I noticed almost everybody here agrees that all AI is bad, and anything produced by AI is slop. and refuse to use any software made in part or in whole with AI or help of AI? Please mention your background and usage of AI with your answer.
I also posted it here.
I literally told you I don’t even understand what your criticism about washing machines is. You’re being extremely vague here.
I just told you that doing laundry went from something that used to take the better half of a day to something that was done in few hours and your response was that now double income couples have to squeeze in time for laundry in the weekeds.
Like what the fuck are you even saying? Yes people still have to do their laundry even after the invention of washing machine. It’s only that it now takes less than third of the time of what it used to.
Yes, you are correct about the washing machine. Now broaden your scope and think about how that washing machine fits into the bigger picture. Like it’s one brick in a house. The brick might be upgraded, it’s a smaller, tougher brick, maybe even cheaper, but now you need two bricks to make the same house.
There are many inventions that have greatly improved working conditions for people, the washing machine is a great example. That’s not what the original commenter is criticizing. They’re criticizing the larger structure, the house, not the brick.
If there weren’t the washing machine (as well as cheap wrinkle free clothes - eliminating the iron and board and sewing), the microwave, the refrigerator for frozen foods, digital spreadsheets for doing the bills, and so on, the economy would naturally adjust to make affordable a one person income household.
We have all these advancements to save time and effort but the system has likewise adapted, requiring you to spend that extra time now at a job in order to live.
That’s what the original comment was criticizing, this sleight of hand of promises, that sells us one thing but delivers only more work.
I think you simply have no idea what you are talking about. Look at the collapse of the USSR and think again. And in general, try living like you described for at least a month.
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And by the way, if you look closely at this economic model, you will see that it is designed for infinite population growth and increased consumption. On the other hand, developed countries have trapped themselves by ceasing to have children while maintaining the basic model. To get out of the crisis, one should not stage revolutions and roll back to manually crafting parts, but rather start having children. That’s it. The larger the population, the wealthier the economy, because money is transitional paper that allows you to exchange one labor for another labor. And a larger population guarantees a greater maximum volume of labor.
Because economic models are not that simple in any country. If automation can do your labor, then labor begins to lose its value. The same thing, by the way, happens with a large influx of migrants or the appearance of a large number of people who can do that kind of work. Labor is just another commodity. And it is also subject to the law of supply and demand.
Conditionally, before the advent of machinery, the only way to produce a spare part was to manually machine it on a lathe. With the advent of machinery, the machines themselves also improved, which is why no one machines spare parts by hand; instead, the machine’s electronics do everything. Consequently, the original labor simply lost its value. Simply loading a program into a machine and standing at the machine machining a part under a microscope are two different tasks. No one will pay the same amount now for manual accounting calculations or manual steel casting.
The flip side of this process is that electronics become cheaper in order to make basic tasks even cheaper, and following that, the pay for basic tasks also decreases. That is, your dishwasher and washing machine appeared not as appliances for your home, but as appliances for catering establishments and laundries. It was simply the lowering of the cost of technology that allowed it to be placed in your home.
Its difficult to put more clearly than he already did, so I’ll come at it from a different angle, see if that’s any better.
You’re at a factory on a machine that takes 10 people to operate it. You all get minimum wage. A new machine comes out that only takes 5 people to work it for the same output. That should be great, but for the worker it sucks. 5 people now have jobs and 5 people are unemployed. The people still working are still on minimum wage.
The salaries that are “saved” go mostly in the bosses pockets. Sure some goes to the manufacturer of the better machine, and some goes on taxes, but mostly it’s value that we, the common man, has lost.
If it works out like they’re hoping, AI will do this at a scale we’ve never encountered before.
Please read the full context. What you just said has nothing to do with the washing machine example I provided that Fleppen was seemingly disagreeing with.
This isn’t a loom that helps workers produce fabric faster but their boss takes all the profits. It’s a piece of technology that people use in their home on their free time to perform a task in a fraction of the time it used to take before washing machines. It’s a massive time saver and that seems a rather uncontroversial claim to me so I have no clue what they’re actually taking issue with.
To your point: I don’t disagree. In the best case scenario AI will take everyone’s job. That is not the issue as most people only work for money anyway. The issue is what follows from that: a handful of people making all the profits while the rest get nothing. The solution to this is however not that we all become luddites but that we figure out a way to spread that wealth to everyone fairly.
The time that has been saved by the washing machine meant more time to join the workforce meaning 2 income households can now provide the same level of value as 1 income households used to. Except they cant. Also its more than simply the washing machine.
The point was that the extra time has not been given to us, but allowed to be taken by the rich.
Edit : yes time has been saved. Its not actually properly benefitted us in the way you’d imagine though.
how do people like individual entrepreneurs fit into this picture?