Anonymous wrote:It is becoming very clear thar AI is already having a detrimental impact on jobs. The current administration wants to withhold regulation on AI for at least ten years per the BBB and just let it happen though this specific part was thankfully overturned so the states can regulate it.
Meanwhile, AI is already destroying jobs - even if initial losses are white collar, it will eventually impact blue collar jobs as well. The current administration seems to be using tariffs to fuel manufacturing job growth here, but this seems quite fruitless thus far relative to job losses and is just making household goods more expensive, taxing all of us.
Meanwhile, the data centers keep multiplying, use excessive electricity and water. Our power infrastructure cannot seem to support this and the current admin does not actually seem to want to make our electrical bills cheaper. They are halting renewable energy and investing in more expensive coal.
Lastly, the majority of the stock market gains are driven by a relatively small number of AI stocks; stock gains are no longer even correlated to job numbers. This appears to be a unsustainable bubble that will pop and tank everyone's retirement savings when it does.
This seems like a dystopian nightmare that impacts everyone; political affiliation does not matter. Furthermore, I see no evidence that the current administration even cares how this is impacting people.
I agree that as a nation and a species we are going to regret this last 16 years as having wasted our best last chance to ameliorate our biggest threats but I think AI and electricity production will not make the top 5 issues.
1. Demographic decline : for the last 50 years 1st world countries have produced smaller families. This has been offset by improving life expectancy but we are at the end of that dynamic . Almost all of our systems (from social security to housing values) are based on an assumption of an ever increasing population. We could help the problem with increased immigration but as we see there is not an appetite for that anywhere in the 1st world.
2. Fiscal end: for years most of the first world has out spent it’s economy: we are coming very close to a point where the largest expenditure for most industrialized countries will be interest on the debt - at that point in time you’ll see financial pressure on governments that will be almost unbearable.
3. Environmental crisis: at this point, almost anybody of good faith recognizes that the impacts of human development on the environment are extreme.. but long before we see apocalyptic sea level rise we will see apocalyptic insurance premium rise making large portions of the most valuable real estate in the world worthless.
4. Breaking down of rules based international order. We see in Ukraine in the Middle East and now with Venezuela the breakdown of rules based order. no one is going to the UN anymore to get permission to invade or to interdict. Future conflicts will be bloodier and more difficult to solve because we no longer respect the institutions we had just a few years ago.
5. Social divide - whatever you think about Charles Murry he nailed it with his book coming apart. America is divided into two distinct cultures one a rural, faith based culture and the other an urban, achievement culture these two cultures are mutually, exclusive and naturally hostile to each other making our politics not just difficult but dangerous.
good luck everybody.