AI, the scary future!

This is my second post about AI; the first was positive and upbeat. I was impressed with ChatGPT’s capabilities and saw it opening new ways of doing creative work. I still think that is possible, but the writer and actor strikes are showing the dark side of its use. Scanning actors once and having total control over their image forever seems creepy. Netflix’s plans for using AI seem to further this trend.

AI could be one most powerful technological changes in history. It will displace workers in a large number of areas; the question is what happens to those displaced. “The Luddites were a secret organisation of workers who smashed machines in the textile factories of England in the early 1800s, a period of increasing industrialisation, economic hardship due to expensive conflicts with France and the United States, and widespread unrest among the working class. They took their name from the apocryphal tale of Ned Ludd, a weaver’s apprentice who supposedly smashed two knitting machines in a fit of rage.” However, while the machines displaced workers and caused suffering, new jobs were created by industrialization and standards of living rose in response to increased efficiency. The question is will this pattern repeat itself, or is AI a completely different beast.

What happens if it replaces jobs and does not create new ones for those displaced? What if the new jobs require skills and abilities that exclude a great many people? I have no doubt that there will be jobs in the future that we can not currently imagine, but will they be only for the few? What happens to those left behind by the forces of technology. Do we enter a world where AI and technology allow a great many people to live lives free of work, where we all receive some sort of Universal Basic Income or do those displaced become a permanent underclass.

I don’t pretend to know where any of this is going, but I hope we avoid a future where humans do crap jobs and while AIs create our cultural products.

What do you think, are we headed to a UBI utopia or a hellscape where a small elite benefits and the rest of us are left without meaningful work and live much poorer lives than we currently do? I hope for the best but fear the worst.