alt Hacker News> The same can probably be said for contemporary AI, but it's tough to tell right now
The same can't even be said for contemporary AI, because lots of the jobs it's going to replace are theoretical or hype. Self-driving cars should've been here years ago, but because AI is extremely hard to improve upon once it gets to a certain level of efficacy, they haven't happened.
The question is: should we be discussing this stuff when AI hasn't started taking all those jobs yet?
I think it's fine to discuss solutions to hypothetical future problems as long as it's clear that these are hypothetical future problems you're talking about, not present reality.
In many of these discussions that line seems to get blurred and I start to get the impression people are using the specter of a vague, poorly understood hypothetical future problem to argue for concrete societal changes now.