Transcript
Title text: This is how you all fucking sound
[A smug tech bro wearing a sideways cap, watch, chain around his neck stands in front of a data center by a lake with dead fish. A smoke stack blows pollution into the air]
Tech bro: AI is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a suit with cigarette in hand stands in a restaurant while two disgruntled diners cough from the smoke]
Suit: Smoking indoors is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a top hat and suit stands in a factory with two sad and dirty children]
Hat: Child labor is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug plantation owner stands in front of a field with with two angry slaves]
Plantation owner: The Atlantic Slave trade is already here, there’s no going back.
The frustrating part is that we could be on the precipice of an amazing time. We could be in a space where it makes sense to dump tons of resources into rapidly progressing automation because it would enable people to finally stop doing tedious labor.
But a combination of our inability to demand collective ownership of these systems and a similar disdain for social welfare means the prospect is instead terrifying. We need to continue to allow people to work cash registers for well below livable wages because otherwise they’ll starve.
There is an alternate reality where the end result of AI is that people are just free to live how they want, to socialize, to explore art and novel ideas within their passion, engage in social supports, etc. but instead we will continue to prop up the need for mind numbing and tedious labor out of a fear of homelessness because collectivism is scary and bad
I think we may very well be on the precipice of the world you imagine, or something like it. But the old world dies hard and takes effort to abolish. We didn't get where we are because we were given what we have - we fought for it. I think we're seeing the beginning stages of people demanding that the benefits of AI and automation flow to them, rather than to just the elite. Won't be without pain, but I think we get there. Partly because we kind of have to. People get over their fear of socialism and collectivism really fast when they get desperate yet there's people making huge piles of money off the automation that stole their job. I can't say for sure what the future looks like, but I don't think we stay locked here forever. To think so is to look at the situation during the first gilded age and say nothing can change. Well, it did and we got the progressive age.
I agree with you, I think the will for change is there. The next challenge is turning will into action.
Either the collapse of civilization or a literal uprising.
Seeing as we're already heading down the nightmare route, it seems poor risk management.
I mean we passed that point decades ago, im not an expert but im pretty sure it's literally been decades since we produced enough food for everyone on the planet to be obese and at least in the US I believe we have more empty houses than individual homeless people. AI overinvestment is another step in the wrong direction but it's not the cause of any of our current problems.
I dont think this is true.
Space mining is only for resources to use in space. The economics of transporting resources back to earth will never stack up.
I dont think any significant number of humans will spend any amount of time in space in any practical time scale.
I don’t mean people actually being in space. Perhaps a better word choice would be place, eg “we could be in a place where…”
Oh my bad i misread that.
I think we could be seeing a shift in the economics if humans can reliably live off world anyway.
I think NASAs SR-1 can show a reliable link to mars via what amounts to automated space trucks, but really only time will tell if we can kick off a new age of humanity or just keep letting neo-aristocrats take over again and again.
Nah.
It would be infinitely better to go live in a box in your back yard for several years. At least that way you avoid the chronic health issues arising from "living off world".
Even with a lot of yet-to-be-theorised physics, I just cant see the motivation for humans to leave earth in significant numbers.
IMO space will be populated almost exclusively by machines.
I suppose my time as a submariner may skew my view of life out there some.
Actually I'm interested to hear your perspective because I have no experience of anything like that.
I just feel like star trek has romanticised space exploration to the point where most people can't conceptualise the hardships that would be involved.
Just as an example, on the ISS, just outside earth's atmosphere, ive heard that the air smells putrid. Astronauts just deal with it because they're passionate about the project.
I guess my pessimistic view is that "life on Mars" would basically be very similar to life on a submarine but with no ports or shore leave or furlough.
It will definitely not be a walk in the park, but the newest ships and landers as well as the tech is so much more than I had on the USS Ohio. The longest we went underwater was 3 months. It definitely wears on you, but you work so much that exhaustion keeps you from any serious cabin fever. This is also helped along by the fact that we keep the oxygen percentage on the sub a little lower than surface air to lower the risk of fires.
To me, the biggest challenge won't be comfort, necessarily, but zero Gs and being able to hold off the deterioration of the body in hypotension. Humans can live in some pretty shitty conditions and space will necessitate them for now, but having the best view money can buy probably helps morale some.
I think that humanity is on the cusp of its next big jump into a new era. The old ways of doing things are no longer working, and new paths to the future will have to be charted. We are still very much in the veery early days of space colonization, kind of like the build up to the mercury program back in the 50s.
Tech is advancing so rapidly that even at 30, I've seen some technology I couldn't even dream of being real is now just in everyday use, so I remain hopeful about humans in space. Our drive to discover is so ingrained in to what we are that I see it as inevitable (if we don't destroy ourselves first) It is a compulsion that spread our species to the farthest reaches of our world and I have no reason to believe our world would be the last boundary.
Maybe that's the end use for AI.
Edit: i think of space as like this infinite ocean depth. There is eventually gonna be like this massive pocket of new world down there, but until there is, there just isn't any reason to go ourselves unless you're one of those types of people.
I'd also like to invoke the cautions of 2001 Space Odyssey as food for thought
Thats kinda of my point though, im predicting that there will never be a new world, either under the ocean or "off world".
Its a fascinating concept, and I do love sci fi, but in reality it just doesn't seem plausible.
I don't think this is quite how the world works. The reason people need to work to survive is because we can't survive if everyone stopped working. We have to make people work under threat of homelessness because if we didn't there is too great a risk they wouldn't work at all and that would eventually mean the collapse of society. How many people would quit their job tomorrow if they won the lottery? Sure some would find work doing something they preferred, but not all of them, and often the thing they prefer doing is not the job that actually needs doing the most. If it's something they even are good at. Loads of people would love to be an actor, but how many actually have both the talent and the skills needed to do that?
In a society where most people actually don't need to work because most work can be handled by machines without significant negative consequences things would change to be very different. People like to think rich people or politicians or kings control the world by themselves but the reality is there are always limits on what they can actually do. If you dick around too much even in an absolute monarchy you will be overthrown one way or another. Typically by your own military, underlings, or family, sometimes by revolution or insurrection. The same thing applies today to liberal democracy. In fact it applies even more so. Anyone who tried to kill off the working class as a whole would find themselves very quickly dead or dethroned one way or another.
No, people want to work. Look at Wikipedia, SCP, Minecraft, all those job simulator games, Linux, the Fediverse. The drive to create something that benefits people is fundamental to the human experience.