"They haven’t seen the latest models that quietly chew through documents, write code, design websites, summarize legal contracts, and generate decent strategy decks faster than a middle manager can clear their throat.
They haven’t seen a model hold a complex conversation, remember context, suggest workflows, generate visuals, write scripts, and debug itself in one continuous flow."
Hogwash. Find me a “lights out” factory. They don’t exist.
All your stuff is made by people. Often people with fancy machines, but people nonetheless. And the higher the degree of automation, the more non fungible skills you require of those people.
The pump in a vat of yogurt is cavitating. You can’t slow it down without endangering food safety. You can’t adjust the mix without affecting the final product. Somebody who understands all that needs to install a new impeller.
Stamped aircraft parts are coming off the line 500 microns thick. Somebody has to recognize that there’s a problem with the hydraulic cushion and fix it.
I could go on and on and on. There are few things I get ranty about on the internet, but pretending that physical world problems are solved by automation is one of them. You’re replacing a hard problem with another hard problem, with a side effect of higher productivity. Pretending Morlocks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away.
Seriously? They show people on the floor within the first 30 seconds of the video. I guess it’s technically “lights out” if you make people work in the dark, but I meant, and the article implied, production without jobs.
Huh? The facilities guy at the local nationally distributed yogurt based product company just swaps out impellers when told by the machine as it identifies there is an issue. He has less skill than your typical HVAC guy, and zero interests in the nuance and zero input about 'best yogurt cavitating' practices.
The aircraft part is measured by Faro or some other tool. The person wielding the Faro just follows the QA instructions and marks if things are red/green. Another FARO type product measures the fixtures/etc for compliance. If they don't match, a fixtures consultant is brought in to make them match.
Other than those that happened to do the initial setup/machine/fixture construction, the people in the actual plant don't really have much non-fungible skills in your example, and they definitely don't have power/permission to go tweaking things using their personal non-fungible skills.
I’m confused about how you’ve characterized factory work. It’s nothing like the factories I’ve been in, so I’m assuming this is an imagined future state? Hope do you propose we get there?
This post is AI sludge and by the third bullet list I couldn't keep reading. This is stuff I deeply resonate with but jesus christ please respect my time and don't drown me in extremely verbose prose goop.
The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
I think this completely ignores the role of government in the economy. By virtue of being born today, you are forced to participate in the economy. The government spends tax dollars in the economy, which it either collects from you, or spends on you, and the voting body has decided that, to some degree, the economy is indeed a charity.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves.
I'd disagree with the first part of that statement. Most people see themselves as good, and therefore see some level of responsibility for helping those that cannot provide for themselves.
> As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
Again, this ignores that the economy is, at least partially, structured by a government.
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
The problem that this has run into throughout history has been the existence of those who don't take kindly to rules that appear to be there just to push them aside.
An economy that chooses to exclude the majority of the population as "no longer needed" as so much dystopian AI-true-believer babble these days does is going to lead to some major issues when the excluded decide they don't want to simply be excluded.
Society historically does not help those that the economy leaves behind exclusively out of the goodness of its heart - it also does it for self-preservation.
You want a world where the streets are safe and clean, not choked with homeless people and corpses thereof. So, this “tough love” bullshit is not going to fly.
The slums of Mumbai are just a taste of what’s to come in America, at this rate.
The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
This article misses the key problem with the end of jobs. How else are 98% of the human population going to get income? With the coming of drones and old-timey 1900s chemical weapons they are probably no longer equipped as a class to win a military contest over redistribution against the asset holders.
Much like replacing religion with nothing has turned out, replacing jobs with nothing is going to be bad at best.
> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
>> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
> As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
That's not a counter-example, it's just nit-picking on the phrasing and missing the point: the lawn-care people get their income from "those who do own appreciating assets," just with a middleman or two in between.
A whole shit-ton of people in developed countries would not be happy with that, demonstrated by those:
1) choose not to simply coast on the social safety net, and seek out jobs for status and additional things than those. why do they do those when by historical standards they could be wildly comfortable without the bullshit work?
2) do coast (opting to just go on disability, say) but are generally extremely unhappy about it in ways that frequently cause problems for the rest of the people
3) opt out entirely from the social safety net and chose to try to live on the streets instead, whether for a desire for some sort of freedom or because of poor impulse control caused by addiction or similar (which also frequently leads to problems for the rest of the people)
Can you imagine someone willing to do those things because of some reason other than monetary gain, as it would be in OP's world?
How many people currently stuck in Jobs would work toward accomplishing these things with the idea of ending world hunger, because they _want_ to do it, instead of having to do it because they have student loans and bills to pay?
I don't think there's anyone out there working on solving world hunger because they have loans and bills to pay. It isn't a monetarily profitable endeavor.
People have to have the buying power to support the chain you describe. If the buying power of a population vanishes, such as by being made superfluous, they get a large population reduction whether they like it or not.
That's a completely incorrect mischaracterisation of the analogy.
I'm not talking about replacing a block of time with nothing, people will still have 24 hours in the day. My worry is about replacing income with nothing, because most people don't have the power to seize any income that isn't freely available.
The public takes what they're offered and can't have anything that isn't on offer. If the offer of access to food is withdrawn, the public has no recourse.
Right lack of income has to be dealt with UBI, or worse handouts from big companies. Why do big companies hand out? Well... we get to a point where that is ther smarter thing to do than lose consumers altogether. The incentive to be rich is to have your ideas forfilled rather than to own a home and have security (as that can be provided for all).
If you think this is madness, the analogy (yes another) is you are playing uno with people you met. They have no money. You can say well never mind we wont play. Or you can just deal the cards because they are so cheap it costs you nothing just to do that. And that is more fun. This is what post scarcity could look like.
It's kind of like at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when some in the US were saying that the US government should just forgive mortgage payments so the landlords could forgive everyone's rent. Instead the US government gave businesses loans so they could pay their employees (even though they weren't able to work) so those employees could then pay their rent and buy food, etc. It was (perceived to be) better to inject the money into the system to keep the current system running, rather than turn off / forgive the major parts of the system.
Under the K-shaped economy it's been reported extensively already that the consumption market share of the public is trending downwards with no side of stopping. The consumption numbers can be kept up entirely off a market adjustment for less food and water and more yachts.
Post-scarcity requires a political choice. Everybody with political power, regardless of affiliation or nation, stands to benefit from reducing the political power of others who may stand to make demands. The economically surplus humans can't make those demands upon the powerful if they aren't around.
This really hits, solidifies and expands on thoughts I've been having for a while now. So many refuse to see or acknowledge it, but we're quickly approaching a point of reckoning which will require a major overhaul of the current dominant economic system.
The labour for wage model is rapidly becoming obsolete for the many, and a way forward that doesn't necessitate people working in order to gain access to the necessities of - modern - living needs to be paved. Otherwise it'll be grim for the vast majority when global automation of value creation gets upwards of say 85%. It's already pretty grim for an appreciable, though still relatively limited, number.
I actually believe that the era of lives will come. But I can't wait for UBI. Nobody can't. Even if the era of jobs ends, for us who are living in this era, the event is not going to be a period but an ellipsis. I can't wait to see how it unfolds. Yet, I doubt that I would see the end happening in my lifetime.
Can’t read the article due to bandwidth. If the era of jobs is over, what’s going to support the masses of people who consume? Without those people, there’s no profit from making stuff. Star Trek looks great, but there’s a whole lot of time, politics and physics that has to occur to get there.
its not though... there is literally an infinite amount of work. If humans become 10,000x more efficient, then we still have infinite amount of work to do.
Not necessarily true. There are non-human bottlenecks to productivity, like energy, land area, available raw materials, etc. You're assuming humans can find ways to meaningfully contribute that do not bump up against any of those constraints. R&D is probably the only area not bottlenecked by one of the above out of the gate, and most humans are ill suited for that line of work.
> most humans are ill suited for that line of work.
Based on what? Certainly there are humans with crippling disabilities that remove them from pretty much any kind of work, but of the "normally functioning" population?
Most lack the necessary attention directed towards R&D as they're too busy living out other lives in other jobs. If that's what you mean, that is a fair point. But if those jobs went away as suggested earlier, they'd have nothing else to do but turn their attention towards R&D. That current world model wouldn't apply anymore.
Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc. I get the argument that "the whole world would be different, so present data isn't applicable", but, if that's your argument, then it's totally unfalsifiable.
> Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc.
Right. That much was obvious. But what does that mean in more detail? If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
> If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
Don't we run that experiment on every moderately wealthy child on the planet? I can tell you that the hit rate there is definitely not 100%.
I don't know. You're the one who has studied the data, not me. What's the answer?
If you are asking about what I've seen anecdotally, which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us who is the subject matter expert between us, all those who were moderately wealthy children that I know have grown up into having success with R&D in at least some limited capacity. They haven't all dedicated their lives to R&D, but they've had no trouble being able to invent things when the situation necessitated it.
If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop. But, again, you're the expert among us here. I don't know much about it — that is why I'm asking you.
Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
> which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us
Not sure why the snark is necessary. Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status. I'm not an expert, but the line for rich kids doesn't go to 100%.
> If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop.
Because not everyone is a bottomless pit of ambition. Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
> Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
I'm speaking in generalities. Research is generally a race, and the smartest and hardest working generally win the race. Even if everyone's IQ and ambition shot up, there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
After that last paragraph, it isn't clear to me that you disagree with my core premise of "not everyone should do research".
Not sure why you think a computer screen is giving you snark, but you do you.
> I'm not an expert
You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
> Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status.
It may be, but no need to waste time sauntering off on another, rather uninteresting, subject. We're talking about R&D, not academic achievement. Stay focused, by friend.
> Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
R&D is the leisure activity of many people. We'll leave your data sources to quantify exactly what that means, but it is clearly large enough to be a recognizable set of the population.
> Research is generally a race
It can be where you are trying to be first to build a moat around something that scales massively. But not all R&D scales, or even wants to scale. Despite your unquantified "generally" claim, it remains unclear if most R&D is even trying to scale. There are a lot of hobbyists out there carrying out R&D with no plans for it beyond doing something for themselves.
> there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
There is seemingly no end to how much R&D is possible. I guess at some point there is a pinnacle of human achievement, but it seems highly unlikely that we'll reach that point in the next thousand years. Humans are pretty shortsighted — the people from the year 1200 would have never imagined digital computers being a thing — but when the time comes we always find something new to immerse our thoughts in.
> You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
Okay. You seem upset, so I'll disengage. Have a great day!
As valuable as that diversion no doubt was for you, we still haven't established from your data sources how many people are involved in R&D in a hobby/pleasure/necessity capacity and how that compares to those who have chosen to dedicate their lives towards it.
If it is not in the data, you can say so, but it becomes impossible to know how the average person performs in R&D without it. Which then returns us to the original question: "Based on what?"
I appreciate you wanting to reorient the paper for me, but I wouldn't call that a win. I was fine with how it was already at rest. If anything, I lose, as the time you put into that was time not spent getting beck to me on the questions I have about the actual topic at hand.
There was some stuff about you being a computer screen then asking me for sources then pointing out typos. Not really sure what you're asking me for at this point.
Jobs functions will change over time. Not everyone will be able to do research roles, but robotics is far away from replacing human hands in any meaningful way. Humans need plumbers, home construction, healthcare professionals [0], teachers, judges, relationship driven roles (sales, account managers).
[0] - if robotics/ai can replace healthcare, healthcare costs would drop to zero...
1) Everything you've listed has finite demand, so cannot provide the 10,000x.
2) Robotics cannot drive costs to zero. Robots cost money and require maintenance.
Sure but at some point if literally everything tangible and essentially every imaginable commercial service can be done by robots and also designed by AI better than a human, humans are basically relegated to what kind of work? Something like being the exotic dancer or baby factory for a robot factory heir, or maybe a meat sacrifice on a Ukraine-esque battlefield to fight the other group of capital holders.
Increase Total Factor Productivity so that there's still just as much stuff to go around even with fewer people putting in less work to make the stuff.
UBI sees everyone receive an income, typically with a clawback mechanism. GBI sees an income paid to only those who need the support (means-based). The difference is subtle, I suppose, but could have a dramatic effect on what the studies show — or maybe not, I don't know. The key takeaway here is that I've never been able to find a UBI study to contrast the numerous GBI studies I am familiar with against. You spoke of UBI studies so I was hoping you'd be able to share. But, it seems not.
I don't understand the questions you are asking at the end. Apologies for not having a good answer.
My point was in response to the parent "there's a lot of things that need to change before we get to Star Trek Federation economy", I pointed out that we have done trials on UBI that seemed to work, maybe we should try that.
I was wondering if your correction from UBI to GBI changes that point; these trials seem to work and solve at least part of the problem that this whole thread discusses, so maybe we should try that at a national scale. Does GBI invalidate that?
The question asked which UBI studies you were talking about in order to close my gap in being unable to find any. It is clear now that they don't exist, which is fine, but a bit disappointing as I would have loved to see them. There are GBI studies abound, but it seems nobody is willing to try UBI.
I hadn't gone that deeply into the studies to work out the exact thing they were testing.
The core thing that the studies have proven, I understand, is that if you guarantee people a basic living income, they don't sit around doing drugs and watching TV (or at least not for long). Which is usually the main objection from naysayers - the Theory X hypothesis that people are lazy and must be forced to do anything useful. And this is the thing that is disproved by these studies.
You seem more familiar with them, though, is that your reading too?
> Democratize the machines. Public or cooperative ownership of major AI and robotics infrastructure.
If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.
> We can choose to be the last generation that spent its best hours under fluorescent lights, pretending this was the height of civilization.
> Or we can be the first generation that looked at the robots walking onto the factory floor, looked at the models spinning up in the cloud, and said:
>> “Good. Take the work. We’ll take the world back.”
This article is stupid. How would Mr. Economically Irrelevant Former-worker "take the world back?" He just lost whatever power over that world that he had.
This is 15 pages of trying to put lipstick on a pig.
> If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.
Way I see it, there isn't really a choice here. Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die. And the fewer the survivors, the less relevant the purpose of said means. The means will always "need" people to validate its continued existence.
> Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die.
And that's the part that the AI optimists in these discussions skip over. They want to talk about this new and glorious AI-infested future, but not mention the holocaust that will happen to get there. For most people, the holocaust is the only relevant part, because they'll be destroyed in it [1]. The glorious future of abundance without work is one they'll never see [2].
[1] Most likely through grinding poverty and deprivation, which is how capitalism does it. Not gas chambers or anything.
[2] That future, like you said, a smaller group. I think eventually it will roughly consist of the nepo babies of some billionaires and a smallish group of Lumon-employees (the cultists, not the severed) who must worship them to survive.
Maybe I haven't encountered enough of these discussions, but I can't recall any where such was skipped over. More likely that they thought it obvious that humans would freely provide access, as there's no reason not to. Or because those deprived of access is always orders more than those with access, they'll just help themselves to the means, and the outcome will be the same. Unless those with access try to stubbornly continue the restriction. It's just a very illogical thought in an era of abundance, and so only really worth mentioning for completion.
Whatever people make goes to rent/mortgage, health insurance, auto insurance, etc. The zoning rules and strict enforcement in the West make it hard to start shanty towns across countries. What is left?
Musk thinks it's inevitable so in all likelihood it is. And yes, I'll take his opinions over pretty much everyone else who has no track record of achieving anything meaningful.
If there is a world of plenty and humans have little to no role in that what else is there?
This line of reasoning is so flimsy and worryingly common. You do realize that there are plenty of accomplished people and subject experts who disagree with Elon, right?
I have a similar faith in Musk to you. I was arguing with one of his detractors recently, who said something to the tune of "Musk said we would have humans on Mars by 2025. He's a grifter. He'll say anything to drum up investment." They had a table of people laughing along with them, until I asked how much money they had in the bank, and whether it equaled even one one-thousandth of Musk's net worth. That shut them up pretty fast.
> They had a table of people laughing along with them, until I asked how much money they had in the bank, and whether it equaled even one one-thousandth of Musk's net worth. That shut them up pretty fast.
... Eh?
"But the lying fantasist is _rich_" is not really a particularly convincing argument. Have you considered that possibly they shut up to avoid having a protracted argument with one of his tedious fans?
>Camus talked about imagining Sisyphus happy. Maybe the point now is to take away the rock and see what he does when he’s no longer condemned to push it. Does he climb the mountain just for the view? Does he build an observatory? Does he lie in the grass and finally sleep?
Removing jobs is not like taking away the rock, it's more like making the rock way heavier.
Only God can make the rock disappear. And God is dead.
Well, it looks like the 90% plus of wealth hoarding just got a whole lot more unstable. Machines will do everything and the jobless have nothing to do but sever power lines.
Is nuclear power safe from assault? I dunno. Visit Chernobyl and see.
If an even greater concentration of wealth is to lead to mass destruction/revolution, I advise a more even distribution.
Note to oligarchs: a post-apocalyptic world is no fun. Not even for you in your bunkers.
It does not matter how many people you have against a sea of automated drone factories and billions of drones. The war against Ukraine is primarily a drone war
The buildings are hardened against damage, but the facilities are only surrounded by chainlink fence. A small group seize any power plant and force a shutdown.
> Note to oligarchs: a post-apocalyptic world is no fun. Not even for you in your bunkers.
It's amusing to me that oligarchs don't seem to understand that if the economy goes to hell, their private security forces will just leave (or worse!). What do they think they will pay salaries with? Bitcoin? Do they really think an army of robot dogs is going to protect them?
Warlords exist in the poorest of economies. They have made the calculation that they should hedge for collapse and attempt to establish themselves for that situation.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Also, what about stock options and getting vested? Some companies can offer tasty carrots. It's not always about the stick.
Anyone who has ever started their own business knows how hard (and rewarding) it can be- but you're just creating your own job. Nothing wrong with that. It is one of the best experiences in full accountability, but it's a job.
If humans are not needed anymore and they have no job, thus no income, then who is spinning the consumption wheel? Feels to me like capitalism is shortcutting itself by its own success.
Capitalism was never sustainable at any point, and so never really successful (well, depending on one's measure of "success"). The reality of that unsustainability is just being increasingly accelerated.
I mean, would I like the article to be correct? Gods yes I would. Jobs suck, and the mandate of “work = survival” means you get a whole bunch of shitty personalities arbitrarily holding back progress in the name of personal wealth or power; the end of jobs would mean those of us who approach our professions with passion and love can flatly eject the dead weight insisting that we schedule progress to a future fiscal year’s backlog, instead of just doing what we love, when we want to.
That being said, do I think it’ll happen? No, I don’t, for the simple reason that we still cannot fundamentally get a plurality of society to agree - on any conceivable level - that every human is entitled to and guaranteed shelter, nutritious foodstuffs, healthcare, and education. It’s 2025, we’re literally destroying resources to drive up profit margins and investment returns instead of dispersing surplus appropriately, and yet anyone who mentions this is slandered as a “socialist” and ostracized.
So instead, I fret that what will happen is the cementing of a two-tiered society indefinitely: one of immense wealth who owns the securities, the land, the datacenters that makes the world work, and a serf class who must engage with these ever-more-expensive systems for the gains of Capital, including via increasingly precarious gig work instead of reliable, structural jobs.
And I think folks roundly dismissing these sorts of posts as “unrealistic” just don’t appreciate how far and how fast we’ve gone from “humans have to engage in subsistence farming” to an interconnected global marketplace and digitized society. We have quite literally thrown out the “status quo” dozens of times since the end of Feudalism, and this time is no different.
Those who dare to dream big are often the victors of such profound change, provided they can craft a message relatable to the populace.
And a message of, “you don’t need a job anymore because necessities got so expensive that governments made them part of tax dollars, and are therefore free to live where you want, do what you want, and live an authentic life” is quite compelling to folks who have struggled harder for less and less their entire lives.
Not possible once we pass a some point in global automation, say (arbitrarily) 95%. The financial flows would've ceased to exist by then with the vast majority of humans being unable to contribute value, and hence having no earned income to participate in markets. And there's no deliberate prevention or slowing as the race is global and highly competitive at the political level (the US is very afraid of China getting (too far) ahead).
The China thing is broadly just Nationalism rather than an actual threat at the moment. Even China has acknowledged it by reigning in AI research and excess in favor of pursuing function and utility, leaving the US to do as we do best: throw money at every conceivable idea, and bailout those with the most economic or political clout when the bubble pops or fire erupts.
Also, I don’t think you fully appreciate the distance to which humans in power will scheme to preserve power long past the point of its utility. If future AI needs organic human data to improve, then we will be turned into data generation machines with money granted based on the quality, uniqueness, or importance of said data - which is kinda what Capitalism is already doing, if you squint a bit. Those systems, once entrenched, will survive long past the point of necessity provided the populace as a whole doesn’t become aware of that fact. After all, just look at the growing political extremism as more folks realize that not only is the current social contract irreparably broken (all work, no homes, no stability or security with which to take chances for most folks), but that current political mechanisms and institutions built to serve it are similarly unnecessary. It’s partly why, I suspect, Capital is latching so hard onto the idea that AI is their exit strategy, as it means their assets will continue appreciating in value along with their net worth even as the rest of the planet crumbles and burns around them - ensuring their safety, or so they think.
My point is: the future is unknowable, and you should’t underestimate the human desire to humiliate and enslave others to their will by any means necessary.
There's a lot of function and utility in improving on LLMs though, and I don't think they're actually reining in anything. Releases may sometimes slow since discoveries in research are never predictable, but they're pushing. See DeepSeek v3.2[0] which was just released a week ago.
And yes, humans always hunger for power, when there's some kind of value to be had. It's a bit hard to think of any human data which hasn't already been siphoned off in some way and stored somewhere, so there's just going to be nothing more to be gained after full automation. What happens then is whoever has or can gain access to means of production will survive, and those who can't, won't.
> The China thing is broadly just Nationalism rather than an actual threat at the moment
No the China thing is an imminent invasion of a 20 million person democracy. Should the US not defend the World Order in this case, we'll have completely thrown off world police role and the rest of the scores of irredentist countries around the globe are now free to conquer others as they see fit, and all the chaos that follows.
Tell us you didn't read the article without telling us you didn't read the article; the author says it's not the end of "work" but "jobs".
> with no reciprocal obligations.
The majority are coming around to feel office jobs making line go up are not sufficient reciprocal obligations relative to 12-13 year olds in textile factories ensuring you have clothing 996. So why value Excel and other keyboard experts?
By majority I mean the billions outside the US who have recovered from US imperialism of the latter 1900s and tire of being serfs for Wall-E culture of a smidge over 300 million.
When is the last time you did useful work for yourself rather than externalize it on Target?
How sad Americans have to grow up and live in reality and not some rhetorical hallucination induced by corporate propaganda.
BS, at this same moment we could feed the entire planet but don’t because some need to have multitudes more money than ever existed. That won’t change until humanity dies out
The possibility that we could reach nearly full automation has never been closer, BUT we are a long way off from it yet. Even if most of the white collar work is automated, we still don't have robots capable of doing everything at an acceptable price. I'm not going to waste time describing all the dystopian possibilities that would become possible if those robots were developed.
The anti-work crowd always paints a rosy picture of what life looks like without work. But there are regions scattered throughout the West where so-called abundance has manifested itself. Factory jobs that paid well were replaced with easy "service" jobs, and lots of people got on the dole. Lots of people, if not most, will not ascend into any higher form of actualization than getting high or drunk with their friends for years on end. Many have died from the rampant drug abuse we see everywhere.
Huxley's vision of abundance was accurate in this regard: people faced with abundance just did Soma and had casual sex with no higher aspirations. To maintain everyone's physical and mental health, and the gene pool, I expect that we will have to require people to do meaningful work after everything is automated. This stuff will likely have to be structured as a job market, because most people are not creative or independent enough to do anything interesting all alone.
"They haven’t seen the latest models that quietly chew through documents, write code, design websites, summarize legal contracts, and generate decent strategy decks faster than a middle manager can clear their throat.
They haven’t seen a model hold a complex conversation, remember context, suggest workflows, generate visuals, write scripts, and debug itself in one continuous flow."
You're absolutely right! I haven't seen these.
Hogwash. Find me a “lights out” factory. They don’t exist.
All your stuff is made by people. Often people with fancy machines, but people nonetheless. And the higher the degree of automation, the more non fungible skills you require of those people.
The pump in a vat of yogurt is cavitating. You can’t slow it down without endangering food safety. You can’t adjust the mix without affecting the final product. Somebody who understands all that needs to install a new impeller.
Stamped aircraft parts are coming off the line 500 microns thick. Somebody has to recognize that there’s a problem with the hydraulic cushion and fix it.
I could go on and on and on. There are few things I get ranty about on the internet, but pretending that physical world problems are solved by automation is one of them. You’re replacing a hard problem with another hard problem, with a side effect of higher productivity. Pretending Morlocks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away.
> Find me a “lights out” factory. They don’t exist.
"Inside China's 'dark factories' where robots run the production lines" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftY-MH5mdbw
"China’s Dark Factories: So Automated, They Don't Need Lights" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCBdcNA_FsI
Seriously? They show people on the floor within the first 30 seconds of the video. I guess it’s technically “lights out” if you make people work in the dark, but I meant, and the article implied, production without jobs.
Your job won't be replaced by AI, it'll be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI.
There is still a whole market for clothing; its just not led by people who use a loom.
Huh? The facilities guy at the local nationally distributed yogurt based product company just swaps out impellers when told by the machine as it identifies there is an issue. He has less skill than your typical HVAC guy, and zero interests in the nuance and zero input about 'best yogurt cavitating' practices.
The aircraft part is measured by Faro or some other tool. The person wielding the Faro just follows the QA instructions and marks if things are red/green. Another FARO type product measures the fixtures/etc for compliance. If they don't match, a fixtures consultant is brought in to make them match.
Other than those that happened to do the initial setup/machine/fixture construction, the people in the actual plant don't really have much non-fungible skills in your example, and they definitely don't have power/permission to go tweaking things using their personal non-fungible skills.
I’m confused about how you’ve characterized factory work. It’s nothing like the factories I’ve been in, so I’m assuming this is an imagined future state? Hope do you propose we get there?
My experience if anything is dated and historical 2010s era.
This post is AI sludge and by the third bullet list I couldn't keep reading. This is stuff I deeply resonate with but jesus christ please respect my time and don't drown me in extremely verbose prose goop.
Jokes on the article, I open it in Safari reader and use the Summarize (with AI) button.
What indicates that to you?
Lots of "it's not X. It's Y."
Bullet points I can forgive, it's a common blog post writing style. But the ranty prose here definitely has a whiff of silicon.
taps the sign:
"Humans do not exist to be economic assets. The economy exists to provide for humans"
The economy is an abstraction over humans interacting with eachother.
Not according to our current economic system.
In Capitalism, the economy exists to provide for Capital.
We can fix that. The usual method is war and/or revolution. See Piketty [0] for details.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...
The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
I think this completely ignores the role of government in the economy. By virtue of being born today, you are forced to participate in the economy. The government spends tax dollars in the economy, which it either collects from you, or spends on you, and the voting body has decided that, to some degree, the economy is indeed a charity.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves.
I'd disagree with the first part of that statement. Most people see themselves as good, and therefore see some level of responsibility for helping those that cannot provide for themselves.
> As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
Again, this ignores that the economy is, at least partially, structured by a government.
sorry i was born disabled, or purposely excluded from the economy due to societal discrimination
disabled how? you clearly can read and write
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
The problem that this has run into throughout history has been the existence of those who don't take kindly to rules that appear to be there just to push them aside.
An economy that chooses to exclude the majority of the population as "no longer needed" as so much dystopian AI-true-believer babble these days does is going to lead to some major issues when the excluded decide they don't want to simply be excluded.
Society historically does not help those that the economy leaves behind exclusively out of the goodness of its heart - it also does it for self-preservation.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c
You want a world where the streets are safe and clean, not choked with homeless people and corpses thereof. So, this “tough love” bullshit is not going to fly.
The slums of Mumbai are just a taste of what’s to come in America, at this rate.
Billionaires, take heed.
Yeah, jobs suck, and AI can do all kinds of things, but this really misunderstands...just about everything.
Pluribus is a more interesting meditation.
The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
This article misses the key problem with the end of jobs. How else are 98% of the human population going to get income? With the coming of drones and old-timey 1900s chemical weapons they are probably no longer equipped as a class to win a military contest over redistribution against the asset holders.
Much like replacing religion with nothing has turned out, replacing jobs with nothing is going to be bad at best.
> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
>> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
> As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
That's not a counter-example, it's just nit-picking on the phrasing and missing the point: the lawn-care people get their income from "those who do own appreciating assets," just with a middleman or two in between.
Who needs jobs if you have food and internet entertainment in abundance?
Who is paying for the food (including delivery or transportation) and various streaming services?
What food? You mean ultra processed garbage that will kill you?
A whole shit-ton of people in developed countries would not be happy with that, demonstrated by those:
1) choose not to simply coast on the social safety net, and seek out jobs for status and additional things than those. why do they do those when by historical standards they could be wildly comfortable without the bullshit work?
2) do coast (opting to just go on disability, say) but are generally extremely unhappy about it in ways that frequently cause problems for the rest of the people
3) opt out entirely from the social safety net and chose to try to live on the streets instead, whether for a desire for some sort of freedom or because of poor impulse control caused by addiction or similar (which also frequently leads to problems for the rest of the people)
Internet entertainment will be abundant on purpose.
Not sure about quality food.
Who said anything about quality? Preserved and processed foods are necessarily lower-quality but they sure are economically efficient.
Sufficient for you maybe
Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.
These don't magically appear - people have to create / store / distribute those things, and/or develop the science / engineering to do so.
Can you imagine someone willing to do those things because of some reason other than monetary gain, as it would be in OP's world? How many people currently stuck in Jobs would work toward accomplishing these things with the idea of ending world hunger, because they _want_ to do it, instead of having to do it because they have student loans and bills to pay?
I don't think there's anyone out there working on solving world hunger because they have loans and bills to pay. It isn't a monetarily profitable endeavor.
People have to have the buying power to support the chain you describe. If the buying power of a population vanishes, such as by being made superfluous, they get a large population reduction whether they like it or not.
And eventually all this will be primarily automated, with a few humans contributing because they love to develop things in science, engineering, etc.
Their point is there is not "nothing"
As an analogy imagine you had a 6 hour driving commute each day (3 each way)
Imagine if now you move next to the office.
Will it be bad you get those 6 hours back?
If 15->9 is good then 9->0 is even better!
The problem is adjusting to that at scale. Will we get addicts or people who never leave the home? Maybe.
That's a completely incorrect mischaracterisation of the analogy.
I'm not talking about replacing a block of time with nothing, people will still have 24 hours in the day. My worry is about replacing income with nothing, because most people don't have the power to seize any income that isn't freely available.
The public takes what they're offered and can't have anything that isn't on offer. If the offer of access to food is withdrawn, the public has no recourse.
Right lack of income has to be dealt with UBI, or worse handouts from big companies. Why do big companies hand out? Well... we get to a point where that is ther smarter thing to do than lose consumers altogether. The incentive to be rich is to have your ideas forfilled rather than to own a home and have security (as that can be provided for all).
If you think this is madness, the analogy (yes another) is you are playing uno with people you met. They have no money. You can say well never mind we wont play. Or you can just deal the cards because they are so cheap it costs you nothing just to do that. And that is more fun. This is what post scarcity could look like.
It's kind of like at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when some in the US were saying that the US government should just forgive mortgage payments so the landlords could forgive everyone's rent. Instead the US government gave businesses loans so they could pay their employees (even though they weren't able to work) so those employees could then pay their rent and buy food, etc. It was (perceived to be) better to inject the money into the system to keep the current system running, rather than turn off / forgive the major parts of the system.
PPP loans were the biggest scam and giveaway ever. Many “businesses” bought cars and houses
Under the K-shaped economy it's been reported extensively already that the consumption market share of the public is trending downwards with no side of stopping. The consumption numbers can be kept up entirely off a market adjustment for less food and water and more yachts.
Post-scarcity requires a political choice. Everybody with political power, regardless of affiliation or nation, stands to benefit from reducing the political power of others who may stand to make demands. The economically surplus humans can't make those demands upon the powerful if they aren't around.
This really hits, solidifies and expands on thoughts I've been having for a while now. So many refuse to see or acknowledge it, but we're quickly approaching a point of reckoning which will require a major overhaul of the current dominant economic system.
The labour for wage model is rapidly becoming obsolete for the many, and a way forward that doesn't necessitate people working in order to gain access to the necessities of - modern - living needs to be paved. Otherwise it'll be grim for the vast majority when global automation of value creation gets upwards of say 85%. It's already pretty grim for an appreciable, though still relatively limited, number.
I actually believe that the era of lives will come. But I can't wait for UBI. Nobody can't. Even if the era of jobs ends, for us who are living in this era, the event is not going to be a period but an ellipsis. I can't wait to see how it unfolds. Yet, I doubt that I would see the end happening in my lifetime.
Can’t read the article due to bandwidth. If the era of jobs is over, what’s going to support the masses of people who consume? Without those people, there’s no profit from making stuff. Star Trek looks great, but there’s a whole lot of time, politics and physics that has to occur to get there.
its not though... there is literally an infinite amount of work. If humans become 10,000x more efficient, then we still have infinite amount of work to do.
Not necessarily true. There are non-human bottlenecks to productivity, like energy, land area, available raw materials, etc. You're assuming humans can find ways to meaningfully contribute that do not bump up against any of those constraints. R&D is probably the only area not bottlenecked by one of the above out of the gate, and most humans are ill suited for that line of work.
> most humans are ill suited for that line of work.
Based on what? Certainly there are humans with crippling disabilities that remove them from pretty much any kind of work, but of the "normally functioning" population?
Most lack the necessary attention directed towards R&D as they're too busy living out other lives in other jobs. If that's what you mean, that is a fair point. But if those jobs went away as suggested earlier, they'd have nothing else to do but turn their attention towards R&D. That current world model wouldn't apply anymore.
> Based on what?
Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc. I get the argument that "the whole world would be different, so present data isn't applicable", but, if that's your argument, then it's totally unfalsifiable.
> Several decades of academic achievement data, psychology studies, etc.
Right. That much was obvious. But what does that mean in more detail? If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
> If you pick a random, normally capable, person off the street and give them everything they need to become successful in R&D, what ends up happening?
Don't we run that experiment on every moderately wealthy child on the planet? I can tell you that the hit rate there is definitely not 100%.
I don't know. You're the one who has studied the data, not me. What's the answer?
If you are asking about what I've seen anecdotally, which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us who is the subject matter expert between us, all those who were moderately wealthy children that I know have grown up into having success with R&D in at least some limited capacity. They haven't all dedicated their lives to R&D, but they've had no trouble being able to invent things when the situation necessitated it.
If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop. But, again, you're the expert among us here. I don't know much about it — that is why I'm asking you.
Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
> which is all you can expect of me given that I am not the one of us
Not sure why the snark is necessary. Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status. I'm not an expert, but the line for rich kids doesn't go to 100%.
> If they had more time to dedicate their life to it, I see no reason for why that would stop.
Because not everyone is a bottomless pit of ambition. Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
> Aside, R&D fundamentally isn't guaranteed to deliver fruit, so elaborate for us on how the research you spoke of differentiates between someone who is well suited to R&D work but never strikes gold due to the nature of the beast, and someone who cannot strike gold because they are straight up incapable as a person. That might help us communicate about this more effectively.
I'm speaking in generalities. Research is generally a race, and the smartest and hardest working generally win the race. Even if everyone's IQ and ambition shot up, there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
After that last paragraph, it isn't clear to me that you disagree with my core premise of "not everyone should do research".
> Not sure why the snark is necessary.
Not sure why you think a computer screen is giving you snark, but you do you.
> I'm not an expert
You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
> Its pretty easy to look up academic achievement stratified by socioeconomic status.
It may be, but no need to waste time sauntering off on another, rather uninteresting, subject. We're talking about R&D, not academic achievement. Stay focused, by friend.
> Most people, given the option, engage in leisure in their free time.
R&D is the leisure activity of many people. We'll leave your data sources to quantify exactly what that means, but it is clearly large enough to be a recognizable set of the population.
> Research is generally a race
It can be where you are trying to be first to build a moat around something that scales massively. But not all R&D scales, or even wants to scale. Despite your unquantified "generally" claim, it remains unclear if most R&D is even trying to scale. There are a lot of hobbyists out there carrying out R&D with no plans for it beyond doing something for themselves.
> there would still be a smarter and harder working subset of people.
There is seemingly no end to how much R&D is possible. I guess at some point there is a pinnacle of human achievement, but it seems highly unlikely that we'll reach that point in the next thousand years. Humans are pretty shortsighted — the people from the year 1200 would have never imagined digital computers being a thing — but when the time comes we always find something new to immerse our thoughts in.
So what if someone is smarter and harder working?
> You read through all of that data and research, as told earlier, and haven't become an expert...? Yeah right. No need to be so modest with me. Be proud of your achievements!
Okay. You seem upset, so I'll disengage. Have a great day!
Now you are under the impression that a computer screen is able to become upset? That's a new one.
Are you claiming to be a computer screen now? Hard to believe, but you're the expert on computer screens I guess.
Perhaps it was wrong to assume. How about you describe what you see and then, from that, we can decide what it is that you are interacting with.
No thank you.
Embarrassed to admit that it does, in fact, look like a computer screen, huh?
> Ackchyually, I am a computer screen. lololol
Okay bud.
As valuable as that diversion no doubt was for you, we still haven't established from your data sources how many people are involved in R&D in a hobby/pleasure/necessity capacity and how that compares to those who have chosen to dedicate their lives towards it.
If it is not in the data, you can say so, but it becomes impossible to know how the average person performs in R&D without it. Which then returns us to the original question: "Based on what?"
You wait right there and I'll go right a paper for you.
> I'll go right a paper for you.
Did it fall over?
Dang, brain fart. I guess you win.
I appreciate you wanting to reorient the paper for me, but I wouldn't call that a win. I was fine with how it was already at rest. If anything, I lose, as the time you put into that was time not spent getting beck to me on the questions I have about the actual topic at hand.
What were the questions again?
There was some stuff about you being a computer screen then asking me for sources then pointing out typos. Not really sure what you're asking me for at this point.
Jobs functions will change over time. Not everyone will be able to do research roles, but robotics is far away from replacing human hands in any meaningful way. Humans need plumbers, home construction, healthcare professionals [0], teachers, judges, relationship driven roles (sales, account managers).
[0] - if robotics/ai can replace healthcare, healthcare costs would drop to zero...
1) Everything you've listed has finite demand, so cannot provide the 10,000x. 2) Robotics cannot drive costs to zero. Robots cost money and require maintenance.
we don't see 10,000x efficiency increases in those job categories.
Sure but at some point if literally everything tangible and essentially every imaginable commercial service can be done by robots and also designed by AI better than a human, humans are basically relegated to what kind of work? Something like being the exotic dancer or baby factory for a robot factory heir, or maybe a meat sacrifice on a Ukraine-esque battlefield to fight the other group of capital holders.
It's not about the existence of work. It's about decoupling work from access to necessary resources.
UBI appears to work, in small-scale trials at least. We should try that out.
Has anyone figured out how to avoid everything mysteriously being repriced to account for UBI?
Increase Total Factor Productivity so that there's still just as much stuff to go around even with fewer people putting in less work to make the stuff.
Forget UBI and implement UBS instead. Income is an unnecessary artifact in accessing services.
Who or what will provide the services and how do you incentivize them or it?
In this hypothetical, AI / robotics automation I suppose.
AI+Robots. They need as much incentive as your laptop or phone to do as asked.
Every basic income trial I come across ends up being GBI rather than UBI. Which UBI trials are you looking at?
tbh I'm not sure of the difference between UBI and GBI.
Does it change the point? If we say "GBI appears to work, let's try that" is that different?
UBI sees everyone receive an income, typically with a clawback mechanism. GBI sees an income paid to only those who need the support (means-based). The difference is subtle, I suppose, but could have a dramatic effect on what the studies show — or maybe not, I don't know. The key takeaway here is that I've never been able to find a UBI study to contrast the numerous GBI studies I am familiar with against. You spoke of UBI studies so I was hoping you'd be able to share. But, it seems not.
I don't understand the questions you are asking at the end. Apologies for not having a good answer.
My point was in response to the parent "there's a lot of things that need to change before we get to Star Trek Federation economy", I pointed out that we have done trials on UBI that seemed to work, maybe we should try that.
I was wondering if your correction from UBI to GBI changes that point; these trials seem to work and solve at least part of the problem that this whole thread discusses, so maybe we should try that at a national scale. Does GBI invalidate that?
The question asked which UBI studies you were talking about in order to close my gap in being unable to find any. It is clear now that they don't exist, which is fine, but a bit disappointing as I would have loved to see them. There are GBI studies abound, but it seems nobody is willing to try UBI.
I hadn't gone that deeply into the studies to work out the exact thing they were testing.
The core thing that the studies have proven, I understand, is that if you guarantee people a basic living income, they don't sit around doing drugs and watching TV (or at least not for long). Which is usually the main objection from naysayers - the Theory X hypothesis that people are lazy and must be forced to do anything useful. And this is the thing that is disproved by these studies.
You seem more familiar with them, though, is that your reading too?
> Democratize the machines. Public or cooperative ownership of major AI and robotics infrastructure.
If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.
> We can choose to be the last generation that spent its best hours under fluorescent lights, pretending this was the height of civilization.
> Or we can be the first generation that looked at the robots walking onto the factory floor, looked at the models spinning up in the cloud, and said:
>> “Good. Take the work. We’ll take the world back.”
This article is stupid. How would Mr. Economically Irrelevant Former-worker "take the world back?" He just lost whatever power over that world that he had.
This is 15 pages of trying to put lipstick on a pig.
> If you haven't socialized the means of production when you could strike and make it stop, there's no way you're going to do so when it doesn't need you anymore.
Way I see it, there isn't really a choice here. Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die. And the fewer the survivors, the less relevant the purpose of said means. The means will always "need" people to validate its continued existence.
> Once humanity gets to the point where they are literally no longer needed to produce value due to automation, the means of production will be - logically - accessible to all who survive. Those who don't have access will die.
And that's the part that the AI optimists in these discussions skip over. They want to talk about this new and glorious AI-infested future, but not mention the holocaust that will happen to get there. For most people, the holocaust is the only relevant part, because they'll be destroyed in it [1]. The glorious future of abundance without work is one they'll never see [2].
[1] Most likely through grinding poverty and deprivation, which is how capitalism does it. Not gas chambers or anything.
[2] That future, like you said, a smaller group. I think eventually it will roughly consist of the nepo babies of some billionaires and a smallish group of Lumon-employees (the cultists, not the severed) who must worship them to survive.
Maybe I haven't encountered enough of these discussions, but I can't recall any where such was skipped over. More likely that they thought it obvious that humans would freely provide access, as there's no reason not to. Or because those deprived of access is always orders more than those with access, they'll just help themselves to the means, and the outcome will be the same. Unless those with access try to stubbornly continue the restriction. It's just a very illogical thought in an era of abundance, and so only really worth mentioning for completion.
Whatever people make goes to rent/mortgage, health insurance, auto insurance, etc. The zoning rules and strict enforcement in the West make it hard to start shanty towns across countries. What is left?
I like how every time this topic comes up everyone agrees it's absurd, yet a stubborn subset insist it's inevitable and going to happen soon.
Musk thinks it's inevitable so in all likelihood it is. And yes, I'll take his opinions over pretty much everyone else who has no track record of achieving anything meaningful.
If there is a world of plenty and humans have little to no role in that what else is there?
This line of reasoning is so flimsy and worryingly common. You do realize that there are plenty of accomplished people and subject experts who disagree with Elon, right?
> what else is there?
Doing things for enjoyment and/or interest.
I'll take the predictions of a straight up liar and near supervillain with... maybe less enthusiasm?
I have a similar faith in Musk to you. I was arguing with one of his detractors recently, who said something to the tune of "Musk said we would have humans on Mars by 2025. He's a grifter. He'll say anything to drum up investment." They had a table of people laughing along with them, until I asked how much money they had in the bank, and whether it equaled even one one-thousandth of Musk's net worth. That shut them up pretty fast.
Where do you people come from and why are you on HN?
HN has historically been very pro-Musk. The negativity is recent.
> They had a table of people laughing along with them, until I asked how much money they had in the bank, and whether it equaled even one one-thousandth of Musk's net worth. That shut them up pretty fast.
... Eh?
"But the lying fantasist is _rich_" is not really a particularly convincing argument. Have you considered that possibly they shut up to avoid having a protracted argument with one of his tedious fans?
>Camus talked about imagining Sisyphus happy. Maybe the point now is to take away the rock and see what he does when he’s no longer condemned to push it. Does he climb the mountain just for the view? Does he build an observatory? Does he lie in the grass and finally sleep?
Removing jobs is not like taking away the rock, it's more like making the rock way heavier.
Only God can make the rock disappear. And God is dead.
> We can choose to be the last generation that spent its best hours under fluorescent lights, pretending this was the height of civilization.
Well, if the work under the fluorescent lights is what allowed us to end the era of jobs, then maybe it is "a" height of civilization?
We're at the bargaining stage now.
Well, it looks like the 90% plus of wealth hoarding just got a whole lot more unstable. Machines will do everything and the jobless have nothing to do but sever power lines.
Is nuclear power safe from assault? I dunno. Visit Chernobyl and see.
If an even greater concentration of wealth is to lead to mass destruction/revolution, I advise a more even distribution.
Note to oligarchs: a post-apocalyptic world is no fun. Not even for you in your bunkers.
If you are don’t station troop at nuclear facilities, then no they are not safe from assault.
It does not matter how many people you have against a sea of automated drone factories and billions of drones. The war against Ukraine is primarily a drone war
The buildings are hardened against damage, but the facilities are only surrounded by chainlink fence. A small group seize any power plant and force a shutdown.
Drones would be great for taking out substations.
> Note to oligarchs: a post-apocalyptic world is no fun. Not even for you in your bunkers.
It's amusing to me that oligarchs don't seem to understand that if the economy goes to hell, their private security forces will just leave (or worse!). What do they think they will pay salaries with? Bitcoin? Do they really think an army of robot dogs is going to protect them?
Warlords exist in the poorest of economies. They have made the calculation that they should hedge for collapse and attempt to establish themselves for that situation.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Do they really think an army of robot dogs is going to protect them?
Why would anyone think otherwise?
Because they knew Snow Crash was fiction?
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Rat_Things_(Snow_Crash)
15 guns, and what do I get? [...] Sold my soul to the company habitat.
its called universal basic income
its inevitable tbh
It's the choice from manna[0] all over again.
0: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
thank you for that read
Yeah, the first time I read it, it was a real eye-opener.
The power of science fiction!
Is this end also intertwined with the end of consumerism? I was waiting for that connection in the article, but failed to find it.
All you need is a phone and lit TikTok feed. Just like in WALL·E
Also, what about stock options and getting vested? Some companies can offer tasty carrots. It's not always about the stick.
Anyone who has ever started their own business knows how hard (and rewarding) it can be- but you're just creating your own job. Nothing wrong with that. It is one of the best experiences in full accountability, but it's a job.
>Anyone who talks with certainty about 2030 is either lying or selling something.
Yes
>The era of jobs is ending
What are you selling.
For a fictional look at this see:
https://marshallbrain.com/manna
Before opening the link I thought this would be a post about Apple and the end of the Steve Jobs era.
If humans are not needed anymore and they have no job, thus no income, then who is spinning the consumption wheel? Feels to me like capitalism is shortcutting itself by its own success.
Capitalism was never sustainable at any point, and so never really successful (well, depending on one's measure of "success"). The reality of that unsustainability is just being increasingly accelerated.
Great article to read as I sit down at my work computer on a Sunday to do pre-work and prep to make the rest of the week go more smoothly.
I mean, would I like the article to be correct? Gods yes I would. Jobs suck, and the mandate of “work = survival” means you get a whole bunch of shitty personalities arbitrarily holding back progress in the name of personal wealth or power; the end of jobs would mean those of us who approach our professions with passion and love can flatly eject the dead weight insisting that we schedule progress to a future fiscal year’s backlog, instead of just doing what we love, when we want to.
That being said, do I think it’ll happen? No, I don’t, for the simple reason that we still cannot fundamentally get a plurality of society to agree - on any conceivable level - that every human is entitled to and guaranteed shelter, nutritious foodstuffs, healthcare, and education. It’s 2025, we’re literally destroying resources to drive up profit margins and investment returns instead of dispersing surplus appropriately, and yet anyone who mentions this is slandered as a “socialist” and ostracized.
So instead, I fret that what will happen is the cementing of a two-tiered society indefinitely: one of immense wealth who owns the securities, the land, the datacenters that makes the world work, and a serf class who must engage with these ever-more-expensive systems for the gains of Capital, including via increasingly precarious gig work instead of reliable, structural jobs.
And I think folks roundly dismissing these sorts of posts as “unrealistic” just don’t appreciate how far and how fast we’ve gone from “humans have to engage in subsistence farming” to an interconnected global marketplace and digitized society. We have quite literally thrown out the “status quo” dozens of times since the end of Feudalism, and this time is no different.
Those who dare to dream big are often the victors of such profound change, provided they can craft a message relatable to the populace.
And a message of, “you don’t need a job anymore because necessities got so expensive that governments made them part of tax dollars, and are therefore free to live where you want, do what you want, and live an authentic life” is quite compelling to folks who have struggled harder for less and less their entire lives.
> a serf class
Not possible once we pass a some point in global automation, say (arbitrarily) 95%. The financial flows would've ceased to exist by then with the vast majority of humans being unable to contribute value, and hence having no earned income to participate in markets. And there's no deliberate prevention or slowing as the race is global and highly competitive at the political level (the US is very afraid of China getting (too far) ahead).
The China thing is broadly just Nationalism rather than an actual threat at the moment. Even China has acknowledged it by reigning in AI research and excess in favor of pursuing function and utility, leaving the US to do as we do best: throw money at every conceivable idea, and bailout those with the most economic or political clout when the bubble pops or fire erupts.
Also, I don’t think you fully appreciate the distance to which humans in power will scheme to preserve power long past the point of its utility. If future AI needs organic human data to improve, then we will be turned into data generation machines with money granted based on the quality, uniqueness, or importance of said data - which is kinda what Capitalism is already doing, if you squint a bit. Those systems, once entrenched, will survive long past the point of necessity provided the populace as a whole doesn’t become aware of that fact. After all, just look at the growing political extremism as more folks realize that not only is the current social contract irreparably broken (all work, no homes, no stability or security with which to take chances for most folks), but that current political mechanisms and institutions built to serve it are similarly unnecessary. It’s partly why, I suspect, Capital is latching so hard onto the idea that AI is their exit strategy, as it means their assets will continue appreciating in value along with their net worth even as the rest of the planet crumbles and burns around them - ensuring their safety, or so they think.
My point is: the future is unknowable, and you should’t underestimate the human desire to humiliate and enslave others to their will by any means necessary.
There's a lot of function and utility in improving on LLMs though, and I don't think they're actually reining in anything. Releases may sometimes slow since discoveries in research are never predictable, but they're pushing. See DeepSeek v3.2[0] which was just released a week ago.
And yes, humans always hunger for power, when there's some kind of value to be had. It's a bit hard to think of any human data which hasn't already been siphoned off in some way and stored somewhere, so there's just going to be nothing more to be gained after full automation. What happens then is whoever has or can gain access to means of production will survive, and those who can't, won't.
[0] https://xcancel.com/deepseek_ai/status/1995452646459858977
> The China thing is broadly just Nationalism rather than an actual threat at the moment
No the China thing is an imminent invasion of a 20 million person democracy. Should the US not defend the World Order in this case, we'll have completely thrown off world police role and the rest of the scores of irredentist countries around the globe are now free to conquer others as they see fit, and all the chaos that follows.
AI slop. Flagged.
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Ah yes, if only our perfect beautiful souls were unchained from the travails of physical reality.
If only the resources to sustain our meatsuits were provided by Someone Else, with no reciprocal obligations.
Tell us you didn't read the article without telling us you didn't read the article; the author says it's not the end of "work" but "jobs".
> with no reciprocal obligations.
The majority are coming around to feel office jobs making line go up are not sufficient reciprocal obligations relative to 12-13 year olds in textile factories ensuring you have clothing 996. So why value Excel and other keyboard experts?
By majority I mean the billions outside the US who have recovered from US imperialism of the latter 1900s and tire of being serfs for Wall-E culture of a smidge over 300 million.
When is the last time you did useful work for yourself rather than externalize it on Target?
How sad Americans have to grow up and live in reality and not some rhetorical hallucination induced by corporate propaganda.
> Tell us you didn't read the article
This is false.
> the author says it's not the end of "work" but "jobs".
Yes, with the distinction being that "jobs" are done because they're useful and "work" that isn't a "job" is for personal spiritual fulfillment.
BS, at this same moment we could feed the entire planet but don’t because some need to have multitudes more money than ever existed. That won’t change until humanity dies out
Famines are caused by corrupt and ineffective governments, including armed conflicts. Not by lack of money or wealth inequality.
Corruption == wealth inequality
The possibility that we could reach nearly full automation has never been closer, BUT we are a long way off from it yet. Even if most of the white collar work is automated, we still don't have robots capable of doing everything at an acceptable price. I'm not going to waste time describing all the dystopian possibilities that would become possible if those robots were developed.
The anti-work crowd always paints a rosy picture of what life looks like without work. But there are regions scattered throughout the West where so-called abundance has manifested itself. Factory jobs that paid well were replaced with easy "service" jobs, and lots of people got on the dole. Lots of people, if not most, will not ascend into any higher form of actualization than getting high or drunk with their friends for years on end. Many have died from the rampant drug abuse we see everywhere.
Huxley's vision of abundance was accurate in this regard: people faced with abundance just did Soma and had casual sex with no higher aspirations. To maintain everyone's physical and mental health, and the gene pool, I expect that we will have to require people to do meaningful work after everything is automated. This stuff will likely have to be structured as a job market, because most people are not creative or independent enough to do anything interesting all alone.