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100 points robtherobber | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.416s | source
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samaltmanfried ◴[] No.45676748[source]
Some people's jobs might be 'meaningless', but we're on the verge of lots of people's jobs being outright 'useless'. Anyone who's worked in a large corporation knows how small some people's useful output is already.

I've been wondering whether increased automation is going to cause some kind of employment crisis in western countries. It's possible we're on the verge of a "second industrial revolution" because of AI. I'll confess that I totally underestimated AI, and figured that by the time AI was writing decent code society would have formulated a plan for what to do when white-collar workers start becoming redundant. This obviously isn't what happened. What is going to happen to the swarms of Uber Eats riders on ebikes? Or all of the new immigrant truckers? Western governments have been keeping immigration relatively high to keep the service sector packed with unskilled, lowly paid service workers. What are we going to do with them all if drones replace Uber Eats riders, or self-driving trucks take over logistics? What I'm seeing now makes me doubt that we're going to look after all these people.

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Havoc ◴[] No.45680183[source]
This is why some form of UBI seems inevitable. Thinking all these people will retrain as data scientists or whatever is deluded and if you don’t do something the fabric of society will tear itself apart so it’s in the interests of the well off to come up with a solution here
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1. cool_man_bob ◴[] No.45681633[source]
There’s another solution: a culling.

Take the now useless people and get rid of them. AI will effectively usher in a new era of eugenics in which your right to live is determined by your economic value.

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2. zingababba ◴[] No.45683862[source]
Who is considered 'useless' though?