Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

I'm more "the kids are showing healthy skepticism of corporate dystopia but AI is vital" camp, here is my argument:

1. Yes the risk of AI corporate/authoritarian dystopia is HUGE, we'll have to fight for our rights MANY times this century. Transcendental AI takeover is probably less of a risk than humans in power using armies of robots and Stasi-AI surveillance.

2. Our current economy is bs and the last century of 'relative prosperity' was a bit of luck + tech and population boom + globalist exploitation and massaging debt. We've tried variations of capitalism, socialism, communism, there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet.

3. AI is not like other tech, and tech does not 'create jobs', it creates business opportunities which up until now have always translated to jobs. We've never had a "drop-in replacement" for a human employee, it could replace anything from 40 to 99% of jobs.

Those are the risks, the potential rewards are:

- OpEx converted to CapEx making almost any kind of business extremely efficient

- Nobody has to spend weeks away from family or risking their health in dangerous or degrading jobs

- Extremely cheap housing and infrastructure with everything from mining to construction to maintenance automated. Fixing the broken window effect of rundown neighbourhoods and generally increasing quality of life

- Almost nobody needs to commute, or do all the other things around commuting, vastly reducing transport, congestion and pollution

- Food can be grown in better ways, even at home, with less mono-cropping, pesticides and waste. Your robot can weed by hand, work the land 24/7 and with the combined experience of millions of farmers, botanists etc

- Healthier society, no need for convenience food if your robot can cook and clean, and it can make far tastier traditional food than McDonalds

- Many products can be made at home or locally. Mass production favoured big dumb machines but a robot can build you a table exactly how you want it, with appropriate materials rather than commoditising everything down to shitty MDF off-gassing formaldyhide. You don't have time to pick through recycled wood - your robot does

- Our existing road network can have far higher capacity because barely anyone needs to commute and idiots don't hold up traffic or drive distracted. Streets aren't jammed with parked cars, taxis instantly have 20% extra capacity as they don't need to carry a driver. We may even get rid of or severely reduce traffic lights, not to mention safety

- Anything in your life that involves expensive repairs or buying more dumb shit is improved, every robot is a plumber with 100 million job experience, so many problems are solved with a machine that combines cheap labour and wide expertise

"Oh but humans need purpose" I just don't think 90% of jobs provide purpose. Purpose is raising kids, spending time with friends and family, working on some project, art, community improvement - it's absolutely insane we spend so much time working on bs.

Even just one of these things coming true is revolutionary - we have turned into fat commuter drones stress eating stuck in traffic thinking about some abstract spreadsheet report so far removed from reality but stealing our sleep and peace. AI isn't the problem here its corporate greed and concentration of power that AI could give

Of course I don't have proof but this looks mighty suspicious: https://github.com/stellamariesays/Manifold/issues/54

> Wow, it took more than a century to get to live better than middle age kings. Do you think the people that lost their means to make a good living in 1800s care that we live so much better today ? It is incredible how so many tech people lack empathy for how regular people think or want to live.

I noticed that comes more from a place of not imagining themselves being the subject of the possible terrible consequences.

Many tech people think in abstract terms, they look back in history without thinking much about how the life of a normal person during a major transitional period was impacted, it's just a sequence of facts, not a collection of human stories.

It's sad because it completely detaches many of these folks from having empathy, yes, change is the only constant but if our aim is to progress as a species we should also be progressing on how to make inevitable changes less miserable for those impacted. I see a lot in tech people the thinking of technological advancement for the sake of technological advancement, not for building a better world for every human, humans tend to get in the way of major technological changes so in their minds they prioritise the advancements without caring much about the human aspect.

It's quite baffling to me because those are usually smart people, I'd expect smart people to have better holistic thinking.

> Frankly, I think I'm going to have to MOVE AWAY FROM GOOGLE to a subscription-based search service just to get any useful search results again.

I would absolutely do this, but the only subscription search service i know about is Kagi, which is a bit too AI-forward for my taste. I wish there was a way i could subscribe to "google but 2007 google but with updated results"

A literal network of child traffickers, fraudsters, traitors, religious lunatics, and foreign agents brought to us by rich assholes like Eric Schmidt.