over. They want to talk about this new and glorious AI-infested future, but not mention the holocaust that will happen to get there. For most people, the holocaust is the only relevant part, because they'll be destroyed in it [1]. The glorious future of abundance without work is one they'll never see [2].
[1] Most likely through grinding poverty and deprivation, which is how capitalism does it. Not gas chambers or anything.
[2] That future, like you said, a smaller group. I think eventually it will roughly consist of the nepo babies of some billionaires and a smallish group of Lumon-employees (the cultists, not the severed) who must worship them to survive.
skeledrew 7 hours ago [-]
Maybe I haven't encountered enough of these discussions, but I can't recall any where such was skipped over. More likely that they thought it obvious that humans would freely provide access, as there's no reason not to. Or because those deprived of access is always orders more than those with access, they'll just help themselves to the means, and the outcome will be the same. Unless those with access try to stubbornly continue the restriction. It's just a very illogical thought in an era of abundance, and so only really worth mentioning for completion.
jh00ker 2 days ago [-]
> We can choose to be the last generation that spent its best hours under fluorescent lights, pretending this was the height of civilization.
Well, if the work under the fluorescent lights is what allowed us to end the era of jobs, then maybe it is "a" height of civilization?
2 days ago [-]
0x1ceb00da 2 days ago [-]
We're at the bargaining stage now.
k310 2 days ago [-]
Well, it looks like the 90% plus of wealth hoarding just got a whole lot more unstable. Machines will do everything and the jobless have nothing to do but sever power lines.
Is nuclear power safe from assault? I dunno. Visit Chernobyl and see.
If an even greater concentration of wealth is to lead to mass destruction/revolution, I advise a more even distribution.
Note to oligarchs: a post-apocalyptic world is no fun. Not even for you in your bunkers.
wombatpm 2 days ago [-]
If you are don’t station troop at nuclear facilities, then no they are not safe from assault.
reducesuffering 1 days ago [-]
It does not matter how many people you have against a sea of automated drone factories and billions of drones. The war against Ukraine is primarily a drone war
wombatpm 9 hours ago [-]
The buildings are hardened against damage, but the facilities are only surrounded by chainlink fence. A small group seize any power plant and force a shutdown.
Drones would be great for taking out substations.
tonyhart7 2 days ago [-]
its called universal basic income
its inevitable tbh
dreamcompiler 2 days ago [-]
> Note to oligarchs: a post-apocalyptic world is no fun. Not even for you in your bunkers.
It's amusing to me that oligarchs don't seem to understand that if the economy goes to hell, their private security forces will just leave (or worse!). What do they think they will pay salaries with? Bitcoin? Do they really think an army of robot dogs is going to protect them?
conception 2 days ago [-]
Warlords exist in the poorest of economies. They have made the calculation that they should hedge for collapse and attempt to establish themselves for that situation.
dreamcompiler 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 1 days ago [-]
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Yeah, the first time I read it, it was a real eye-opener.
The power of science fiction!
andsoitis 2 days ago [-]
Is this end also intertwined with the end of consumerism? I was waiting for that connection in the article, but failed to find it.
onlyhumans 2 days ago [-]
All you need is a phone and lit TikTok feed. Just like in WALL·E
DaveZale 2 days ago [-]
Also, what about stock options and getting vested? Some companies can offer tasty carrots. It's not always about the stick.
Anyone who has ever started their own business knows how hard (and rewarding) it can be- but you're just creating your own job. Nothing wrong with that. It is one of the best experiences in full accountability, but it's a job.
protocolture 2 days ago [-]
>Anyone who talks with certainty about 2030 is either lying or selling something.
Before opening the link I thought this would be a post about Apple and the end of the Steve Jobs era.
sublinear 2 days ago [-]
I like how every time this topic comes up everyone agrees it's absurd, yet a stubborn subset insist it's inevitable and going to happen soon.
jaimex2 2 days ago [-]
Musk thinks it's inevitable so in all likelihood it is. And yes, I'll take his opinions over pretty much everyone else who has no track record of achieving anything meaningful.
If there is a world of plenty and humans have little to no role in that what else is there?
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
> what else is there?
Doing things for enjoyment and/or interest.
sublinear 2 days ago [-]
This line of reasoning is so flimsy and worryingly common. You do realize that there are plenty of accomplished people and subject experts who disagree with Elon, right?
lelandbatey 2 days ago [-]
I'll take the predictions of a straight up liar and near supervillain with... maybe less enthusiasm?
maplethorpe 2 days ago [-]
I have a similar faith in Musk to you. I was arguing with one of his detractors recently, who said something to the tune of "Musk said we would have humans on Mars by 2025. He's a grifter. He'll say anything to drum up investment." They had a table of people laughing along with them, until I asked how much money they had in the bank, and whether it equaled even one one-thousandth of Musk's net worth. That shut them up pretty fast.
rsynnott 1 days ago [-]
> They had a table of people laughing along with them, until I asked how much money they had in the bank, and whether it equaled even one one-thousandth of Musk's net worth. That shut them up pretty fast.
... Eh?
"But the lying fantasist is _rich_" is not really a particularly convincing argument. Have you considered that possibly they shut up to avoid having a protracted argument with one of his tedious fans?
sublinear 2 days ago [-]
Where do you people come from and why are you on HN?
maplethorpe 18 hours ago [-]
HN has historically been very pro-Musk. The negativity is recent.
2 days ago [-]
jh00ker 2 days ago [-]
Great article to read as I sit down at my work computer on a Sunday to do pre-work and prep to make the rest of the week go more smoothly.
general1465 2 days ago [-]
If humans are not needed anymore and they have no job, thus no income, then who is spinning the consumption wheel? Feels to me like capitalism is shortcutting itself by its own success.
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
Capitalism was never sustainable at any point, and so never really successful (well, depending on one's measure of "success"). The reality of that unsustainability is just being increasingly accelerated.
periodjet 2 days ago [-]
> Universal basic services: housing, healthcare, education, public transit, internet access as rights, not products.
aaaaaaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
stego-tech 2 days ago [-]
I mean, would I like the article to be correct? Gods yes I would. Jobs suck, and the mandate of “work = survival” means you get a whole bunch of shitty personalities arbitrarily holding back progress in the name of personal wealth or power; the end of jobs would mean those of us who approach our professions with passion and love can flatly eject the dead weight insisting that we schedule progress to a future fiscal year’s backlog, instead of just doing what we love, when we want to.
That being said, do I think it’ll happen? No, I don’t, for the simple reason that we still cannot fundamentally get a plurality of society to agree - on any conceivable level - that every human is entitled to and guaranteed shelter, nutritious foodstuffs, healthcare, and education. It’s 2025, we’re literally destroying resources to drive up profit margins and investment returns instead of dispersing surplus appropriately, and yet anyone who mentions this is slandered as a “socialist” and ostracized.
So instead, I fret that what will happen is the cementing of a two-tiered society indefinitely: one of immense wealth who owns the securities, the land, the datacenters that makes the world work, and a serf class who must engage with these ever-more-expensive systems for the gains of Capital, including via increasingly precarious gig work instead of reliable, structural jobs.
And I think folks roundly dismissing these sorts of posts as “unrealistic” just don’t appreciate how far and how fast we’ve gone from “humans have to engage in subsistence farming” to an interconnected global marketplace and digitized society. We have quite literally thrown out the “status quo” dozens of times since the end of Feudalism, and this time is no different.
Those who dare to dream big are often the victors of such profound change, provided they can craft a message relatable to the populace.
And a message of, “you don’t need a job anymore because necessities got so expensive that governments made them part of tax dollars, and are therefore free to live where you want, do what you want, and live an authentic life” is quite compelling to folks who have struggled harder for less and less their entire lives.
skeledrew 2 days ago [-]
> a serf class
Not possible once we pass a some point in global automation, say (arbitrarily) 95%. The financial flows would've ceased to exist by then with the vast majority of humans being unable to contribute value, and hence having no earned income to participate in markets. And there's no deliberate prevention or slowing as the race is global and highly competitive at the political level (the US is very afraid of China getting (too far) ahead).
stego-tech 2 days ago [-]
The China thing is broadly just Nationalism rather than an actual threat at the moment. Even China has acknowledged it by reigning in AI research and excess in favor of pursuing function and utility, leaving the US to do as we do best: throw money at every conceivable idea, and bailout those with the most economic or political clout when the bubble pops or fire erupts.
Also, I don’t think you fully appreciate the distance to which humans in power will scheme to preserve power long past the point of its utility. If future AI needs organic human data to improve, then we will be turned into data generation machines with money granted based on the quality, uniqueness, or importance of said data - which is kinda what Capitalism is already doing, if you squint a bit. Those systems, once entrenched, will survive long past the point of necessity provided the populace as a whole doesn’t become aware of that fact. After all, just look at the growing political extremism as more folks realize that not only is the current social contract irreparably broken (all work, no homes, no stability or security with which to take chances for most folks), but that current political mechanisms and institutions built to serve it are similarly unnecessary. It’s partly why, I suspect, Capital is latching so hard onto the idea that AI is their exit strategy, as it means their assets will continue appreciating in value along with their net worth even as the rest of the planet crumbles and burns around them - ensuring their safety, or so they think.
My point is: the future is unknowable, and you should’t underestimate the human desire to humiliate and enslave others to their will by any means necessary.
skeledrew 1 days ago [-]
There's a lot of function and utility in improving on LLMs though, and I don't think they're actually reining in anything. Releases may sometimes slow since discoveries in research are never predictable, but they're pushing. See DeepSeek v3.2[0] which was just released a week ago.
And yes, humans always hunger for power, when there's some kind of value to be had. It's a bit hard to think of any human data which hasn't already been siphoned off in some way and stored somewhere, so there's just going to be nothing more to be gained after full automation. What happens then is whoever has or can gain access to means of production will survive, and those who can't, won't.
> The China thing is broadly just Nationalism rather than an actual threat at the moment
No the China thing is an imminent invasion of a 20 million person democracy. Should the US not defend the World Order in this case, we'll have completely thrown off world police role and the rest of the scores of irredentist countries around the globe are now free to conquer others as they see fit, and all the chaos that follows.
jaredcwhite 2 days ago [-]
AI slop. Flagged.
kaluga 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
wakawaka28 2 days ago [-]
The possibility that we could reach nearly full automation has never been closer, BUT we are a long way off from it yet. Even if most of the white collar work is automated, we still don't have robots capable of doing everything at an acceptable price. I'm not going to waste time describing all the dystopian possibilities that would become possible if those robots were developed.
The anti-work crowd always paints a rosy picture of what life looks like without work. But there are regions scattered throughout the West where so-called abundance has manifested itself. Factory jobs that paid well were replaced with easy "service" jobs, and lots of people got on the dole. Lots of people, if not most, will not ascend into any higher form of actualization than getting high or drunk with their friends for years on end. Many have died from the rampant drug abuse we see everywhere.
Huxley's vision of abundance was accurate in this regard: people faced with abundance just did Soma and had casual sex with no higher aspirations. To maintain everyone's physical and mental health, and the gene pool, I expect that we will have to require people to do meaningful work after everything is automated. This stuff will likely have to be structured as a job market, because most people are not creative or independent enough to do anything interesting all alone.
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
Ah yes, if only our perfect beautiful souls were unchained from the travails of physical reality.
If only the resources to sustain our meatsuits were provided by Someone Else, with no reciprocal obligations.
dawgzill4 2 days ago [-]
Tell us you didn't read the article without telling us you didn't read the article; the author says it's not the end of "work" but "jobs".
> with no reciprocal obligations.
The majority are coming around to feel office jobs making line go up are not sufficient reciprocal obligations relative to 12-13 year olds in textile factories ensuring you have clothing 996. So why value Excel and other keyboard experts?
By majority I mean the billions outside the US who have recovered from US imperialism of the latter 1900s and tire of being serfs for Wall-E culture of a smidge over 300 million.
When is the last time you did useful work for yourself rather than externalize it on Target?
How sad Americans have to grow up and live in reality and not some rhetorical hallucination induced by corporate propaganda.
tbrownaw 2 days ago [-]
> Tell us you didn't read the article
This is false.
> the author says it's not the end of "work" but "jobs".
Yes, with the distinction being that "jobs" are done because they're useful and "work" that isn't a "job" is for personal spiritual fulfillment.
b3ing 2 days ago [-]
BS, at this same moment we could feed the entire planet but don’t because some need to have multitudes more money than ever existed. That won’t change until humanity dies out
nradov 2 days ago [-]
Famines are caused by corrupt and ineffective governments, including armed conflicts. Not by lack of money or wealth inequality.
marcus_holmes 2 days ago [-]
Corruption == wealth inequality
Rendered at 02:10:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
They haven’t seen a model hold a complex conversation, remember context, suggest workflows, generate visuals, write scripts, and debug itself in one continuous flow."
You're absolutely right! I haven't seen these.
All your stuff is made by people. Often people with fancy machines, but people nonetheless. And the higher the degree of automation, the more non fungible skills you require of those people.
The pump in a vat of yogurt is cavitating. You can’t slow it down without endangering food safety. You can’t adjust the mix without affecting the final product. Somebody who understands all that needs to install a new impeller.
Stamped aircraft parts are coming off the line 500 microns thick. Somebody has to recognize that there’s a problem with the hydraulic cushion and fix it.
I could go on and on and on. There are few things I get ranty about on the internet, but pretending that physical world problems are solved by automation is one of them. You’re replacing a hard problem with another hard problem, with a side effect of higher productivity. Pretending Morlocks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away.
"Inside China's 'dark factories' where robots run the production lines" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftY-MH5mdbw
"China’s Dark Factories: So Automated, They Don't Need Lights" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCBdcNA_FsI
There is still a whole market for clothing; its just not led by people who use a loom.
The aircraft part is measured by Faro or some other tool. The person wielding the Faro just follows the QA instructions and marks if things are red/green. Another FARO type product measures the fixtures/etc for compliance. If they don't match, a fixtures consultant is brought in to make them match.
Other than those that happened to do the initial setup/machine/fixture construction, the people in the actual plant don't really have much non-fungible skills in your example, and they definitely don't have power/permission to go tweaking things using their personal non-fungible skills.
Bullet points I can forgive, it's a common blog post writing style. But the ranty prose here definitely has a whiff of silicon.
"Humans do not exist to be economic assets. The economy exists to provide for humans"
In Capitalism, the economy exists to provide for Capital.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...
Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
I think this completely ignores the role of government in the economy. By virtue of being born today, you are forced to participate in the economy. The government spends tax dollars in the economy, which it either collects from you, or spends on you, and the voting body has decided that, to some degree, the economy is indeed a charity.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves.
I'd disagree with the first part of that statement. Most people see themselves as good, and therefore see some level of responsibility for helping those that cannot provide for themselves.
> As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
Again, this ignores that the economy is, at least partially, structured by a government.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
The problem that this has run into throughout history has been the existence of those who don't take kindly to rules that appear to be there just to push them aside.
An economy that chooses to exclude the majority of the population as "no longer needed" as so much dystopian AI-true-believer babble these days does is going to lead to some major issues when the excluded decide they don't want to simply be excluded.
Society historically does not help those that the economy leaves behind exclusively out of the goodness of its heart - it also does it for self-preservation.
The slums of Mumbai are just a taste of what’s to come in America, at this rate.
Billionaires, take heed.
Pluribus is a more interesting meditation.
This article misses the key problem with the end of jobs. How else are 98% of the human population going to get income? With the coming of drones and old-timey 1900s chemical weapons they are probably no longer equipped as a class to win a military contest over redistribution against the asset holders.
Much like replacing religion with nothing has turned out, replacing jobs with nothing is going to be bad at best.
As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
> As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
That's not a counter-example, it's just nit-picking on the phrasing and missing the point: the lawn-care people get their income from "those who do own appreciating assets," just with a middleman or two in between.
1) choose not to simply coast on the social safety net, and seek out jobs for status and additional things than those. why do they do those when by historical standards they could be wildly comfortable without the bullshit work?
2) do coast (opting to just go on disability, say) but are generally extremely unhappy about it in ways that frequently cause problems for the rest of the people
3) opt out entirely from the social safety net and chose to try to live on the streets instead, whether for a desire for some sort of freedom or because of poor impulse control caused by addiction or similar (which also frequently leads to problems for the rest of the people)
These don't magically appear - people have to create / store / distribute those things, and/or develop the science / engineering to do so.
Not sure about quality food.
As an analogy imagine you had a 6 hour driving commute each day (3 each way)
Imagine if now you move next to the office.
Will it be bad you get those 6 hours back?
If 15->9 is good then 9->0 is even better!
The problem is adjusting to that at scale. Will we get addicts or people who never leave the home? Maybe.
I'm not talking about replacing a block of time with nothing, people will still have 24 hours in the day. My worry is about replacing income with nothing, because most people don't have the power to seize any income that isn't freely available.
The public takes what they're offered and can't have anything that isn't on offer. If the offer of access to food is withdrawn, the public has no recourse.
If you think this is madness, the analogy (yes another) is you are playing uno with people you met. They have no money. You can say well never mind we wont play. Or you can just deal the cards because they are so cheap it costs you nothing just to do that. And that is more fun. This is what post scarcity could look like.
Post-scarcity requires a political choice. Everybody with political power, regardless of affiliation or nation, stands to benefit from reducing the political power of others who may stand to make demands. The economically surplus humans can't make those demands upon the powerful if they aren't around.
The labour for wage model is rapidly becoming obsolete for the many, and a way forward that doesn't necessitate people working in order to gain access to the necessities of - modern - living needs to be paved. Otherwise it'll be grim for the vast majority when global automation of value creation gets upwards of say 85%. It's already pretty grim for an appreciable, though still relatively limited, number.
Based on what? Certainly there are humans with crippling disabilities that remove them from pretty much any kind of work, but of the "normally functioning" population?
Most lack the necessary attention directed towards R&D as they're too busy living out other lives in other jobs. If that's what you mean, that is a fair point. But if those jobs went away as suggested earlier, they'd have nothing else to do but turn their attention towards R&D. That current world model wouldn't apply anymore.
Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc. I get the argument that "the whole world would be different, so present data isn't applicable", but, if that's your argument, then it's totally unfalsifiable.
Right. That much was obvious. But what does that mean in more detail? If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
Don't we run that experiment on every moderately wealthy child on the planet? I can tell you that the hit rate there is definitely not 100%.
If you are asking about what I've seen anecdotally, which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us who is the subject matter expert between us, all those who were moderately wealthy children that I know have grown up into having success with R&D in at least some limited capacity. They haven't all dedicated their lives to R&D, but they've had no trouble being able to invent things when the situation necessitated it.
If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop. But, again, you're the expert among us here. I don't know much about it — that is why I'm asking you.
Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
Not sure why the snark is necessary. Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status. I'm not an expert, but the line for rich kids doesn't go to 100%.
> If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop.
Because not everyone is a bottomless pit of ambition. Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
> Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
I'm speaking in generalities. Research is generally a race, and the smartest and hardest working generally win the race. Even if everyone's IQ and ambition shot up, there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
After that last paragraph, it isn't clear to me that you disagree with my core premise of "not everyone should do research".
Not sure why you think a computer screen is giving you snark, but you do you.
> I'm not an expert
You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
> Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status.
It may be, but no need to waste time sauntering off on another, rather uninteresting, subject. We're talking about R&D, not academic achievement. Stay focused, by friend.
> Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
R&D is the leisure activity of many people. We'll leave your data sources to quantify exactly what that means, but it is clearly large enough to be a recognizable set of the population.
> Research is generally a race
It can be where you are trying to be first to build a moat around something that scales massively. But not all R&D scales, or even wants to scale. Despite your unquantified "generally" claim, it remains unclear if most R&D is even trying to scale. There are a lot of hobbyists out there carrying out R&D with no plans for it beyond doing something for themselves.
> there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
There is seemingly no end to how much R&D is possible. I guess at some point there is a pinnacle of human achievement, but it seems highly unlikely that we'll reach that point in the next thousand years. Humans are pretty shortsighted — the people from the year 1200 would have never imagined digital computers being a thing — but when the time comes we always find something new to immerse our thoughts in.
So what if someone is smarter and harder working?
Okay. You seem upset, so I'll disengage. Have a great day!
Okay bud.
[0] - if robotics/ai can replace healthcare, healthcare costs would drop to zero...
Does it change the point? If we say "GBI appears to work, let's try that" is that different?
I don't understand the questions you are asking at the end. Apologies for not having a good answer.
Removing jobs is not like taking away the rock, it's more like making the rock way heavier.
Only God can make the rock disappear. And God is dead.
If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.
> We can choose to be the last generation that spent its best hours under fluorescent lights, pretending this was the height of civilization.
> Or we can be the first generation that looked at the robots walking onto the factory floor, looked at the models spinning up in the cloud, and said:
>> “Good. Take the work. We’ll take the world back.”
This article is stupid. How would Mr. Economically Irrelevant Former-worker "take the world back?" He just lost whatever power over that world that he had.
This is 15 pages of trying to put lipstick on a pig.
Way I see it, there isn't really a choice here. Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die. And the fewer the survivors, the less relevant the purpose of said means. The means will always "need" people to validate its continued existence.
And that's the part that the AI optimists in these discussions skip over. They want to talk about this new and glorious AI-infested future, but not mention the holocaust that will happen to get there. For most people, the holocaust is the only relevant part, because they'll be destroyed in it [1]. The glorious future of abundance without work is one they'll never see [2].
[1] Most likely through grinding poverty and deprivation, which is how capitalism does it. Not gas chambers or anything.
[2] That future, like you said, a smaller group. I think eventually it will roughly consist of the nepo babies of some billionaires and a smallish group of Lumon-employees (the cultists, not the severed) who must worship them to survive.
Well, if the work under the fluorescent lights is what allowed us to end the era of jobs, then maybe it is "a" height of civilization?
Is nuclear power safe from assault? I dunno. Visit Chernobyl and see.
If an even greater concentration of wealth is to lead to mass destruction/revolution, I advise a more even distribution.
Note to oligarchs: a post-apocalyptic world is no fun. Not even for you in your bunkers.
Drones would be great for taking out substations.
its inevitable tbh
It's amusing to me that oligarchs don't seem to understand that if the economy goes to hell, their private security forces will just leave (or worse!). What do they think they will pay salaries with? Bitcoin? Do they really think an army of robot dogs is going to protect them?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Why would anyone think otherwise?
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Rat_Things_(Snow_Crash)
0: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
The power of science fiction!
Anyone who has ever started their own business knows how hard (and rewarding) it can be- but you're just creating your own job. Nothing wrong with that. It is one of the best experiences in full accountability, but it's a job.
Yes
>The era of jobs is ending
What are you selling.
https://marshallbrain.com/manna
If there is a world of plenty and humans have little to no role in that what else is there?
Doing things for enjoyment and/or interest.
... Eh?
"But the lying fantasist is _rich_" is not really a particularly convincing argument. Have you considered that possibly they shut up to avoid having a protracted argument with one of his tedious fans?
aaaaaaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That being said, do I think it’ll happen? No, I don’t, for the simple reason that we still cannot fundamentally get a plurality of society to agree - on any conceivable level - that every human is entitled to and guaranteed shelter, nutritious foodstuffs, healthcare, and education. It’s 2025, we’re literally destroying resources to drive up profit margins and investment returns instead of dispersing surplus appropriately, and yet anyone who mentions this is slandered as a “socialist” and ostracized.
So instead, I fret that what will happen is the cementing of a two-tiered society indefinitely: one of immense wealth who owns the securities, the land, the datacenters that makes the world work, and a serf class who must engage with these ever-more-expensive systems for the gains of Capital, including via increasingly precarious gig work instead of reliable, structural jobs.
And I think folks roundly dismissing these sorts of posts as “unrealistic” just don’t appreciate how far and how fast we’ve gone from “humans have to engage in subsistence farming” to an interconnected global marketplace and digitized society. We have quite literally thrown out the “status quo” dozens of times since the end of Feudalism, and this time is no different.
Those who dare to dream big are often the victors of such profound change, provided they can craft a message relatable to the populace.
And a message of, “you don’t need a job anymore because necessities got so expensive that governments made them part of tax dollars, and are therefore free to live where you want, do what you want, and live an authentic life” is quite compelling to folks who have struggled harder for less and less their entire lives.
Not possible once we pass a some point in global automation, say (arbitrarily) 95%. The financial flows would've ceased to exist by then with the vast majority of humans being unable to contribute value, and hence having no earned income to participate in markets. And there's no deliberate prevention or slowing as the race is global and highly competitive at the political level (the US is very afraid of China getting (too far) ahead).
Also, I don’t think you fully appreciate the distance to which humans in power will scheme to preserve power long past the point of its utility. If future AI needs organic human data to improve, then we will be turned into data generation machines with money granted based on the quality, uniqueness, or importance of said data - which is kinda what Capitalism is already doing, if you squint a bit. Those systems, once entrenched, will survive long past the point of necessity provided the populace as a whole doesn’t become aware of that fact. After all, just look at the growing political extremism as more folks realize that not only is the current social contract irreparably broken (all work, no homes, no stability or security with which to take chances for most folks), but that current political mechanisms and institutions built to serve it are similarly unnecessary. It’s partly why, I suspect, Capital is latching so hard onto the idea that AI is their exit strategy, as it means their assets will continue appreciating in value along with their net worth even as the rest of the planet crumbles and burns around them - ensuring their safety, or so they think.
My point is: the future is unknowable, and you should’t underestimate the human desire to humiliate and enslave others to their will by any means necessary.
And yes, humans always hunger for power, when there's some kind of value to be had. It's a bit hard to think of any human data which hasn't already been siphoned off in some way and stored somewhere, so there's just going to be nothing more to be gained after full automation. What happens then is whoever has or can gain access to means of production will survive, and those who can't, won't.
[0] https://xcancel.com/deepseek_ai/status/1995452646459858977
No the China thing is an imminent invasion of a 20 million person democracy. Should the US not defend the World Order in this case, we'll have completely thrown off world police role and the rest of the scores of irredentist countries around the globe are now free to conquer others as they see fit, and all the chaos that follows.
The anti-work crowd always paints a rosy picture of what life looks like without work. But there are regions scattered throughout the West where so-called abundance has manifested itself. Factory jobs that paid well were replaced with easy "service" jobs, and lots of people got on the dole. Lots of people, if not most, will not ascend into any higher form of actualization than getting high or drunk with their friends for years on end. Many have died from the rampant drug abuse we see everywhere.
Huxley's vision of abundance was accurate in this regard: people faced with abundance just did Soma and had casual sex with no higher aspirations. To maintain everyone's physical and mental health, and the gene pool, I expect that we will have to require people to do meaningful work after everything is automated. This stuff will likely have to be structured as a job market, because most people are not creative or independent enough to do anything interesting all alone.
If only the resources to sustain our meatsuits were provided by Someone Else, with no reciprocal obligations.
> with no reciprocal obligations.
The majority are coming around to feel office jobs making line go up are not sufficient reciprocal obligations relative to 12-13 year olds in textile factories ensuring you have clothing 996. So why value Excel and other keyboard experts?
By majority I mean the billions outside the US who have recovered from US imperialism of the latter 1900s and tire of being serfs for Wall-E culture of a smidge over 300 million.
When is the last time you did useful work for yourself rather than externalize it on Target?
How sad Americans have to grow up and live in reality and not some rhetorical hallucination induced by corporate propaganda.
This is false.
> the author says it's not the end of "work" but "jobs".
Yes, with the distinction being that "jobs" are done because they're useful and "work" that isn't a "job" is for personal spiritual fulfillment.