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Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this argument. Speaking as a kid who grew up middle-class as an 80's teen obsessed with (the then still new) computers, a non-rich person has access to more salient power today than ever in history, and largely for no or low cost. There are free AI's available that can diagnose illnesses for people in remote areas, non-Western nations, etc. and which can translate (and/or summarize) anything to anything with high quality. Etc. etc. AI will help anyone with an idea execute on it.

The only thing you have to worry about are not non-rich people, but people without any motivation. The difference of course is that the framing you're using makes it easy to blame "The System", while a motivation-based framing at least leaves people somewhat responsible.

Wealth may get you a seat closer to the table, but everyone is already invited into the room.

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The problem is if the system leads to demotivating people more than motivating them on average, which risks a negative feedback loop where people demotivate each other further and so on

Yes, just read reddit or this thread.

I'd love to see the people's lives saying how bad it is now. My guess is they have every luxury afforded to them. There is strong negativity bias.

Yes. This, 100%.

What is demotivating people is negativist-framing-obsessed doomer assholes like you dooming and glooming all the possible negatives and absolutely none of the positives. There's no actual unmanageable bad things occurring, and a ton of upside occurring.

People are literally quitting CS majors because of this BS. Hopefully only the people who aren't meant to do it in the first place, but anyway.

This is a simplistic, individualistic view of the impact of AI.

You’re imagining the world we have today, but with AI.

In reality it’ll be a world that’s completely different, and most likely in a worse way, and AI is the tool used to make it worse.

> it’ll be a world that’s completely different

And this is all wild negative speculation by you. And if you deny that, you're lying. It may be different, but not unmanageably different.

You have an incorrect reading of history and economy. Basically none of the wealth and comfort we (regular people) enjoy were "gifted" or "left over" willingly by the owner class. Everything had to be fought for: minimum wage, reasonable weekly hours, safe workplaces, child labor, retirement, healthcare...

Now, ask yourself, what happens when workers lose the only leverage they have against the owner class: their labor? A capitalist economy can only function if workers are able to sell their labor for wages to the owner class, creating a sort of equilibrium between capital and work.

Once AI is able to replace a significant part of workers, 99% of humans on Earth become redundant in the eyes of the owner class, and even a threat to their future prosperity. And they own everything, the police and army included.

> Everything had to be fought for: minimum wage, reasonable weekly hours, safe workplaces, child labor, retirement, healthcare...

Fair enough. True.

> Once AI is able to replace a significant part of workers

But it won't do that. It's going to shift people around a lot, like literally every other technological development in the history of mankind, sure. But there's literally no evidence that it's going to do what you're claiming, which means you're arguing against a spooky strawman. It's not like people are going to just sit around doing nothing and going homeless, dude. Ideas (and activity that ends up being economically-tangible) will fill the vacuum.

“Free ai” lol

I bought a Mac IIci computer in 1990 from my savings working throughout high school, for my freshman year of college. It cost over $8k, which in today's dollars is over $20k.

So imagine my lack of sympathy when people complain about things being literally free (as long as you don't mind signing away your social media profile data)

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