You say it like it's a bad thing.
Do you really think making labor obsolete and giving humans back their time is such a bad thing?
In the short term, AI is disempowering the vast majority of people in favor of a very small subset. In the also way too short term, AI is disempowering all people.
I believe we will distribute the fruits of AI's labor at the very least to the extend where everyone can live comfortably.
No one has an interest in putting large parts of society on the streets in some sort of dystopia.
Historically though, technological improvement has lead to large increases of living standards for the overwhelming majority of people, so I think that past trends support the utopian view more than the doomer view.
I am not assuming humans don't remain in control, but rather, I am not axiomatically assuming there's any inherent reason we will.
We have precedents of people warning about existential risks in the past, when the warnings turned out to be false, or overblown. In some cases, such overblown warnings led to serious negatives for society (demonization of nuclear power).
Those counterfactuals are important, though. We do have a history of averted disasters, albeit not as large. Ozone hole, Y2K, think about things that seemed overblown at the time, and consider whether they were actually overblown or whether there was a concerted effort to successfully avert them.
No, the argument is instead that the person claiming that humanity is going to be destroyed is making a fairly extraordinary claim and that requires fairly extraordinary evidence.
Or, in other words, we have tons of evidence already as for why the world ended is a fairly far out there prediction, given all the crazy people making these predictions keep turning out to be wrong.
So, you can make your extraordinary claim if you want, but really the burden is entirely on you to prove your extraordinary claim, and everyone else is free to remain on the default and completely normal end of the prediction spectrum, of believing that the world isn't going to end.
And when people do tricks like this, they are running away from the fact that they are making a wild completely out-there prediction, and hiding behind that by trying to come up with reasons as for why evidence doesn't matter and actually the burden of proof is shifted to those who have the default and boring prediction of the world not ending.
Its not a counterargument to basically anything, except as to avoid having to deal with actual evidence.
It is an argument that seems almost tailor made to have to ignore mountains of evidence against you.
In any other contexts the supposed "rationalists" would be fully in agreement that having evidence matters, and that not having any works against you.
So, in order to fight against this severe issue with their arguments, they have to invent a reason as for why the entire concept of evidence itself doesn't apply to them and they get to ignore normal evidentiary requirements.
Wow.
Only on HN.
Also apparently not from the US? Or Russia?
This does not reflect what I see in my government.
I'd guess horses today have on average a better life than back then.
I am much more than my job. If I receive basic income, please replace my job ASAP!
And if I don't receive a basic income in a world where AI is capable of replacing all human jobs, then the problem is not AI, but the powers that be.
And if I don't receive enough, then again: the problem is not AI, but powers that be. And there are various solutions for that... and none of them are helped by me being anti-AI.
The limit is inflation.
Theyre never going to use that power to provide basic income for everybody. You cannot wave a wand to make them do that. Theyre going to use that power to accumulate even more resources and raw materials and impoverish/expel the "useless" labor.
Realistically our leverage over the powers that be is mostly about our labor and our ability to withdraw it.
That's not necessarily true. Technology gives more power to everyone. The rise of factories historically did not give more power to the powers that were at the time (the aristocracy), but instead lifted the masses from poverty (after some initial turbulent period).
> Theyre never going to use that power to provide basic income for everybody. You cannot wave a wand to make them do that. Theyre going to use that power to accumulate even more resources and raw materials and impoverish/expel the "useless" labor.
Contrary to leftist propaganda, the rich are not some cartoon villains and psychopaths that abuse people just for fun. The reason why the rich currently exploit the poor is because doing so provides them with significant material gains. Once they can obtain the same or even better material gains by "exploiting" robotic labor instead of human labor, the logical outcome is not further abuse and exploitation of other humans, but simply indifference.
> Realistically our leverage over the powers that be is mostly about our labor and our ability to withdraw it.
That is (partly) true, but only in the current economic system. Widespread human-level AI changes the equation, and not necessarily in favor of those who are currently rich. You are applying capitalist and socialist analysis to a system that transcends those terms (AI post-scarcity economy).
Did not give more power to everyone. At best you could say that it shifted power from landed gentry to industrialists. Even that switchover was less of a change than you'd think.
The practical upshot of the beginning of industrialization was very negative. The enclosure movement stripped families of their land to push them to work in the factories where they would never go willingly. The famines in Ireland and Ukraine were both triggered by redirecting grain to export in order to fund domestic industrial expansion.
The most brutal two wars in human history were that brutal precisely because industrialization made it possible.
>instead lifted the masses from poverty (after some initial turbulent period).
What lifted the masses from poverty wasnt the factories it was the labor movement which occurred in response to horrific working conditions and the reliance those factory workers had on mass labor (specifically coal mining which was incredibly labor intensive and a key economic chokepoint).
The whole of that is glossed over by right wing libertarian propaganda but that last part is particularly underemphasized.
>Contrary to leftist propaganda, the rich are not some cartoon villains and psychopaths
Do you look at peter thiel and elon musk or the robber barons and see anything else?
The few billionaires ive encountered personally were no less sociopathic but they kept it hidden better. Power corrupts. Immense wealth corrupts. That isnt a leftist thing, that's a human thing.
>The reason why the rich currently exploit the poor is because doing so provides them with significant material gains. Once they can obtain the same or even better material gains by "exploiting" robotic labor instead of human labor, the logical outcome is not further abuse
False. It just shifts the focus of their exploitation from human labor to natural resources.
They'll fight over oil and minerals and gas and water resources and at best leave us to rot (homelessness will skyrocket) and at worst they'll find some excuse to exterminate those of us they particularly dislike (Gaza serves as a model here).
The world economy's reliance on human labor has been the best inducement to peace there is. It's no coincidence that all of the countries in the world with lots of natural resources and no industry are the biggest shitholes and vice versa.
>That is (partly) true, but only in the current economic system. Widespread human-level AI changes the equation, and not necessarily in favor of those who are currently rich.
Human level AI (assuming it ever happens) will simply make the fight over natural resources that much more intense because labor will matter that much less.
You're living at the tail end of a relatively golden period in a country where labor was the economic bottleneck and natural resources were relatively plentiful. Venezuela and Angola and Iraq are models of what happens when that equation is reversed.
Nobody gives a shit about appeasing the people who live in those countries, their labor is virtually worthless. They are a model for how the rest of us will be treated in a world where human labor loses its value.
Compare the standard of living in 1850 vs. 1950. Even of relatively poor people. I rest my case. Technology is the main force that improves human wellbeing. There are of course also other factors, but they are less important.
> The practical upshot of the beginning of industrialization was very negative. The enclosure movement stripped families of their land to push them to work in the factories where they would never go willingly. The famines in Ireland and Ukraine were both triggered by redirecting grain to export in order to fund domestic industrial expansion.
Yes, that's what I mean by "initial turbulent period". Perhaps the same will happen with AI, but it will be worth it in the end. Don't give up prematurely!
> What lifted the masses from poverty wasnt the factories it was the labor movement which occurred in response to horrific working conditions and the reliance those factory workers had on mass labor (specifically coal mining which was incredibly labor intensive and a key economic chokepoint).
It was not one or the other. It was both. The rise from poverty would not be possible if factories were not developed. And I am not saying that in the AI world we would not have to fight for our rights. Of course we would. But the problem is not AI, just like historically the problem were not the actual machines in factories.
> False. It just shifts the focus of their exploitation from human labor to natural resources.
Exploiting more natural resources is the only way to increase standard of living of humanity. I am OK with that. Resources don't have feelings, and ecology is not more important than human wellbeing.
> The world economy's reliance on human labor has been the best inducement to peace there is. It's no coincidence that all of the countries in the world with lots of natural resources and no industry are the biggest shitholes and vice versa.
The reason why some countries become shitholes is mostly ideological (extremist political or religious ideologies take hold of the population). Every shithole country is non-democratic (communist, totalitarian, fascist, theocratic etc..). This is not a problem of natural resources. It is a problem of people, their education, their beliefs/ideology, or, as capitalists say, "human capital" is the main problem here. AI could help here too, especially with education.
But yes, if people themselves are largely ignorant and extremist, no amount of resources and human-level AI robots will help them make a well-functioning society. You could drop masses of AGI robots into Afghanistan tomorrow, and people will just use them to kill or oppress each other more effectively, instead of using them to start building an AGI utopia...