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Comment by gdas | Hacker News Reader

I'm thinking about this basic idea: We have, in this case, a machine that is doing the job that a human driver would do - A machine replacing a man.

My question is: Should we be happy about this? Or should we be sad?

This time, we have a machine replacing a driver. In the future we may have machines replacing teachers, doctors, carpenters, artists... even lovers and machine makers.

So, my question remains: Should we be happy? Or should we be sad?

Normally, in science fiction movies, when the machines become intelectually smarter than humans, they try to destroy humanity.

But if, in the real world, they just become smarter than us, and just replace us in every activity. Then, what would we do?

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I've been thinking about this a lot. I'll answer it two ways.

Negative:

- As we've automated jobs we've also created new ones, but lots of these new jobs are BS. Inspectors of inspectors etc. to fulfil health and safety regulations. We're also creating a lot of things that improve our lives or entertain us but are really just created so we have something to spend our money on. We don't need them.

Positive:

- I think the idea of a basic income would fix this. If we can automate everything and reduce the number of people that need to work AND provide them with a basic income, they can live their lives and not have to work. If you aren't anti-government you could even have the government owning factories, producing goods through automation and selling them to other countries in order to finance a good basic income for its citizens.

It's going to be interesting and if you are young enough likely something you will see played out in your lifetime. Although the changes in the 20th century were massive and world changing I think the changes this century are going to be ones which change how we actually live on lives on a very basic level. What we do everyday and how we get money. Even if it all goes to hell it'll be interesting!

What we always do - find more time and capital for more interesting projects.

What did housewives do when they didn't have to stoke a fire to make dinner or out dirty clothes through a wringer?

The relentless increase of technology improves everyone's lives even as it replaces manual labour. It's a non-stop process that shouldn't be messd with.

> My question is: Should we be happy about this? Or should we be sad?

We should have a machine be sad about it for us!

What would we do? Well, we might aspire to be more like our newfound superiors. We might attempt to become cyborgs.

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