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Comment by supergarfield | Hacker News Reader

> It's all fun and games until you realise you can't run a consumer economy without consumers.

If the issue is that the AI can't code, then yes you shouldn't replace the programmers: not because they're good consumers, just because you still need programmers.

But if the AI can replace programmers, then it's strange to argue that programmers should still get employed just so they can get money to consume, even though they're obsolete. You seem to be arguing that jobs should never be eliminated due to technical advances, because that's removing a consumer from the market?

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The natural conclusion I see is dropping the delusion that every human must work to live. If automation progresses to a point that machines and AI can do 99% of useful work, there's an argument to be made for letting humanity finally stop toiling, and letting the perhaps 10% of people who really want to do the work do the work.

The idea that "everybody must work" keeps harmful industries alive in the name of jobs. It keeps bullshit jobs alive in the name of jobs. It is a drain on progress, efficiency, and the economy as a whole. There are a ton of jobs that we'd be better off just paying everybody in them the same amount of money to simply not do them.

The problem is that such a conclusion is not stable

We could decide this one minute, and the next minute it will be UN-decided

There is no "global world order", no global authority -- it is a shifting balance of power

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A more likely situation is that the things AI can't do will increase in value.

Put another way, the COMPLEMENTS to AI will increase in value.

One big example is things that exist in the physical world -- construction, repair, in-person service like restaurants and hotels, live events like sports and music (see all the ticket prices going up), mining and drilling, electric power, building data centers, manufacturing, etc.

Take self-driving cars vs. LLMs.

The thing people were surprised by is that the self-driving hype came first, and died first -- likely because it requires near perfect reliability in the physical world. AI isn't good at that

LLMs came later, but had more commercial appeal, because they don't have to deal with the physical world, or be reliable

So there are are still going to many domains of WORK that AI can't touch. But it just may not be the things that you or I are good at :)

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The world changes -- there is never going to be some final decision of "humans don't have to work"

Work will still need to be done -- just different kinds of work. I would say that a lot of knowledge work is in the form of "bullshit jobs" [1]

In fact a reliable test of a "bullshit job" might be how much of it can be done by an LLM

So it might be time for the money and reward to shift back to people who accomplish things in the physical world!

Or maybe even the social world. I imagine that in-person sales will become more valuable too. The more people converse with LLMs, I think the more they will cherish the experience of conversing with a real person! Even if it's a sales call lol

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

To say that self driving cars (a decade later with several real products rolling out) has the same, or lesser, commercial appeal than LLMs now (a year/two in, with mostly VC hype) is a bit incorrect.

Early on in AV cycles there was enormous hype for AVs, akin to LLMs. We thought truck drivers were done for. We thought accidents were a thing of the past. It kicked off a similar panic among tangential fields. Small AV startups were everywhere, and folks were selling their company to go start a new one then sell that company for enormous wealth gains. Yet 5 years later none of the "level 5" promises they made were coming true.

In hindsight, as you say, it was obvious. But it sure tarnished the CEO prediction record a bit, don't you think? It's just hard to believe that this time is different.

It's our only conclusion unless/until countries start implementing UBI or similar forms of post scarcity services. And it's not you or me that's fighting against that future.

So how do you choose who has to work vs who gets to just hang out? Who's gonna fix the machines when they break?

It honestly doesn't matter, because we're hundreds of years from > a point that machines and AI can do 99% of useful work

I would much rather work than not work. Many other people are the same. If I don't have a job, I will work on my free time. I enjoy it. I don't have to work for a living, but I have to work to be alive.

There are many people like me, and we will be the ones to work. It won't be choosing who has to work, it will be who chooses that they want to work.

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