Earlier quoted context omitted.
The realization a self-driving car is not infinitely exciting is how bubbles pop. This particular bubble was formed mostly by Tesla hyping up the coming of their fleet of millions of robotaxis that will turn every other car immediately obsolete, “like owning a horse”, and Teslas will 100x in price, and Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world. And all that, over a product they still can’t ship (and won’t)…
Your Luddite take is profoundly wrong, and has been consistently proven wrong at every single technological turn in history. We have more robots than even today, and yet a labor SHORTAGE. Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dol…
Think about it, how can there be a “SHORTAGE of jobs”, when we have over 8 billion people on this planet? Are we running out of people in general? No. Is everyone employed and happy? No.
So we are short of the kind of increasingly mythical people with 20 years experience in some tech that came out yesterday, we’re short of people with IQ 180 and above with five diplomas, people with certain increasingly higher level of requirements. PRECISELY the kind I’m talking about.
Most people do not qualify for those jobs. They never will. They can’t. They’re not seeking those jobs as they don’t understand them (the employers often also don’t), and if they saught them they would not be given to them. Do you understand what I’m talking about?
More and more people will be in the pool that do not qualify. The more “shitty jobs” you take out of the jobs pool we have available for humans, the more “shitty unemployed people” there will be. Eventually there will be billions of “shitty unemployed people”, because what passes as moderately intelligent person today will be just another shitty person 10-20 years from now, who better brush up and get those five diplomas and his IQ to 180 and otherwise how dare they ask for a job?
There is no such situation where dumb people rule over smart machines. If the machines are better then the people become useless. Many aren’t good at much. They’re decent people but just happen to be best at “store clerk”. Those are maybe some of your friends, parents, siblings, children. Your wife. They don’t get math, and find it hard to remember too much. Those people are doomed. And that’s most people.
Your elitist attitude is only further stressed by the incorrect reference to the Luddites. They embraced technology with open arms. Their bosses told them no one will be fired, only promoted, everyone will be rich. Then they got fired. They protested and were subdued with violence and prison time. That’s the story of the Luddites. They didn’t hate machines. But the machines made them useless. So they were gone from the picture.
You think you’re not like them, you’re better. You’re one of the smart ones. But you’re precisely them. Your don’t know your history so you’re doomed to repeat it.
I’m not against machines. I love machines. I make machines. I program machines. I evolve machines. I’m sympathetic to any system in this universe, be it smart, dumb, protein, silicon and metal. But it’s incredibly awkward to me to see people cheer for their own obsoletion. We really have no idea what we’re doing. We’re simply the scorpion riding on the frog’s back and following our nature. We can’t escape our nature.