alt Hacker NewsCounterpoint: Work sucks. Of the billions of workers on the planet, the number of them who love their job and would truly be doing it even if they didn't need to in order to survive is probably in the low single digits.
Hating work is good, wanting it to all be automated is good. It is a pro-human flourishing stance, whereas keeping the majority of humanity laboring in jobs they dislike just to survive is against human flourishing in favor of the status quo.
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> Hating work is good, wanting it to all be automated is good.
It's this "path of least resistance life style" that ruins a lot in our society. Yes, being wasteful is bad, but not appreciating the work is also bad.
> Hating work is good, wanting it to all be automated is good.
Not without a concrete answer for how we all continue to survive and thrive when our jobs are replaced. And that's the part the AI boosters are silent on, beyond vague notions of UBI.
It's highly cynical, but people need to work. It provides structure and most people don't do well with unstructured time.
Also, I find it odd that of all the automation being attempted with LLMs, we're automating the ones that actually are interesting, not the ones that are dangerous or truly rote, yet highly mechanical.
Humans will not flourish if you remove their jobs, they will become violent criminals because they will have nothing else to fill their days and no purpose in their community.
People may hate their job, but they will hate being unemployed way more.
That's not the future envisioned by AI pushers.
Its fine to hate work, whatever. But you wouldn't quit your job today, so why would you want to be replaced by an AI today?
I would humor this stance if we were also actively building a new economic arrangement that was not capitalism.
Automating away the drudgery or dangerous parts of life seems inherently good. But I would argue that AI has not been awesome at that, really. There are certainly cases where it has lessened tiresome work, but there are just as many cases where AI is worsening the pleasant parts of life. And I don't know anyone who has experienced shorter work weeks because AI is doing stuff for them.
Under capitalism, AI is converting labor power of ordinary people to "property" owned by the owning class. It is making the rich richer. It doesn't really improve my state of being.
Work sucks, but try paying bills without working. Try buying food.
I don't think many people disagree with this. The main problem is that labour has been what allows regular people to have negociating power with those who own most of the capital.
People are worried that if they lose this leverage, nothing is stopping the few who have most of the capital to just disregard the needs of the masses.