So...AI. It's a polarizing topic these days. Sometimes people get too insufferably polarizing about it to the point it's REALLY fricking annoying and obnoxious on both sides. You got the pro AI side that thinks it's this end all be all of everything, like they're creating strong AI but in reality AI being pushed is weak AI with no actual human like cognition. And then you have the anti AI people who are super anti AI for....reasons, particularly in terms of job losses and stuff.
And this is where I'm really gonna clobber the left. Okay, lefties? You guys got AI derangement syndrome. I'm not gonna lie. The amount of anti AI crap I see from the left is getting annoying, insufferable, and stupid. Like, from my ideology, it's so stupid.
Obviously, this is because unlike most leftists, I'm anti work, not pro work. AI is a tool that automates work. It threatens the livelihood of artists. And I understand it and sympathize, but hey, THAT'S WHY WE SHOULD HAVE A UBI! I feel like I keep saying it, but then I get this thing where leftists (and the right as well, it's the whole spectrum) has this thing where we can't have AI because we need people to work, but when we have automation threaten jobs, we need to preserve the jobs, and again, being anti work, I really just wanna fricking automate the jobs away so we don't have to work any more.
But...again, leftists are job lovers. They love work. They just hate capitalist exploitation. And we see this a lot with the art thing. I'm gonna be blunt. The reason leftists hate AI is because it puts artists out of work. And that sucks, I get that. But again...we should have a UBI for this. But yeah. Leftists glorify labor, they glorify work, and they are patting themselves on the back going on about how AI art sucks because it has no soul and lacks intentionality. Except, here's the thing, THE CAPITALISTS DON'T CARE! Like, seriously, most people aren't interested in masterpieces. They just wanna hire artists to get work done. If they can have an AI produce art that is 90% as good for 10% of the cost of hiring a person, they're gonna do it. And generally speaking, that's a good thing for society. Because we shouldn't be chained to jobs in the first place. We should celebrate automating jobs away. We should be like IM FREE! IM FREE! I DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS ANY MORE! But because we force people to work to get money, and we give all of the money to wealthy people to "create jobs" with, well, if you lose your job, you lose your paycheck. So the system incentivizes inefficiency from the worker side of things, where leftists wanna preserve old and inefficient jobs to justify giving people paychecks. Which is, quite frankly, anti progress.
Again, my idea actually is the best of both worlds. I decouple work from income, I give people a check no matter if they work or not, I make work voluntary, and I let employers and individuals interested in working do what they do. If AI automates jobs away, so be it. If workers dont wanna work, so be it. Im tired of keeping this arrangement of working for money around simply because it's how we always did things. Institutions exist for human needs. We shouldnt exist to serve them, and we need to stop romanticizing this economic model where we force people to work, and give them money to work. if we no longer need to work, we need to come up with some other distribution mechanism to give people money. And that's where UBI and my other proposals come in. I want to build a world where people don't have to work any more, where poverty doesn't exist, where work is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
And, again, what irks me about leftists is they're luddites. While I admit, AI will likely never replace the best art, it can replace enough of it, and produce results that are "good enough" where it will displace a lot of artists. Now, this is bad for the artists, but, in the long term it should make the economy more productive through added efficiency. And honestly, if we took care of the UBI thing, then job loss wouldnt be a problem.
Idk. Leftists just irk me because they miss the point. Dont get me wrong, I get it to some extent being pro worker, but it's just such short sighted thinking that misses the point. If more wealth is generated long term by having AI do the jobs humans used to do, then that should be good for us, but we have to create the mechanisms to allow the wealth to reach us. In the absence of jobs, mass redistributionary policies are how we do it.
Even then, it's not like we'll ever (at least in the foreseeable future) be without jobs. People just dont wanna do jobs in things they would otherwise have to. Because let's face it, those jobs are difficult, physically demanding, and don't pay very well. Another problem. But again, if we had a UBI, it would give workers more bargaining power to pressure employers to raise wages....or automate those jobs too.
Again, point is, if you stop thinking in terms of preserving jobs, you just start seeing these things from a different angle and all this anti AI nonsense just comes off as luddism. Because that's what it is. It's just the modern luddites. And yeah. I'm really getting tired of the left's anti AI circlejerk. I'm not some elon musk you know what rider. I hate the guy too. But I just can't wrap my head around this anti AI crap. From my own ideology, it's just "yeah it sucks for the artists, jobs are lost, but should we want to preserve work for its own sake anyway?" Rather than insisting we work for a paycheck, I'd rather just give people a paycheck. Ya know? Would solve a metric crapton of problems and then we can appreciate societal progress to a greater degree without worrying as much about how it will affect our finances.
No comments:
Post a Comment