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Comment by zeryx | Hacker News Reader

Here's a mundane example; AI is aligned and used without harming humans. If/when robotics catches up, we will be heading to a world without a need for humans (at least based on the world pops we have today).

Humans _hate_ being useless, and we were already running into surplus human issues last decade in certain parts of the world.

I foresee a depression/suicide spiral never before seen in our history unless we do something radical

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Plenty of people are quite happy without doing economically valuable work. Maybe most. So this isn't an X-risk in the sense that humans might go extinct. Workaholics may remove themselves from the gene pool, but there'll be plenty of people happily chilling.

I think that's a very limited view.

A lot of people that retire from their careers pursue other interests that fulfill their needs, maybe it will be the era of amateur artists everywhere. Others prefer to manually do tasks that can be automated.

Others could engage in cooperation with robots because humans will always have creative desires.

Amature artists doing what? Trying to figure out why human greed is insatiable, therefore they have no place to live?

There are any number of problems that have to be solved together. Giving the capital class hyper powerful AI robots so they can own the world while everyone else suffers is an AI risk.

Are people's self worth really intricately tied to what they do for a living?

I mean I enjoy my work, for the most part anyway. But if I could spend all my time with my family and hobbies I see that as an improvement rather then something to be depressed about.

I disagree with the last part in your scenario. It's going to be waves of murder and anarchy, not depression and suicide

Most people that retire don't turn into murderers or anarchists. I find very interesting how people tend to picture the worst possible scenarios, maybe a lot of Movies or TV influence?

How about news? Look at what Paris looks like right now with a small minority of "aimless youths" and multiply that by 1000x

There will always be places with social revolts. Still a tiny tiny fraction of how it was in the past.

Watching news can distort your perspective very quickly.

So 'now' has a problem. We have no means to know if our social environment is actually stable or not. Currently we are in a long 'peace' after WWII. Maybe it will remain, and improving technology will improve our lives and and things will continue to remain stable. Or, we'll have further climate instability coupled with AI labor displacement and things will go to shit faster than they ever have in history.

The point is people that believe the world will be stable in the future are more apt to build a stable future. If everyone is watching the news and they believe the future will be unstable, then the future will become unstable as a self fulfilling prophecy.

Technology that's putting those folks out of work (and into rioting, etc.) will also provide the tools to repress them. I don't like it, but that's the way it seems to me. E.g. Hong Kong.

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