Fuck AI

Every technologically advancement throughout history has resulted in the floor, ceiling, and median quality of life significantly advancing in short order.

Every such change in the past has eventually resulted in vast improvements. However take a closer look at history and you’ll see that those disrupted mostly don’t recover, and it takes a couple generations to see the improvement. Those buggy whip manufacturers generally couldn’t get another job equivalent to theirs, and it wasn’t until their grandkids that people were overall better.

The AI revolution is theoretical so far so we can each offer whatever predictions we want. The thing is previous industrial revolutions replaced muscle: a machine can work harder and more continuously than people. However there always needed to be people. Each could do more with the help of the machine but there were so many things a machine couldn’t do that as efficiency improved it always opened more opportunity for people.

But what can people do that AI can’t? My prediction is to lump it in with other advanced automation. As automation gets smarter and smarter, there’s less need for people: the smart automation takes over more supervision. We know AI also has a place in creativity: that’s what generative ai is. It may be bad but it’s already on par with the dregs of the internet and will only get better. And we know that ai can make decisions: machine learning used to be central to ai until it worked.

Machines already took place of muscle and focus. various forms of smart automation and AI can start making inroads (and already have) on supervision, imagination, and decision making. Even if it doesn’t go far up those trees, most of the jobs are in the bottom branches. What type of role is left for humans that machines, automation or ai can’t handle? Theoretically not much is left.

Think back to the scare over self driving. If that works, that’s a huge safety and efficiency improvement, but it’s also millions of jobs. What else will those millions do, especially if other jobs at that level of skill are also being automated. It would be a huge disruption. If ai is able to take all the jobs predicted, that’s most of them and no one will have any better options. Even if it ushers in a new golden age, that will take a couple gneberations, and it might not if there’s no role left for humans that can’t be automated

Luckily ai sucks now. It does some amazing things and I’m in awe at recent progress. It does seem to have come far enough to be a useful tool in some places but luckily for us is far from being able to replace humans. However the potential is there, and approaching fast