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Comment by aspenmartin | Hacker News Reader

Ignoring CEO predictions, can anyone point to any major revolutionary technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life and employment statistics? AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable. Revolutions like this do create widening inequality while also increasing long run productivity. Yes inequality rises but what you should care about is your quality of life and that will also improve over time. There will be suffering during transition and there will be many that don’t fare well but…this happens during every major revolution—electricity the internet etc. so why do people treat AI like it’s a uniquely damaging phenomenon?

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Don't ignore the transient.

The industrial revolution created a hell on Earth for workers for the better part of a century.

Or as the article puts it:

"Over the long run, it’s true that the Industrial Revolution radically boosted economic growth. But living through it was another matter entirely. Many people saw their wages stagnate and working conditions deteriorate as factory owners and industrialists came into immense wealth. (Just read a Charles Dickens novel, and you’ll get the idea.) This led to riots and, occasionally, attacks on the industrialists themselves."

> There will be suffering during transition and there will be many that don’t fare well

Yeah, and the people suffering are not going to like that. If people are afraid of being in that group, then they will not be very happy about it.

If you put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from AI, how comforting do you think your observations here are?

Not comforting at all, in fact I would find it aggravating. Yet to imply that means this is somehow a cold and callous take is what I take an issue with because it ignores the vast majority on the other side of the fence, and the economic windfall and quality of life improvement for the majority. The last thing you want to be is like Europe or any other country that is regulating their way out of the loop. You think there will be suffering if AI continues to roll out? imagine if we stop. You want Xi to chuckle at your naïveté and build out enough power to leverage the entire global economy to bend to its will?

I didn't imply anything. I just called out the emotional reality. There are a lot of externalized pain in the world today, and little recourse to addressing it. You can try telling people that they are naive and need to look at the big picture, but you might not see much success at getting your point across.

Very fair. My goal isn’t to say pain doesn’t matter, it’s to say policy to change course that would disadvantage more people than it would help is doing more damage than good. We shouldn’t let our empathy cloud judgement as hard as that is as humans. Addressing pain, like people fighting to do data centers right (sans people trying to simply stop any data center construction) and ensure impact to local life is not made worse are good efforts because it imperils nothing. Companies will just optimize within regulatory framework (for the most part) and so grassroots movements to change the things we can are great.

Even if some tech were presented, people would just nitpick and quibble, saying the tech wasn't actually revolutionary, didn't truly have a net negative impact on quality of life, didn't truly have a net negative impact on employment, or the timeframe of the latter two.

Personally, I'd nominate gunpowder, DDT, leaded gasoline, and nuclear fission.

You are confusing the macro view with the personal. Try losing your job and being told "don't worry, your quality of life will improve over time!" Would you respond positively?

My point is: you can say the exact same thing for any other major technological revolution. Would you have preferred we stopped making the internet because some people didn’t fare well in the transition? The genie is out of the bottle so what do people want to happen here?

Yes? Life was almost certainly better before the internet.

Ok so you’re the most powerful person in your country in 1995, what’s your strategy? “I’m going to fight as hard as possible to legislate away the infra buildout and internet companies” and tank your country’s economy while other countries eat your lunch?

You originally asked if there was any technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life. Now you are arguing that is inevitable. Which may be true but it is a different argument.

That being said I am not convinced a society who decided not to allow the internet would have been worse off.

That’s a fair point to the first part, but if you look at the numbers it’s also just not true. Poverty went from 38% to 10%, scientific progress was enormous (imagine doing a lit review in 1980). Internet destroyed old media yet aggregate employment didn’t collapse. Developing economies got access to global markets. Yea I mean ok I’m glued to my phone now, that’s bad, but to your point and to make a second argument (which I sort of blended into my original comment): this is inevitable. It’s inefficient not to have done the internet. The idea of “if <country> had somehow avoided connecting their society to the internet they would have been just fine” is just not logical: they would be completely disconnected from the entire world economy and their economy would be incredibly inefficient and stagnant. You would have rioting in the streets. Do you think life in Iran without the internet is better?

Similarly for AI: yea there will be serious downsides not least of which you doing this will be surveillance and centralized state power and suffering for people ill positioned to navigate the transition. It would be more damaging to not let AI develop fully and to engage in the global competition that the US is strategically winning at this point (though China will probably figure out how to get around their compute starvation in the next ~5 or so years).

For who?

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Machine-Origins-Rebellion-Again... Has some pertinent examples.

Industrial revolution made lives of many people into a hell. In the long term we gained, but only after those people went through periods of violence and fights.

> AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable.

At this point, a lot of AI is hot water rather then powerful shift in our way of life.

We treat it as uniquely damaging, because it's touted as uniquely enhancing, or even uniquely revolutionary. "AI is not just any tool" is often the response to some asking to exercise choice in the tools they use. "You don't have to use AI in your work, but if you don't, you'll work for someone who does".

Unique it is in terms of the technology and the particular scent of this revolution, but I don’t see how it’s unique in the broader sense of “this is yet another major technological/economic paradigm shift”

> You don't have to use AI in your work, but if you don't, you'll work for someone who does

I think there may be some cases where this is not true but it is definitely true the majority of the time. It’s like someone today being like “I just don’t use email” (I have worked for this person). It slowly but surely becomes more and more ridiculous and impactful for the company you work for not to adapt.

Agriculture for starters. The internet. The automobile.

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