AI really appeals to a fantasy that I think all of us have to some extent but that powerful people really have, of a world without people in it—because hell really is other people.
This. The AI industry is pushing super hard to make it work, to replace human workers. It’s failing, as AI work is crappier than human work and costs way, way more than human work, but there’s that Ayn Rand fantasy that the ownership class can just shut out the worker class and create an utopia.
I’m reminded of the car factory in which the upper management fired the striking workers assuming they could do the work themselves, only to find that the unskilled labor actually took skill.
No, hell is loneliness and that’s what humanity gets if it goes down the Ai / dystopian route. We can see in China today how people are suffering from loneliness despite having tech to order food and items and having them delivered in hours.
AI really appeals to a fantasy that I think all of us have to some extent but that powerful people really have, of a world without people in it—because hell really is other people.
This. The AI industry is pushing super hard to make it work, to replace human workers. It’s failing, as AI work is crappier than human work and costs way, way more than human work, but there’s that Ayn Rand fantasy that the ownership class can just shut out the worker class and create an utopia.
I’m reminded of the car factory in which the upper management fired the striking workers assuming they could do the work themselves, only to find that the unskilled labor actually took skill.
No, hell is loneliness and that’s what humanity gets if it goes down the Ai / dystopian route. We can see in China today how people are suffering from loneliness despite having tech to order food and items and having them delivered in hours.
cf. The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, 1909.