Dear Elon, You're Wrong | Hacker News Reader

Dear Elon, You're Wrong

aesirlab.com

7 pointscbames893 comments

"As robots fulfill these menial tasks, our society becomes more productive, and we are able to meet more needs than our current system. And as more of the basic needs of society are met, more will begin to move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—realizing higher callings and answering to creativity... Robotics and A.I. are more likely to bring about a period of new enlightenment than one of subjugation."

In an ideal situation sure. But thats if:

1) education keeps up with the demands/flavors of the job market

2) education stays affordable.

3) the economy finds ways to value "creative goods" that people occupying the higher levels of Maslow's Hierarchy create. If the music industry is any signifier, this is not the trend.

4) Somehow, some way, a middle class needs to flourish again. The poor can create culture, but don't have the resources to insert it into the economy, and the wealthy manage/own culture. But it's the middle class that is the sweet spot and links the two.

A society that mainly occupies the upper Maslow's Hierarchy, without a demand or infrastructure for monetizing it, is a society of unemployed and poor (but maybe happy?) hobbyists.

The fact that otherwise intelligent people seem to genuinely think that AI would take over and run amok like the fucking Matrix or something is pretty ridiculous.

Modern humans have not demonstrated either particularly good foresight or an ability to correct the things we've set in motion. Case in point is nuclear arms.

If antibiotics had always been regulated as tightly as pain pills are today, resistant bacterial strains would never have proliferated.

Malaria carrying mosquitoes in Africa were not overwhelmingly resistant to pesticides before Jane Fonda's emotional pleas swayed the public to call for the end to DEET spraying.

Crop monocultures not bred for disease resistance led to the loss and destruction of entire cultivars at enormous cost. Insects and other vermin that have coevolved with humans have entire industries dedicated to and required for their control.

Granted neither mice, mosquitoes, nor bacteria are as intelligent as humans, and certainly none of them are actively trying to enslave humanity, but intelligence isn't what makes these things dangerous- they're mindlessly disruptive, and even worse at foresight than we are.

We shouldn't foster a culture of lax attitudes toward security or an IoT primordial soup for AIs that lasts into a different century where the conditions might make it impossible to contain or eradicate. The flags need to be waved now not just so that when something unexpected happens someone can smugly say they told us so, but so that the future is designed in such a way that the worst case can't occur.

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