One need only look at the damage wrought upon Black America’s values and economic wherewithal since the experiment in socialism that took off in the 1960s with LBJ and parentage from FDR.
Exactly! My late father told me that LBJ was the man who created the welfare state and that we all need to pay our way in the world. Why are we supporting people who should be out earning their own living?
No one seems to be asking what seems to me an obvious question: "If no one is working, where does the government get the revenue to issue these subsidy checks?" One answer might be that the government confiscates the means of production and distributes the companies' profits.... Oh, wait, that sounds familiar....
These brilliant nit wits who are creating AI are young people with no real knowledge of how the world works. Your comment that do not understand that their UBI is pure socialism proves the point. In my 83 years I’ve lived through an era of constant change. Every time something new comes along the luddites scream the same lies. Millions of people will be thrown out of work and find a job again. My personal favorite is the telephone operator. How many reading this recall the days of every call having to go through a live operator managing a huge switch board? Long distance calls had to be placed with the operator who would call back with your call. Then came area codes and direct dial. No more operators. Cries about lost jobs. I can go on with many other jobs. Bank tellers. Office secretaries. Typewriter. Gas station attendants. Etc etc. each change created unimaginable new technologies and opportunities. So will AI.
Regarding UBI, in the words of Fleet Admiral Gial Ackbar, the foremost military commander of the Rebel Alliance who led the attack against the second Death Star, "It's a Trap!!!!!!
UBI ties right into Digital ID, 15 minute cities aka concentration camps and every 1984 nightmare you can imagine.
Something this article touches on but sort of skirts is that what AI means to some people is concentrations / disparities of wealth / power, like nothing we have ever seen before. Like feudalism on steroids, but without the ability to feed yourself. Marry this to how entities like BlackRock are busy buying real estate and everything with the potential to increase in value, and then renting it out, and what results is not likely to be democracy, or individual independence.
Not a fan of UBI, as its original concept has been redefined to be simply money for no work. Such goes against human nature. Charles Murray proposed UBI decades ago as an *exchange* for all welfare payments. In that, the few countries that have experimentally implemented UBI failed and discontinued such efforts.
However, the aspect of AI not replacing significant numbers of workers seems preposterous. One needs only to ask oneself, “Then what is the purpose of AI?”. To claim that workers will “retrain” begs the question “In what fields?”. Not so long ago, the supercilious response from our duplicitous leadership to robotics was to “learn to program”. Silly on its face as it fails to take into account human differences in ability—not everyone can learn to program at such levels, and every robot that displaces a worker does not need a full-time programmer, or repair person (or why would they be installed).
I sense the same issues with AI, but even that is not my main worry. My main worry is that ubiquitous AI use will make the “incompetent” seem “competent”. More than once in my use of AI has the responses given been proved to be incomplete and sometimes simply wrong. As a programmer myself, the old adage “Garbage in, garbage out!” Comes to mind. Perhaps future AGI will be the answer, but for now I use AI for the few inquiries that I care about and never in fields which I have little grounding.
The idea of spending $4Tn/year to give everyone $1000/month is ridiculous - as if $1000/month will pay rent/mortgage in most markets, let alone everything else. It's even more ridiculous when you consider the nation is $36+ Tn in debt and climbing fast. And let's not kid ourselves - the amount of fraud that would accompany such a program will add to the rampant fraud already evident in all levels of government.
As an engineer who works in construction, I can see where AI *could* be disruptive. But I think there's a required human element that will be found if in no other area than liability. When a building leaks, or an AC unit fails because of poor installation and a million dollar batch of drugs is lost, suing "AI" for the mistake will not likely work. And I can't see contractors relying entirely on "AI" but assuming all of the liability for AI's mistakes.
Regardless, the thing is coming, and I completely agree that UBI is the worst idea imaginable. But I can see it happening if the left gains enough power.
Your theory has a giant fatal flaw in it that is quite frankly laughable.
The comparison to the 1900s doesn't hold up on basic scrutiny. I've pointed this out to many who suggest this comparison. In your example of the 1900s, you went from human worker to human worker. The horse drawn carriage driver became a taxi driver but you still had a human being behind the wheel.
What you're talking about with self driving cars is the elimination of the concept of a driver. The word driver will become like the word VHS or audio cassette tape is to current generations with access to streaming services and smartphones. This is going to become true of basically every technological space and job that requires any kind of manual labour.
Shipping and truck driving and even things like grocery shopping and potentially grocery stores themselves will become things of the past.
Current Trump administration officials openly suggested when discussing the deportation of illegal immigrants who work on farms that these humans will be replaced by AI powered machines. Not replaced with human workers. I'm all for deporting illegal immigrants. The error is in the belief that replacing human beings with machines is just like the industrial revolution.
This isn't the 1900s, believing that it is makes you the Luddite, not the people you're criticizing.
Humans have a horrible habit of believing that rich celebrities know everything there is to know. This includes rich celebrity CEOs. Just because these glorified programmers created LLMs doesn't mean they know jack shit about economics, psychology, etc. In fact the more they've specialized and gone deep in their chosen field, the *less likely* they are to know anything else with any depth. But here we are, giving them credit where credit is most certainly not due. Like Hollywood dopes opining on such subjects, we should be collectively laughing in their faces and turning our backs.
More evil perpetrated on humanity by evil people, who don’t value life, to gain power and wealth. Just has it has been since the beginning of modern humans.
UBI becomes the new “dead broke”. If it’s $1,000 that everyone gets for adding no value, then $1,000 is effectively zero — price inflation will eventually see to that.
People mistake money for value. Money has no intrinsic value, it’s a token representing underlying value. Printing money does not increase wealth except temporarily, and only for those closest to the money printer. Cutting a pizza in more slices doesn’t increase the total nutritional value available.
Oh don't worry, there is nothing perpetual about the sort of government that goes this route. They always end in widespread destruction and mountains of human skulls.
This is stuff of nightmares. The welfare state always hurts more than it helps. UBI is just welfare on steroids. I am software engineer. Every day I wake up now and wonder if its going to be the day I get replaced by AI. If I do get replaced by AI I do not want UBI. I won't nothing to do with the government. UBI is welfare on steroids and will almost assuredly destroy our entire economy, making my life harder in the process. Like you said this is morally wrong. People need a purpose. If you don't have one then the only thing left for you is to die.
One need only look at the damage wrought upon Black America’s values and economic wherewithal since the experiment in socialism that took off in the 1960s with LBJ and parentage from FDR.
Exactly! My late father told me that LBJ was the man who created the welfare state and that we all need to pay our way in the world. Why are we supporting people who should be out earning their own living?
Is it just us Gen Xers that get that?
Possibly. No one else ever mentions it. We are a forgotten and frequently ignored generation.
No one seems to be asking what seems to me an obvious question: "If no one is working, where does the government get the revenue to issue these subsidy checks?" One answer might be that the government confiscates the means of production and distributes the companies' profits.... Oh, wait, that sounds familiar....
We already have UBI. It's called welfare. Works very well if you want to destroy society.
These brilliant nit wits who are creating AI are young people with no real knowledge of how the world works. Your comment that do not understand that their UBI is pure socialism proves the point. In my 83 years I’ve lived through an era of constant change. Every time something new comes along the luddites scream the same lies. Millions of people will be thrown out of work and find a job again. My personal favorite is the telephone operator. How many reading this recall the days of every call having to go through a live operator managing a huge switch board? Long distance calls had to be placed with the operator who would call back with your call. Then came area codes and direct dial. No more operators. Cries about lost jobs. I can go on with many other jobs. Bank tellers. Office secretaries. Typewriter. Gas station attendants. Etc etc. each change created unimaginable new technologies and opportunities. So will AI.
Regarding UBI, in the words of Fleet Admiral Gial Ackbar, the foremost military commander of the Rebel Alliance who led the attack against the second Death Star, "It's a Trap!!!!!!
UBI ties right into Digital ID, 15 minute cities aka concentration camps and every 1984 nightmare you can imagine.
Something this article touches on but sort of skirts is that what AI means to some people is concentrations / disparities of wealth / power, like nothing we have ever seen before. Like feudalism on steroids, but without the ability to feed yourself. Marry this to how entities like BlackRock are busy buying real estate and everything with the potential to increase in value, and then renting it out, and what results is not likely to be democracy, or individual independence.
UBI is the wrong answer to everything. People were pushing it before AI had entered the discussion. I remember George McGovern.
Might be time for civil non-compliance. Stop buying. Only essentials. don't pay bills, don't show up for work etc. Would get their attention for sure.
That's how the Filipinos got rid of the Marcos, without firing a shot.
Not a fan of UBI, as its original concept has been redefined to be simply money for no work. Such goes against human nature. Charles Murray proposed UBI decades ago as an *exchange* for all welfare payments. In that, the few countries that have experimentally implemented UBI failed and discontinued such efforts.
However, the aspect of AI not replacing significant numbers of workers seems preposterous. One needs only to ask oneself, “Then what is the purpose of AI?”. To claim that workers will “retrain” begs the question “In what fields?”. Not so long ago, the supercilious response from our duplicitous leadership to robotics was to “learn to program”. Silly on its face as it fails to take into account human differences in ability—not everyone can learn to program at such levels, and every robot that displaces a worker does not need a full-time programmer, or repair person (or why would they be installed).
I sense the same issues with AI, but even that is not my main worry. My main worry is that ubiquitous AI use will make the “incompetent” seem “competent”. More than once in my use of AI has the responses given been proved to be incomplete and sometimes simply wrong. As a programmer myself, the old adage “Garbage in, garbage out!” Comes to mind. Perhaps future AGI will be the answer, but for now I use AI for the few inquiries that I care about and never in fields which I have little grounding.
The idea of spending $4Tn/year to give everyone $1000/month is ridiculous - as if $1000/month will pay rent/mortgage in most markets, let alone everything else. It's even more ridiculous when you consider the nation is $36+ Tn in debt and climbing fast. And let's not kid ourselves - the amount of fraud that would accompany such a program will add to the rampant fraud already evident in all levels of government.
As an engineer who works in construction, I can see where AI *could* be disruptive. But I think there's a required human element that will be found if in no other area than liability. When a building leaks, or an AC unit fails because of poor installation and a million dollar batch of drugs is lost, suing "AI" for the mistake will not likely work. And I can't see contractors relying entirely on "AI" but assuming all of the liability for AI's mistakes.
Regardless, the thing is coming, and I completely agree that UBI is the worst idea imaginable. But I can see it happening if the left gains enough power.
Your theory has a giant fatal flaw in it that is quite frankly laughable.
The comparison to the 1900s doesn't hold up on basic scrutiny. I've pointed this out to many who suggest this comparison. In your example of the 1900s, you went from human worker to human worker. The horse drawn carriage driver became a taxi driver but you still had a human being behind the wheel.
What you're talking about with self driving cars is the elimination of the concept of a driver. The word driver will become like the word VHS or audio cassette tape is to current generations with access to streaming services and smartphones. This is going to become true of basically every technological space and job that requires any kind of manual labour.
Shipping and truck driving and even things like grocery shopping and potentially grocery stores themselves will become things of the past.
Current Trump administration officials openly suggested when discussing the deportation of illegal immigrants who work on farms that these humans will be replaced by AI powered machines. Not replaced with human workers. I'm all for deporting illegal immigrants. The error is in the belief that replacing human beings with machines is just like the industrial revolution.
This isn't the 1900s, believing that it is makes you the Luddite, not the people you're criticizing.
Humans have a horrible habit of believing that rich celebrities know everything there is to know. This includes rich celebrity CEOs. Just because these glorified programmers created LLMs doesn't mean they know jack shit about economics, psychology, etc. In fact the more they've specialized and gone deep in their chosen field, the *less likely* they are to know anything else with any depth. But here we are, giving them credit where credit is most certainly not due. Like Hollywood dopes opining on such subjects, we should be collectively laughing in their faces and turning our backs.
More evil perpetrated on humanity by evil people, who don’t value life, to gain power and wealth. Just has it has been since the beginning of modern humans.
UBI becomes the new “dead broke”. If it’s $1,000 that everyone gets for adding no value, then $1,000 is effectively zero — price inflation will eventually see to that.
People mistake money for value. Money has no intrinsic value, it’s a token representing underlying value. Printing money does not increase wealth except temporarily, and only for those closest to the money printer. Cutting a pizza in more slices doesn’t increase the total nutritional value available.
Oh don't worry, there is nothing perpetual about the sort of government that goes this route. They always end in widespread destruction and mountains of human skulls.
This is stuff of nightmares. The welfare state always hurts more than it helps. UBI is just welfare on steroids. I am software engineer. Every day I wake up now and wonder if its going to be the day I get replaced by AI. If I do get replaced by AI I do not want UBI. I won't nothing to do with the government. UBI is welfare on steroids and will almost assuredly destroy our entire economy, making my life harder in the process. Like you said this is morally wrong. People need a purpose. If you don't have one then the only thing left for you is to die.