So here’s the thing… In between the land of “shitty service jobs” and the land of “fully automated luxury” lies the vast desert of “reverse-centaurs”.
Right now, when “AI” takes over 60% of a job, that remaining 40% becomes a brutal dehumanizing gauntlet: the “human-in-the-loop” becomes a peripheral for the computer, manipulated into working at the speed that the computer prefers, like Lucy in the chocolate factory, until they’re used up and replaced. Think Amazon warehouse pickers or drivers.
Part of the problem is that this exploitation is hidden from consumers. When we see a fellow laborer suffering horrible conditions in a public-facing service job, we’re much more likely to throw a fit than when they’re hidden behind a sleek UI.
With no guarantee that we’ll ever make it through to the other side of the desert, I’d be perfectly content to stay on this side of it.
I am not saying that we will necessarily go down the road to fully automated luxury, or that if we do that the journey there would go smoothly. The current “AI” bubble is an unsustainable mess which is causing a lot more problems than it solves. In the long term, we are looking at the development of incredibly powerful and dangerous technologies that can potentially reshape society.
I mainly just wanted to highlight the weird, shortsighted reasoning behind this post. The argument that we need to keep cashiers so that we have a human connection feels a lot like arguments for going back to an agrarian lifestyle. It’s a losing argument that requires glossing over a lot of downsides and ignoring much better alternatives.
Ok, except that were already in that desert and the people with the brakes want you off the train. AI and automation are happening. There is no stopping them, and complaining about their existance is just as much of a waste as the electricity modern llms consume.
Its not an option. Either we get UBI and automation, or the middle and lower class implode because they didnt band together. Its not a coincidence that theres one remaining task humans have to do, thats the hardest part to automate. But its absurd to think it cant be automated, as humans are able to do it. If a human can do it, a machine can be programmed to do it better. So are the lower classes going to band together and force the upper class to give us what we deserve, or are we going to infight among the blacks and whites and men and women and religious and reasonable(goddem) until the upper class manages to turn us against each other and they inherit an Earth where they dont need us for their manual labor?
So here’s the thing… In between the land of “shitty service jobs” and the land of “fully automated luxury” lies the vast desert of “reverse-centaurs”.
Right now, when “AI” takes over 60% of a job, that remaining 40% becomes a brutal dehumanizing gauntlet: the “human-in-the-loop” becomes a peripheral for the computer, manipulated into working at the speed that the computer prefers, like Lucy in the chocolate factory, until they’re used up and replaced. Think Amazon warehouse pickers or drivers.
Part of the problem is that this exploitation is hidden from consumers. When we see a fellow laborer suffering horrible conditions in a public-facing service job, we’re much more likely to throw a fit than when they’re hidden behind a sleek UI.
With no guarantee that we’ll ever make it through to the other side of the desert, I’d be perfectly content to stay on this side of it.
I am not saying that we will necessarily go down the road to fully automated luxury, or that if we do that the journey there would go smoothly. The current “AI” bubble is an unsustainable mess which is causing a lot more problems than it solves. In the long term, we are looking at the development of incredibly powerful and dangerous technologies that can potentially reshape society.
I mainly just wanted to highlight the weird, shortsighted reasoning behind this post. The argument that we need to keep cashiers so that we have a human connection feels a lot like arguments for going back to an agrarian lifestyle. It’s a losing argument that requires glossing over a lot of downsides and ignoring much better alternatives.
Ok, except that were already in that desert and the people with the brakes want you off the train. AI and automation are happening. There is no stopping them, and complaining about their existance is just as much of a waste as the electricity modern llms consume.
Its not an option. Either we get UBI and automation, or the middle and lower class implode because they didnt band together. Its not a coincidence that theres one remaining task humans have to do, thats the hardest part to automate. But its absurd to think it cant be automated, as humans are able to do it. If a human can do it, a machine can be programmed to do it better. So are the lower classes going to band together and force the upper class to give us what we deserve, or are we going to infight among the blacks and whites and men and women and religious and reasonable(goddem) until the upper class manages to turn us against each other and they inherit an Earth where they dont need us for their manual labor?