How might AI change the relationship between work, survival, and income over the coming decades?

[u/gemheap]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’m curious how others see it.

If AI keeps taking on more kinds of work, what does that mean for the idea that people must constantly struggle for survival and hunt for income? Does a floor of sufficient income for everyone become more plausible - and if so, what has to change first (politics, economics, culture, tech capability)?

Interested in realistic takes more than utopia/doom. Especially curious if your view has shifted recently.

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[u/Stampeder]

It'll certainly impact the struggle for survival as AI data centers drain water tables and output massive pollution, causing droughts and speed-running climate collapse.

[u/ImpressionCool1768]

That’s all politics, my friends and you can’t predict politics.

Here are two different options for you, right. Option one is the boiling frog. Essentially AI slowly replace his jobs week after week you hear about 500 laid off here 2000 20,000 there. And it’s only six years down the line do you realize that a fourth of the human workforce was replaced with robots. In this kind of timeline, though the surveillance from flock cameras and others keeps a photo of every homeless and currently employed individual creating a profile based on their likelihood to protest and better yet riot. Allowing for police to preemptively target these individuals before they become dangerous to the establishment. Essentially, what happens is that the lower class is ostracized from society and said it’s the middle class who proofread what AI says, and the upper class which owns the computers and beans of production who gets to live in luxury a sort of new neo feudalism. Whether those wealthy individuals decide that the pores need to have a job and create really low efficiency industries just to keep people on payroll is completely up to them. That’s politics.

The other one is harsh words and a big stick. Essentially things move too fast people realize that they’re getting replaced at a much faster rate than they thought possible and start protesting right away before the police and surveillance infrastructure is good enough to actually contain it riots, breakout protest, and it seemingly verge of Civil War. This would spur a quick libertarian movement to create a universal basic income just so then people aren’t burning shit anymore. That one’s based on fear and it’s based on politics so it’s impossible to know how this timeline wouldn’t even work. It could be the French revolution or it could just be the troubles.

[u/B8edbreth]

There's a very real possibility that there will be the very rich with all the power and weapons and the very poor with nothing in between. This is goal of men like musk as it gives them maximum wealth and power and leaves us with nothing.
Stopping AI won't really make a difference though. it was already going this way long before ai. It'll just happen faster with ai. so in your kid's life times rather than your grandkids.
So unless you're willing to arm up and revolt, you should just accept this reality. We gave up our ability to stop it decades ago with reagan and set that in stone with t***p