Computer pioneer Alan Turing’s remarks in 1950 on the question, “Can machines think?” were misquoted, misinterpreted and morphed into the so-called “Turing Test”. The modern version says if you can’t tell the difference between communicating with a machine and a human, the machine is intelligent. What Turing actually said was that by the year 2000 people would be using words like “thinking” and “intelligent” to describe computers, because interacting with them would be so similar to interacting with people. Computer scientists do not sit down and say alrighty, let’s put this new software to the Turing Test - by Grabthar’s Hammer, it passed! We’ve achieved Artificial Intelligence!
oh come on
people are in denial that their way of life - getting paid for intellectual output - is coming to an end. it’s not the case that AI just produces slop. surely it does but so do a lot of humans. you know all the memes about human workers having imposter syndrome - feeling as if they don’t even really know what they’re doing? AI only has to produce higher quality output than them. and it definitely can.
the reason why people shit on AI so hard is because they’re afraid - afraid that AI will “out-compete” them. in that sense, you could also call it “jealous”, like a woman fears she’s replaced by another woman.
people need to respect themselves and others enough to agree to survive - and thrive, even - in the absence of a productive output. in other words, only if you can allow your fellow men (and women) a living income without work, you are truly in a position where you can live comfortably in the future.
I don’t entirely disagree with the comic at the end; but given the current systems in place I doubt the robots will be used to support the masses and rather enrich the few.
My dude, our billionaire overlords are pushing AI to save them money. They won’t be willing to pay for something like UBI. They spent over a fuckton of money in this last election to hand the presidency to someone who only cares about billionaires and their profits.
You are both right. But the parent is exhibiting too much techno-optimism when it should be focusing on capitalism-pesimism instead.
Found the Elon Musk alt account lmao
No idea why this is getting downvoted. You can argue over the exact practicality of the current iteration of AI, but this is a proven good take on automation generally speaking
The cartoon is a critique of capitalism, not automation. Maybe most voters or readers are missing that.
Because they’re saying that people are afraid of AI taking their job, as if the majority of people enjoy their jobs? People don’t want to be without an income. As if our benevolent oligarchs will suddenly give us even the smallest chance of getting some kind of basic income?
The enshittification of employment isn’t necessary. And having a role in how your society functions is necessary for any kind of democratic control of the economy. You can’t just be a consumer, on the outside looking in.
Automating away drudgery is generally good for an economy. Automating away control is what sucks.
The structures of basic income are already in place. We have social security. We have pensions. We have annuities. The struggle is in if and how we continue to fund them.
Since Reagan, the answer to funding basic income schemes has been to displace the cost from higher income earners to younger workers. Now that we’ve drained that well, there’s definitely a push to simply dissolve these systems entirely.
But it’s hardly a given, any more than the Reagan Era was some historical inevitability. Americans can change course if enough of them can unify around an opposition.