Yeah. I particularly hate the handwavium which makes this sound like it’s super simple, just make the ASI, have it churn out labour for us, surely human society will adapt just nicely to the new state of things and chill. It’s easy to say this if you think you’re going to be the one in charge of the ASI because you’re a CEO or big shot in some company (you may still be vastly overestimating your chances of controlling the ASI of course but that’s just plain old hubris). But not so easy to believe it if instead you’re more the kind of person who usually gets the short end of the stick. Like, as much as we may celebrate automation, it DOES often have hugely disruptive effects. There’s a lot of pain hidden in that “some jobs are destroyed but others are created so it evens out”. And that’s not even a fraction of the pain that would be possible if ALL jobs were destroyed and never replaced and we would somehow have to find a way to deal with that.
And that’s, again, just the most optimistic scenario. The more pessimistic one is more along the lines of “you’re a megatherium and these strange new hairless apes with sticks have started flooding in from the north”.
Yeah. I particularly hate the handwavium which makes this sound like it’s super simple, just make the ASI, have it churn out labour for us, surely human society will adapt just nicely to the new state of things and chill. It’s easy to say this if you think you’re going to be the one in charge of the ASI because you’re a CEO or big shot in some company (you may still be vastly overestimating your chances of controlling the ASI of course but that’s just plain old hubris). But not so easy to believe it if instead you’re more the kind of person who usually gets the short end of the stick. Like, as much as we may celebrate automation, it DOES often have hugely disruptive effects. There’s a lot of pain hidden in that “some jobs are destroyed but others are created so it evens out”. And that’s not even a fraction of the pain that would be possible if ALL jobs were destroyed and never replaced and we would somehow have to find a way to deal with that.
And that’s, again, just the most optimistic scenario. The more pessimistic one is more along the lines of “you’re a megatherium and these strange new hairless apes with sticks have started flooding in from the north”.