Though as someone who works in modern IT I foresee the future of robotics and AGI allowing for the kind of economic automation that would make communism inevitable eventually as jobs are reduced over time in the course of the next hundred or two hundred years.
Yeah, I thought that too, but now that we’re getting some rudimentary functional AI and robotics, what we’re seeing is companies using it to save them money - basically automating work that would be done by highly paid specialists, contractors, or outside companies. And they are not investimg in it to automate low paid rote work because the human labor is cheap enough that a big automation investment only yields gains long term - and businesses have been focused on short term gains for the last few decades. So, automation, in the short term at least, is really just limiting our opportunities for more satisfying work.
What’s more likely to happen in the short term is that the pressure to adopt new tools will fall on the worker. AI and robotics won’t take your job, but someone using them will.
You talked about the long term, hundreds of years, and it’s difficult to speculate how our society would work then. But… work and money is a form of social control. There will be significant pressure as jobs disappear to ensure the populous is still working to earn something that the ruling class has more of. Nothing short of a looooonnnnnnng term political change or violent upheaval of power dynamics will change that. Now, is that possible in the time scale of hundreds on years? Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that those in power would easily give up the very thing that gives them their power.
Yeah, I thought that too, but now that we’re getting some rudimentary functional AI and robotics, what we’re seeing is companies using it to save them money - basically automating work that would be done by highly paid specialists, contractors, or outside companies. And they are not investimg in it to automate low paid rote work because the human labor is cheap enough that a big automation investment only yields gains long term - and businesses have been focused on short term gains for the last few decades. So, automation, in the short term at least, is really just limiting our opportunities for more satisfying work.
What’s more likely to happen in the short term is that the pressure to adopt new tools will fall on the worker. AI and robotics won’t take your job, but someone using them will.
You talked about the long term, hundreds of years, and it’s difficult to speculate how our society would work then. But… work and money is a form of social control. There will be significant pressure as jobs disappear to ensure the populous is still working to earn something that the ruling class has more of. Nothing short of a looooonnnnnnng term political change or violent upheaval of power dynamics will change that. Now, is that possible in the time scale of hundreds on years? Maybe, but I find it hard to believe that those in power would easily give up the very thing that gives them their power.