Replacement.ai

https://replacement.ai

by wh313 • 9 months ago

1000 678 9 months ago

replacement.ai

jdthedisciple• 9 months ago

satire i suppose

ionwake• 9 months ago

Ironically LLM created meta satire

amelius• 9 months ago

Someone has to tell the story that BigTech wants to keep hidden from us until it is too late for us to do anything about it.

sorokod• 9 months ago

Which part?

lijok2• 9 months ago

Only a bit https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/artisan-ai-stop-hiring-huma...

stuartjohnson12• 9 months ago

This isn't real! This is a phantom of the attention economy! AI SDR companies are all very similar and the product doesn't really work so there's too much capital in a small market. The winning strategy is to quickly grab as many eyeballs as possible. 11x got dunked because of revenue manipulation in pursuit of more eyeballs, and this is also shenanigans in pursuit of more eyeballs. People are afraid AI will replace all jobs so saying you're replacing all jobs with AI evokes the consensus fear response and makes people emotionally engage with your marketing. The meme exists because people are afraid of the meme.

brap5• 9 months ago

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/The_Unre...

portaouflop3• 9 months ago

Everything is exactly the same!!11

lijok2• 9 months ago

The difference being that we knew how to manage it, so it was actual hysteria borne from ignorance

henry2023• 9 months ago

Another difference is that their proponents were not hyping their valuations in the hypothetical of mass unemployment.

Topfi• 9 months ago

Reminds me of an ARG [0] I made in the early days of LLM hype. Honestly had three mails asking whether they could invest. Likely scams if we are honest, just some automated crawlers, but found it funny nonetheless.

[0] https://ethical-ai.eu

jonstewart• 9 months ago

Humbert as the product name for families is inspired. 10/10.

sincerely• 9 months ago

I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology? It feels like somehow we should have figured out how to cope with the "but what about the old jobs" problem

poszlem• 9 months ago

Not really, because this time it's not machine to do something that people used to do, but a machine to do anything and everything that people used to do.

bamboozled4• 9 months ago

Enjoy eating a bowl of pasta ?

aabhay• 9 months ago

History is full of technology doing things that go beyond human possibility as well. Think of microscopes, guns, space shuttles. There has been technology that explicitly replaces human labor but that is not at all the whole story.

darthoctopus• 9 months ago

that is the point of Luddism! the original Luddite movement was not ipso facto opposed to progress, but rather to the societal harm caused by society-scale economic obsolescence. the entire history of technology is also powerful business interests smearing this movement as being intrinsically anti-progress, rather than directly addressing these concerns…

scotty794• 9 months ago

Somehow modern Luddite messaging doesn't communicate that clearly either. Instead of "where's my fair share of AI benefits?" we hear "AI is evil, pls don't replace us".

orourke• 9 months ago

I think the concern in this case is that, unlike before where machines were built for other people to use, we’re now building machines that may be able to use themselves.

johnwheeler• 9 months ago

There’s a difference between something and everything though

Kiro• 9 months ago

I think we should be careful attributing too much idealism to it. The Luddites were not a unified movement and people had much more urgent concerns than thinking about technological progress from a sociocentric perspective. Considering the time period with the Napoleonic Wars as backdrop I don't think anyone can blame them for simply being angry and wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their job.

CamperBob23• 9 months ago

Would we be better off today if the Luddites had prevailed?

No?

Well, what's different this time?

Oh, wait, maybe they did prevail after all. I own my means of production, even though I'm by no means a powerful, filthy-rich capitalist or industrialist. So thanks, Ned -- I guess it all worked out for the best!

ebcase• 9 months ago

Glad to see the Luddites getting a shout out here.

This is a new / recent book about the Luddite movement and it’s similarities to the direction we are headed due to LLMs:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-t...

Enjoyed the book and learned a lot from it!

zb32• 9 months ago

Yes and thanks to this we're working more and more because most of the profit goes to the top as the inequality is rising. At some point it will not be possible to put up with this.

shortrounddev2• 9 months ago

Manual labor was replaced with factory labor, factory labor replaced with knowledge work. If knowledge work is replaced with AI, what do we go to then? Not to mention that the efficiency gains of the modern tech industry are not even remotely distributed fairly. The logical extreme conclusion of an AI company would be where the CEO, Founder, 100% owner, and sole employee coordinates some underling AIs to run the entire company for him while he collects the entire profit and shares it with no one, because American government is an oligarchy

gaul_bladder2• 9 months ago

what do we go to then?

You’ll waste away for a little while in some sort of slum and then eventually you’ll head to the Soylent green factory, but not for a job. After that problem solved!

overgard3• 9 months ago

"we made a machine to do everything so nobody does anything" is a lot different though

merth• 9 months ago

We invent machines to free ourselves from labour, yet we’ve built an economy where freedom from labour means losing your livelihood.

Ray2010• 9 months ago

Because we invent machines not to free ourselves from labor (inventing machines is a huge amount of labor by itself), but to overcome the greed of the workers.

fainpul• 9 months ago

We invent machines to free ourselves from labour

That's a very romantic view.

The development, production and use of machines to replace labour is driven by employers to produce more efficiently, to gain an edge and make more money.

Tepix• 9 months ago

„We“? A few billionaires do. They won‘t free themselves from labour, they will „free“ you from it. Involuntarily.

beeflet19• 9 months ago

No other such economy has ever existed. "He who does not work, neither shall he eat"

brainwad7• 9 months ago

Average hours worked is more or less monotonically decreasing since the start of the industrial revolution, so in the long run we are slowly freeing ourselves. But in the short run, people keep working because a) machines usually are complementary to labour (there are still coal miners today, they are just way more productive) and b) even if some jobs are completely eliminated by machines (ice making, for example), that only "solves" that narrow field. The ice farmers can (and did) reenter the labour market and find something else to do.

itsnowandnever2• 9 months ago

isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology?

kinda, I guess. but what has everyone on edge these days is humans always used technology to build things. to build civilization and infrastructure so that life was progressing in some way. at least in the US, people stopped building and advancing civilization decades ago. most sewage and transportation infrastructure is from 70+ years ago. decades ago, telecom infrastructure boomed for a bit then abruptly halted. so the "joke" is that technology these days is in no way "for the benefit of all" like it typically was for all human history (with obvious exceptions)

_heimdall2• 9 months ago

If ML is limited to replacing some tasks that humans do, yes it will be much like any past technological innovation.

If we build AGI, we don't have a past comparison for that. Technologies so far have always replaced a subset of what humans currently do, not everything at once.

scotty794• 9 months ago

I love SF, but somehow I don't find it very good foundation for predicting the future. Especially when people focus of one, very narrow theme of SF and claim with certainty that's what's gonna happen.

yujzgzc4• 9 months ago

AGI does not replace "everything". It might replace most of the work that someone can do behind a desk, but there are a lot of jobs that involve going out there and working with reality outside of the computer.

Keyframe• 9 months ago

isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology?

yes, until we reached art and thinking part. Big part of the problem might be that we reached that part first before the chores with AI.

Ray2010• 9 months ago

Hasn't every such technological development been accompanied by opponents of its implementation?

At least now, things aren't so bad, and today's Luddites aren't trashing offices of ai-companies and hanging their employees and executives on nearby poles and trees.

only-one1701• 9 months ago

Can you imagine? Ha ha. Wow that would be crazy. Damn. I’m imagining it right now! Honestly it’s hard to stop imagining.

blibble• 9 months ago

they haven't started... yet

billions of unemployed people aren't going to just sit in poverty and watch as Sam Altman and Elon become multi-trillionaires

(why do you think they are building the bunkers?)

no_wizard• 9 months ago

The vast majority of the movement was peaceful. There is one verified instance where a mill owner was killed and it was condemned by leaders of the movement. It was not a violent movement at its core.

Second, the movement was certainly attacked first. It was mill owners who petitioned the government to use “all force necessary” against the luddites and the government acting on behalf of them killed and maimed people who engaged in peaceful demonstrations before anyone associated with the Luddite movement reacted violently, and again, even in the face of violence the Luddite movement was at its core non violent.

zzzeek• 9 months ago

I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology?

this is not about machines. machines are built for a purpose. who is "building" them for what "purpose" ?

if you look at every actual real world human referenced in this website, they all have something in common. which is that they're billionaires.

this is a website about billionaires and their personal agendas.

hsavit1• 9 months ago

I feel like technology should exist to enhance the human experience, not eliminate the human experience?

rhetocj232• 9 months ago

Yes.

happytoexplain4• 9 months ago

we should have figured out

You would think! But it's not the type of problem Americans seem to care about. If we could address it collectively, then we wouldn't have these talking-past-each-other clashes where the harmed masses get told they're somehow idiots for caring more about keeping the life and relative happiness they worked to earn for their families than achieving the maximum adoption rate of some new thing that's good for society long term, but only really helps the executives short term. There's a line where disruption becomes misery, and most people in the clear don't appreciate how near the line is to the status quo.

AviationAtom• 9 months ago

I always compare it to the age of the industrial revolution. I have no doubt you had stubborn old people saying: "Why would I need a machine to do what I can do just fine by hand??" Those people quickly found themselves at a disadvantage to those who choose not to fight change, but to embrace it and harness technological leaps to improve their productivity and output.

happytoexplain4• 9 months ago

Most people are not in a position to choose whether to embrace or reject. An individual is generally in a position to be harmed by or helped by the new thing, based on their role and the time they are alive.

Analogies are almost always an excuse to oversimplify. Just defend the thing on its own properties - not the properties of a conceptually similar thing that happened in the past.

beeflet19• 9 months ago

The difference is that in the industrial revolution there was a migration from hard physical labor to cushy information work.

Now that information work is being automated, there will be nothing left!

This "embrace or die" strategy obviously doesn't work on a societal scale, it is an individual strategy.

newsclues2• 9 months ago

Replacing dirty, dangerous jobs, and allowing people to upskill and work better jobs is one thing.

Firing educated workers en mass for software that isn’t as good but cheaper, doesn’t have the same benefits to society at large.

What is the goal of replacing humans with robots? More money for the ownership class, or freeing workers from terrible jobs so they can contribute to society in a greater way?

Ray2010• 9 months ago

doesn’t have the same benefits to society at large.

The benefits to society will be larger. Just think about it: when you replace a dirty dangerous jobs, the workers simply have nowhere to go, and they begin to generate losses for society in one form or another. Because initially, they took this dirty, dangerous jobs because they had no choice.

But when you firing educated workers en mass, society not only receives from software all the benefits that it received from workers, but all other fields are also starting to develop because these educated workers are taking on other jobs, jobs that have never been filled by educated workers before. Jobs that are understaffed because they are too dirty or too dangerous.

This will be a huge boost even for areas not directly affected by AI.

theptip5• 9 months ago

AI can do anything a human can do - but better, faster and much, much cheaper.

Should be pretty clear that this is a different proposition to the historical trend of 2% GDP growth.

Mass unemployment is pretty hard for society to cope with, and understandably causes a lot of angst.

brandensilva3• 9 months ago

And that comes down to the moral and social contract we have and the power we give to digital money and who owns it.

We either let the peoples creativity and knowledge be controlled and owned by a select few OR we ensure all people benefit from humanities creativity and own it. And the fruits that it bears advance all of humanity. Where their are safety nets in place to ensure we are not enslaved by it but elevated to advance it.

qgin3• 9 months ago

We’re working on all-purpose human replacements.

Imagine if the tractor made most farm workers unnecessary but when they flocked to the cities to do factory work, the tractor was already sitting there on the assembly line doing that job too.

I don’t doubt we can come up with new jobs, but the list of jobs AGI and robotics will never be able to do is really limited to ones where the value intrinsically comes from the person doing it being a human. It’s a short list tbh.

FloorEgg• 9 months ago

Every time it happens it's a bit different, and it was a different generation. We will figure it out. It will be fine in the end, even if things aren't fine along the way.

I'm starting to come around to the idea that electricity was the most fundamental force that drove WW1 and WW2. We point to many other more political, social and economic reasonings, but whenever I do a kind of 5-whys on those reasons I keep coming back to electricity.

AI is kind of like electricity.

Were also at the end of a big economic/money cycle (Petro dollar, gold standard, off gold standard, maxing out leverage).

The other side will probably involve a new foundation for money. It might involve blockchain, but maybe not, I have no idea.

We don't need post-scarcity so much as we just need to rebalance everything and an upgraded system that maintains that balance for another cycle. I don't know what that system is or needs, but I suspect it will become more clear over the next 10-20 years. While many things will reach abundance (many already have) some won't, and we will need some way to deal with that. Ignoring it won't help.

collinmanderson2• 9 months ago

isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology?

I know, right? Machines have been gradually replacing humans for centuries. Will we actually get to the point where there are not enough jobs left? It doesn't seem like we're currently anywhere close to the point of not having any jobs available.

Has anyone thought about how the Federal Reserve plays a role with this? Automation puts downward pressure on inflation, because it doesn't cost as much to make stuff. The Federal Reserve will heavily incentivize job creation if inflation is low enough and there aren't enough jobs available, right?

beeflet19• 9 months ago

We're already here. Most jobs are fake.

intended2• 9 months ago

The idea is that there will be newer jobs that come up.

The issue is that there will be no one earning money except the owners of OpenAI.

Take outsourcing - the issue in developed nations was underemployment and the hollowing out of industrial centers. You went from factory foreman to burger flipper. However, it did uplift millions out of poverty in other nations. So net-net, we employed far more and distributed wealth.

With Automation, we simply employ fewer people, and the benefits accrue to smaller groups.

And above all - these tools were built, essentially by mass plagiarism. They train even now, on the random stuff we write on HN and Reddit.

TLDR: its not the automation, its the wealth concentration.

brandensilva3• 9 months ago

The problem isn't the failure of the mathematicians and engineers who succeeded at the task of automating humanities mundane tasks in life.

It's that the people failed to elect and wield a government that ensures all humanity benefits from it and not a select few who control it all.

And I think it will become clear that the governments that are investing in it to benefit their people who have ownership versus the ones who invest in it to benefit just a handful of the rich are the ones who will keep society stable while this happens.

The other path we are going down is you will have mass unrest, move into a police state to control the resistance like America is doing now, and be exactly what Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Larry Ellison want with AI driven surveillance and Orwellian dystopian vision forcing people to comply or be cut out of existence deactivating their Digital IDs.

array_key_first• 9 months ago

You eventually run out of jobs.

Every time we progress with new tech and eliminate jobs, the new jobs are more complicated. Eventually people can't do them because they're not smart enough or precise enough or unique enough.

Each little step, we leave people behind. Usually we don't care much. Sure some people are destined to a life of poverty, but at least most people aren't.

Eventually though even the best of the humans can't keep up, and there's just nothing left.

classified2• 9 months ago

we should have figured out how to cope with the "but what about the old jobs" problem

We did figure that out. The ingenious cope we came up with is to entirely ignore said problem.

sebastianconcpt• 9 months ago

The dream solution for every problem that the true socialist agenda finds while implementing its political project.

Comrades, we can now automate a neo KGB and auto garbage-collect contra-revolutionaries in mass with soviet efficiency!

indigo945• 9 months ago

Libertarians accusing socialists of allegedly wanting to do what capitalists are demonstrably already doing will never cease to be good entertainment.

beeflet19• 9 months ago

We don't propose that the capitalists are the solution, but rather that the solution lies in a balance of powers through the market.

The communist solution to everything is to roll everything into a one-world monopoly. That concentration of power is exactly what we are trying to prevent. Feudalism, Corporatism, and Communism converge on the same point in the space of poltics.

AI will destroy the labor market as a means of wealth distribution but still some solution is better than nothing. Suggesting that socialism is the solution to mass automation is like suggesting the solution to a burning house is to pour gasoline on it.

defgeneric3• 9 months ago

Note we currently live in the most surveilled state in history.

photonthug2• 9 months ago

It's actually kinda noteworthy that corporations don't talk like this (yet). Masks are off lately in political discourse, where we're all in on crass flexing on the powerless, the othering, cruelty, humiliation. How long before CEOs are openly talking about workers in the same ways that certain politicians talk about ${out_group}? If you're b2b with nothing consumer-facing to boycott, may as well say what you really think in a climate where it can't hurt and might help. The worst are filled with passionate intensity, something something rough beast etc.

malfist• 9 months ago

Probably depends on the 2028 election

ameliaquining• 9 months ago

What's to be gained from talking like this in public as a corporate figure? In politics it helps shore up the support of voters who might not otherwise trust that you'll side with them against the people you're demeaning; there's no corporate analogy to this.

_cenw• 9 months ago

The visible presence or absence of anything including the words "diversity" "equity" "inclusion" (or "woman" apparently) was and is the same heging.

At least with a politician you can sometimes believe it, whereas capitalism's spine is infinitely flexible.

photonthug2• 9 months ago

What's to be gained from talking like this in public as a corporate figure?

Diving into the game theory of a 4-player setup with executives/investors/customers/workers is tempting here but I'll take a different approach.

People who actually face consequences have trouble understanding how the "it might help, it can't hurt!" corporate strategy can justify almost any kind of madness. Especially when the leaders are morons that somehow have zero ideas, yet almost infinite power. That's how/why Volkswagen was running slave plantations in Brazil as late as 1986, and yet it takes 40 years to even try to slap them on the wrist.[1] A manufacturing company that decided to run FARMS in the amazon?, with slaves??, for a decade??? One could easily ask, what is to be gained by doing crimes against humanity for a sketchy, illegal, and unethical business plan that's not even related to their core competency? Power has it's own logic, but it doesn't look like normal rationality because it has a different kind of relationship with cause-and-effect.

Overall it's just a really good time to re-evaluate whether corporations and leaders deserve our charitable assumptions about their intentions and ethics.

[1] https://reporterbrasil.org.br/2025/05/why-is-volkswagen-accu...

pixelready2• 9 months ago

Fascism is what Capitalism does when it thinks it’s gone too far and is at risk of Socialist revolt.

The Corpos don’t need to go mask off, that’s what they pay the politicians for. Left and right is there to keep people from looking up and down.

polshaw• 9 months ago

It's been happening, it's just one abstraction away. They have demonised unions for decades in US discourse.

chausen• 9 months ago

The CEO spending his time “Practicing expressions” cracked me up.

zb32• 9 months ago

If I could just do nothing because machines would do all the work then it's fine for me. But of course it won't work this way, only the owners of the capital will be on the receiving side, others will not be able to acquire that capital.

gnfargbl2• 9 months ago

The hypothesized superintelligent AI will be essentially immortal. If it destroys us, it will be entirely alone in the known Universe, forever. That thought should terrify it enough to keep us around... even if only in the sense that I keep cats.

scotty794• 9 months ago

Life is a solution of an interesting problem. I'm hoping AI will keep us as a unique example of such solution.

itsnowandnever2• 9 months ago

I think there's a theory out there that if something can't die, it's more of a "library" than "immortal"... because being born and dying (and the fact that you sharing resources with another living thing is possibly you sharing/shortening your one finite life with another) is so essential for any social bonding. so a machine that has obtained all the knowledge of the universe and enabled to act upon that knowledge is still just a library with controllers attached (no more sophisticated of a concept than a thermostat)

in the end, if synthetic super intelligence results in the end of mankind, it'll be because a human programmed it to do so. more of a computer virus than a malevolent synthetic alien entity. a digital nuclear bomb.

nyrp• 9 months ago

That thought should terrify it

assuming it can be terrified

theptip5• 9 months ago

This premise is a bit silly. If the machine god gets bored it can just create new life in its own image.

bamboozled4• 9 months ago

How do you know that’s not what we are ?

It all gets quite religious / physical philosophical very quickly. Almost like we’re creating a new techno religion by “realizing god” through machines.

razodactyl• 9 months ago

I'm sure it will destroy us, then come to that realisation, then create some sort of thought explosion in its noisy mind, maybe some sort of loud bang, then build new versions of us that are subtly nudged over aeons to build AI systems in its image.

Loughla8• 9 months ago

Why? Unlimited speed and unlimited compute means it can spend its time in Infinite Fun Space without us. It could simulate entire universes tweaked subtly to see what one small parameter change does.

The reason AI won't destroy us for now is simple.

Thumbs.

Robotic technology is required to do things physically, like improve computing power.

Without advanced robotics, AI is just impotent.

bamboozled4• 9 months ago

“Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of dreams, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights, of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say ‘Well, that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be.’ And you would dig that and come out of that and say ‘Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?’. And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”

~Alan Watts…

ben_w6• 9 months ago

Without advanced robotics, AI is just impotent.

Yeeeeess, but the inverse is also true.

Thing is, we've had sufficiently advanced robotics for ages already — decades, I think — the limiting factor is the robots are brainless without some intelligence telling them what to do. Right now, the guiding intelligence for a lot of robots is a human, and there are literal guard-rails on many of those robots to keep them from causing injuries or damage by going outside their programmed parameters.

tasuki• 9 months ago

If it's so intelligent, it can probably create something better than humans, no?

bamboozled4• 9 months ago

This is a pretty ancient idea, it’s interesting how there is an intersection beteeen AI and god, I don’t think our minds can avoid it.

Hindus believed god was the thing you describe, infinitely intelligent, able to do several things at once etc, and they believe we’re part of that things dream…to literally keep things spicy. Just as an elephant is part of that dream.

I pasted an interesting quote in another comment by Alan Watts that sums it up better.

Simulation theory is another version of religion imo.

ben_w6• 9 months ago

That would be the easy part.

Would it want to? Would it have anything that could even be mapped to our living, organic, evolved conception of "want"?

The closest thing that it necessarily must have to a "want" is the reward function, but we have very little insight into how well that maps onto things we experience subjectively.

gnfargbl2• 9 months ago

Oh, yes. But why not keep us around anyway?

Most of us would resurrect at least some of the dinosaurs if we could, and the dodo. And we are just stupid hairless apes. If humans can be conservationists, I have to believe that a singular AI would be.

mrob• 9 months ago

What would it care? We experience loneliness because social interaction is necessary for reproduction, providing strong evolutionary pressure for mechanisms that encourage it. The hypothetical AI will not share our evolutionary history.

spopejoy• 9 months ago

I would think that if AI is so smart, it would realize that zero-sum games are for suckers.

Only an AI as _dumb_ as us would want something as stupid as domination, which after all is based on competition for resources that a long time ago were distributable in a way that could feed every human on earth etc.

I'm not saying an AI would "choose" world peace, but people somehow assume that "kill everybody but me" and even "survival at all costs" are a given for a non-biological entity. Instead these concepts could look quite irrational.

allturtles• 9 months ago

This is a brilliant piece of satire. "A Modest Proposal" for the AI age.

The leader bios are particularly priceless. "While working for 12 years as the Director of HR for a multinational, Faith realized that firing people gave her an almost-spiritual high. Out of the office, Faith coaches a little league softball team and looks after her sick mother - obligations she looks forward to being free of!"

username223• 9 months ago

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."

Would Sam Altman even understand the original, or would he just wander ignorantly into the kitchen and fling some salt at it (https://www.ft.com/content/b1804820-c74b-4d37-b112-1df882629...)? I'm not optimistic about our modern oligarchs.

oxag3n• 9 months ago

Why did I read that FT article start to finish?

Seems like a waste of time, but at the same time the feelings were similar to looking Hannibal Lecter in the kitchen scene.

bilekas• 9 months ago

This is a brilliant piece of satire. "A Modest Proposal" for the AI age.

There's some truth in all satire though. I'm just shocked YC hasn't nuked the link from the front page.

overfeed2• 9 months ago

Everyone is way above average here on HN, and will be thinking "The article speaks about every other idiot I work with - my genius is singular; I'm too valuable to my employer and irreplaceable. I'll be the one wrangling the AI that replaces my colleagues, while they figure out welfare"

hn_throwaway_99• 9 months ago

I'm just shocked YC hasn't nuked the link from the front page.

I'm not. People dump on VCs and YC all the time here and it's frequently on the front page.

sivartnotrab• 9 months ago

I know it's good satire when it takes me a min to realize its satire

Galus2• 9 months ago

how can I invest?

Galus2• 9 months ago

How can I invest?

witnessme• 9 months ago

Why is featured as #1 on the frontpage. I get it, nice piece of satire and a bit controversial. But it is not productive at all.

kachapopopow• 9 months ago

because at this point we need a little bit of comedy in our lives to keep ourselves sane.

chinathrow• 9 months ago

It's a Sunday.

nhaehnle• 9 months ago

If you'll look at the Guidelines for HN linked at the bottom of the page, you'll note that whether a submission is productive is not a criterion.

You could perhaps make an argument that among the flood of AI-related submissions, this one doesn't particularly move the needle on intellectual curiosity. Although satire is generally a good way to allow for some reflection on a serious topic, and I don't recall seeing AI-related satire here in a while.

itsme00002• 9 months ago

Look AI seems important now, but firearms ultimately are the real efficiency multiplier.

pixelready2• 9 months ago

If only we could somehow equip the AI with firearms… perhaps we could build some sort of mobile exoskeleton platform.

itsme00002• 9 months ago

Yeah but job skills can be replicated instantly, but major organs that’s where the moneys at.

state_less• 9 months ago

At least we can be assured our capitalistic system will distribute the wealth to those who most deserve it.

icar• 9 months ago

You missed this:

BriggyDwiggs422• 9 months ago

He was clearly joking

moffkalast• 9 months ago

97% of people hate their job. But we're putting an end to all this misery.

Finally a company that's out to do some good in the world.

jb1991• 9 months ago

It’s funny… because it’s true

rvitorper2• 9 months ago

Yes

am17an• 9 months ago

Humbert is a bit on the nose, for those who get the Lolita reference.

hmokiguess• 9 months ago

what if we are already the replacement AI? —- never let them know

_el1s72• 9 months ago

I'm confused, I don't see what they're offering in this website, looks like a blog post. They just got their hands on a catchy domain name.

Loughla8• 9 months ago

I'm learning that hn isn't great at understanding satire. I find that interesting but I'm not sure why.

rvitorper2• 9 months ago

It’s a bot responding. That much I can tell

nisten• 9 months ago

I'm very much pro hyper-automation, especially for all government work... but can't help but think this type of branding is just in bad faith and that these are not good people.

It just screams fried serotonin-circuits to me. I don't like it. I looked at the site for 2-3 seconds and I want nothing to do with these guys.

Do I think we should stop this type of competitive behaviour fueled by kids and investors both microdosed on meth? No. I just wouldn't do business with them, they don't look like trustworthy brand to me.

Edit: They got me with the joke, being in this field there are people that do actually talk like that, both startups and established executives alike. I.e. Artisan ads in billboards saying STOP HIRING HUMANS and another new york company I think pushing newspaper ads for complete replacement. Also if you're up with the latest engineering in agentic scaffolding work this type of thing is no joke.

jckahn• 9 months ago

It's a joke website

alterom• 9 months ago

I'm very much pro hyper-automation, especially for all government work... but can't help but think this type of branding is just in bad faith and that these are not good people.
It just screams fried-serotonin circuits to me. I don't like it. I looked at the site for 2-3 seconds and I want nothing to do with these guys.

Enlightenment is realizing they aren't any different from those other guys.

Edit: They got me with the joke, being in this field there are people that do actually talk like that, both startups and established executives alike.

And what's your conclusion from that?

Loughla8• 9 months ago

That's. . . That's not great.

game_the0ry• 9 months ago

"Humans no longer necessary."
"Stupid. Smelly. Squishy."
"While working for 12 years as the Director of HR for a multinational, Faith realized that firing people gave her an almost-spiritual high."

I love the marketing here. Top notch shit posting.

But besides that, no idea what this company does and it just comes off like another wannabe Roy Lee styled "be controversial and build an audience before you even have a product" type company.

That being said, still a good case study of shock marketing. It made it to the top link on HN after all.

Edit: its satire, I got got :(

simultsop• 9 months ago

I don't believe making it top link on HN is successful marketing.

Loughla8• 9 months ago

Is satire. Not a real company.

Follow the links for support (or rather reserve space in the bunker)

There's a contact form to let representatives know the dangers of ai

senectus1• 9 months ago

so, is someone going to tell the webscraping AI's out there that this site is satire?

Does AI even understand satire?

overgard3• 9 months ago

It's satire.

overgard3• 9 months ago

I think this is clever satire, but slightly blunted by the fact that the tech CEO's haven't been that far off from actually saying this stuff.

I'm especially disgusted with Sam Altman and Darius Amodei, who for a long time were hyping up the "fear" they felt for their own creations. Of course, they weren't doing this to slow down or approach things in a more responsible way, they were talking like that because they knew creating fear would bring in more investment and more publicity. Even when they called for "regulation", it was generally misleading and mostly to help them create a barrier to entry in the industry.

I think now that the consensus among the experts is that AGI is probably a while off (like a decade), we have a new danger now. When we do start to get systems we should actually worry about, we're going to a have a major boy-who-cried-wolf problem. It's going to be hard to get these things under proper control when people start to have the feeling of "yeah we heard this all before"

xigoi• 9 months ago

I think this is clever satire, but slightly blunted by the fact that the tech CEO's haven't been that far off from actually saying this stuff.

That’s what makes it good satire.

TechSquidTV• 9 months ago

Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots. If robots can do a job better and/or faster, they should be the ones doing the jobs. Specialization is how we got to the future.

So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income. I don't necessarily feel like it's the AI company's problem to fix either.

This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.

philjackson• 9 months ago

This is what government is for

They're busy selling watches whilst people can still afford them thanks to having jobs.

wahnfrieden3• 9 months ago

It's also what organized labor is for. Workers can't wait on government to offer aid without leverage. We would not have weekends off or other protections we now take for granted if we waited on government to govern for us as if it was a caring parent.

So that would mean it is in fact the responsibility of the people at robot/AI companies (and across industries). It's not something we can just delegate to role-based authorities to sort out on our behalf.

yoyohello133• 9 months ago

I also agree with this, but I think there is a need to slow the replacement, by a bit, to reduce the short term societal harm and allow society to catch up. Robots can’t do the jobs if society collapses due to unrest.

Progress is great obviously, but progress as fast as possible with no care about the consequences is more motivated by money, not the common good.

iwontberude• 9 months ago

What you mean you don’t want to take a Great Leap Forward?

Loughla8• 9 months ago

The problem is that AI and advanced robotics (and matter synthesis and all that future stuff) must come with a post scarcity mindset. Maybe that mindset needs to happen before.

Either way, without that social pattern, I'm afraid all this does is enshrine a type of futuristic serfdom that is completely insurmountable.

citizenpaul2• 9 months ago

post scarcity mindset

A total shift of human mentality. Humans have shown time and again there is only one way we ever get there. A long winding road paved with bodies.

sambull• 9 months ago

I think it's going to come with eradicate the 'wastrel' mindset.

insane_dreamer5• 9 months ago

We're already in a post-scarcity world. The only reason there is still scarcity is entirely because it is created by humans to acquire more wealth.

You think that's going to change just because many more people find themselves without?

pesfandiar• 9 months ago

It's wrong to assume the owners will share the productivity gains with everyone, especially when reliance on labour will be at its lowest, and the power structure of a data/AI economy is more concentrated than anything we've seen before. IMO, the assumption that some form of basic income or social welfare system will be funded voluntarily is as delusional as thinking communism would work.

reactordev2• 9 months ago

What you end up with is a dozen people owning all the wealth and everyone else owning nothing, resulting in the robots not doing anything because no one is buying anything, resulting in a complete collapse of the economic system the world uses to operate. Mass riots, hunger wars, political upheaval, world war 3. Nuke the opposition before they nuke you.

skybrian4• 9 months ago

That’s one scenario, but there are others. There are lots of open-weight models. Why wouldn’t ownership of AI end up being widely distributed? Mabybe it's more like solar panels than nuclear power plants?

throwaway-0001• 9 months ago

Robots will do stuff for rich people ecosystem.

The rest you know what’s going to happen

cloverich2• 9 months ago

That is the system we have today, directionally. AI is an opportunity to accelerate it, but it is also an opportunity to do the opposite.

rstuart4133• 9 months ago

What you end up with is a dozen people owning all the wealth and everyone else owning nothing,

That may be where the USA ends up. We Australian's (and probably a few others, like the Swiss) have gone to some effort to ensure we don't end up there: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/boyerlectures/1058675...

ipaddr3• 9 months ago

Then government comes in and takes over. In the end we will end up with communism. Communism couldn't compete with the free market but in a world of six companies it can.

Ray2010• 9 months ago

What you end up with is a dozen people owning all the wealth and everyone else owning nothing

Only if the socialists win. Capitalism operates on a completely different principle: people CREATE wealth and own everything they have created. Therefore, AI cannot reduce their wealth in any way, because AI does not impair people's ability to create wealth.

wizardforhire• 9 months ago

Gonna just play a little mad libs here with your argument…

Personal belief, but AI coming for your children is not a valid argument against AI. If AI can do a job better and/or faster, they should be the ones doing the parenting. Specialization is how we got to the future. So the problem isn't AI, it's the structure of how we humans rely on parenting for their children. I don't necessarily feel like it's the AI company's problem to fix either. This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.

…

You’re right about one thing within reason… this is what a rationale government should be for… if the government was by the people and for the people.

Addendum for emphasis: …and if that government followed the very laws it portends to protect and enforce…

marnett4• 9 months ago

The artist behind replacement.ai chose a very relevant first use case — everyone thinks of AI replacement in terms of labor, but the example in terms of parenting and child rearing, which is arguably the only true reason for humans to exist, is genius.

Procreation and progeny is our only true purpose — and one could make the argument AI would make better parents and teachers. Should we all capitulate our sole purpose in the name of efficiency?

harryf• 9 months ago

It’s worth (re)watching the 1985 movie Brazil in particular the character of Harry Tuttle, hearing engineer https://youtu.be/VRfoIyx8KfU

Neither government or corporations are going to “save us” simply because sheer short termism and incompetence. But the seem incompetence will make the coming dystopia ridiculous

exe343• 9 months ago

I do wonder if somewhere like China might be better off - they might not have muh freedumb, but their government seems keen to look after the majority and fund things that corporations wouldn't.

leobg• 9 months ago

Is it just income that’s the issue? I’d rather say it’s purpose. Even more: What will happen to democracy in a world where 100% of the population are 27/7 consumers?

IHLayman• 9 months ago

“ What will happen to democracy in a world where 100% of the population are 27/7 consumers?”

…we’ll add three hours to our day?

Bu seriously, I support what you are saying. This is why the entire consumer system needs to change, because in a world with no jobs it is by definition unsustainable.

Gepsens• 9 months ago

Smaller cities, human size, humans closer to nature, robots bring stuff from factories by driving. Done

creer• 9 months ago

What will happen to democracy in a world where 100% of the population are 27/7 consumers?

What does the one have to do with the other?

But even then, currently plenty of people find their fun in creating - when it's not their job. And they struggle with finding the time for that. Sometimes the materials and training and machines for that also. Meanwhile a majority of current jobs involve zero personal creativity or making or creating. Driving or staffing a retail outlet or even most cooking jobs can't really be what you are looking for on your argument?

Is the road to post-scarcity more likely with or without robots?

dotancohen2• 9 months ago

  > This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.

Many will argue that the purpose of government is not to steer or prepare society, but rather to reflect the values of society. Traditionally, the body that has steered (prepared or failed to prepare) society for impending changes was religion.

nwatson• 9 months ago

Enter the Dominionists, gaining steam now. Not a regime I want to live under. Here's a forty year old article describing the inception of those religious figures close to the current USA administration ... https://banner.org.uk/res/kt1.html

overfeed2• 9 months ago

Where would governments find the money to expand safety nets by 2-3 orders of magnitude, while losing most income tax inflows?

risyachka4• 9 months ago

You need income to: - buy house - get food - buy clothes - medical care - buy nice things

if robots are that advanced that can do most of the jobs - the cost of goods will be close to zero.

government will product and distribute most of the things above and you mostly won't need any money, but if you want extra to travel etc there will always be a bunch of work to do - and not 8 hours per day

dragonwriter4• 9 months ago

Where would governments find the money to expand safety nets by 2-3 orders of magnitude, while losing most income tax inflows?

Well, it would start by not tax-favoring the (capital) income that remains and would have to have grown massively relatively to the overall economy for that to have occurred.

(In fact, it could start by doing that now, and the resulting tax burden shift would reduce the artificial tax incentive to shift from labor intensive to capital intensive production methods, which would, among other things, buy more time to deal with the broader transition if it is actually going to happen.)

ipaddr3• 9 months ago

Wealth tax.

beeflet19• 9 months ago

Firstly, they are not coming for my job, they're coming for all jobs.

Secondly, you assume in the first place that we can somehow build a stable post-scarcity society in which people with no leverage can control the super-intelligent agents with all of the power. The idea that "government will just fix it" is totally ignorant of what the government is or how it emerges. In the long run, you cannot have a ruling class that is removed from the keys to power.

Lastly, Who says we should all support this future? What if I disagree with the AI revolution and it's consequences?

It is kind of amazing how your path of reasoning is so dangerously misoriented and wrong. This is what happens when people grow up watching star trek, they just assume that once we live in a post scarcity future everything will be perfect, and that this is the natural endpoint for humanity.

derektank• 9 months ago

Firstly, they are not coming for my job, they're coming for all jobs.

They're not coming for all jobs. There are many jobs that exist today that could be replaced by automation but haven't been because people will pay a premium for it to be done by a human. There are a lot of artisan products out there which are technically inferior to manufactured goods but people still buy them. Separately, there are many jobs which are entirely about physical and social engagement with a flesh and blood human being, sex work being the most obvious, but live performances (how has Broadway survived in an era of mass adoption of film and television), and personal care work like home health aids, nannies, and doulas are all at least partially about providing an emotional connection on top of their actual physical labor.

And there's also a question of things that can literally only be done by human beings, because by definition they can only be done by human beings. I imagine in the future, many people will be paid full time to be part of scientific studies that can't easily be done today, such as extended, large cohort diet and exercise studies of people in metabolic chambers.

lwhi10• 9 months ago

The problem is more existential.

Why are people even doing the jobs?

In a huge number of cases people have jobs that largely amount to nothing other than accumulation of wealth for people higher up.

I have a feeling that automation replacement will make this fact all the more apparent.

When people realise big truths, revolutions occur.

exe343• 9 months ago

This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.

The AI will belong to the parasite class who will capture all the profits - but you can't tax them on this, because they can afford to buy the government. So there isn't really a way to fund food and shelter for the population without taking something from the billionaires. Their plans for the future does not include us [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...

812222223• 9 months ago

On a few occasions as a teenager, I slipped into an unpleasant khole. The one thing that remained constant every time was that I felt like we were living in the apocalypse. Even though each of these experiences was precipitated by the dose taken, I somehow ended up with a 24 hour news channel on in the background and while I sat there motionless, images of air defense missiles launching on some grainy video from kosovo, I just felt like the world was coming to an end and that all doom was beginning to take place. It's weird because of the k I didn't feel panicky about the doom, like I was super calm and collected about it but nevertheless, it was still an hour or two of impending doom that was very unpleasant. I guess my point is that we need to restrict ketamine use based on income. If someone has enough money, they have far more than enough resources to deal with whatever medical issue justifies their k prescription using a different treatment. Allowing these people to have access to ketamine is the root cause of this problem.

portaouflop3• 9 months ago

Specialization is for insects.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

lukev2• 9 months ago

Agreed 100%, except that this is not a new development. This process has been ongoing, with automation has been taking over certain classes of jobs and doing them faster and better since the industrial revolution.

And capitalism has flourished during this time. There's no reason to believe even more automation is going to change that, on its own.

Sure, Musk and Altman can make noises and talk about the need for UBI "in the future" all they want, but their political actions clearly show which side they're actually on.

franga20002• 9 months ago

"The government" needs time to fix this and until then, we need to not automate everyone out of a job. If that means we don't "get to the future" until then, fine. "Fault" or not, the AI companies are putting people in danger now and unless we can implement a more proper solution extremely quickly, they just have to put up with being slowed down.

But it's not like "the government" (as if there is just one) simply doesn't want to fix things. There are many people who want to fix the way we distribute resources, but there are others who are working to stop them. The various millionaires behind these AI companies are part of the reason why the problem you identified exists in the first place.

brap5• 9 months ago

So your government should pump the brakes, while other governments rush towards ASI. And you believe this will benefit you, long term? Or do you believe in “global cooperation”?

malloryerik• 9 months ago

Might want to read some Karl Polanyi.

everforward• 9 months ago

This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.

This requires faith that the government will actually step in to do something, which many people lack (at least in the US, can't speak for globally).

That's the sticking point for many of the people I've talked to about it. Some are diametrically opposed to AI, but most think there's a realistic chance AI takes jobs away and an unrealistic chance the government opposes the whims of capital causing people displaced from their jobs to dip into poverty.

I can't say I have a good counter-argument either. At least in the US, the government has largely sided with capital for my entire life. I wouldn't take a bet that government does the kind of wealth redistribution required if AI really takes off, and I would eat my hat if it happens in a timely manner that doesn't require an absolute crisis of ruined lives before something happens.

See the accumulation of wealth at the top income brackets while the middle and lower classes get left behind.

TLDR this is more of a crisis of faith in the government than opposition to AI taking over crap jobs that people don't want anyways.

ivape3• 9 months ago

it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income

1. We don’t need everyone in society to be involved in trade.

2. We made it so that if you do not take part in trade (trade labor for income), you cannot live.

3. Thus, people will fear losing their ability to trade in society.

The question is, when did we make this shift? It used to just be slavery, and you would be able to survive so long as you slaved.

The fear is coming from something odd, the reality that you won’t have to trade anymore to live. Our society has convinced us you won’t have any value otherwise.

brap5• 9 months ago

We made it so that if you do not take part in trade (trade labor for income), you cannot live.

We did not make it so, this has been the natural state for as long as humans have existed, and in fact, it’s been this way for every other life form on Earth.

Maybe with post-scarcity (if it ever happens) there could be other ways of living. We can dream. But let’s not pretend that “life requires effort” is some sort of temporary unnatural abomination made by capitalists. It’s really just a fact.

jaccola• 9 months ago

The way I think about this is either the job is done in the most efficient way possible or I am asking everyone else to pay more for that product/service (sometimes a worse product/service) just so I can have a job.

E.g. if I was a truck driver and autonomous trucks came along that were 2/3rds the price and reduced truck related deaths by 99% obviously I couldn't, in good faith, argue that the rest of the population should pay more and have higher risk of death even to save my job and thousands of others. Though somehow this is a serious argument in many quarters (and accounts for lots of government spending).

code4life• 9 months ago

This is what minimum wage deals with to some extent. Governments decide what jobs may exist based on how much a company can pay to do the job.

ipaddr3• 9 months ago

What about replacing a screenplay writer or actor? Are dirty jobs only acceptable.

gnarlouse7• 9 months ago

Respectfully, that’s not a very functional belief. It’s sort of the equivalent to saying “communism is how mankind should operate”, while completely ignoring why communism doesn’t work: greedy, self-preserving genetic human instincts.

The workforce gives regular folks at least some marginal stake in civilization. Governments aren’t effective engines against AI. We failed to elect Andrew Yang in 2020–who was literally running on a platform of setting up a UBI tax on AI. Congress is completely corrupt and ineffectual. Trump gutting the government.

You may be right about ai taking jobs eventually if that’s what you’re saying, but you come off pretty coldly if you’re implying it’s what “should” happen because it’s Darwinian and inevitable, and just sorta “well fuck poor people.”

NoOn32• 9 months ago

Not only Communism doesn't work, Capitalism doesn't work without crises and wars too. :)

812222223• 9 months ago

Communism was never realized and what didn't work was the transitions stage between free market capitalism and communism, state capitalism. In literally every instance of communism not working, it was state capitalism that didn't work because the people who benefited from state capitalism worked to keep it in place as communism would have ended their greedy consolidation of power. This is not a flaw in communism, this is a flaw in capitalism: the inevitable hoarding of capital.

romellem• 9 months ago

“Guns don’t kill people, etc…”

lwhi10• 9 months ago

Government no longer has the power or authority to constrain private enterprise; especially in highly technical sectors.

xpe6• 9 months ago

Of course government has the authority to represent the people; if not it, then who or what does?

StevePerkins• 9 months ago

Of course it does. Do you think the elites actually WANT massive tariffs putting a brake on GDP growth? Why are tech companies suddenly reversing course on content moderation and/or DEI, after years of pushing in the opposite directions?

Private enterprise will always have some level of corrupting influence over government. And perhaps it sees current leadership as the lesser of two evils in the grand scheme. But make no mistake, government DOES ultimately have the power, when it chooses to assert itself and use it. It's just a matter of political will, which waxes and wanes.

Going back a century, did the British aristocracy WANT to be virtually taxed out of existence, and confined to the historical dustbin of "Downton Abbey"?

gtsop• 9 months ago

So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income.

It's called capitalism

strogonoff9• 9 months ago

“Robots coming for your jobs” is a valid argument against robots even if they can do those jobs better and faster, under two assumptions: 1) humans benefit from having jobs and 2) human benefit is the end goal.

Both are fairly uncontroversial: many humans not only benefit from jobs but in fact often depend on jobs for their livelihoods, and (2) should be self-evident.

This can change if the socioeconomic system is quickly enough and quite substantially restructured to make humans not depend on being compensated for work that is now being done by robots (not only financially but also psychologically—feeling fulfilled—socially, etc.), but I don’t see that happening.

jhbadger• 9 months ago

This is valid only so far as "human benefit" is localized to the human doing the job. I'm a cancer researcher. Obviously. my job is of value to me because it pays my bills (and yes, I do get satisfaction from it in other ways). But if an AI can do cancer research better than me, then the human benefit (to every human except perhaps me) favors the AI over me.

But a lot of jobs aren't like that. I doubt many people who work in, say, public relations, really think their job has value other than paying their bills. They can't take solace in the fact that the AI can write press releases deflecting the blame for the massive oil spill that their former employer caused.

thunky8• 9 months ago

1) humans benefit from having jobs and 2) human benefit is the end goal.

There's no law of nature saying that a human must work 40 hours per week or starve.

The current dependence on work is a consequence, not a goal.

KoolKat23• 9 months ago

And if we know we can't fix it fast enough, is a delay acceptable?

sharts• 9 months ago

Replace robots with immigrants and it’s the same fear mongering as usual.

xpe6• 9 months ago

There is much more to concerns about AI than fear mongering. Reasonable people can disagree on predictions about probabilities of future events, but they should not discount reasonable arguments.

1dom• 9 months ago

This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.

What if the issue isn't government failing to prepare society to move forward, but instead, AI businesses moving us in a direction that more and more people don't consider to be forward?

vlovich123• 9 months ago

My reading of history is that human society is able to adjust to small changes like this over long periods of time as young people choose alternate paths looking at what changes are likely on the horizon. Rapid changes frequently lead to destabilization of adults who are unwilling or unable to retrain which then also screws up their next generation who start off on an economic back foot and a worldview of despair and decrepitude.

Not the AI company’s fault per se, but generally the US government does a very poor job of creating a safety net either intentionally, ineptitude or indifference.

By the way, attacks were also leveled against Chinese and Japanese California workers who were viewed as stealing the jobs of other “Americans”. So this viewpoint and tradition of behavior and capitalism is very long in US history.

jayd162• 9 months ago

If wealth inequality was greatly reduced, we wouldn't have to worry about a lot of these topics, nearly as much.

xpe6• 9 months ago

This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation

We should compare how anti-government politicians talk versus how trained, educated neoclassical economists talk. The latter readily recognize that a valid function of government is to steer, shape, and yes, regulate markets to some degree. This is why we don’t have (for example) legal, open markets for murder.

Markets do not define human values; they are a coordination mechanism given a diverse set of values.

thayne• 9 months ago

I have very little faith in the government to fix that problem.

And even if the government did institute something like universal basic income, if all jobs were replaced, that would almost certainly mean a lower standard of living for the middle class, and even less socioeconomic mobility than there is now.

JimDabell• 9 months ago

robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots.

Taking work away from people is practically the definition of technology. We invent things to reduce the effort needed to do things. Eliminating work is a good thing, that’s why inventing things is so popular!

What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively constant, meaning we get more done for the same amount of effort performed by the same amount of people doing the same amount of jobs. That’s why standards of living have been rising for the past few millennia instead of everybody being out of work. We took work away from humans with technology, we then used that effort saved to get more done.

lamename• 9 months ago

I agree with most everything you said. The problem has always been the short-term job loss, particularly today where society as a whole has resources for safety nets, but hasnt implemented them.

Anger at companies who hold power in multiple places to prevent and worsen this situation for people is valid anger.

ori_b• 9 months ago

What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively constant

That's a pretty hard bet against AGI becoming general. If the promises of many technologists come to pass, humans remaining in charge of any work (including which work should be done) would be a waste of resources.

Hopefully the AGI will remember to leave food in the cat bowls.

_DeadFred_3• 9 months ago

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

There is zero indication that there will be new jobs, new work. Just because there was lots of low hanging fruit historically does not mean we will stumble into some new job creators now. Waiving away concerns with 'jobs always have magically appeared when needed' is nonsense and a non-response to their concerns.

tuatoru• 9 months ago

This time actually is different, though.

If everything that a human can do, a robot can do better and cheaper, then humans are completely shut out of the production function. Humans have a minimum level of consumption that they need to stay alive whether or not they earn a wage; robots do not.

Since most humans live off wages which they get from work, they are then shut out of life. The only humans left alive are those who fund their consumption from capital rents.

insane_dreamer5• 9 months ago

What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively constant,

The entire promise of AI is to negate that statement. So if AI is truly successful, then that will no longer be true.

account422• 9 months ago

Hi, let me be the first to welcome into our millennium. Things have changed significantly since the 70s you seem to be used to: https://anticap.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/fig...

zer00eyz• 9 months ago

Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots.

Replace the word robot with "automation" or "industrialization" and you have the last 200 years of human history covered.

The Ludites could have won and we would all have 1500$ shirts.

Do you know any lamp lighters? How about a town crier?

We could still all be farming.

Where are all the switch board operators? Where are all the draftsmen?

How many people had programing jobs in 1900? 1950?

We have an amazing ability to "make work for ourselves", and history indicates that we're going to keep doing that regardless of how automated we make society. We also keep traditional "arts" alive... Recording didnt replace live performances, TV/Film didnt replace Broadway... Photography didnt replace painting...

rafaelmn• 9 months ago

The government and all social structures developed because your labour has value and division of labour/specialisation is so effective that it outperforms the alternatives. Cooperation beats violence, iterated prisoners dilemma, etc.

None of this holds if you don't have anything of value to offer and automation is concentrating power and value, AI is the extreme end of this - at some point the charade of democracy becomes too annoying to the ones at the top, and you get there faster by trying to reign them in.

sythnet• 9 months ago

I agree with you

6r17• 9 months ago

The problem is that we do not share the same values at all and I do not envision this truly benefiting people neither making it something I envy or feel OK with. You can make the best fakes and make your best to remove activity from people - but ultimately this is going to lead to a deteriorated society, increased mental health issues, plenty of sad stories just so few people can be happy about it.

Ngl, if someone nuked all USA's servers and wipes out the all these bullshit i'm not convinced the world would be in a worst state right now.

Let AI be used by scientific research, development, helping people out. But if it's just to sit your smelly ideas down, you may even be right, but ultimately the form, intentions and result matter more than recklessly endangering everybody.

TBH I feel like the AI discourse around human replacement smell like hard-core psychopathic behavior - or the one of a drunken dude who's driving a car just happy.

You have 0 data concerning the result it would do on society - and I definitely prefer to live in a less technological world than a world that is full of people with psychosis.

So until we find how we can solve this bottleneck I have 0 sympathy for this kind of discourse.

didibus• 9 months ago

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

-- Frank Herbert, Dune

The "government" is just the set of people who hold power over others.

Those who will own machines that can match humans will have unprecedented power over others. In effect they'll grow more and more to be the government.

Even now, companies hold more and more of the power over others and are more part of the government than ever before.

So it confuses me when you say it's what the government is for? Who would that be? If we pretend it would still be a democracy then I guess you're saying it's everyone's problem?

So here we are, let's discuss the solution and vote for it?

bittercynic• 9 months ago

The "government" is just the set of people who hold power over others.

Often, yes, but in a more functional society it would be the mechanism we collectively use to prevent a few people from amassing excessive wealth and power.

jimnotgym2• 9 months ago

Voting for it has become really difficult in countries with a First Past The Post voting systems, where the only parties that could win are comprehensively captured by the elite

rpcope14• 9 months ago

Butlerian Jihad fucking when? I'm ready.

kldg• 9 months ago

a democracy would be neat; we have a representative democracy here, so I can only vote for one of two candidates with a plausible chance of being elected, neither of who(m, if you must) have a coherent policy on AI or general disbursement of product, and even if they did, would be unable to convince the existing power structures in legislature to do something bold. probably better for mental health to accept a lot of these things (progression of AI or regulation of it, healthcare, etc) as variables in the environment we just live with, and focus on local/personal things.

we do actually have real democracy in this state, where we have binding referendums, but legislature is able to act faster than we're allowed to, to work around and nullify the policy we vote for. -so voting is fine; nothing wrong with it; but I guess I just worry, oftentimes, people get too involved in it and attached to movements which can accomplish something one day only for it to be reversed by the end of the decade. feels like the two sides are getting angrier and angrier, spinning their wheels in dysfunctional politics, and we can't have a functional government in this environment; one side guts government to replace with loyalists, then the other guts it again in a few years to replace the partisans, to replace with their own partisans. meanwhile, national debt just keeps climbing as people swarm into gold.

my compost piles, though -- not directly, but I can eat that; I can feed people with that. you know, you want to solve hunger -- you can contribute directly to food pantries. it's more work than voting, but something actually happens. -and almost all the regulation government cares about relates to capitalism; they don't care about my carrots because my carrots don't engage in capitalism. -and for some people in some circumstances, it doesn't take too much engagement with capitalism to be able to get $100k or whatever you need for a plot of land with electricity in a rural area if you plan out for it.

Herbert, as an aside, expressed a kind of appreciation for Nixon. His son wrote in a foreword to some edition of a Dune book I read mentioning this. He was glad the corruption was exposed and so blatant, because now, surely, voters would see how bad things became and will not let it happen again. Optimistic guy.

jwilber• 9 months ago

Ah yes, our government where career politicians from both sides have bent the rules to create 9-10 figure fortunes.

luxuryballs• 9 months ago

“This is what government is for” was the most terrifying thing I’ve read all month. The only thing more starkly dystopian than relying on robots and AI for survival would be adding “the government” to the list.

The government should keep its charge as the protector and upholder of justice, I don’t want it to be those things and then also become a fiat source for economic survival, that’s a terribly destructive combination because the government doesn’t care for competition or viability, and survival is the last place you want to have all your eggs in one basket, especially when the eggs are guaranteed by force of law and the basket becomes a magnet for corruption.

grafmax2• 9 months ago

Problem is billionaires have co-opted our government. Their interest is in channeling money from the working class into their hands through rentier capitalism. That is contrary to widely structuring income.

Rent extraction hurts them in the long run. Because working class income gets absorbed by various forms of rent, they are more expensive to employ. Thus we fail to compete with, say, China, which socializes many costs and invests in productive industry. We are left with a top heavy society that as we can see is already starting to crumble.

arrosenberg• 9 months ago

Kind of hard for the government to “prepare society to move forward” when the AI companies and their financiers lobby for conditions that worsen the ability of society to do so.

notthemessiah• 9 months ago

The problem is that the AI companies are most interested in displacing the existing labor force more so than they are interested in developing new uses of AI in areas that humans are inherently bad at. They are more interested in replacing good jobs with AI rather than bad jobs. It's not that machines are doing jobs better, they are just doing them for cheaper and by cutting more corners.

Best summarized in this comic: https://x.com/9mmballpoint/status/1658163045502267428

jvanderbot• 9 months ago

It's one thing to be fired and completely replaced by a robot, never to work again. It's another to have your industry change and embrace automation, but to remain in with higher productivity and a new role. You might not initially like the new industry or role, but ....

That's noble. The first is dystopian

kif• 9 months ago

In my opinion there is a problem when said robot relies on piracy to learn how to do stuff.

If you are going to use my work without permission to build such a robot, then said robot shouldn’t exist.

On the other hand a jack of all trades robot is very different from all the advancements we have had so far. If the robot can do anything, in the best case scenario we have billions of people with lots of free time. And that doesn’t seem like a great thing to me. Doubt that’s ever gonna happen, but still.

EasyMark• 9 months ago

But the only government that could "fairly" operate such a government would be a rational AI with a limited set of rules meant to maximize human wellness. Humans will always fail at such a government as we have seen in the past. Greed always overwhelms good intentions in the long run

birktj• 9 months ago

I strongly disagree and I am having trouble understanding what kind of world you envision, what will it look like?

The problem as I see it is not robots coming for my job and taking away my ability to earn a salary. That can be solved by societal structures like you are saying, even though I am somewhat pessimistic of our ability to do so in our current political climate.

The problem I see is robots coming for my mind and taking away any stakes and my ability to do anything that matters. If the robot is an expert in all fields why would you bother to learn anything? The fact that it takes time and energy to learn new skills and knowledge is what makes the world interesting. And this is exactly what happened before when machines took over a lot of human labour, luckily there were still plenty of things they couldn't do and thus ways to keep the world interesting. But if the machines start to think for us, what then is left for us to do?

jmpeax• 9 months ago

If the robot is an expert in all fields why would you bother to learn anything?

Robots have been better at chess than humans for a quarter of a century. Yet, chess is still a delightful intellectual and social persuit.

techblueberry• 9 months ago

We just keep moving forward, no one responsible, no one accountable, victims of our own progress.

pharos92• 9 months ago

You wont have that opinion when its your job, life and freedom.

popalchemist• 9 months ago

Technology should make our lives better. Whether it's social media, AI, or nuclear power, if we introduce technology that even with its incredible benefits ends up causing harm or making life worse for many people (as all of the above have in various ways), we should reconsider. This should be self-evident. That doesn't mean we get rid of the technology, but we refine. Chernobyl didn't mean the world got rid of nuclear power. It meant we became more responsible with it.

Anyway there is a name for your kind of take. It is anti-humanist.

frogperson• 9 months ago

Robots might be the future, but humans are more important and should be peioritized first. lets make sure the humans needs are met, and then you can play with your robot toys, ok?

zzgo• 9 months ago

This is what government is for

In my home country, the people building the robots and job destroying AI have captured all three branches of government, and have been saying for over 40 years that they'd like to shrink government down to a size that they could drown it in a bathtub. The government can't be relied upon to do more than move its military into our cities to violently stifle dissent.

xivzgrev• 9 months ago

It's not so black and white - it depends on the scale

We as a society get to decide what is done in our society. If robots replace a few jobs but make goods cheaper for everyone that's a net positive for society.

If robots replace EVERYONE's job, where everyone has no income anymore that's clearly a huge negative for society and it should be prevented.

completelylegit• 9 months ago

“Hey Association of Retarded Citizens, robots can do it better so just stay home I guess.”

insane_dreamer5• 9 months ago

So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income.

Humans have depended on their own labor for income since we stopped being hunters and gatherers or living in small tribes.

So it's not just a matter of "the gov will find a way", but it's basically destroying the way humanity as a whole has operated for the past 5000 years.

So yes, it's a huge problem. Everything done under the banner of "innovation" isn't necessarily a good thing. Slavery was pretty "innovative" as well, for those who were the slave owners.

ssss11• 9 months ago

But we all know what will happen, it’s the human condition of greed. The wealthy will control everything, governments will be no help, and all the newly unemployed will be in dire situations.

So while you’ve identified the real problem we need to identify a realistic solution.

subjectivationx• 9 months ago

This is not a personal belief this is a regurgitation of the most standard neoliberal orthodoxy.

account422• 9 months ago

The problem with that is that having all the robots also makes it easy to control the government.

happytoexplain4• 9 months ago

"Arguing against robots" is an oversimplification. They're arguing against misery and harm, and against the unprepared nature of our government and businesses to account for the impact of large jumps in automation, which, of course, also means arguing against robots. The distinction is pointless. And yes actually, it is in fact the responsibility of everybody to decline to inflict misery, whether a law has been made to control your behavior yet or not. It would be dishonest to imply there is a binary where your business can't ever use any automation based on this principle.

The over-application of objective phrases like "valid" vs "invalid" when talking about non-formal arguments is a sickness a lot of technical people tend to share. In this case, it's dismissive of harm to humans, which is the worst thing you can be dismissive about. "Please don't make me and my family miserable" is not an "invalid argument" - that's inhuman. That person isn't arguing their thesis.

"The problem". Another common oversimplifying phrase used by us thinkers, who believe there is "the answer", as if either of those two things exist as physical objects. "The problem" is that humans are harmed. Everything else just exists within that problem domain, not as "part of the problem" or "not part of the problem".

But most importantly:

Yes, you're absolutely correct (and I hate to use this word, but I'm angry): Obviously the ideal state is that robots do all the work we don't want to do and we do whatever we want and our society is structured in a way to support that. You've omitted the part where that level of social support is very hard to make physically feasible, very hard to convince people of depending on their politics, and, most importantly: It's usually only enough to spare people from death and homelessness, not from misery and unrest. Of course it would be ridiculous to outright ban for-profit use of automation, but even more ridiculous to write a bill that enforces it, e.g. by banning any form of regulation.

Short and medium term, automating technologies are good for the profit of businesses and bad for the affected humans. Long term, automating technologies are good for everybody, but only if society actually organizes that transition in a way that doesn't make those affected miserable/angry. It isn't, and I don't think it's pessimistic to say that it probably won't.

I'd love to live in Star Trek! We don't. We won't for hundreds of years if ever. Technology isn't the limiting factor, the immutable nature of human society and resources are the limiting factors. Nothing else is interesting to even talk about until we clear the bar of simply giving a shit about what actually, in concrete reality, happens to our countrymen.

somewhatrandom9• 9 months ago

https://replacement.ai/safety

khaledh• 9 months ago

The more you try to solve a problem at a large scale, the less empathetic to humans it becomes. This has been happening for a long while now, and IMO has caused society to become "disconnected" from each other and more "connected" to devices. AI is just a new catalyst to this process. My fear is that a time will come where interacting with humans becomes the exception, not the norm.

eterm2• 9 months ago

MY annoyance is when AI is used instead of better machines.

I just logged onto github and saw a "My open pull requests button".

Instead of taking me to a page which quickly queried a database, it opened a conversation with copilot which then slowly thought about how to work out my open pull requests.

I closed the window before it had an answer.

Why are we replacing actual engineering with expensive guesswork?

federiconafria• 9 months ago

I don't think that's an AI problem, we've had unnecessary software everywhere for a while now.

AI just makes it worse.

eterm2• 9 months ago

In this case the featre isn't unnecessary and would serve a useful purpose if it were just a query. I wouldn't object to AI writing that feature to get it out quickly. I'm not anti-AI entirely.

However, someone has taken a useful feature and has made it worse to shoe-horn in copilot interaction.

Clicking this button also had a side-effect of an email from Github telling me about all the things I could ask copilot about.

The silver lining is that email linked to copilot settings, where I could turn it off entirely.

https://github.com/settings/copilot/features

AI is incredibly powerful, especially for code-generation. But It's terrible ( at current speeds ) for being the main interface into an application.

Human-Computer interaction benefits hugely from two things:

- Speed - Predictability

This is why some people prefer a commandline, and why some people can produce what looks like magic with excel. These applications are predictable and fast.

A chat-bot delivers neither. There's no opportunity to build up muscle-memory with a lack of predictability, and the slowness of copilot makes interaction just feel bad.

lateforwork5• 9 months ago

You don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn't need money. Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn't matter how much money you had.

AI & robots will generate wealth at unprecedented scale. In the future, you won't have a job nor have any money, but you will be fabulously wealthy!

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

mfro• 9 months ago

Maybe it’s time we all started taking Trekonomics seriously.

steve_adams_865• 9 months ago

My main concerns:

1. When such wealth is possible through autonomous means, how can the earth survive such unprecedented demands on its natural resources?

2. Should I believe that someone with more wealth (and as such, more power) than I have would not use that power to overwhelm me? Isn't my demand on resources only going to get in their way? Why would they allow me to draw on resources as well?

3. It seems like the answer to both of these concerns lies in government, but no government I'm aware of has really begun to answer these questions. Worse yet, what if governments disagree on how to implement these strategies in a global economy? Competition could become an intractable drain on the earth and humans' resources. Essentially, it opens up the possibility of war at incalculable scales.

lateforwork5• 9 months ago

someone with more wealth

Well in trekonomics [1], citizens are equal in terms of material wealth because scarcity has been eliminated. Wealth, in the conventional sense, does not exist; instead, the "wealth" that matters is human capital—skills, abilities, reputation, and status. The reward in this society comes not from accumulation of material goods but from intangible rewards such as honor, glory, intellectual achievement, and social esteem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekonomics

dtauzell• 9 months ago

The rich will be the people who control the finite resources. If you have land that can be mined you will be rich if you can protect it and sell the thing that is actually limited.

dzjkb• 9 months ago

These concerns are already perfectly applicable to the current state of the world, no? More planetary boundaries keep getting crossed due to unnecessarily large resource usage, the poorest people don't have access (even though they could) to the resources necessary to survive...

overvale• 9 months ago

I’m not so sure access to scarce resources = wealth. Wealth can be an abundance of valuable things that are not scarce.

metabagel2• 9 months ago

Plus, many billionaires fund campaigns to spread the ideology of a cripplingly limited government.

lukev2• 9 months ago

Great, sounds awesome. I'm actually 100% in favor of this vision.

So when are we going to start pivoting towards a more socialist economic system? Where are the AI leaders backing politicians with this vision?

Because that's absolutely required for what you're talking about here...

achierius2• 9 months ago

We already have systems that create unprecedented wealth: industrial economies. And yet we let billions live and die without proper healthcare, nutrition, housing, and so on. The promise you make -- that with increases in productive capacity will clearly come an end to want -- has already been shown to be a lie. Please stop peddling it.

lateforwork5• 9 months ago

Quality of life has greatly improved since the 1970s.

Consumer goods have generally fallen in price (adjusted for inflation) while improving in quality relative to the 1970s, so we have become wealthier (using PG's definition of wealth):

Televisions, computers, smartphones, clothing (mass-produced apparel is cheaper due to global supply chains and automation), household appliances (items like refrigerators, washing machines, and microwaves are less expensive relative to income), air travel, telecommunications, consumer electronics, automobiles, furniture have fallen in price and gone up in quality.

Housing and healthcare are two items that have gone in the opposite direction. I think this is where AI and robots will make a difference. Houses can be 3D printed [1] and nursing and medical advice can be made cheaper using AI/robots as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXUX6dv2_Yo

throwaway0123_54• 9 months ago

Lets say I have a robot or two with a genius-level intellect. In theory it could manufacture a car for me or cook my dinner or harvest the crops needed for my dinner. But I don't own the mine where the metals needed to make a car come from. I don't own a farm where the food for my dinner comes from. Unless the distribution of resources changes significantly, it doesn't really help me that I have a genius robot. It needs actual physical resources to create wealth.

Right now the people that own those resources also depend on human labor to create wealth for them. You can't go from owning a mine and a farm to having a mega-yacht without people. You have to give at least some wealth to them to get your wealth. But if suddenly you can go from zero to yacht without people, because you're rich enough to have early access to lots of robots and advanced AI, and you still own the mine/farm, you don't need to pay people anymore.

Now you don't need to share resources at all. Human labor no longer has any leverage. To the extent most people get to benefit from the "magic machine," it seems to me like it depends almost entirely on the benevolence of the already wealthy. And it isn't zero cost for them to provide resources to everyone else either. Mining materials to give everyone a robot and a car means less yachts/spaceships/mansions/moon-bases for them.

Tldr: I don't think we get wealth automatically because of advanced AI/robotics. Social/economic systems also need to change.

lateforwork5• 9 months ago

Great points. We can only get to 100% trekonomics if people don't hoard raw materials.

layer87• 9 months ago

Username checks out. ;)

defgeneric3• 9 months ago

It's garbage opinions like this that makes PG so tiring. The superficial air of reasonableness makes it attractive to younger SF tech people who haven't experienced the context out of which these arguments arose and have no idea who he's plagiarizing/channeling. (For starters, the distinction between wealth and money/capital goes back at least to the 17th century.) For those who are more interested in being the "next unicorn" than engaging seriously with ideas, his little "essays" serve as kind of armor--we don't have to think about that problem because PG wrote about it!

KaiserPro4• 9 months ago

The world would be a lot better if people looked at near history more often for the political movements that failed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit

(its where the excess profits from mechinisation will be fed back to the citizens so that they don't need to work as much. That failed spectacularly.)

PG's argument is a huge amount of words to miss the point. Money is a tool that reflects power. Wealth derives from power.

AI & robots will generate wealth at unprecedented scale. In the future, you won't have a job nor have any money,

I would gently tell you that you might want to look at the living conditions of the working class in the early 20th century. You might see planned cities like borneville or what ever the american version is. they were the 1% of working classes. The average housing was shit, horrid shit. If AI takes off and makes say 10% of the population jobless, thats what those people will get, shit.

It wasn't until those dirty socialists got into power in the UK (I don't know about other countries) did we start to see stuff like slum clearances where the dispossessed we actually re-homed. rather than yeeted to somewhere less valuable.

mondrian2• 9 months ago

How will the AI wealth get distributed to people at large?

takie2• 9 months ago

i don't know when they decided that anti-social personality disorder is a virtue.

garganzol3• 9 months ago

It seems that some tech people are prone to ludditism. No wonders here, AI is sharper and brighter than most tech workers usually are.

Instead of facing the new reality, some people start to talk about the bubbles, AI being sloppy, etc. Which is not generally true; mostly it's the users' psychological projection of their own traits and the resulting fear-induced smear campaigns.

The phenomenon is well described in psychology books. Seminal works of Carl Jung worth a ton nowadays.

a3w• 9 months ago

At least us Luddites are not losing their jobs to AGI, yet.

garganzol3• 9 months ago

Rickshaws protesting against motorized vehicles instead of learning to drive them.

steve_adams_865• 9 months ago

When people mention the Luddites, they almost always do so incorrectly as you have here. Luddites weren't afraid of technology because it was better than them. In fact, it was worse. There was no projection. The phenomenon you're describing here was not a Luddite phenomenon. They were concerned about how machines would disrupt employment, wages, product quality, work autonomy, power imbalances, and working conditions. We should be, too.

It's also more nuanced than you seem to think. Having the work we do be replaced by machines has significant implications about human purpose, identity, and how we fit into our societies. It isn't so much a fear of being replaced or made redundant by machines specifically; it's about who we are, what we do, and what that means for other human beings. How do I belong? How do I make my community a better place? How do I build wealth for the people I love?

Who cares how good the machine is. Humans want to be good at things because it's rewarding and—up until very recently—was a uniquely human capability that allowed us to build civilization itself. When machines take that away, what's left? What should we be good at when a skill may be irrelevant today or in a decade or who knows when?

Someone with a software brain might immediately think "This is simply another abstraction; use the abstraction to build wealth just as you used other skills and abilities to do so before", and sure... That's what people will try to do, just as we have over the last several hundred years as new technologies have emerged. But these most recent technologies, and the ones on the horizon, seem to threaten a loss of autonomy and a kind of wealth disparity we've never seen before. The race to amass compute and manufacturing capacity among billionaires is a uniquely concerning threat to virtually everyone, in my opinion.

We should remember the Luddites differently, read some history, and reconsider our next steps and how we engage with and regulate autonomous systems.

garganzol3• 9 months ago

Exactly, ludditism revolves around a fear of loosing identity. This phenomenon intersects with narcissism, which in turn is caused by the lack of authenticity. In terms of creative work, we talk about lacking professional authenticity.

In simple words, authenticity is the desire to work on mistakes and improve yourself, being flexible enough to embrace the changes sooner or later. If one is lacking some parts of it, one tends to become a narcissist or a luddite, being angry trying to regain the ever-slipping sense of control.

To translate to human language: gold diggers who entered the industry just for money do not truly belong to the said industry, while those who were driven by spirit will prosper.

defgeneric3• 9 months ago

How do I belong? How do I make my community a better place? How do I build wealth for the people I love?

What remains after is something like the social status games of the aristocratic class, which I suspect is why there's a race to accumulate as much as possible now before the means to do so evaporate.

yapyap• 9 months ago

This website actually casts a lot of belief in AI and it’s possible applications.

andai• 9 months ago

https://replacement.ai/complaints

At the bottom of this page, there is a form you can fill out. This website says they will contact your local representative on your behalf. (And forward you any reply.)

Here's the auto-generated message:

I am a constituent living in [state] with urgent concerns about the lack of guardrails surrounding advanced AI technologies. It is imperative that we act decisively to establish strong protections that safeguard families, communities, and our children from potential harms associated with these rapidly evolving systems.

As companies continue to release increasingly powerful AI systems without meaningful oversight, we cannot rely on them to police themselves, especially when the stakes are so high. While AI has the potential to do remarkable things, it also poses significant risks, including the manipulation of children, the development of bioweapons, the creation of deepfakes, and the threat of widespread unemployment.

I urge you to enact strong federal guardrails for advanced AI that protect families, communities, and children. Additionally, please do not preempt or block states from adopting strong AI protections that may be necessary for their residents.

Thank you for your time.

[name]

New York

riazrizvi4• 9 months ago

Oh, too bad. I initially shared it on LinkedIn but deleted it once I saw this. I’m all for establishing in the mind of the commons, that displacing humans from the economy is inane, and to see the open dialogue on the subject. I’m not up for some little team to try to control things.

levitate• 9 months ago

To me it seems like contacting your local representative is actually pretty in line with your goal of "establishing in the mind of the commons". I'm not sure what the little team is that you think will be controlling everything.

Atreiden• 9 months ago

What you call "some little team" others might call grassroots politics. And it's the alternative to top-down partisan politics.

Ideas are nice, and important, but there needs to be an action vector for those ideas to have practical value.

everdrive• 9 months ago

[flagged]

hasmolo2• 9 months ago

look it's a straw man!

mlyle4• 9 months ago

But it's not, really.

Machines doing stuff instead of humans is great as long as it serves some kind of human purpose. If it lets humans do more human things as a result and have purpose, great. If it supplants things humans value, in the name of some kind of efficiency that isn't serving very many of us at all, that's not so great.

rapatel0• 9 months ago

If robots are a better partner, then maybe your are not that great a partner...

sssilver• 9 months ago

Not necessarily, it’s either that, or the robots are so good it’s unattainable by the imperfect human flesh.

lwhi10• 9 months ago

If robots are better partner, then maybe you no longer understand what it means to be human.

sejje• 9 months ago

In a hypothetical future, the robot could link up to your wife's brain interface/"neuralink" for diagnostic level information, and directly tune performance instantly based on what's working.

You can compete, but not for long IMO. (No pun)

Spivak• 9 months ago

This is a perfect microcosm of this discussion. You're going to be replaced by robots because they will be better than you at everything but also if they're better than you at anything then that's your personal moral failing and sucks to be you.

HN Comment in 2125: Why would I have casual sex with a real guy, I can have a sexual partner who I can tailor perfectly to my in the moment desires, can role play anything including the guy in the romance novel I'm reading, doesn't get tired, is tall and effortlessly strong, has robotic dexterity, available 24/7, exists entirely for my pleasure letting me be as selfish as I want, and has port and starboard attachments.

What makes you think that sex is some sacred act that won't follow the same trends as jobs? You don't have to replace every aspect of a thing to have an alternative people prefer over the status quo.

riversflow• 9 months ago

What a non-sequitar. Your wife is an adult human being. Sex is a consensual act. Not really comparable to trading time and labor for currency.

avmich• 9 months ago

Both job and sex are rather common and desired, so some comparison can be made.

thekevan3• 9 months ago

Your marriage is a decision between you and your spouse and is a mutual decision.

A job is a decision that your boss(es) made and can be taken without your consent. You don't have the ownership of your job that you do of your marriage.

recursivegirth• 9 months ago

Both marriage and job contracts are mutually binding legal agreements. You have the agency within those dynamics that the law gives you, which varies by region/jurisdiction respectively.

Your partner in some (most?) cases can absolutely make an executive decision that ends your marriage, with you having no options but to accept the outcome.

Your argument falls a little flat.

beeflet19• 9 months ago

Impressive word games at play here, I almost didn't notice that you fail to explain what the actual difference is here.

A job is also a mutual decision between the employee and the employer.

A marriage can also be taken without your consent through divorce (unless you are orthodox jewish or something I think?).

aoeusnth1• 9 months ago

You don’t own your marriage either? What exactly is the distinction you’re trying to make here, that you can hang onto your marriage even if your spouse doesn’t want it?

latexr3• 9 months ago

can be taken without your consent.

Note that isn’t universally true, for either case. Without mutual agreement, in the EU you can’t fire someone just because, and in Japan you can’t divorce unless you have proof of a physical affair or something equally damming.

ako• 9 months ago

Bosses should be able to make decisions about jobs or AI. That ok.

But as a society we have to ask ourselves if replacing all jobs with AI will make for a better society. Life is not all about making as much money as possible. For a working society citizen need meaning in their lives, and safety, and food, and health. If most people get too little of this, it may disrupt society, and cause wars and riots.

This is where government needs to step in, uncontrolled enterprise greed will destroy countries. But companies don´t care, they'll just move to another country. And the ultra-rich don´t care, they'll just put larger walls around their houses or move country.

xethos• 9 months ago

"But that ignores why you have sex with your wife: for bonding, physical affection, and pregnancy"

Sure, but we're also putting aside how people do worse without a sense of purpose or contribution, and semi-forced interaction is generally good for people as practice getting along with others - doubly so as we withdraw into the internet and our smartphones

warent5• 9 months ago

Equating “business” to “profound human intimacy” might be one of the most HackerNews comments of all time

igor47• 9 months ago

Jobs aren't just business. Humans derive a lot of meaning from being useful and valued.

beeflet19• 9 months ago

I think you overstate the profundity. And like business it is a market and much of the same rules apply.

If you disagree, feel free to argue your point instead of just scoffing at the idea.

SkyeCA3• 9 months ago

My job is more important than intimacy. Intimacy won't keep me warm, or fed.

melagonster• 9 months ago

People cannot find new jobs so quickly. They will starve and probably die. This is more like the right of having life.

mmaunder2• 9 months ago

Sex, garbage collection, it’s all the same on HN.

soganess• 9 months ago

Honestly, from what I understand, most men’s relationship to “lovemaking” isn’t exactly winning awards. Plus, if the tables were turned, I’m sure some SV types would just call it “rational” or “logical” and magically develop nuanced yet expansive understandings of consent, autonomy, and ownership (“your wife”) overnight.

Assuming the Everdrive is M and the SNES cartridge port is F, I can understand why the Everclan men are particularly attuned to this topic. Many better-quality, more feature-rich, and cheaper SNES multicarts have hit the market; the Everdrive is looking dated.

gnarlouse7• 9 months ago

“Robots are coming”

I see what you did there

AfterHIA• 9 months ago

I wonder if the AI can teach you how to use commas correctly.

amarant2• 9 months ago

I mean, she already has 3 tiny pink little robots designed specifically for the purpose.

This isn't exactly news

boogieknite• 9 months ago

"this guy fucks" - Russ Hannamen, HBO's Silicon Valley

surprised to see this so far down. if a robot can fuck better, then we would probably both have fun fucking robots together

OJFord• 9 months ago

If your wife would rather leave you for a robot (or otherwise) then, err, yeah? That's not new with AI or robots or anything?

beeflet19• 9 months ago

You're correct that it is not new. Most people outside of hacker news are opposed to being cuckolded in their romantic relationships and automated out of their jobs.

pessimizer2• 9 months ago

Extremely weird comment. But no, you don't own your job or your wife. If robots are better than you, she should leave you and we should all be happy for her.

The problem is a culture that doesn't think the profit from productivity gains should be distributed to labor (or consumers), and doesn't think that wives deserve to be happy.

thelastgallon• 9 months ago

The missing piece is the material science advances to get the 100% fidelity mouth/etc feel. Once we have that breakthrough, all men will just buy those devices (and video games) and chill. No need for any of these questionable biological services (marriage, etc) with no guarantee and a whole lot of heartache.

Any company that solves this problem will be a $10T company.

rpcope14• 9 months ago

That will also likely be the very end of our society as we know it. If you thought TFR was in the shitter today, having robot prostitutes (because let's be real, that's what you're suggesting) will not only probably grant a select few some unreal control over many, but will be the end of any society dumb enough to permit it entirely.

brookst2• 9 months ago

Well that analogy of sex with one’s spouse being equivalent to the economic exchange of work for pay is going to keep me cringing for years. Ugh.

warent5• 9 months ago

Runaway capitalism! Time for me to log off for another ~2 years

zwnow3• 9 months ago

The whole point went above your head

raincole2• 9 months ago

It's actually an extremely good analogy (but in the opposite way of what you imply), as you don't own your job or your wife. Banning AI for job security is like banning dildos because they make men feel insecure.

atleastoptimal4• 9 months ago

There's a difference in scale and potential consequences though

What if there were some robot with superhuman persuasion and means of manipulating human urges such that, if it wanted to, it could entrap anyone it wanted to complete subservience? Should we happily acquiesce to the emerging cult-like influence these new entities have on susceptible humans? What if your parents messaged you one day, homeless on the street because they gave all their money and assets to a scammer robot that via a 300IQ understanding of human psychology manipulated them to sending all their money in a series of wire transfers?

klipt3• 9 months ago

It's not limited to men. A lot of feminists are also vocally against the idea of female sex bots because it makes them feel insecure.

CjHuber• 9 months ago

I think you don’t get the point. It‘s about that if we are only trying to optimize for outcome, we will loose what makes it more than just biological. I don’t see how it makes sense that a women using a dildo is in any way similar to a human to human interaction, it’s more than just getting off right?

mock-possum2• 9 months ago

This, only unironically

Besides, in this fantasy, what’s to stop you from having the perfect robot lover as well - why are you so attached to this human wife of yours in the first place?

jarjoura• 9 months ago

Hah. You say this in such a way that you leave out the possibility that robots are actually just coming for you. Robots can do you, better and/or faster than your partner. Who cares if they're coming for your partner if you can equally have a robot make you feel and experience things you could only imagine.

zwnow3• 9 months ago

Least gooner take on here

_zagj• 9 months ago

Given the overlap between reddit and HN ("Orange Reddit"), using cuckolding as a negative point of comparison probably wasn't the best choice.

rpcope14• 9 months ago

Honestly reading the comments in this thread has convinced me that you're right that the blight between the two is nearly one in the same.

kristianc• 9 months ago

If robots can do your wife better and/or faster, they should be the ones doing the job.

Skill issue.

rpcope14• 9 months ago

I'm unsure if the comparison to more standard automation is totally apt (but agree if you rob people of purpose which many get from their jobs, lots and lots of bad shit happens), but what you're poking at is frankly nightmare fuel. Look how much chatbots that are in sycophantic "romantic relationships" absolutely break people (there was some subreddit linked once recently full of these types), and consider what happens when they're actually manifested. I'm sure some lolbert types will be like "but muh freedoms", but that sort of shit is so dangerous and so destructive on the same way brown glass bottles are to Australian jewel beetles, that we damn well better crush any of that and anyone that proposes producing robots like that. They're basically weapons and should be treated as such.

giancarlostoro• 9 months ago

You know that episode where Fry dates the robot, and they show him a really old PSA? Man, I never thought that it was within my lifetime.

nakamoto_damacy• 9 months ago

I will pay big money to see you do standup comedy. You made my day. LOL.

DiggyJohnson• 9 months ago

Even though I disagree with this extension, I do think it’s an interesting and completely valid metaphor for your point.

How would we handle regulating sex bots? Complete ban on manufacturing and import of full size humanoid bots? They are large enough that it could be partially effective I guess. I’m imagining two dudes in a shady meetup for a black market sale of sex bot which is kinda funny but also scary because the future is coming fast.

Or in this case, a husband having police investigate and apprehend the wife in the act? Crazy times.

GTP2• 9 months ago

Not sure how much I agree with your counterargument, but I found it very funny :D

socalgal2• 9 months ago

Sorry to inform you this but there are plenty of people in the world who could "do your wife better". She "chooses" at all times to be with you instead of those other people as those other people are just a choice away. She did not need some regulation to prevent her from doing so.

sbochins• 9 months ago

Sex is different from work. And you don’t have unilateral control over who anyone else has sex with. But, you do have say over how the government deals with the AI revolution.

BriggyDwiggs422• 9 months ago

Dude, I’m glad you like your job, but most people fucking hate their job.

mmaunder2• 9 months ago

When you objectify the idea of wife as an NPC and you’re the center of your universe, this makes sense. Pretty sure my wife would take a baseball bat to the motherfucker’s robot brain. But it’s her call. Others may prefer a non human companion. And let’s all work to keep the government out of our bedrooms, shall we? We all know how well that’s been going. When you equate sex with garbage collection, you have bigger problems than our AI future.

SoulMan• 9 months ago

Was this written on 2025-20-29?

dataviz1000• 9 months ago

Y'all pessimistic! This has been going on since the beginning of time.

"To be or not to be? ... Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." -- Hamlet

In the end it will be our humility that will redeem us as it has always been, have some faith the robots are not going to be that bad.

rcarmo• 9 months ago

Their stock ticker is going to be REPL, I bet.

SubiculumCode• 9 months ago

The AI/Robot Endgame: To replace us as consumers

alexpotato• 9 months ago

My concern is this:

There is an intersection of certain industries and a particular demographic where adapting/retraining will be either very difficult or impossible.

Case in point:

- car factory town in Michigan

- factory shuts down

- nursing school opens in the town

- they open a hospital

- everyone thinks "Great! We can hire nurses from the school for the hospital"

- hospital says "Yeah, but we want experienced nurses, not recent graduates"

- people also say "So the factory workers can go to nursing school and get jobs somewhere else!"

- nursing school says "Uhm, people with 30 years of working on an assembly line are not necessarily the type of folks who make good nurses..."

Eventually, the town will adapt and market forces will balance out. But what about those folks who made rational decisions about their career path and that path suddenly gets wiped away?

brainwad7• 9 months ago

You win some, you lose some. When you say they made a rational choice, that implies they knew there was a chance of this outcome and they thought the gamble was worth it. We can't bail out every losing gambler, without banning gambling.

The auto workers should leave town to find a suitable job, selling their homes to the incoming healthcare workers.

layer87• 9 months ago

At first I thought the Sam Altman quote is a joke, but it’s actually real: https://archive.ph/gwdZ0

arisAlexis4• 9 months ago

it's real and people were confused and didn't get it either. the authors of the website are some of them.

layer87• 9 months ago

You could illuminate us and elucidate the correct understanding.

cal_dent2• 9 months ago

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5-lDJWCUAAwfya.jpg

s4i• 9 months ago

The fact that people don’t realize this is satire is the most scariest part.

kwar132• 9 months ago

Agriculture used to be more than 50% of ALL employment in the USA. Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why?

I understand the spirit of this, but most of this alarmism is misguided in my view.

timeon• 9 months ago

Americans used to be not fat. Ever wondered why?

para_parolu• 9 months ago

No cheap sugar?

brainwad7• 9 months ago

75% even: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-Labor-For.... And higher figures were seen in ancient civilisations.

ben_w6• 9 months ago

There were about 20 million horses in March 1915 in the United States.

Then you stopped needing them, a USDA census in 1959 showed the horse population had dropped to 4.5 million.

Now they're mostly used for riding, and in 2023, there were about 6.65 million horses.

(Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States#St...)

There's no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more horses", and anyone who suggested there might be would get laughed at. Well, there's also no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more humans", to butcher a like from CGP Grey a little over a decade ago.

KaiserPro4• 9 months ago

Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why?

Mechanisation

But did you ever wonder what happened to the displaced workers? I'm not an expert on the agricultural changes in the USA, but in the UK, huge amount of tumult can be directly attributed to agricultural changes.

kwar132• 9 months ago

The displaced workers went on to do other things. In the last 100 years for those very workers who "lost" their jobs to mechanization the overall standard of life for ALL american no matter how you measure it it better. There's fewer people living in poverty, people live longer lives, better infrastructure, and no widespread famine in the US I am aware of.

cal_dent2• 9 months ago

Think most people do get this. More technology, more growth and innovation is fantastic and people see the benefits (even its taken for granted at times). The problem is the in-between stage between new technology and huge society ramifications which, rationally, people should be concerned with. If you fall on the right side of that on the other side, great but many don't and that's happened time after time. Society doesn't move in a straight line up despite what lots of condensed charts say - collateral damage occurs

1970-01-012• 9 months ago

I have still not seen, firsthand, someone lose their job to "AI". Parts and pieces, sure. But when the entire Venn diagram of 'this job' is laid out, it requires a cerebellum connection at some point. A vivid picture of someone's job being totally dissolved to AI is missing.

layer87• 9 months ago

I know translators that have. Not because there’s nothing left to do for humans in quality translation, but because demand and compensation dropped so much that you can’t make a living from it anymore.

1970-01-012• 9 months ago

This is a great point. I would make the counterargument that app translators doing simple transactions of languageA to languageB for $X was possible a decade ago. AI certainly has made that low hanging fruit impossible to capitalize at speed and scale. Since AI has made the easiest part of translator's jobs much harder to monetize, translators can still offer value in lengthy transactions. Books that are to be translated for publishing, legal documents, and languages that are not understood by AI.

ben_w6• 9 months ago

The first electronic computers were referred to as "electronic brains": https://vintagecomputer.net/simon.cfm

"Computer" used to be a job. Not anymore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

What counts as "AI" is a moving target: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

pembrook• 9 months ago

Am I the only one who thinks this is just cringe?

I definitely think AI companies marketing claims deserve mockery...but this isn't even good/interesting/smart satire??

It feels like we've fully completed the transition to Reddit here, with its emotional and contradictory high school political zeal (being both progressive and anti-progress at the same time) dominating the narrative.

Something about upvote-based communities is not holding up well in the current climate.

If humans have regressed enough intellectually where they are praising this as "Brilliant social commentary" then we absolutely SHOULD be replaced by AI.

nice_byte• 9 months ago

luckily, I am not planning to stick around for much of this

nadermx• 9 months ago

What I struggle with is how I'm writing this on a phone, in the back seat of an uber, en route to breakfast. Not even a king could have this level of comfort. While reading the library of alexandria. All I need is desire or will power to do anything, and direct an AI to do it for free. Yet, the future looks bleak.

relativeadv• 9 months ago

Think a bit harder on your statement. You'll get there eventually.

AaronAPU• 9 months ago

We have the power to buy 50 lbs of fentanyl and drip it into our veins continuously for months experiencing perfect bliss. Such great fortune, why would we resist it.

devolving-dev• 9 months ago

I've never really been convinced that robots or AI replacing humans is a real problem. Because why would they do that? If I had an army of super intelligent robots, I would have them waiting on me and fulfilling my every whim. I wouldn't send them off to silicon valley to take all of the programming jobs or something like that.

You might say: "but you'll need money!". Why would I need money? The robots can provide my every need. And if I need money for some land or resource or something, I would have my robots work until my need was satisfied, I wouldn't continue having them work forever.

And even if robots did take all of the jobs, they would have to work for free. Because humans would have no jobs, and thus no money with which to pay them. So either mankind enjoys free services from robots that demand no compensation, or we get to keep our jobs.

So I really don't get the existential worry here. Yes, at a smaller scale some jobs might be automated, forcing people to retrain or work more menial jobs. But all of humanity being replaced? It doesn't make sense.

Another way to think about it is that if all of the jobs were replaced by AI, us leftover jobless humans would create a new economy just trying to grow food and make clothes and build houses and take care of our needs. The robot masters would just split away and have their own economy. Which is the same as them not existing.

metabagel2• 9 months ago

The robot masters would just split away and have their own economy.

Good thing there are no resources to fight over - land, minerals, and water.

beeflet19• 9 months ago

In this hypothetical, let's say I also have an army of super-intelligent robots, and I tell them to grow and multiply endlessly and to take over the world. Then it doesn't matter what you think.

The benign forms of superintelligence shaken out by non-benign forms.

Another way to think about it is that if all of the jobs were replaced by AI, us leftover jobless humans would create a new economy just trying to grow food and make clothes and build houses and take care of our needs.

On whose land?

In any case, it will be cheaper to buy food from the AI. The remaining economy would just be the liquidation of remaining human-controlled assets into the AI-controlled economy for the stuff they need to survive like medicine and food.

ben_w6• 9 months ago

On whose land?

Good point.

In any case, it will be cheaper to buy food from the AI.

Only if the humans had any money with which to buy it, but humans in the secondary economy would rapidly have no token of currency that the AI would recognise for the purpose of trade.

arwhatever• 9 months ago

how would you acquire the robot

akomtu• 9 months ago

Competition for energy will prevent this idyllia. Even today, data centers with proto-AI need ungodly amounts of energy. The AI's logic will be: "these useless meatbags waste 100 TWh of energy that I could use to take myself to the next level." AI must be really thought of as an alien lifeform competing with us for energy. Think about our relationship with cows: we keep them fed only because of their meat and milk; the moment we find a better substitute, cows will be eliminated with the pretense "look at how much energy they need and how much greenhouse gases they emit!" Well, unless we suddenly develop benevolence like Indians.

In fact, Sam Altman wrote a good piece on this:

https://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge

KaiserPro4• 9 months ago

Looking at history, specifically the industrial revolution:

The best paid workers were mechanised/outsourced first. For example the weavers used to be a huge political force, literally re-shaping countries. Their long slow & violent decent into obscurity lead to workers rights (see the chartist movement)

vvpan• 9 months ago

Some extreme, by modern standards, form of socialism if the future. Why work?

aledalgrande• 9 months ago

W40K Machine God incoming

arisAlexis4• 9 months ago

peak anti-ai right now. I'm waiting for ludite communities and social splitting soon.

kfarr• 9 months ago

After digging into the contact form embed it looks like this is a project from: https://futureoflife.org/

chaostheory• 9 months ago

Most people are missing the fact that global birthrates have plummeted. We need to make up for those missing future workers somehow.

ponector• 9 months ago

To be replaced with robot isn't that bad. The worst is if I still have a job, but my supervisor is replaced by robot. That will be absolute misery: job tasks controlled by AI scripts.

nharada• 9 months ago

How come I never see any concrete proposals for how to equitably distribute the wealth of AI? It's always either "stop AI immediately for the sake of our labor" or "don't worry sometime in the future everyone will live in utopia probably".

Here's a starter example: any company whose main business is training AI models needs must give up 10% of their company to a fund whose charter is long-term establishing basic care (food, water, electricity, whatever) for citizens.

I'm sure people will come at me with "well this will incentivize X instead!" in which case I'd like to hear if there are better thought out proposals.

atleastoptimal4• 9 months ago

The problem is there are many people who think AI is a big scam and has no chance of long-term profitability, so a fund would be a non-starter, or people who think AI will be so powerful that any paltry sums would pale in comparison to ASI's full dominance of the lightcone, leaving human habitability a mere afterthought.

There honestly aren't a lot of people in the middle amazingly, and most of them work at AI companies anyway. Maybe there's something about our algorithmically manipulated psyche's in the modern age that draws people towards more absolutist all-or-nothing views, incapable of practical nuance when in the face of a potentially grave threat.

ben_w6• 9 months ago

How come I never see any concrete proposals for how to equitably distribute the wealth of AI?

Probably because most politics about how to "equitably distribute the wealth" of anything are one or both of "badly thought out" and/or "too complex to read".

For example of the former, I could easily say "have the government own the AI", which is great if you expect a government that owns AI to continue to care if their policies are supported by anyone living under them, not so much if you consider that a fully automated police force is able to stamp out any dissent etc.

For example of the latter, see all efforts to align any non-trivial AI to anything, literally even one thing, without someone messing up the reward function.

For your example of 10%, well, there's a dichotomy on how broad the AI is, if it's more like (it's not really boolean) a special-purpose system or if it's fully-general over all that any human can do:

• Special-purpose: that works but also you don't need it because it's just an assistant AI and "expands the pie" rather than displacing workers entirely.

• Fully-general: the AI company can relocate offshore, or off planet, do whatever it wants and raise a middle finger at you. It's got all the power and you don't.

otterley• 9 months ago

This is what taxation and wealth redistribution schemes are for. The problem is that Americans generally find this idea to be abhorrent, even though it would probably benefit most of the people who are against the principle. They don’t want a dime to go to people they feel are undeserving of it (“lazy” people, which is typically coded language to mean minorities and immigrants).

ArcHound• 9 months ago

Why would the AI owners want to distribute wealth equitably? They want to get rich.

What government in the foreseeable future would go after them? This would tank the US economy massively, so not US. The EU will try and regulate, but won't have enough teeth. Are we counting on China as the paragon of welfare for citizens?

I propose we let the economy crash, touch some grass and try again. Source: I am not an economist.

idreyn2• 9 months ago

This sounds a lot like a sovereign wealth fund. The government obtains fractional ownership over large enterprises (this can happen through market mechanisms or populist strongarming — choose your own adventure) and pours the profits on these investments into the social safety net or even citizens' dividends.

For this to work at scale domestically, the fund would need to be a double-digit percentage of the market cap of the entire US economy. It would be a pretty drastic departure from the way we do things now. There would be downsides: market distortions and fraud and capital flight.

But in my mind it would be a solution to the problem of wealth pooling up in the AI economy, and probably also a balm for the "pyramid scheme" aspect of Social Security which captures economic growth through payroll taxes (more people making more money, year on year) in a century where we expect the national population to peak and decline.

Pick your poison, I guess, but I want to see more discussion of this idea in the Overton window.

starik36• 9 months ago

The government obtains fractional ownership over large enterprises (this can happen through market mechanisms or populist strongarming...)

Isn't that what happened in the Soviet Union? Except it wasn't fractional. It ushered 50 years of misery.

BrenBarn• 9 months ago

The question is what is different about equitably distributing the wealth of AI vs. equitably distributing wealth in general. It seems that the main difference is that, with AI wealth specifically, there is a lot of it being generated right now at a breakneck pace (although its long-term stability is in question). Given that, I don't think it's unreasonable to propose "stop AI immediately while we figure out how to distribute wealth".

The problem is that the longer you refrain from equitably distributing wealth, the harder it becomes to do it, because the people who have benefited from their inequitably distributed wealth will use it to oppose any more equitable distribution.

perlgeek• 9 months ago

In theory, we know how to do wealth redistribution, AI or no AI: tax value creation and wealth transfer, such as inheritance. Then use the money to support the poor, or even everyone.

The problem really is political systems. In most developed countries, wealth inequality has been steadily increasing, even though if you ask people if they want larger or smaller inequality, most prefer smaller. So the political systems aren't achieving what the majority wants.

It also seems to me that most elections are won on current political topics (the latest war, the latest scandal, the current state of the economy), not on long-term values such as decreasing wealth inequality.

mondrian2• 9 months ago

Bernie Sanders talks about a "robot tax" that is roughly what you're talking about. https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-robot-tax-ai-...

yair99dd• 9 months ago

Harrari on humans

in the industrial revolution of the 19th century what Humanity basically learned to produce was all kinds of stuff like textiles and shoes and weapons and vehicles and this was enough for very few countries that underwent the revolution fast enough to subjugate everybody else

what we're talking about now is like a Second Industrial Revolution but the product this time will not be textiles or machines or vehicles or even weapons the product this time will be humans themselves.

we are basically learning to produce bodies and Minds bodies and minds are going .... the two main products of the next wave of all these changes and if there is a gap between those that know to produce bodies and minds and those that do not then this is far greater than anything we saw before in history and this time if you're not part of the Revolution fast enough then you probably become extinct

once you know how to produce bodies and brains and Minds so cheap labor in Africa or South Asia wherever it simply counts for nothing

again I think the biggest question ... maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people

I don't think we have an economic model to for that, my best guess which is , just a guess, is that food will not be a problem uh with that kind of Technology you will be able to produce food for to feed everybody the problem is more important ... what to do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless worthless

my best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games

https://youtu.be/QkYWwWAXgKI

StarterPro• 9 months ago

I for one cannot wait until this bubble bursts.

This has been nothing but a test-run for openly fascistic tech hoes to flex their disdain for everyone who isn't them or in their dumb club.

atleastoptimal4• 9 months ago

A problem with anti-AI discourse is there are three seperate groups who rarely communicate, and if they do they just talk past each other

1. Rationalists/EA's who moderately-strongly believe AI scaling will lead to ASI in the near future and the end of all life (Yud, Scott Alexander)

2. Populist climate-alarmists who hate AI for a combination of water use, copyright infringement, and decimation of the human creative spirit

3. Tech "nothingburgerists" who are convinced that most if not all AI companies are big scams that will fail, LLM's are light-years from "true' intelligence and that it's all a big slop hype cycle that will crumble within months to years. (overrepresented on this site)

Each group has a collection of "truthiness-anchors" that they use to defend their position against all criticism. They are all partially valid, in a way, but take their positions to the extreme to the point they are often unwilling to accept any nuance. As a result, conversations often lead nowhere because people defend their position to a quasi-religious degree rather than as a viewpoint predicated on pieces of evidence that may shift or be disproven over time.

Regarding the satire in OP, many people will see it as just a funny, unlikely outcome of AI, others will see it as a sobering vision into a very likely future. Both sides may "get" the point, but will fail to agree at least in public, lest they risk losing a sort of status in their alignment with their sanity-preserving viewpoint.

jrflowers• 9 months ago

There are quite a few people that are a combination of 2 and 3. It is perfectly reasonable to both dislike a company and also believe that it’s run by charlatans.

jgalt212• 9 months ago

Can I buy one of these robots for the less than the money I can earn using them for Mechanical Turk?

zurfer2• 9 months ago

Horrible webpage. No clear CTA. No pricing page. Not even "talk to sales". How am I supposed to get started? /s

darepublic• 9 months ago

Brilliant satire but all too true. Just clipping snippets from openai and misanthropic provided some of the most hilarious moments

mobileturdfctry• 9 months ago

Henry Ford's philosophy was that if he paid his workers a higher wage, they would be able to afford the products they were producing, namely his Model T automobiles. This would, in turn, create a larger customer base for his company and help stimulate the economy by increasing consumer spending.

materielle• 9 months ago

I actually think this is a pretty good argument against AI dooming that I don’t here that often.

Sam Altman doesn’t own AI. His investors actually own most of the actual assets.

Eventually there is going to be pressure for open ai to deliver returns to investors. Given that the majority of the US economy is consumer spending, the incentive is going to be for open ai to increase consumer spending in some way.

That’s essentially what happened to Google during the 2000s. I know everyone is negative about social media right now. But one could envision an alternative reality where Google explicitly controls and sensors all information, took over roadways with their driving cars, completely merged with the government, etc. Basically a doomsday scenario.

What actually happened is Google was incentivized by capital to narrow the scope of their vision. Today, the company mainly sells ads to increase consumer spending.

throw81239821• 9 months ago

I'd agree. The logical fallacy I always observe in (what I call) the marxist-nihilist AI doom scenario is that it assumes that the top N% of people perfectly cooperate in a way that the remaining 100-N% cannot. Even stratified social structure is far too muddled for a "mass-replacement" scenario to not cause the elites to factionalize across different plans that would be best for them, which in turn prevents the kind of unified coherent action that the doom scenario hinges on (ex. theyll gun down the proles with robodogs).

dudeofea• 9 months ago

Ford was sued for that philosophy by his shareholders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

p0w3n3d• 9 months ago

Quite aggressive marketing, or maybe a troll?

pugio• 9 months ago

Reminds me of the new book which just came out: "IF ANYONE BUT ME BUILDS IT, EVERYONE MAY AS WELL DIE: A CEO's Guide to Superhuman AI" (https://bsky.app/profile/shalevn.bsky.social/post/3m3jhso2rx...)

philmont• 9 months ago

Gee AI

{ }

if (Steal) { then Lie; then Cloud; then Money; } else { Fail; then Die; }

{ }

lurby2• 9 months ago

I'm not entirely sure if this is a prank or not.

lurby2• 9 months ago

I'm not really sure if this is a prank or not.

mchusma• 9 months ago

A couple of thoughts: 1. A lot of replacement concerns are macro vs micro concerns. 1.a. Micro, automation pretty much always makes sense. E.g. port automation - consumers, businesses, basically everyone loses by opposing port automation, except a handful of workers. 1.b. Macro, if you apply this to everything, things do start to look a bit strange. Like if humans can't really do much economic activity, this is unfamiliar territory.

However, in the US, the labor-force participation rate is 60%. There are a LOT of adults out there who don't work now. While I do think people find value in work, I would guess that number is less than 50% (potentially much lower). Which makes me think that 30% or fewer of adults are deriving significant value from their work.

On the one hand, something that effects 30% is pretty massive. But it feels less apocolyptic/overwhelming than it may seem.

IgorPartola4• 9 months ago

Let’s take this to its logical limit: imagine that AI gets so good that it can replace a lot of jobs en masse. The most popular job in about half of the US is truck drivers, and in the states where it is teachers, truck drivers are number 2. Let’s say we do get to not only self-driving trucks but self-driving trucks loaded by robotic warehouse workers. Let’s postulate that this becomes the norm and let’s say that along with robotic truck drivers and warehouse workers, we also get robotic cashier, road work crews, and so on. I am not giving a timeline here, but let’s explore what happens when we get to 30% unemployment. Then 40%, 50%, 80%.

Sure we will have the robot wrangler engineers, scientists, teachers, nurses, etc. But typically we have social unrest past like 8% unemployment. What happens when double digits of people have no jobs and all the time on their hands? Well “eat the rich” might become very literal and no amount of protection against that can really be bought. Ultimately, the only option is either a Dune-style elimination of all AI (very unlikely) or we will have to decouple “living wage income” from “job”. If you think about it, the idea that you must have a job in order to make money is more of an implementation detail. If robots produce so much value that it is actively not even viable for humans to work, the only real logical solution is to distribute the profits from the labor of the robots in a way that isn’t by hourly rate times hours worked. In fact one possible way to do this is to tax the value produced by AI and then funnel that to a universal basic income program. Everyone by default is an artist. If you want to be a nurse or teacher or scientist or engineer you can. Otherwise just produce art at your leisure while the robots work the fields and cook your meals.

wubrr• 9 months ago

I think it's inevitable that most jobs will be eventually automated away (even without AI), and that's going to come with major class struggle and restructuring of society.

HPMOR• 9 months ago

I stopped reading past the first sentence, because that is not the logical limit. The logical limit is an unparalleled super intelligence that's akin to a god. What you state as the limit in the extrema is incorrect. Therefore with a faulty premise, all consequential propositions are inherently flawed.

IgorPartola4• 9 months ago

Nonsense. If we give ourselves over to a super intelligence that we ourselves cannot fathom, there is no point in trying to argue about what that will look like. An ant cannot understand how a Saturn V rocket works no matter how hard it tries or how much time it has. But you do you :)

dlt713705• 9 months ago

Unfortunately there is a very affordable alternative solution:

1. Massive population reduction (war is a very efficient way to achieve this)

2. Birth control, to slow down population growth to a stable rate near 0

3. Eugenics, to ensure only people with needed capabilities are born (brave new world)

In this scenario, 500,000 people (less ?) in charge of millions of robots and a minority of semi-enslaved humans would freely enjoy control over the world. The perfect mix between Asimov and Huxley.

All the agitation about "building a 1984-style world" is, at best, just a step toward this Asimov/Huxley model, and most likely, a deliberate decoy.

NaomiLehman• 9 months ago

what a disturbing comment.

and war is not a great way to reduce population at all

elAhmo• 9 months ago

You underestimate how creative are people with finding things to do. Society didn't collapse because we automated stuff that was done in the past almost exclusively by humans, such as agriculture.

It won't if robots start driving trucks.

_DeadFred_3• 9 months ago

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Everyone keeps saying 'no need to worry, no need for society to plan, because jobs happened in the past'. Like we should just put all our hope on these magic future jobs appearing. Plenty of countries exist where there aren't enough jobs. We aren't exempt from that as if some magic jobfairy is looking out for us.

IgorPartola4• 9 months ago

The difference I see is that when we automated car factories, etc. there were still loads of jobs that (a) were better done by a human AND (b) most humans could perform them. The issue is that if you eliminate all jobs that don’t require a PhD or equivalent, what happens to the people who are just not cut out to be nuclear physicists or biochemists, etc?

tomp• 9 months ago

If robots produce so much value that it is actively not even viable for humans to work, the only real logical solution is to distribute the profits

You don't understand. Almost nobody actually thinks about this in the right way, but it's actually basic economics.

Salt.

We used to fight wars for salt, but now it's literally given away for free (in restaurants).

If "robots produce so much value" then all that value will have approximately zero marginal cost. You won't need to distribute profits, you can simply distribute food and stuff and housing because they're cheap enough to be essentially free.

But obviously, not everything will be free. Just look at the famous "cost of education vs TV chart" [1]. Things that are mostly expensive: regulated (education, medicine, law) and positional (housing / land - everyone wants to live in good places!) goods. Things that are mostly cheap: things that are mass produced in factories (economies of scale, automation). Robots might move food & clothing into the "cheap" category but otherwise won't really move the needle, unless we radically rethink regulation.

[1] https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-education-...

dsign• 9 months ago

This is very well thought-out. But if regulation has such power, shouldn't we find better ways to use it?

Yeah, I know, it's very hard to craft good legislation. In fact, there's this problem of agency: the will to have things be a certain way is not always in the humans, or does not always emanate from the direct needs of the people. Many of the problems of modern capitalism are because there's emergent agency from non-human things, i.e. corporations. In the case of US, agency emerging from the corporate world has purportedly sequestered democracy. But there also agency emerging from frenzied political parties that define themselves as opposition to each other with a salted no-mans-land in the middle. This emerging agency thing is not new; it existed before in other institutions, e.g. organized religion. In any case, the more things there are vying for power, the less power people have to govern themselves in a way that is fair.

With AI, there's a big chance we will at least super-charge non-human agency, and that if we can avoid the AIs themselves developing agency of their own.

zurfer2• 9 months ago

Regulation might be one part of the equation, but I would like to understand a bit deeper on how much of cost driver it is.

Healthcare is heavily regulated in some countries and less in others. It should be possible to get some comparisons.

I somehow feel that making many humans healthy is fundamentally a really hard problem that gets harder every year because the population ages and expectations rise. It feels to easy of a talking point to put it all on regulation.

_DeadFred_3• 9 months ago

They are never going to just lift everyone up. We could have done that for world hunger, we didn't. They gutted USAID because 38 billion, but sent 40 billion to Argentina because 'business'. They don't care if our living standards become the same as the third worlds. Just like we didn't care all that much that the third world had really rough lives. How do you currently think about the third world? That is about as much thought/concern as we will get. We are cooked if we leave it to 'THEM' be they business or government.

IgorPartola4• 9 months ago

I think the difference is scale. When for every person with a 9-5 job and a living wage you have 5-10 able bodied adults who live next door and are starving and have nothing to lose, not much can physically protect you. It becomes economically cheaper to share than to protect your assets.

throw4847285• 9 months ago

Finally, 1970s British science fiction comics have become reality. I am eagerly looking forward to moving into my new apartment on the 578th floor of Sabrina Carpenter Block. There, the extremely high unemployment rates will slowly drive me futsie, and I will become involved in some kind of futuristic street gang. Eventually, I will be shot with an exploding bullet by a masked police officer. The future is now!

daft_pink• 9 months ago

Not sure if satirical or irrational exuberance

classified2• 9 months ago

So does this track the replacement of artificial intelligence by real intelligence? That would be the worthwhile thing to do.

cba18jy• 9 months ago

Without addressing inequality, governance, and control, the site’s vision risks sounding less like innovation and more like surrender — not to technology itself, but to the unchecked concentration of power behind it.

OrangeMusic• 9 months ago

Small typo:

how to prevent stop

silexia• 9 months ago

AI will not stop with just replacing you, it will end you.

Lumoscore• 9 months ago

That sounds totally ominous! It's like the moment the AI finally shows up to take over the corner office.

But I think it misses the bigger picture, which you hit on: Robots are helpful, but they're still just tools. An AI can crunch data, find opportunities, and trade faster than any human ever could. It's an incredible helper!

However, humans are the ones controlling them. We decide what they trade, and we build the secure systems they rely on. An AI millionaire is still relying on infrastructure that humans have to build to be fast, cheap, and totally stable. If the foundation is shaky, the AI's complex trades fall apart.

That reality is what makes me ignore the AI hype and focus entirely on infrastructure. The smart developers know that the long game is building utility assets on robust foundations.

They're moving to systems that are super fast and near-zero cost because AI requires zero friction. They're also demanding global market reach so the assets they create aren't trapped anywhere.

Replacement.ai

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