Artificial Intelligence

[M1 Abrams]

(quoting the Wired article on Elon Musk) ...Optimus will upend the job market and free humanity from the drudgery of work.

One suspects that many of the world's richest and most powerful are eagerly looking forward to the day when they are freed from the drudgery of paying any more money to us lowly, unworthy, ungrateful flesh-and-blood parasites. Once liberated from their fetters, they will rise to a level of Super Genius that will even dwarf that of Wile E. Coyote.

With great benevolence, though, they will pave the way to remove all drudgery from our lives...

 

[bobpbx]

One suspects that many of the world's richest and most powerful are eagerly looking forward to the day when they are freed from the drudgery of paying any more money to us lowly, unworthy, ungrateful flesh-and-blood parasites. Once liberated from their fetters, they will rise to a level of Super Genius that will even dwarf that of Wile E. Coyote.

With great benevolence, though, they will pave the way to remove all drudgery from our lives...

I had a spat with a fellow in the comments forum below a WSJ article about Amazon laying off thousands because they are installing robots in a couple locations. This fellow said:

Meh, dead wood being replaced by AI.
The buggy whip makers want their (jobs) back.
Innovate or perish.

I can understand the layoffs, but don't kick people when they are down.

 

[Boyd]

Those layoffs are just the tip of a very big iceberg at Amazon. I suppose you could compare this to how the automobile disrupted everything in the horse-based economy. That affected not only the companies that made buggies but also buggy whip makers, blacksmiths, etc.

But that seems like the wrong analogy for what's happening at Amazon. People are still riding in buggies and buying buggy whips but they will be built by AI and robots now. That's more like the industrial revolution, where they still made the same products but machines did it faster and cheaper. And now, everything is happening at such an accelerated pace, the results might be more like a wildfire instead of a slow burn that took 100 years.