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Comment by quadrifoliate | Hacker News Reader

> The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching its metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone.

Not true at all. If you have a robotic servant that can "do everything" for anywhere close to an affordable amount for even a middle-class person, please post a link and specify what it can do.

There a big gap between a tool that can spew out large amounts of code and something you trust to not screw up your house. Once I can tell a robot to do a simple plumbing task in my house, I'll believe in this metamorphosis you're talking about.

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Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. I think you're right that plumbing is safe for a bit. Human hands are insanely dexterous

> Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive.

This will not happen in my lifetime.

It may do some. It may even do a lot. It will certainly augment close to 100% the remote jobs.

AI will never be able to “do every job that is remote”.

Just 5% of the population with no hope, no future, and looking at no survival can be extremely disruptive to a society. Take away all the daydream future job options and only leave the difficult labor that breaks peoples bodies by 40 and the youth could become disruptive to society. You can't add in Mana making sure every minute of those jobs left is productive and every dollar paid in wages gets clawed back from workers. People can't function in modern hyper optimizing of all the impacts on workers but no optimization in housing affordability, food affordability, enjoyment options that benefit the average person instead of all optimizations extracting all the previous slack/dollars in life.

You can't optimize away all the slack (in affordability, in time, in things to be enjoyed, in xyz, in 123). You can't optimize away all the future opportunity. You can't optimize away all the daydreams and hope and expect society to look anything like our current society.

I hope you realize that your comments are those of a “doom and gloom” person. It’s a fairly extreme take on things that makes some pretty wild assumptions about humanity that don’t really seem to hold (e.g., assuming a complete lack of adaptability, while we seem to be actually quite adaptable).

It’s not a credible take.

> You can't optimize away all the daydreams and hope and expect society

Agree. I think only dysfunctional weirdos actually think that’s what AI will do.

> to look anything like our current society

Who says our current society is at its apex? I don’t think it is. I think we have a ton of upside left to explore.

If our society looks like it is now 10-20 years from now, I will feel like we will have failed miserably. I am willing to bet that it will be much better.

That’s a weak goalpost, the tech you’re talking about will land soon and then we’ll have to move goalposts again.

Technically you are right, of course. But don't forget that Dario and Sam have already promised us autonomous killer robots. They may not be realistic right now, but together with the administration they're dreaming about them and I think we can safely assume that they will make them a reality as soon as they possibly can. And guess who will be at the receiving end of their life-terminating implements once the feudal AI overlords come to the conclusion they can do without us. Even if it can't really work, it's enough that the people making the decisions believe it can. And the people we're talking about are the world champions of drinking the Kool-Aid.

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