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The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

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Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#71

Post by philipkglass »

zeteo wrote: post #49
philipkglass wrote: post #43

That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A u…

> What of people receiving Social Security, pensions, inherited wealth, royalties from patents and copyrights, rents collected on real estate...? Not exactly the definition of the creative class is it?

Before governments started heavily funding scientific research in the 20th century, most basic science was done as some wealthy person's hobby. Of course there were far more aristocrats who were interested in using their moneyed leisure to (e.g.) race horses than to experiment with electricity or identify new insect species, but some were driven by curiosity. (If you remember the Web in the 1990s, there was also a lot of amazing creativity that found an outlet via personal passion-sites that had nothing to do with earning an income.)

If nobody really needed to work I think that's it quite possible that the huge population multiplied by a tiny percentage of people spontaneously taking up a creative pursuit (science, music, writing, mathematics, sculpture, animation...) could provide us with a "creative class" of a decent size. How many contemporaries of Henry Cavendish were born with comparable latent curiosity but left no scientific discoveries behind because they had to work in the fields all their lives instead of inheriting wealth? I personally stopped pursuing scientific research and started writing software (very little of it truly novel) because the wages and employment situation are so much better with software. If I didn't have to worry about income ever again I'd spend more time on truly novel interests. It's kind of sad if other people would use their newfound freedom from waged labor to rot on a couch in front of the TV, but not so concerning that I'd assign them a self improvement life-nanny.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#72

Post by e40 »

rrggrr wrote: post #27
xapata wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large middle class hasn't been around all that long in the history of civilization. Maybe it's just a flash in the pan. My guess is that computer programming will be the new blue collar manufacturing job.

I think you've nailed it with this observation. The middle class may be a mile marker on a many millennium journey from self/tribal sustenance to ubiquitous sustenance as specialization, automation and efficiency combine to compress social-economic classes. This assumes an intelligent and benevolent ruling class. The Snowpiercer outcome is possible too.

This assumes an intelligent and benevolent ruling class.

That would never happen, except temporarily. Those who want power for selfish reasons (money, control, etc) will always prevail in the long run, because they are slightly more likely to seek power. It's the Darwinism of politics. What we see going on today is merely that playing out. Good politicians play by the rules and the bad ones do not. This puts the good ones at a severe disadvantage. I'm using "good" here to mean ethical and moral.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#73

Post by fictioncircle »

philipkglass wrote: post #43

That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A u…

> It's funny how boredom, vice, and the indignity of receiving income without continual labor loom in importance if and only if we're talking about technological unemployment. What of people receiving Social Security, pensions, inherited wealth, royalties from patents and copyrights, rents collected on real estate...?

It is largely a desire for a control mechanism where the sheep are inherently dependent on the mechanism to eat.

The retired pensioners and independently wealthy are both largely willing to sustain the status quo without substantial, rapid change.

The scary thing to people at the top of the ladder is what happens when it isn't just those two segments of the population? What happens when you have millions of rebellious young people completely free of the 9-5 to grind to survive?

They don't know if the answer supports the status quo and to them its a scary unknown.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#75

Post by gukov »

Every living organism is designed by evolution to strive for survival and reproduction. It's the constant fight that gets you out of the bed every morning. Having nothing to do all day but paint will eventually result in premature death. Think animals in captivity.

What if the end of humanity will be caused not by a nuclear war but by a peaceful AI that made us zoo animals?

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#76

Post by _rpd »

stevehiehn wrote: post #30

Each time this conversation comes up I notice people often like to suggest that history is just repeating and we have seen this before. I think its important to recognize patterns in cycles but its also important to be open to the possibility we've only seen local cycles and larger global cycles are still revealing themselves. In other words is AI really analogous to shifts we've seen before?

The "AI" being discussed is mainly competent data mining and machine learning. If we stay at that level, then there are easily bigger shifts that we've adjusted to in the past.

But self-improving AI is truly on a different level, as is AI with human-level 'general intelligence'.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#77

Post by eternalban »

stevehiehn wrote: post #30

Each time this conversation comes up I notice people often like to suggest that history is just repeating and we have seen this before. I think its important to recognize patterns in cycles but its also important to be open to the possibility we've only seen local cycles and larger global cycles are still revealing themselves. In other words is AI really analogous to shifts we've seen before?

I agree. History certainly didn't repeat itself when it came to the scientific and technological explosion of the past ~150+ years.

But if we are considering history, we may also wish to recall that education was strictly for the clerical and aristocratic classes before the industrial revolution. And we may also wish to remember that in US none other than the robber baron John D. Rockefeller took initiative to shape the educational paradigm for the "peasants".

Will the peasants need to be educated anymore?

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#78

Post by bad_user »

wmccullough wrote: post #54

It scares me too, but you know, I'm ready to embrace whatever comes next. I've been thinking alot about this over the course of the last year. Say that enough things get automated that we have massive numbers of unemployed, how do we address that? Instead of dodging the question by exclaiming that it won't happen, we probably should address a much deeper and more fundamental question: Why does the value of a person c…

Such questions have been asked for a long time, because this problem was visible ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution. It's what inspired Marx after all. And no, I'll never advocate for communism because I think Marx was wrong and because in practice it ends with crimes against human kind.

But we are here because of greed. And along with all other problems that we face, like global warming, overpopulation, pollution, etc, I think it's going to get a lot worse before getting better.

Some form of socialism is inevitable though, that much is certain. Having guaranteed food, shelter and medical care is a must.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#79

Post by justinhj »

wmccullough wrote: post #54

It scares me too, but you know, I'm ready to embrace whatever comes next. I've been thinking alot about this over the course of the last year. Say that enough things get automated that we have massive numbers of unemployed, how do we address that? Instead of dodging the question by exclaiming that it won't happen, we probably should address a much deeper and more fundamental question: Why does the value of a person c…

Maybe this idea of worth is hardwired inside us. As animals that existed in small groups throughout the world there was much work to be done in the daily activities of hunting, cooking, fixing and building shelters, raising children and possibly fighting with other tribes. With those constraints where there are no idle hands, the elderly and disabled become liabilities that are often discarded. Lazy people probably would not be tolerated in this environment.

So it seems likely that the distaste for someone not working as hard as everyone else is deeply ingrained in our culture and possibly even our genes.

Re: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class

#80

Post by TheSmiddy »

philipkglass wrote: post #43

That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse, because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question the psychological effects of the idea. “A u…

The idea that giving someone just enough money to live will kill their motivation is insane. If that were true why do people still work 40+ hour weeks when they could be earning enough to live on just 15? Most UBI schemes are initially targeting around 1k per month which is nowhere near enough satisfy the vast majority of people.
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