alt Hacker News>Fundamentally, I know that HN has plenty of people who will react with "ha-ha, human authors should pack their bags", just like what we keep telling mathematicians, because we see the discipline as just another market that can be conquered by automation or another benchmark to track.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that, at least some of us are going: "ha-ha, people derive their value from their outputs instead of understanding existence is itself valuable"
Why does everyone value themselves based on their economic output? Why do blood diamonds compete at all with lab grown - one often involves sacrifices to the minors, and the other is cheaper and by all metrics better? (hint: because the narrative of "effort" is what drives that particular example... the blood makes the diamonds shinier in some people's minds... that's not a good look, morally)
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It's not the economic output itself, but what it represents. I can value myself as a human being all I want, and I should, but without that economic output, it's a much harder life. Money gets you food and a roof over your head. More money gets you better food and a better roof that doesn't leak and a more secure one as well. (also gets you more problems)
Gets you a car that runs, one that runs reliably instead of breaking down. A parking space for it, even in the center of a big city.
It represents security, happiness, vacations, things/stuff. We can judge however we want about those categories but judging people isn't going to change that do actually want them. So maybe you can get all that without economic output, it just seems like it would be easier to accomplish/achieve with than without.
> Why does everyone value themselves based on their economic output?
I mean this is really the issue with the idea of AI taking jobs, isn't it? If our entire economic system wasn't predicated on this, nobody would be really that miffed about AI use in art because there wouldn't be much of a market for it, because the concept of art as being a marketable widget wouldn't exist in the first place, and the notion of human expression being replaced with a machine would be absurd. But we have tied up art with economic exchange for centuries. It has been a market commodity for almost as long as recorded human history. So the graphic designer who pours their creative spirit into what is, essentially, an economic exchange (rather than going and painting landscapes or something) feels an acute threat because it threatens their existence.
To overcome this and to live a future where it feels more like ML/LLMs live in concert with humanity then you'd have to picture a future where human value is divorced from one's capacity to provide economic value. When exactly does anyone foresee that happening? The entire system would crumble. UBI is clearly not the answer because all it does is entrench a subtle cast system and limit upward mobility and does nothing to address this root cause.
I don't know what the future is, but I know that as long as the current economic system persists (in all its permutations, whether that's socialism, capitalism, communism, whatever outmoded 19th and 20th century ideas we have to structure society -- all alienate the individual and relationships to some degree or another) then AI will always be met with disdain even in areas where it can improve people's well-being (and FWIW I think the arts and even mathematics are NOT part of this subset of use cases).
Maybe the solution is walled cities and shutting off the internet entirely; returning to our neighborhood pubs, sports, expressions of the human spirit placed up at farmers' markets. Seems like we already seem to be trending in that direction; and if last night's apocalypse was any indication maybe the internet's days are numbered anyways.
Diamonds are expensive because that's how much money people pay for them. People buy diamonds because [they have no taste and] they can afford to, or want to present themselves as being able to afford to. I'm sure some of them have various dark thoughts about it, too.
People derive their value from their economic status because that is a tool available to them and the world they grew up in forced them to do so. Being able to derive your value from other aspects of life is a luxury and a privelege that is, ironically, unaffordable for the majority.