We have some other examples worth considering though, like literal workhorses. Once the engine came around, horses became inefficient and were relegated to shows and races. With AI able to do superhuman pattern recognition, it's only a matter of time before humans also become a luxury, as they're no longer needed for traditional work.
In a lot of data science focused places, like mine, people are more or less researchers. There is no repetitive work, and everyone must show creativity and autonomy. You can't automate that.
The economy might be at full employment, but people are often underemployed, getting few hours, and shit wages. Most people are employed but many don't make enough to support even just themselves on their earnings let alone a family. Real wages have barely increased since the 1970s while costs have risen. We've had the first generations of Americans who are worse off than their parents. I wouldn't say our current situation was at all encouraging.
I don't get why we use this term. You're either employed or you're not. Just because you got an education in something that is no longer valued by society doesn't mean you're entitled to a job doing whatever you're educated to do.
Society rewards those that provide some good or service that is wanted/needed.
Furthermore, employment by others is not the only option. You can also work for yourself (except when the state forbids it through licensing and permits)
We have another term, "unemployed", for people who have no work.
We need a third term, "underemployed", to describe people in between those two situations, who have some work (so they're not "unemployed") but nonetheless do not earn a living wage (so counting them as "employed" is disingenuous).
"Where has all the income gone" Minneapolis FED research
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where...
I would agree with you if wages had risen enough that workers could work one job and have their needs met but that won't happen any time soon, especially with robots on the horizon. The only thing that makes sense is to plan ahead.
Where are you getting this? From the govt statistics that don't include people who have dropped out of the workforce entirely? The same stats that don't differentiate between a salaried career and scraping by in the transient gig economy?
I'm extremely skeptical. Can we afford to just dismiss all these legitimate concerns because, "the govt told me everything is okay"?
AI's permutate artwork. They don't feel, they don't assign or derive meaning. They don't feel, they aren't inspired, they aren't moved.
They don't derive joy from the beautiful, despair and disgust from the loathsome, awe at the sublime, and dissolution and insignificance in the face of the all encompassing.
They don't dance with glee at a bright and bouncy tune, they aren't struck to the edge of tears by the melody of wind through a forest of bottles. They know and can reproduce patterns that are labelled for them, but they don't get it, ya dig?
They don't relate or understand the soul of Jazz, the message of Blues/Rock and Roll, the Struggle and perseverance evoked by a good fight song.
They can't appreciate the byproducts of their work, or "make 10 more, but different."
They can't appreciate, display, or develop technique; they cannot perform. When composing, they generate content based off of higher-dimensional correlations between words as encoded through syntax and grammar, but a poem generated by a machine is not but a permutation of words ejaculated forth, with no rhyme, reason, or correlation to the world at the time; even being removed from the whimsy of it's programmer.
Art is a tricky thing. It is what it is because a human found that at that time in their life, in the details of their personal situation was the right time for that work to be born forth into the world, in all it's symbolism, ugliness, beauty, sublimity, and to affect all those who gazed upon it.
Think hard about the significance of that. That man's mortality factors into the fruits of his labor; something a machine, deriveable from a prescription can never truly know or imitate.
It isn't humanistic chauvinism...merely that as the clock is not the first cause of time, so the AI is not the creator of the Art it produces, if what it produces can even be truly called Art.
It may not always remain that way. Right now though, it is.
Least that's my guess.
People are moved everyday by music created by machines. That's enough to put artists out of business because the output is the same even if the input is different.
I never really accepted that. Otherwise, the response I've gotten to a hypothetical man under a rock perfectly replicating the Mona Lisa without having witnessed or heard of it before would be as great and worthy of celebration of artistic work as the original; many of more artistic inclinations I've spoken to balk at the very suggestion. Man that was a fun day in Philosophy of Art class.
Most of the artistic I've gone back and forth with do not see the end product alone as Art, but also the process, from ideation, to execution, and finally display. The reason behind the creation of that particular work and not another even has a place in the Art-Ness of the work-of-art.
Just because something is moving to someone, somewhere can be said to be necessary, but not quite sufficient to bestow the quality of being Art. It's a rather perplexing problem to discuss. I tend to approach it like linguists do language. Descriptive, not prescriptive. Though I haven't mingled in artistic circles recently to reconduct a census with regard to generative music/art. Most of those I do run into though tend to be non-committal on the subject and just treat it as just what I've described. A pleasant, and surprisingly novel sensation from an unexpected origin.