Comment on Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust: ‘AI has taught us that people are excited to replace human beings’

acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That might not be what we should be excited to do.

  And what people are excited is the idea of replacing all non-pleasant work.

  So here’s the catch, replacing human work with machines where practical usually leaves the parts where humans are needed for being human, not for their output as a part of a mechanism.

  For example, humans greeting you at a hotel, humans carrying trays and accepting orders in restaurants, humans as a decoration, humans doing prostitution, human gladiators, human actors. OK, the last part is fine.

  All these involve learning and maintaining skills more removed from power than skills of more industrial professions (monotonous work).

  Being a nice monkey to those who can afford you as a servant might not be what most people dream about.

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  • acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    my point is what we “should be” excited about is being released from monotonous work in exchange for universal basic income, so we wouldn’t feel the need to be reduced to servants. obviously that isn’t going to happen.

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    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      So - what’s good about utopian dreams not going to happen? Communities championing them are often not very good. The dissonance between what’s championed and what’s achievable leads to hypocrisy. How Soviet Communism was not very free or equal, or how Christianity is far more hypocritical, ritualized and hierarchical than even most orthodox Judaism (not even talking about Christian inferiority complexes towards both Judaism and various pre-Christian religions), or how Western support of democracy worldwide is now a joke about airborne delivery, mostly.

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  • demonsword@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    All these involve learning and maintaining skills more removed from power than skills of more industrial professions (monotonous work).

    I tend to disagree. There is something gratifying in making something with your own hands/tools. I could buy a table, or a drawer, or a pre-built computer. But I kinda enjoy making/assembling mine own. There are other people out there that enjoy gardening, and plenty other “monotonous work”.

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    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Losing the point, though - which is that the work you’d enjoy won’t be in demand. Including what you’ve described.

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  • MangoCats@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And what people are excited is the idea of replacing all non-pleasant work.

    So, when do I get an AI to navigate the phone-tree for me (kind of like the advocate in Jupiter Ascending)?

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• GaryGhost@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It would be exciting if all of our lives were going to be easier rather than an increase in homelessness.

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• Oisteink@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the thing. If it does increase efficiency that only goes to the money and not the worker. It’s not unique to AI

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• Fedditor385@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Not monotonous but non-creative. Any machine can do non-crative work. No machine can do creative work. You don’t need creativity to farm food, you do need creativity to invent new medicine.

  In an average company that isn’t scaled worldwide, usually the cost of labour is 40-50% (paying wages). This means if we replace humans with robots, doing repetitive and non-creative work, we can make stuff cheaper by a lot. OFC unless the company boss, who is then left alone with all the profits, just decides to keep the prices with no people he needs to pay anymore.

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