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Comment by esafak | Hacker News Reader

The OP is likely referring to the technology's ability to replace certain workers, which naturally leaves them poorer. The net effect is one of increased wealth inequality, the minting of new AI entrepreneurs notwithstanding. Is the data on this out yet?

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We survived industrial revolution, we’ll survive AI.

> We survived industrial revolution

Did we? I mean, I guess we're surviving it for now, but climate change data doesn't tell the most optimistic story.

TBF the worst outcome is famine and mass death of humans which... was somewhat the standard historically (low populations / intermittent famine). I have as much existential dread as you but that's also because I overvalue human life relative to what nature has historically thought about us.

Survivorship bias.

You always survive unless you don’t.

Doesn’t matter. Our species survived. Individual casualties don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

It does matter because it‘s a false trust in our ability to survive.

We could make an error that kills the whole species based on the assumption because we survived before

The industrial revolution was so good for those living through it, that they invented communism and recognisably modern policing.

And we got a few wars whose death toll exceeded the pre-industrial population of the UK. And one whose toll exceeds the current population of the UK.

Isn't the jury still out on that statement? Pretty sure we've been experiencing the long-tail cultural decomposition caused by the effects the industrial revolution brought with it with the exception of a 20 year opportunity to change our trajectory as a species. I think getting out of this conundrum alive will require de-segmenting our cultural narrative around how we got here.

edit: typos/grammar abound.

> Isn't the jury still out on that statement?

Content-free comment.

This isn't an industrial revolution moment; it's a printing press moment.

"We" is doing an awful lot of work. We may have survived the industrial revolution, but subjective individual experience varies widely.

Life would be quite different if we could subjectively experience ourselves as a whole.

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