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The Coming AI Backlash: How the Anger Economy Will Supercharge Populism

(www.foreignaffairs.com)
20 points zerosizedweasle | 1 comments | 13 Oct 25 12:14 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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dsign ◴[13 Oct 25 14:24 UTC] No.45568666[source]▶
I too believe social unrest due to labor market disturbances is very likely. But I will feel some relief if that's all it comes from it. AI has the potential to automate everything, including company management and civil governance, at which point people will be out of the loop to a degree not seen before in history. The worst part is that it won't happen overnight; society will gradually anneal humans towards that redundancy potentially without any shock that would provoke our species to react decisively. Plus, we are starting from a bad place already.
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credit_guy ◴[13 Oct 25 15:46 UTC] No.45569672[source]▶
AI does not have that potential. Not now, maybe in some distant future, as in decades from now.

Right now, AI has the potential to increase productivity. Work that's done by 10 people without AI, can be done by 5 people with AI. So 5 people can be laid off. But soon, companies will realize that rather than laying off half of their workforce, they can simply produce twice as much as before.

In reality, the AI productivity boost is nothing close to 100%. Maybe 10% per year. That could translate in 5% layoffs, 5% increased output. Nothing extraordinary compared to other times in history.

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1. dsign ◴[13 Oct 25 16:35 UTC] No.45570348[source]▶
Even following your model, in twenty years we end up with 0.95*20=0.36, that's a whopping 64% of the population not-needed. People will do their best to adapt, but the article rightly points out that even when blue-collar jobs were off-shored and there were plenty of white-collar jobs, most people couldn't adjust in a decade or two, and that it still resulted in significant social strain.

Now imagine most white-collar jobs gone too, our cracked democratic institutions finally crumbling, and survtech and repressive police everywhere to squash protesters and dissidents... I've coined a term for a way to get out of that dystopia, if we manage: The Grim Revolts[^1]. I hope it remains the fiction of my feverish mind that it's supposed to be, and that we do manage to find good ways to prevent things from spiraling.

[^1]: https://w.ouzu.im/