Isn’t our technology supposed to create an environment where less people have to work?

If "work" was finite, sure. It's not.

These predictions always take way longer to come true than expected.

People will predict that there will be 20% fewer white collar jobs in 5 years due to AI, and it might happen in 20 years.

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How is the majority of the people going to purchase anything without a job?

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The question nobody can answer. Who is going to buy the company's products that's run by AI?

The government is never going to give you a middle class lifestyle. They might keep you from starving to death in some public housing slum

Tech frees up labor for other tasks.

IC engine killed a lot of jobs but created many times more

Price of tomorrow: Jeff Booth

Strangely, we simultaneously need to import more foreign workers and also have universal basic income because technology is taking all the jobs and turning us into a consumer society.

It’s quite the conundrum.

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So tech is freeing us up to continue to work just as much as before?

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Its called productivity.

And yes, the sole goal of capitalism is endless productivity via efficiency. And rather than find peace we will create our own need to produce more with all "extra time." We will fill the time with more work until, that too we can make more efficient.

And such is the meaningless human cycle.

I'm not anti- capitalist by any means, but its only goal is efficiency, and that is as much a problem for man's soul as are the end goals of other systems. It's still the best one...probably.... but there is only meaninglessness at its end.

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Isn’t that what is supposed to be happening as tech advances?

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No, generally, the pattern has been that labor gets reoriented around that new industry. AI seems to promise that it can even replace that, but I am skeptical. The entire AI drive seems more about getting funding than it does about actually producing something. The AI products I've used have been mostly annoying.

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Is the government going to give out money to every citizen weekly or monthly?

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Yes. You've just redefined Universal Basic Income.

It is the cornerstone of the theoretical "utopian" era, where there are fewer jobs than there are people. So, those who cannot or choose to not work will get enough money to live a modest life.

Those who can provide value in this world would get more money and thus get to live a more luxurious lifestyle in return.

Again, all theoretical and we are not nearly there, but we are inching closer and closer to that reality.

We all thought “automation” twelve years ago would have everyone out of a job. Didn’t really come to fruition like we had imagined. Probably going to be a similar outcome with AI.