Every major tech firm is betting billions of dollars that the generative AI revolution will change society - yet when you look under the hood, the reality of generative AI might be far grimmer. Ed Zitron walks you through the many signs that we're on the verge of the AI bubble popping - and what the consequences might be if it does.
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They said the same thing when the spinning Jenny was invented, but who wants to go back to work in a cotton mill now?
Yes, there was hardship when these employees had to find new work, but historically, these types of innovation have always been a long term gain, regardless of the short term pain.
The industrial revolution took a lot of manual labour away from the workforce. That led to a lot of people transitioning to mental labour. It also led to an explosion of resource usage.
Unfortunately, humans haven’t changed. Technology is catching up with the capabilities of a lot of people. We also can’t expand our resource usage again to expand the remaining job opportunities.
We honestly need to be planning for there not to be enough work to go around full time. The question becomes how we do that?
Do we have 10% of people working, but the rest almost destitute?
Do we have everyone working 10% of what they work now?
Do we have 90% of jobs being time wasting ‘make work’?
How do we balance both the target and the transition process?
Good questions and I can’t say I have the answers.
Personally, I think it would be ideal if we could all increase our personal time. Think of all the extra hours we could use to pursue our hobbit or the time we could spend with loved ones.
The transition will be strange, as some jobs will be much easier to make obsolete than others and it is worth asking how we will compensate those who remain critical for the running of society. I can’t say I wouldn’t feel a little bitter if I had to remain at work 9-5 if other people were effectively retired.
In a perfect world, we would all work less, and benefit from the improvements. Unfortunately, I suspect it will go the other way. You’ll be thankful to have any work at all.
Capitalism is fundamentally amoral. If you have 100 factories producing widgets, and you increase productivity by 5x then (assuming saturated demand) you only need 20 factories. The other 80 either retool, or close down. When you apply that to humans, it doesn’t end well for the majority.