alt Hacker NewsYep I read the article.
I disagree with the implication the author is making with this though:
"But there’s a difference between an observation about the past and a law of nature, and the optimists consistently confuse the two"
For one, laws of nature are understood through observations. That's how science works. Secondly, I can point at many examples across history way past the industrial revolution, agricultural revolution, mitochondria, all the way back to the earliest supernovas...
Through a physics lens... With respect for the meta patterns that transcend emergence and exist in the relationship between complexity and entropy, there is a relevant law of nature.
When a method to do work more efficiently comes to be, and propagates at scale, an explosion of diversity of new kinds of work emerges.
> When a method to do work more efficiently comes to be, and propagates at scale, an explosion of diversity of new kinds of work emerges.
... work that can be done better, and cheaper, by AI.
That's the goal. The idea is not for the people who have invested trillions into AI to find another way to give you money. They think they've given enough money. Now it's time for them to make money. They do that by telling your boss that you're dead weight and that their AI agents can do the same work for a fraction of the cost without vacation days, sleep, office space, or any of the other things associated with humans.
And it's a law of nature that we have people in our species who will gladly take short-term financial gain over long-term social stability. If you can't observe that, then you're not looking very hard.