Governments and tech moguls have bet hundreds of billions on artificial intelligence. If the technology does what it promises, we will have to radically rethink how the global economy functions.
I’m not sure there’s any more depressing climax I could imagine to this story:
While the talk of eradicating friction or even rents suggests a “freeing up” of capital for more productive investment, given services would follow manufacturing into a realm of hyperproductive overcapacity, there would seem to be no upside to the euthanasia of the rentier in this instance.
Rather than “free up” business, this development would destroy it. Capital may well be a parasite, but in the absence of revolutionary pressure it is still work-producing. Our jobs might be bullsh-t, but without them there is only unemployment and (even more) poverty.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art
Yea … it’s the bit I don’t get why people don’t care about this more.
If we’re replaced, there’s nothing really left for us in the terms of the way we’ve conceived our whole world for centuries. Sure maybe we go native again or something, but let’s be real, that is a massively tough transition even if it’s viable.
It’s even more bleak than that. Politically, the bargaining power of the masses is from the labor they contribute. As soon as the need of human labor is gone, there is absolutely no reason for those with power to heed the will of the populus. You can say open revolt, but if we’re talking a situation where any significant portion of the military is automated, uprisings are no longer a concern.
I’m not sure there’s any more depressing climax I could imagine to this story:
For most people it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin
And art is being destroyed by AI
Those are very different things though.
And one can argue that how people imagine the end of the world is probably shaped works of art/media.
Yea … it’s the bit I don’t get why people don’t care about this more.
If we’re replaced, there’s nothing really left for us in the terms of the way we’ve conceived our whole world for centuries. Sure maybe we go native again or something, but let’s be real, that is a massively tough transition even if it’s viable.
It’s even more bleak than that. Politically, the bargaining power of the masses is from the labor they contribute. As soon as the need of human labor is gone, there is absolutely no reason for those with power to heed the will of the populus. You can say open revolt, but if we’re talking a situation where any significant portion of the military is automated, uprisings are no longer a concern.