Midjourney prompt: "two versions of a sky split vertically down the middle. the left half is dark, cloudy, and stormy. the right half is sunny, warm, and idyllic. watercolor"

Awe, Anxiety, and AI

Navigating the conflicting emotions of this moment in tech

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Oshyan Greene over 2 years ago

What's interesting to me is how many people are looking at the AI capability explosion, acknowledging the "oh no, but jobs!" issue, but then *not* acknowledging that, well, AI may actually break Capitalism. And not to be a crazy Socialist here but... would that be so bad? In my view the *true* optimistic perspective, the "best case scenario" of AI *is precisely that*. And I'm very interested in understanding why anyone would argue otherwise. Not that this *will* happen, but that it would be the best case.

In other words if AI can truly do all these things as well as or better than humans, with similar or lesser resource use, if we get to the point where *most* or at least *many* jobs are no longer necessary for humans to do... Then it would seem to make sense to consider what is "beyond jobs". And not *having* to do jobs that many of us dislike seems like a net benefit. It has a *ton* of challenges to work out, of course, but then Capitalism and the systems that sustain it bend over backward on the daily to do this (interest rate shenanigans, bank bailouts, loan forgiveness, health insurance mandates, etc, etc.).

This is something often contemplated and written about in sci-fi, etc. but I think it's important for it to be *more* a part of the current, actual conversation. Some people are definitely talking about it, of course, but many are not and I want to understand why, and to know what the people not talking about this actually think about it (and why).

@michaelelling63 over 2 years ago

"When I’m in meetings, I want to stand up and shout, ‘Computers can do incredible things right now!’" Back to the (late 1990s) future. We're revisiting Internet 1.0 and not learning from our mistakes. AI needs to develop incentives and disincentives to avoid concentration and bias.