I do believe there's going to be a lot of left-behinds, as a sort-of digital rust belt. Even though, as an industry, we've always been in the business of automating and replacing ourselves, the shift will hit too quick.

I lay none of the blame on AI the technology, and all the blame on AI as a mindset and excuse.

Layoffs are not due to AI, but it's a convenient excuse: "more productive, don't need people, we're firing on all cylinders and yeah, firing 20% of the workforce while we're at it". Everything else being equal, the "more productive so we earn 20%" counterfactual makes more sense - but of course, not everything else is equal.

Treadmill speed will increase, no doubt. We haven't lowered working hours from 40 to 20 when computers 2x'd us all, we for sure won't lower them now.

We'll manage the nondeterministic imperfections, but boy, will there be bumps on the road.

What I fear most: AI will give us all more power. This includes profitmaxxing no-holds-barred corpos, from preseed startups hustling 996-style to big multinacionals. Even now, with locked-down devices and subscriptions for everything and owning things replaced with "owning a limited nontransferrable revokable end-user license", it's not good. AI is going to multiply that.

Damn, now I need a drink.