alt Hacker NewsSo many people have spent a lot of energy dehumanizing others on the basis of their “contribution to society”. Ideas like, if you aren’t employed, you shouldn’t have access to healthcare, etc. I can only hope that AI can force people to rethink whether their value is tied to their work output or not.
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> Ideas like, if you aren’t employed, you shouldn’t have access to healthcare, etc.
Fucking hell, there are so many bullshit jobs. I'm doing one of them. I'm sure a homeless person having a few heartfelt conversations per day because he has the time and is open to it is giving more value to society than me right now.
I don’t know why it would. That rethink has always been possible, yet didn’t happen.
AI will only make “contribution to society” even stronger criterion, and help create permanent "not needed" underclasses.
AI has been around in various forms for a little while now. Have you seen anything to suggest that this is even a possibility?
Weigh this against the context that people have had centuries to figure this out.
It goes beyond that. There is inherent classism in this, because it implies that you do not question the value of wealthy people who put in relatively little actual work output due to their privileged position. Take for example the unemployed person in your example who might have literally been 100 times more productive in their career solving substantive problems than a VC who lucked out on their startup and has been cruising on a few boards for ten years.