underscored

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It's a striking inversion of the pandemic, when the people who could work from home were the safest — and the essential workers who couldn't were the most exposed. That inversion is also why (like Edwards) Kinder rejects a standard San Francisco answer for AI job loss, which is to skip straight to universal basic income. If everyone gets a check big enough to replace a displaced software engineer's salary, she asks, why would anyone keep showing up to police the streets, build houses, or staff hospitals?

Casey Newton
6d ago

I think some of the conversation around AI is deeply, deeply classist …. It feels like some of that comes from being a little high on your own supply of how amazing your technology is when you hawk it. And it comes from this idea that some workers are better or more special than others, which makes your technology better or more special. That's also a way of saying the value of other workers is a lot lower — so it doesn't matter if they're displaced, it only matters if these workers are displaced.

1w ago

The people who have the money and skills to move between the U.S. and Europe are probably disproportionately highly paid professional workers (who can earn more in the U.S.), while working-class people who would like to take advantage of Europe's urban safety and generous welfare states find it harder to move.

4w ago

A core part of JFK's message was that innovation without inclusion is not progress; it is a slow-motion eviction of the American worker from their own economy.

1mo ago

In fact, this shift represents more evolution than revolution. Years ago, Altman did seem to generally agree with the folk consensus that AI's purpose is to make most or all humans obsolete; in 2014 he warned that we could be faced with "a new idle class", and explored the idea of Universal Basic Income as a remedy.

1mo ago

So far, AI is replacing tasks, not jobs. Alex Imas and Soumitra Shukla have written that as long as there are a few things that only humans can do, this pattern can be expected to hold.

2mo ago

We shouldn't seek to quell AI anxiety, we should embrace and analyze it. The truth is, the U.S. labor market is in serious trouble, and it has little to do with AI so far.

2mo ago

The deeper problem appears to be that the tech is not a meaningful job creator or increasing productivity outside of a few roles even in technology companies.

3mo ago

Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.

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