I wish we were in the Star Trek universe, so this was "AI will free humanity to pursue science and art without economic concerns" instead of "AI will make everyone poor and subjugate."
Star Trek is a reflection of American society at the time.
Back in 1968 people were concerned about losing jobs to computers, just like they are today.
MCCOY: Jim, we've all seen the advances of mechanisation. After all, Daystrom did design the computers that run this ship.
KIRK: Under human control.
MCCOY: We're all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine. When it comes to your job, that's different. And it always will be different.
KIRK: Am I afraid of losing command to a computer? Daystrom's right. I can do a lot of other things. Am I afraid of losing the prestige and the power that goes with being a starship captain? Is that why I'm fighting it? Am I that petty?
MCCOY: Jim, if you have the awareness to ask yourself that question, you don't need me to answer it for you. Why don't you ask James T. Kirk? He's a pretty honest guy.
Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut's first novel in 1952, and ironically his least overtly wry and sardonic satirical one, really captured the listless drudgery of a fully-automated future without frontiers to explore.
>> >95% of people used to work in agriculture. The machines took the AG jobs, and we're on net far better off.
That kind of argument is getting really old. It's not a given that there is always something else for people to do when a job is automated, and when there is it's generally not something of equal or higher value (hint, they would have already been doing it).
Like when people were working in private equity, marketing, law, finance, etc before the machines took AG jobs?
Those jobs didn't really exist yet, because everyone was too busy trying to get enough to eat.
~50% of the people on the planet live in pretty miserable conditions. We do not live in the age of abundance. Contrary to popular opinion, if we just split up Bill Gates's money, it would not be enough for everyone to have a nice life. On net, we will benefit massively from freeing up labor to do other things - beside mundane things that could be automated but currently cost too much to automate with current methods for it to make sense to automate them.
> We could do with fewer "marketing, law, finance, etc" jobs
We can say this about almost any job category. For those perceived as useless, good riddance. For those seen as essential, they’re essential—wouldn’t it be nice if doctors could spend as much time as they wanted with every patient because a machine was doing the boring bits?
I'm not sure it's 50% of the planet that's living in miserable conditions - we really do live in an age of abundance. The United States supplies 25% of the global food supply - that's a single country.
Human Beings have been forced to survive most of our existence - I believe when we lift ourselves out of the necessity of work, that we finally actually be human for the first time.
We are supposed to exist above it all as we are the only life that we are aware that could ever do that.
I'm sure hundreds of millions living in slums, with no jobs or prospects, but capable of plenty of spare labor, would be glad to hear about this new law of nature!
Poor people in Delhi, Lagos, Mexico City, Cairo, and all around the world where there are such slums, literally "kick dirt all day" - and beg, steal, live with what they can get their hands on, do some ocassional odd gig and try to survive on that, and so on.
We're not talking about working class poor people.
There is always something to do that could improve the lot of our fellow humans, even if that just means hanging out with lonely people (of which there are many). The problem is finding anyone to pay someone to do these things, so that they can continue to be housed, clothed, fed, and entertained while they are.
Even short of abolishing capitalism (or at least UBI, or a decent social safety net) though, the most likely answer is that people will find work doing stuff that capital wants, and which AI can't yet do (sex work? meaningful art?), or that capital for some reason doesn't want AI to do (intelligence work? domestic servants?). I don't know what those professions will be, but it's likely some of them don't even exist yet.
We'd have more community, be more grounded, respect the land more, and have less bullshit jobs and products, if a much larger percentage of people still worked in agriculture.
Most people had to work as hard as they were able just to have enough to eat. When crops failed, the aristocrats forcibly took the food they needed (with the support of the legal system because they owned to land) with the result that some of the farmers starved.
This best it represents specific times and places, under specific regimes, not some constant fact of working the land.
Working the land had tons of downtime - even back at medieval and ancient times. In fact, even hunter gatherers have been observe by ethnographers to just need 2-3 hours to get the food for the day.
Star Trek requires a (nearly) post-scarcity world. In an AI driven future compute will be the new hot scarcity. It just so happens that those with the means to get the most compute are also the ones with the most wealth already.
Today’s society can’t exist without mass exploitation. AI at least gives us a chance at a true utopia, where we don’t need a large fraction of the population working long hours in farms and factories doing physical labor for low wages.
It also makes it possible that a few can effectively rule over many without risking a revolution. But there’s a solid argument we are morally obligated to take that risk due to the state of today’s society.
Analogy: if a lot of people are held hostage in a building, do you attempt to breach the building, risking more casualties, or do you give up and let those people die? You do option c, evacuate the surroundings, form a plan to minimize risk, and then breach the building.
Translating into AI, it means we need to minimize the risk of a few taking control and then move forward. Obviously if we achieved AGI today, the risk of a few taking control is still very present
However, you also move fast, because waiting costs lives. If the risk of a few taking control isn’t going away, then we need to move forward. It’s only worth waiting if there’s a good chance that society will fundamentally change in a way that reduces this risk, but if we move forward now, AGI would precede that shift.
Oddly, I feel society is becoming a lot more liberal and anti-capitalist. Maybe it’s just the echo-chamber from the people I surround myself with and online places like HN. So the above could be true.
But lastly, we’re nowhere near AGI, and I’m certain the steps we need to take will cause massive societal shifts before AGI is reached, revealing more about how great the risk of a few taking control really is.
