> when we're (say) half way there, the amount of societal upheaval will be enormous.
I had a conversation with a C level exec of a large company last week around this theme. My suggestion that limited AI such as self driving cars has the potential to create a vast number of extremely frustrated individuals making a second round of 'Sabotage' and Luddites a definite possibility was waved away as if those people don't matter and don't have any power.
I really wonder how far you'd have to be removed from the life of a truck or cab driver not to be able to empathize with them and to realize that if you take away some of the last low education jobs that allow you to keep your hands clean that there will be some kind of backlash.
If self driving cars/trucks become a thing, and cause millions of people to be unemployed, there is ALSO a correspondingly massive economy increase.
IE, the world is now massively richer because of all this awesome new technology.
Yes, there could be some short term disruption, but honestly I think things will end up fine, just because of the massive amount of extra money and wealth that the world will have that could be used to solve all those short term problems that disruption causes.
That's not how things have generally worked out in the world. Billions live in abject poverty even although the world has plenty enough to feed them and provide shelter.
The issue is income distribution - and just making more money doesn't magically fix the problem.
Yes exactly. We really hope to see this effort made. It's a fixable problem, but often in history great inequality is only fixed by violent revolution, which I don't want to see happen in my (or my daughter's) time!
But it seems that increased economic benefits aren't shared. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, average adjusted worker wages in the US from ~1975 to present, etc.
I'm concerned that 'some short term disruption' will actually be quite widespread and long-lasting, given increasing interdependencies.
You seem to forget why the luddites were luddities in the first place.
Yes, fabric was much cheaper, but in the meantime they were starving to death. The groups that make billions off this technology will lobby to keep more of their earnings so this vast wealth redistribution you want to happen, wont.
Chances are that the increased riches of the world will not be divided in such a way that those who are now earning a living wage with their driving license will profit from that.
I had a conversation with a C level exec of a large company last week around this theme. My suggestion that limited AI such as self driving cars has the potential to create a vast number of extremely frustrated individuals making a second round of 'Sabotage' and Luddites a definite possibility was waved away as if those people don't matter and don't have any power.
I really wonder how far you'd have to be removed from the life of a truck or cab driver not to be able to empathize with them and to realize that if you take away some of the last low education jobs that allow you to keep your hands clean that there will be some kind of backlash.
AGI will expand that feeling to all of us.