AI optimism is a class privilege

Author certainly has a point. The central idea is (IMO) best expressed in this quote:

> to focus on its [i.e., AI's] benefits to you, you’re forced to ignore its costs to others.

I would say it is privilege (now) combined with denialism (for the future).

Not only do you have to believe that you're in the group that benefits, but you also have to believe that "AI" improvement from here forward will stall out prior to the point where it goes from assisting your job to replacing it wholesale. I suspect there are many less people for whom that applies to them than there are people who believe it applies to them.

It is very easy for us to exist in that denialism bubble until we see the machine nipping at our heels.

And that is not even getting into second order effects, like even if you do provide AI-proof value, what happens when some significant percentage of everyone else (your potential customers) loses their income and society starts to crumble?

>what happens when some significant percentage of everyone else (your potential customers) loses their income and society starts to crumble?

They will start to burn down data centers.

[dead]

(I feel that I write a comment like this every few years)

The author catalog of harms is real. But it's worth noting that nearly identical catalogs were compiled for every major technological shift in modern history. The Internet destroyed print journalism, local retail, and enabled cyberbullying and mass surveillance. If we applied the same framework used here, Internet optimism in 2005 was also a form of "class privilege" (his term, I personally hate it).

And the pattern extends well beyond the Internet. For example, mechanized looms devastated weavers, the automobile wiped out entire trades while introducing pollution and traffic deaths, and recorded music was supposed to kill live performances.

In each case, the harms were genuine, the displacement was painful and unevenly distributed, and the people raising alarms were not irrational. They were often right about the costs. What they tended to miss was the longer trajectory: the way access to books, transportation, music, and information gradually broadened rather than narrowed, even if the transition was brutal for those caught in it.

History doesn't guarantees a good outcome for AI, but the author does advocates from a position of "class privilege": of having access to good lawyers, good doctors, and good schools already, and not feeling the urgency of tools that might extend those things to people who don't.