alt Hacker NewsSo we want to replace a lot of cheap human labour with expensive robots?
Even if I think this has legs, where do the cheap humans go to work after? Where/what are the remaining jobs for all of this displaced labour in both white collar and blue collar worlds? It basically screams UBI. And in a UBI world, the economy looks pretty different and humanoid esque robots start to look either very altruistic or very dystopian depending on how hard the oligarchs don't want things to change.
Like, what's the end game for humans in this path we're embarking?
>Like, what's the end game for humans in this path we're embarking?
The market becomes more efficient as fewer human beings are needed to create value and move capital. A lot of them are going to die, surplus to requirements. A lot more will be stuck in lives of grinding and meager poverty, probably doing gig work acting as "flesh AI" for less expensive robots or "blood boys" for the rich. But the rich will be very rich indeed.
It won't just be end-stage capitalism killing people, either. The collapse of the knowledge economy, scientific and research institutions and the mass adoption of AI to fill the gap will kill tons of people too, as will the return of diseases like polio and smallpox, and mass starvation as climate change destroys global agriculture, and the normalization of christofascism.
We're almost certainly not getting UBI, at least not in the US. It would help too many black people and immigrants, half the country would secede. We might get something called UBI but only so long as it isn't universal, and has tons of racially biased and religiously motivated means testing and plenty of carve-outs that keep that money flowing to the top, and out of the hand of the "useless eaters."