Hacker News Reader

Comment by burnte | Hacker News Reader

My follow up would be, "if AI is doing so many 'menial' jobs, even if AI makes everything cheap, how will unemployed people afford anything?"

View on HN

It's not a coincidence the people loudest in pushing AI are the same people who build high walls around their San Francisco homes. They plan to do the same thing around larger chunks of society. There is no plan for people who are unemployed and unable to afford anything. The expectation is the walls will be built high enough that their suffering can be hidden.

Someone recently said there will be "sustainable abundance" but this is magical thinking. There will be abundance for people in one class and death and poverty for people in the other class. But the abundance will not be "sustained" -- it will be fueled by the suffering of the under class.

We've done this before, and it turned out great.

In the industrial revolution, tractors and machine looms and steam engines did all the old 'menial' jobs. We just invented new jobs that pay better with all the extra wealth created by automation. The middle class grew and quality of life skyrocketed.

It was arguably the best thing to ever happen to the world.

This is categorically not what happened during the industrial revolution, you're thinking of the second industrial revolution and even then it's a less rosy picture. The first industrial revolution did not lead to rapid growth and in fact led to brutal methods to increase cheap resource extraction like children working in coal mines, expanded slavery in the new world, and brutal colonialism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com