this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Alright, when the AI takes my job and I can’t feed my family while the billionaires add another digit to their net worth I’ll consider the pros.
There’s about 0% chance we reform society for AI, it will just funnel more wealth to the rich. People claim it will open new jobs but I don’t see it.
People have had the same concerns about automation since basically forever. Automation isn't the problem. The people who use automation to perpetuate the systems that work against us will continue to find creative ways to exploit us with or without AI. Those people and those systems-- they are the problem. And believe it or not, that problem is imminently solvable.
It's fair to compare but you can't dismiss concerns based on that.
Past automation often removed duplicate or superfluous work type things, AI removes thought work. It's a fundamentally different kind of automation than we've seen before.
It will make many things cheaper to do and easier to start some businesses, but it will also decimate workers. It's also not something that's generally available to lower classes to wield yet.
It's here but I don't have to be optimistic.
I fully agree with everything you said. My point is more that if we look at AI as the culprit, we're missing the point. If I may examine the language you are using a bit-
Employers are the agents. They remove thought work.
Employers will decimate workers.
It would be smart to enact legislation that will mitigate the damage employers enabled by AI will do to wokers, but they will continue to exploit us regardless.
Using language that makes AI the antagonist helps tyrants deflect their overwhelming share of the blame. The responsible parties are people, who can and should be held accountable.
I don't think you're wrong either, but at the same time it's not feasible for everyone to be their own agent and it's not feasible to say employers can't use AI.
I don't know what the solution is, but I'm prepping for a sudden career change in the next few years.
In general, progressive taxation can do quite a lot to ease the widening wealth gap. One such strategy is the robot tax. There exist other, perhaps better, legislative solutions, but more broadly we need to restore voting rights and diminish the influence the wealthy have on our political system so that smart, progressive legislation doesn't have to fight tooth and nail against lobbying and other mechanisms that tie wealth to political influence.
What'a your solution to Automation reducing the number of workers needed in several industries?
I want to avoid using the term solution, not least of all because implementation has its own set of challenges, but some of us used to dream that automation would do that work for us. Perhaps naively, some of us assumed that people just wouldn't have to work as much. And perhaps I continue to be naive in thinking that that should still be our end goal. If automation reduces the required work hours by 20% with no reduction in profit, full time workers should have a 32 hour week with no reduction in income.
But since employers will always pocket that money if given the option, we need more unionization, we need unions to fight for better contracts, we need legislation that will protect and facilitate them, and we need progressive taxation that will decouple workers most essential needs from their employers so they have more of a say in where and how they work, be that universal public services, minimum income guarantee, or what have you.
We're quite far behind in this fight but there has been some recent progress about which I am pretty optimistic.
Edit: for clarification
This was so very thoughtful, and after reading it, I feel optimistic too. Fuck yeah.
Edit: thank you.