“I think the big companies are betting on it causing massive job replacement by AI, because that’s where the big money is going to be.”
This race to displace human labor with AI is a typical late-stage capitalism race to the bottom because it ignores something fundamental: workers are also consumers. No job, no money, no purchases.
In other words, all companies embracing AI are collectively working their ass off to destroy their own and everybody else’s markets. It’s global economic suicide.
But… capitalism being what it is and doing what it does, it only looks at what the competition does, expenses and no further than the next quarter. So individual corporations see AI as a way to reduce expenses and get ahead of the competition that does the same thing.
They all know AI will destroy everything eventually, including themselves, if they all do the same thing. But they can’t help it: corporations look no further than their own selfish interests with the narrowest possible set of criteria, and the bigger picture be damned. Always.
Assuming they actually believe their technology is capable of replacing the majority of human labor in the not so distant future, they ought to be pushing for UBI. Having everyone get a guaranteed income would help ensure that there is still consumer demand capable of supporting their businesses. And it would help fend off the backlash that would come from taking jobs from a massive portion of the population.
Capitalism ain’t the problem. Capitalism for the economy and democracy for the government is the best we humans have figured out. Problem being, money, as in any system, has been funneled to the top. The top took our vote via lack of education and media control, and their power has been snowballing for the last 20-30 years. Now we’re too ignorant and misled to vote in our own best interests. We’re seeing the end game, the end game of any unregulated system.
Said many times, almost every evil of capitalism gets nullified when the government disallows and breaks monopolies and megacorps. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, argued vehemently against monopolies.
Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, I am stunned by what is allowed. A handful of corporations own and control our health, food, entertainment, news, banking, everything. Education is the one thing that’s not wholly corporate, and the oligarchs have had that sector in their sights for decades.
And they’re not after education merely to skim more money. Education in history, math, critical thinking, is how they can be beaten. FFS, we’re repeating the mistakes of exactly a century ago, people can’t figure when back-of-the-napkin math doesn’t make sense and can’t tell when they’re being conned. I see the latter two on lemmy, daily.
Blaming capitalism is as naive as saying, “Trump did this!”. We can acheive nothing but backlash. Instead say, “The GOP did this!” (politically) and “The billionaires did this!” (economically). Words matter if you want to win hearts and minds.
They want us all in the service industry.
They want to replace service jobs with AI too.
They already have. I went to McDonalds 2 years ago. They had a giant kiosk where you ring up your own order. I also saw an automated machine drop fries into the oil. I also saw an automated drink machine that did everything besides put lids on top.
Basically what I remember from the early 2000s as a job at mcdonalds no longer exists. I would be on register, and I had one guy doing nothing but fries, and another guy doing nothing but drinks. With this system, 1 human did all 3 roles. Because the register was eliminated. The fries was just a matter of scooping the already prepared fries into the sleeve, the drinks was just a matter of putting the lid on top. So now 3 empoyees became 1. And I had no idea what was going on in the grill. In my day you had 2 guys on grill and 1 guy doing utility work. Wouldn’t surprise me if 3 became 1 again.
AI is a massive bubble, and it will be popping in the next year or so. It will still be the case that no companies are making money from it. Why? Because it makes the technology more accessible, and allows individuals to do things that otherwise would have taken a team without AI. The level of competition is extremely high, and no one will be willing to pay for AI services. Profitable companies with multiple revenue sources like Google and Meta will continue to offer AI services for free, while companies like Anthropic and OpenAI will run out of money.
The internet was a bubble. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful. It just means that companies are overselling its value. There are too many companies jumping on the bandwagon, and not all of them with survive when the bubble pops.
It’s still bad and destructive, but I think far too many people are interpreting this bubble as “if I wait a few more years, this technology will disappear and I won’t have to worry about it any more”. No, it’s more like the internet where if people wait a few more years and don’t use it, they will lag behind and be replaced by people who understand the tech. Companies that don’t use it will die out.
I like Hank Green’s recent takes on AI.
The level of competition is extremely high, and no one will be willing to pay for AI services.
Companies are already paying for AI services. You think everybody has a free account? Please!
I use LLMs every day in my job. It’s a useful tool for programming, and it’s saved me a lot of time searching for information.
Not a bubble popping, but a balloon deflating. We have enough hardware to simulate the 10 billion neurons in a human brain, right now they are focusing on the software. I don’t think it will “pop and crash”.
pop goes the bubble
AI as it currently is an excuse to lay people, off without saying they are laid off or fired.
Reminder that the Luddites were not against mechanization, and not just made at the loom and nothing else.
They were a pro-worker movement who want to see the increase in efficiency translate to less hours for more overall pay, instead of just a drastic reduction in the amount of jobs with weekly earnings remaining unchanged.
They got made a joke, because they did gain some ground.
The looks were expensive and located in a central location, so that’s where Luddite activity was focused. A modern equivalent would be something like all the AI data centers being built nationwide against locals wishes.
Especially before construction is finished. Delays in construction are very expensive and not exactly covered by insurance to my knowledge.
The remarks echo what he said in September, when he told the Financial Times that AI will “create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits,” attributing it to the capitalist system.
So if the middle and lower classes don’t have jobs, the Wealthy are going to circulate money back and forth? So trickle-down becomes trickle-around? Trickle down doesn’t work as intended. So trickle around is likely to fail, too.
They want feudalism back. Ngl, the technology available today might make it work for them.
