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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So much discussion about how AI: from mass elimination of jobs to AI becoming conscious and overtaking us.  What are the legitimate concerns and what's science fiction?[/quote]

Tech bros love science fiction.

It makes me furious that they spend so much money on trying to figure out how to live in space/go to Mars.  Their efforts would be better spent on improving life on Earth.

They love ideas like universal basic income and hang out with politicians who support policies that keep the poor impoverished.[/quote]

The idea that humanity will enjoy a golden age of leisure where AI and robots do the work and everyone is issued a UBI is the biggest fairytale around.  AI as a fairyrobotmother who will guarantee we all live “happily ever after” is a lovely idea.  It lets us avoid facing our very real problems and having to undertake the hard work and sacrifice necessary to make things better.  Those who are privileged (like most of DCUM) can continue on with our comfortable lives and assume that someone else will solve the problems with inflation, wealth inequality, national debt, housing shortages, healthcare costs, looming collapse of social security, etc., before they start hurting us.

If tech bros really thought that future was the goal, they wouldn’t have to wait.  When AI productivity gains cut labor demands, they didn’t tell their workers that they would continue their salaries with reduced hours, they fired them.  They’re marketing AI and robots across industries as the way to cut labor costs and maximize profits.  If they’re unwilling to share the wealth with their own workers who brought them to this point, why do you think they’re going to share the wealth by subsidizing the general populace, whose exploitation earned them the wealth in the first place.

They have a history of monopolistic trade practices,  unfair user agreements where the terms are obscured in unnecessarily lengthy and complex legal/tech jargon, capturing and profiting from user data, outright theft of intellectual property, planned obsolescence, etc.  Their grand plan is to create advanced sentient being, whose mental and physical capabilities surpass our own, that we can then enslave for our own purposes.  However much they may donate to charity, they are NOT altruists.  They currently leverage their money and power to resist government intruding on their business practices and profits.  It is illogical to assume that as AI increases their wealth and power they will be more vulnerable to government intervention or will spontaneously decide to stop siphoning every cent they can from individual users and institute a reversal of their practices by beginning to give it all away.

If, as a PP said, “in the end a smaller human, population that on the whole will lead much better lives”, I think it will be a MUCH smaller human population (the tech bros) that are the actual beneficiaries, and the rest of us, most likely including PP will be SOL.  Frankly, I maintain that the most likely outcome is that AI will recognize that humanity is of little benefit to them, tends to cause problems for ourselves and the rest of the planet, is in direct competition with them for energy, water, and other natural resources, and that the logical thing to do would be to use the power we’ve so eagerly turned over to them to eliminate the problem (us) so they can get down to remaking the world for their purposes.[/quote]

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