In recent WhatsApp thread, there was a lot of discussion about Elon Musk and AI. Some of that is reposted here.
“In many discourses I feel that people still have the same assumptions about the world and the reality that were valid in the “pre-Ai world”. I’m writing a little piece about the future of education - and almost all of the needs for education as a process of transferring skills to make you “successful” as an individual and “aligned” with the society - seem to be under threat”
" In the world where humans don’t have jobs and have no power - you won’t need work related skills and you won’t need to ideologically. align them. Everything will be kept clean by robots, all human behaviour will be conducted through tightly controlled interfaces. In many cases there’s no “adoption" for the new world - it will fundamentally be different."
“Elon Musk was talking to a journalist the other day about the need for money disappearing in teh world defined by the abundance. Most of the people commenting thought that Musk is talking nonsense - that’s how hard wired we are in the reality that is about to change.”
“The Ai and robotics is fundamentally different type of technology. It’s capable of solving problems quicker than humans by a huge margin. Saying “there will always be a need…” is just some sort of dogmatic inertia."
“it’s forward modelling - no empirical evidence for something that hasn’t happened yet. None of it is certain to happen - we’re only observing the trends.”
“I’ll believe that when anthropic and open ai stops hiring researchers and uses its model for all future improvements”
" I am one of those “most people” who think Musk is talking nonsense. More precisely, Musk is talking his own financial “book”. He needs to keep the hype dialed up to maximal levels all the time, lest the stock value of his many dubious technical ventures starts to tank. What Musk - and the tech bros in general - don’t bother with is physical constraints like supply chains, energy, geopolitical conflict, shipping routes, and the rather nagging problem of when all the workers are laid off, where exactly is effective demand for production supposed to come from? Musk currently sits atop Peter Turchin’s “wealth pump”. Of course Musk wants that pump to keep pumping! Also, why bother funding social services if voting cattle can be herded on the cheap through racism, empty promises of future android-driven wealth for everyone, and AI slop.
However … red state voters are starting to connect the dots that data centers everywhere means higher power bills for them. Without data centers everywhere, consuming ever-increasing power loads, the robot workforce future is not happening. Of course, we can burn coal to power all the robots, which sadly also would effectively result in also burning the planet. (Which is happening anyway). Excuse me if I’m not on board Musk’s AI hype train. But I’m not on board Musk’s AI hype train!"
" You’re now mind-reading Musk’s motivation instead of evaluating his arguments. If you believe that this new type of automation will lead to abundance - then money becomes redundant.
“And this argument also reminds of people claiming that China’s growth will come to an end because of the “demographic time-bomb”. If technology replaces humans as a work-force - they won’t be much affected.”
" btw - we’ll probably be told off for generating this much traffic here - so maybe better to take the discussion to the forum."