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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   32185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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I think calling artists and journalists "poor members of the upper classes", while not entirely wrong, isn't my preferred framing. They're semi-prestigious, certainly, but my definition of upper class would be someone like 2rafa. They're often members of the intelligentsia, and have a somewhat disproportionate impact on public affairs, but they're not upper class by most definitions. Poor but upper class is close to a contradiction in terms.

In any case, AI isn’t taking everyone’s job. There will be fewer software engineers, sure, but we don’t need so many of them. They should learn to fix toilets or dig coal or something. Previous increases in the productivity of white collar work have not led to the elimination of white collar employment.

I've already explained my stance in this thread that the previous expectation about the state of affairs for automation doesn't hold. Cognitive automation that replaces all human thought is a qualitatively different beast when compared to the industrial revolution or computers.

A tool that does 99% of my work for me? Great, I'm a hundred times as productive! There might even be a hundred times more work to do, but I'll probably see some wage growth. There might be some turmoil in the employment market.

A tool that does 100% of the labor? What are you paying me for?

The whole point is that AI is approaching 100%, might even be there, or is so close employers don't care and will fire you.

I think calling artists and journalists "poor members of the upper classes", while not entirely wrong, isn't my preferred framing. They're semi-prestigious, certainly, but my definition of upper class would be someone like 2rafa. They're often members of the intelligentsia, and have a somewhat disproportionate impact on public affairs, but they're not upper class by most definitions. Poor but upper class is close to a contradiction in terms.

Perhaps a more accurate description would be members of an upper class in the same way that samurai were in Edo society, literati were in China since essentially the Warring States, or Brahmins in India?

A tool that does 99% of my work for me? Great, I'm a hundred times as productive! There might even be a hundred times more work to do, but I'll probably see some wage growth. There might be some turmoil in the employment market.

A tool that does 100% of the labor? What are you paying me for?

The whole point is that AI is approaching 100%, might even be there, or is so close employers don't care and will fire you.

To be honest the pessimistic case of the AI "only" being able to do 99% or even 90% of human cognitive work scares me in terms of social upheaval. It might be better off in the long run, but it sure looks like it'll be a bumpy ride...

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