Job Security

Except we’ve been eliminating manual labour jobs for much longer than we’ve had AI.

And yet we’re still far from succeeding. It’s sad.

Hardly sad, first of all. Second, we’ve been reasonably successful, or there’d still be at least twice as many such jobs now (likely more). Third, recent advances in multipurpose robotics have a strong likelihood of having major effects in this area before much longer - especially when combined with AI tech.

So you don’t think that automating production and freeing people to do what they enjoy while improving their standard of living is a worthy goal? Yes, we are moving in the right direction, but there’s still an astonishing amount of manual labor in terrible conditions happening in poor countries to produce cheap stuff. For things that are automated elsewhere, but it would cost more than the cheap labor there. As I said, it’s sad.

If improving people’s standard of living were actually the end result, but it’s not been the case thus far.

In general, it obviously is. The standard of living is rising over the last few hundred years. Many people can quite easily get things and amount and types of food that would be unthinkable just several decades ago. Many of which wouldn’t be possible to manufacture at scale, if at all, without progressing automation. Jobs shifting from production (agriculture and manufacturing) toward services are clear indication of this.

Enriching the rich disproportionately more is also happening. But that is somewhat different story with partially different causes.

If you compare recent history to a hundred years ago, sure. Now, analyze the trajectories of trends from that recent history and extract where things are going over the next century.

If you select a sufficiently short and localised subset of data, you can show almost anything. Would I be wrong to guess tjat your opinion is heavily influenced by the current state of the US? While I agree that the situation there is complete shit and something needs to happen, I would argue (admittedly without any solid data in hand) that globally, automation is helping loads of people and is going to continue to do so.

I’m glad you still manage have a more positive outlook on the future than I do.

Yes, my perspective is definitely colored by my experience in America, but if you think similar won’t happen elsewhere then I think you’re being overly idealistic - at least when it comes to the full population of the world. Those who enable the powerfully wealthy will certainly do better - at least until those who don’t are no longer much of a threat, and said wealthy no longer need their enablers.