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Comment by arvid-lind | Hacker News Reader

What makes you so confident that it is improving life for humans? Are you seeing any specific signs yet?

If we only waited 4 years for any given technology to improve the human condition before abandoning it, we'd be in the Stone Age.

Theoretically, if a technology came along that destroyed the human condition in a four year time frame, your "let's wait longer than four years and see" philosophy would kill us all.

Okay, but you have no basis to assume a technology that automates labor will do that given your priors (previous technologies that have automated general labor en masse). In other words, the FUD is not based in anything, whereas the optimism most certainly is.

I'm not trying to argue whether AI is good or bad. I'm only pointing out the flaw in your philosophy.

Like, there will one day be a technology invented that could indeed wipe us all out in 5 years. On a long enough timeline, it's a certainty that someone will come up with such a thing. And when it comes, there will be people such as yourself saying "no technology has ever wiped us out before, therefore this one won't either". And then it will wipe us out, and there will be no one left to say "well I guess this time was the exception".

No, you don't seem to be reading my words because you have a preconceived notion of what I'm saying.

I'm not saying all technology is good. I never said that.

I'm saying automating labor is good. All of my arguments have been specifically scoped to the automation of labor.

I didn't say you said all technology was good. I'm addressing the part of your argument where you point to past events as evidence that the automation of labor will always continue to be good in the future. I used an extreme example to show that one day, if a new technology that automates labor is actually a net negative for society, your philosophy won't catch it. It will slip right through.

To spell it out so we don't keep going around in this circle: it's worth looking at indicators other than the past to judge a technology's benefit to the labor force.

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