My problem with the technology is that it is inseparable from the current economic model that you openly admit is flawed.
It's inseparable? Why?
I see no reason why we couldn't have current generative AI under any other economic system. It's a useful tool that any economic system might find value in creating. You're going to have to be more specific with why this is true.
Yes, I think the current economic model is flawed, to put it mildly. I'm not shy about that. But I think that's a separate problem that happens to impact almost everything we do, not something specific to AI.
Happiness, love, health and purpose pretty much sum it up for me. You can have all four while still living a pretty difficult life.
You can also have all four while living a pretty easy life. You were making the argument that an easier life is not necessarily a better life, but it's not necessarily a worse one either. So given that the difficulty of a life isn't really that tied to happiness/love/health/purpose, why would you intentionally choose a more difficult life?
Unless actually, you DO think that a more difficult life is more likely to lead to happiness/love/health/purpose. In which case you're going to have to spell that out, because there's a certain type of person that has significant incentive to believe in that.
I disagree that AI is the same as countless previous tech changes. Its power is unlimited and repercussions are yet to be understood.
Its power is not unlimited, its power is not fully understood. Similar to many technologies when they were introduced.
Its repercussions are not yet fully understood either, and that's been the case with pretty much every significant new technology. I doubt people fully understood the ramifications of the printing press when it was introduced, and that's a stupid simple machine.
This is just how progress works. We don't know entirely how new things will work out until we actually start using them. That's a reason to be cautious, but not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I’m not actually concerned about a robot shagging my wife. IRobot will not be raising my kids, washing my car or doing my dishes. I’ll be well and truly dead in 100 years time.
Glad we cleared that up.
Interesting that your counter-argument is
"I won't be here so I don't care", rather than
"I enjoy doing those things so I would do them myself even if I had the opportunity to get someone/something else to do them".
Hypotheticals are tough, especially if you don't engage with them.
Satisfaction and a sense of achievement can be earned by a good hard days work. I worked hard for years and took a lot of pride in that.
Did you need someone telling you what to do during that good hard day's work in order to feel that satisfaction and sense of achievement?
One should not necessarily feel pride simply because they worked hard for years. You should feel pride because you achieved something meaningful to you in that time. I think there's a far greater chance of someone doing something meaningful with their time if they're self-directing than if they're being told what to do by their supervisor.
There's a lot of people out there stacking supermarket shelves and driving forklifts. Currently that work needs to be done by a human, but it's real unlikely that those people are getting much pride and satisfaction from their jobs. On the other hand, there are people who spend thousands of hours to get one perfect speedrun of a game, and they seem to experience a lot of pride and satisfaction.
AI could evolve to the point where it is capable of doing everything. That doesn't take away our ability to do those things ourselves though.
Indeed.
Just because you have a robot kitchen capable of cooking anything doesn't stop you from cooking something yourself. Or feeling pride in having done so. Or even feeling pride in having got the robot kitchen to help you make something new or unique or unusual.
AI is going to teach people that the real treasure really was the friends and adventures we had along the way.
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For people who like science fiction, The Culture series of novels by Iain M. Banks is set in an actual post-scarcity society, which I think is relevant to where the whole AI/jobs/creation thing ends up in the long term. Resources are practically unlimited on the personal scale, people can have almost anything they want made for them, and there are benevolent AI and robots to assist with almost anything you might want. But people are still people, and removing the struggles to survive and create basic things does not impact the fundamental human experience, at least in this fictional setting. Whether you think that's an accurate depiction of humans or not is up to you.
One of the best books in the series to start with is Player of Games. The protagonist is one of the best game players in the galaxy, his life's work is studying games and strategy and refining his understanding and play. He knows that there are AI that are so powerful that they could demolish him in any game he chose, but that's not the point. He does this because he enjoys doing this, the same way that people still play chess even though there are computers out there that can consistently beat the best players in the world.
At some point our society is going to have to shift from the competitive mindset of only having value if you're the best to a mindset where you just try and do your best for yourself. As players of Gran Turismo, I think most of us are aware of this. There's always some alien out there who is faster and better than you, and these days Sophy is getting pretty close to being faster and better than all of us. But you can still have fun by trying to improve yourself, and that's why most of us play.
