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Comment by streetfighter64 | Hacker News Reader

It's funny all this talk of AI "stealing jobs" from humans. Shouldn't we, as in humanity, want to collectively work less? It's amazing that the top 1% has psy-opped so many people into wanting to work more in order to allow their "families to eat", while holding 30-40% of the world's resources for themselves. We have robots that can work for us, but still we prefer to spend our time doing menial customer service, rather than just convincing the 1%ers to share with normal people... (who in fact created everything they claim to own)

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Losing the jobs that we are required to have to eat and have shelter before there is a safety net is the problem. If we cede our jobs to AI they aren't going to be replaced with a life of leisure, they're going to be replaced with a life of poverty. If the safety net was put in place first we might have a very different conversation about it, but that's not the world we live in.

Yeah, my point is no safety net will ever be "put" in place unless people coordinate in order to put one in place themselves. Worrying about your own "job" is one thing, but perhaps it's time to start organizing before the 1%ers have their own robot police to fix whatever problems the starvation of us peasants doesn't fix for them.

"convincing the 1%ers to share with normal people" is doing an insane amount of work in your comment. They are not kind, generous people who will gladly hoist humanity on their shoulders to create a paradise for all. They could have ubi implemented already if that's what they wanted to do. Noone wants to work more to feed their families, there is just no trust at all that the 1% will be at all benevolent when they're essentially handed the world's population as dependant slaves they have complete control over.

Um, that's exactly my point. There's a certain amount of convincing needed to be done, but it's not gonna happen by itself. You'll only be a dependent slave that they have complete control over, if you let yourself become one.

Working at your job won't feed your family in the long run. Organizing will perhaps do so.

Western countries are supposedly democracies, so shouldn't it be possible to rewrite some laws for the benefit of the people? And even nondemocratic countries have been able to improve the conditions of the masses through organization. In any case, wanting the tech overlords to hire people to do customer service instead of using AI, seems like a very poor solution to the coming problems.

I totally agree with you. But, I heard a story that helps me see the other side.

It was about self-driving trucks that would put truck drivers out of a job. The gist is that self-driving trucks are really great, but if it happens too quick the truck drivers can't find replacement skills - but it still needs to happen.

I think the current conversation about AI replacing jobs is similar. It should happen. But also, there are real people who will lose their income and they need time and space to find replacement income streams

For disclosure, my current job I use AI heavily to "translate" technical and legal jargon, and I can watch, in real time, as AI gets better at my job. I might be replaced in a year or two.

Well, the point is that people shouldn't need to find replacement skills. We have robots that can grow our food, drive it to us, manufacture our clothes, etc. etc. So the only reason we're still working our asses off, is because our laws and expectations of society are wrong.

The people that lose their jobs don't need to "find replacement income streams", they need to organize in order to establish a society where we all can just work to survive and thrive, instead of enabling the richest to waste the resources of us all and destroy our environment.

So no, sorry, I'm not seeing the "other side" at all here. In my opinion the story you heard is just an attempt to (yet again) redirect the focus to machines "taking people's jobs", in order to distract from the real problem: our organization of society is completely wrong, to the benefit of certain rich people who willingly make others suffer for their gain.

People don't need or want work, they need resources. And we collectively have all the resources we need, it's just a problem of dividing fairly.

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