/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11754111
"Computer" was once a job title. People were employed to be "computers". Now, replace "computer" with "vehicle driver" or "Lawyer" & eventually "theoretical physicist".


We still rely on economic models where it is a given that work needs to be done, and human workers will do the majority of that work. Non intelligent machines may displace jobs, but they don't literally replace the human worker. That's the way it's always been. As advanced robotics and increasingly reliable AI become capable of doing more and more tasks once exclusive to human workers, these economic models begin to crack. The equations start to break down once the demand for human labor(skilled or not) starts trending toward zero. The systems we have today were never designed for or intended to function in a world where productivity and employment are starting to have an inverse relationship.


I believe robot taxes, mass retraining programs, UBI, and other "solutions" are simply bandaid fixes that kick the crisis fown a few years. The reality, as politically inconvenient as it may be, is that we are moving in the direction of a world in which the MK 1 human is becoming obsolete. That's a slow, gradual process that we've already started on decades ago, but it's speeding up. By the second half of this century, humans will not be competitive with AI and robots in most fields. Once that happens, the result is determined by plain natural selection. Make AI and machines that are better than humans at a task compete against human workers doing the same, and even Charles Darwin would be able to tell you who comes out on top.


AI does not need to even be sapient at all to
devastate human society. Once we reach the point where machines are better than humans at most tasks, any economy that still relies on the continued mass employment of a human workforce is going to crash hard.