Major players in the IT industry, including Jeff Bezos and Nvidia Corp., have reportedly invested in Figure AI Inc., a startup creating human-like robots. The company is seeking to raise approximately $675 million in a funding round. The move comes as part of a rush to discover new uses for artificial intelligence.
The solution should be to fix our system which is designed to enrich the wealthy. We should fix this and have the machines/AI and automation to benefit everyone.
I feel like your solution is to not do the cool new innovative thing that has the potential to help everyone, and so let’s just stay in this capitalist hellscape as is? At least if massive robot automation displaces tons of jobs, then the Working class might be forced to come together and fight back, maybe?
Your mindset is just to keep everything the way it currently is, which I think sucks.
No, it isn’t. Don’t put words in my mouth. This is impossible anyway, things can’t ever be kept the way they are.
I agree with this completely. It needs to be done first, not second and not during.
That’s the point, it doesn’t have the potential to help everyone until after the socioeconomic issues are resolved. We, the working class, should not be cheering for any of this until it has the potential to benefit and not harm us.
Ok fair enough.
My only last point would be that what if the socioeconomic changes we want could be resolved because of the technical/automation advancements? What if it’s the only way to get the change we want? I’d see great hardship as a transition most probably.
I’m obviously just speculating here. I’m very very cynical about solving the socioeconomic issues first, I just don’t see it happening, enstead we just stay business as usual. At least with a huge shift in automation causing massive job loss there is the potential for a big revolutionary change. No guarantee obviously, it could also only make things worse. We really don’t know.
I see the mass displacement of the working class as the only thing that would unite us. Bring in the robots. The only thing you have to lose is your chains.
What do you think a situation like this would look like, in practice? I’m curious because I see people suggest that some kind of revolution would be a good thing… but what you’re talking about is a lot of suffering and death leading up to the revolution, followed by violence and more death during, followed by more hardship and death trying to pick up the pieces after… do you expect to not be part of the suffering and death? do you expect it to happen after your life? what about family?
Frankly I think this kind of fatalism is a lazy cop-out. Saying “things are bad and getting worse, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so let’s just wait for it to all fall apart” excuses you from making an effort to improve things now. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and collectively we make our own hell through inaction and the belief that collapse is inevitable.
We can demand more from our governments. By organizing, we can overwhelm the intentions of the wealthy. We can do better now.
Genuine question how would we “fix” our society by removing those jobs and keep same or more people. What jobs would they do. Having robots do Amazon workhouse jobs would displace thousands of people who work that for a job where would they go. They can’t just become software developers or medical workers etc. The way I see it is we just need more jobs in general so removing some is a total negative unless we have somewhere for them to go.
Not everyone needs to work. Many jobs are useless or detrimental to our existence.
We need to think about fundamental changes in how our societies run.
Think about how much wealth the richest people in our world have. Would it be so bad if they lived in a regular house if it meant living in a world where everyone has accomodation, food, health care and education - and the work that is done is that which is actually useful to our survival and development as a species.
Why be so committed to the idea that “everyone needs to work” for some arbitrary reason to build useless plastic things, or countless variations of the same thing with different packaging. Why are we continuing to live in a world that throws perfectly good food into dumpsters and landfill just to keep prices at a certain level. The world we are living in now is totally nonsensical.
If people had the security of being able to leave their job and not face eviction, starvation, or poor health they would have the freedom to retrain, learn more, and move onto something which is of actual benefit.
We don’t need countless food delivery drivers, bankers, or stock brokers. All of those people would benefit us much more by doing nothing. We don’t need more jobs, we need less jobs.
Imagine a world where we do the work needed to build the housing, education facilities, food and energy production we actually need. Then we are free to build technology which benefits us instead of enslaving us. We could live without poisoning our environment and driving our planet deeper into climate change and extinction.
If we lived in that world we would be able to build humanoid robots to do the work we don’t want to do, and it would benefit us all. We would have more time to pursue our own interests and passions. No people put out of jobs, who then become homeless, who then need to turn to crime for survival, and no need build humanoid killer robots to hunt us all down when we all lose our jobs.
https://crimethinc.com/tce
But therein lies the problem. You yourself are a commodity. You benefit the wealthy when you go to work, so everybody must work. We have created nothing here but a ceaseless wheel that mangles the pennies from our corpses.
I dont have a solution, that’s why I’m cynical. It is perfectly OK to say “I don’t know”.
That being said, you’re way of thinking is very myopic and only fits our current society standard / zeitgeist.
Why do people need to do these menial jobs at all? You’re answer is probably that they won’t have money to pay for food, rent, etc. What if we had a society where people could pursue hobbies, interests, passions, etc, without fear of homelessness and starvation? Why can’t we reach for something much better than what we have now?
Some people would exploit such a system and never contribute to society and just sit around playing video games all day? So what, who gives a shit?
Just because this would be extremely difficult, and we have absolutely no idea how to do it, doesn’t mean we should just give up and not try. The current system sucks ass. People shouldn’t be wasting there time doing menial pointless labor to keep the wealthy rich, just to survive a pointless existence.