Earlier quoted context omitted.
Datacenters aren't built by people, they're built by corporations.
Corporations which are entirely made up of people. Not to mention the people that physically built and maintain the data center. Or did the actual legal fiction of a corporation do it? Maybe the articles of incorporation documents got up and did the work themselves?
Replacement.ai
431–440 of 725 posts
Re: Replacement.ai
#432Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots. If robots can do a job better and/or faster, they should be the ones doing the jobs. Specialization is how we got to the future. So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income. I don't necessarily feel like it's the AI company's problem to fix either. This is what government is for, and n…
I also agree with this, but I think there is a need to slow the replacement, by a bit, to reduce the short term societal harm and allow society to catch up. Robots can’t do the jobs if society collapses due to unrest. Progress is great obviously, but progress as fast as possible with no care about the consequences is more motivated by money, not the common good.
Re: Replacement.ai
#433Re: Replacement.ai
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if robots are that advanced that can do most of the jobs - the cost of goods will be close to zero. No, the cost of goods will be the cost of the robots involved in production amortized over their production lifetime. Which, if robots are more productive than humans, will not be “near zero” from the point of view of any human without ownership of at least the number of robots needed to produce the goods that they w…
The cost of robots will be zero because robots will mine ore, process it and make other robots.
Re: Replacement.ai
#435Re: Replacement.ai
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if robots are that advanced that can do most of the jobs - the cost of goods will be close to zero. No, the cost of goods will be the cost of the robots involved in production amortized over their production lifetime. Which, if robots are more productive than humans, will not be “near zero” from the point of view of any human without ownership of at least the number of robots needed to produce the goods that they w…
The cost of robots will be zero because robots will mine ore, process it and make other robots.
This assumes, among other things that are unlikely to be true, that the only cost of extraction is (robot) labor, and that mining rights are free, rather than being driven by non-zero demand and finite supply.
(Another critical implicit assumption is that energy is free rather than being driven by non-zero demand and finite supply, as failing that will result in a non-zero price for robot labor even if the materials in the robot were free.)
Re: Replacement.ai
#437[flagged]
It's actually an extremely good analogy (but in the opposite way of what you imply), as you don't own your job or your wife. Banning AI for job security is like banning dildos because they make men feel insecure.
What if there were some robot with superhuman persuasion and means of manipulating human urges such that, if it wanted to, it could entrap anyone it wanted to complete subservience? Should we happily acquiesce to the emerging cult-like influence these new entities have on susceptible humans? What if your parents messaged you one day, homeless on the street because they gave all their money and assets to a scammer robot that via a 300IQ understanding of human psychology manipulated them to sending all their money in a series of wire transfers?
Re: Replacement.ai
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I think about this is either the job is done in the most efficient way possible or I am asking everyone else to pay more for that product/service (sometimes a worse product/service) just so I can have a job. E.g. if I was a truck driver and autonomous trucks came along that were 2/3rds the price and reduced truck related deaths by 99% obviously I couldn't, in good faith, argue that the rest of the population…
This is what minimum wage deals with to some extent. Governments decide what jobs may exist based on how much a company can pay to do the job.
Re: Replacement.ai
#439The dream solution for every problem that the true socialist agenda finds while implementing its political project. Comrades, we can now automate a neo KGB and auto garbage-collect contra-revolutionaries in mass with soviet efficiency!
Re: Replacement.ai
#440It's actually kinda noteworthy that corporations don't talk like this (yet). Masks are off lately in political discourse, where we're all in on crass flexing on the powerless, the othering, cruelty, humiliation. How long before CEOs are openly talking about workers in the same ways that certain politicians talk about ${out_group}? If you're b2b with nothing consumer-facing to boycott, may as well say what you really…
What's to be gained from talking like this in public as a corporate figure? In politics it helps shore up the support of voters who might not otherwise trust that you'll side with them against the people you're demeaning; there's no corporate analogy to this.
Diving into the game theory of a 4-player setup with executives/investors/customers/workers is tempting here but I'll take a different approach.
People who actually face consequences have trouble understanding how the "it might help, it can't hurt!" corporate strategy can justify almost any kind of madness. Especially when the leaders are morons that somehow have zero ideas, yet almost infinite power. That's how/why Volkswagen was running slave plantations in Brazil as late as 1986, and yet it takes 40 years to even try to slap them on the wrist.[1] A manufacturing company that decided to run FARMS in the amazon?, with slaves??, for a decade??? One could easily ask, what is to be gained by doing crimes against humanity for a sketchy, illegal, and unethical business plan that's not even related to their core competency? Power has it's own logic, but it doesn't look like normal rationality because it has a different kind of relationship with cause-and-effect.
Overall it's just a really good time to re-evaluate whether corporations and leaders deserve our charitable assumptions about their intentions and ethics.
[1] https://reporterbrasil.org.br/2025/05/why-is-volkswagen-accu...