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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

Why does it matter how it's sold? Unless you're overpaying for what it's actually capable of, it doesn't really matter.

We all have skin in the game when how it’s sold is “automated intelligence so that we can fire all our knowledge workers”

Might be good in some timelines. In our current timeline this will just mean even more extreme concentration of wealth, and worse quality of life for everyone.

Maybe when the world has a lot more safety nets so that not having a job doesn’t mean homelessness, starvation, no healthcare, then society will be more receptive to the “this tool can replace everybody” message.

If a machine can do your job; whether it's harvesting corn or filing a TPS report then making a person sit and do it for the purpose of survival is basically just torture.

There are so many better things for humans to do.

I agree in theory. In practice people who are automated out of jobs are not taken care of by society in the transition period where they learn how to do a new job.

Once having a job is not intimately tied to basic survival needs then people will be much more willing to automate everything.

I, personally, would be willing to do mind numbing paperwork or hard labor if it meant I could feed myself and my family, have housing, rather than be homeless and starving.

You might as well stop being a software developer. Not because you'll be out of job, but because you're directly contributing to other people being out of jobs. We've been automating work (which is ultimately human labor) since the dawn of computers. And humans have been automating work for centuries now. We actually call that progress. So lets stop progressing entirely so people can do pointless labor.

If the problem is with society the solution is with society. We have stop pretending that it's anything else. AI is not even the biggest technological leap -- it's blip on the continuum.

>There are so many better things for humans to do.

For the time being, at least.

There will always be better things for people to do. We don't exist on this planet just to sit at a desk and hit buttons all day.

The only reason we exist is as a carrier for our genes to make more of our genes. Everything after that is an accidental byproduct.

I can already think of something more useful to pass on my genes than typing on keyboard all day.

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