A Spanish agency became so sick of models and influencers that they created their own with AI — and she’s raking in up to $11,000 a month::Founder Rubén Cruz said AI model Aitana was so convincing that a famous Latin actor asked her on a date.
But… why would you not replace workers with robots when you can? Serious question.
The alternative is paying people to do an unneeded job, and that’s not sustainable. How do we intend to pay a person who contributes nothing to society?
I feel there are going to be a shitload of questions like this in the coming decade. We’ve navigated such upheavals before, such as during the Industrial Revolution and the beginning of the Information Age. But now? Seems quite different.
Had this talk with a more conservative acquaintance about minimum wage:
“We gotta pay these people a living wage. What about all the dumbasses out there that can’t handle more than a convenience store job?”
“Not my problem.”
“But those people are OUR problem. Want to give them more welfare? Want them to be homeless with all the problems that brings?”
Anyway, some fool will come along shortly and scream, “UBI!”. If you get a simple answer to a complex question, the answering party is simple.
How do we intend to pay a person who contributes nothing to society?
Why must we value how a person “contributes to society” via their output for capitalism?
Is studying philosophy useless? Is making art? Is reaping the benefits of a society built upon tens of thousands of years of human innovation to just sit back and relax a bit?
Humanity worked hard to get to a point where this is even a question. If you listen to the capitalists saying “If you’re not working you’re worthless” then you’ve been tricked. Tens of thousands of years of human innovation and suffering to advance society to a point where we don’t all have to work, but the rich want you to think that’s a bad thing. It is not natural that the benefits of all of that effort and suffering should all collect in the hands of a few at the top while everyone else suffers.
The “simple answer” is UBI because there literally is no alternative short of outright killing people that don’t work to maintain automation. You and everyone else deserves a cut of that pie, we and all of our ancestors put blood, sweat, and tears into it. Let the people relax and enjoy the fruits of that society.
The alternative is paying people to do an unneeded job, and that’s not sustainable.
Well unfortunately that’s the proposed solution too. When you ask an AI optimist what their solution is for workers after their jobs are replaced by ai, a common answer is a universal basic income. But if you believe it’s unsustainable to pay a person to do a job that could be done by a robot (which for the record isn’t really accurate, as we’ve been sustaining that), then it probably isn’t sustainable to pay that same person for doing nothing…
So we’re left with the same problem, what do we do about the workers?
then it probably isn’t sustainable to pay that same person for doing nothing…
Why is that unsustainable?
That person isn’t going to spend their life doing “nothing,” humans have an intrinsic need to do something. Psychology has shown us pretty conclusively. The difference is once we’ve automated so much, that can be whatever we want instead of focusing on the bare necessities to survive. The only way “paying someone to do nothing” is unsustainable is if you’ve bought into the lie that our value as human beings is inherently tied to what we produce for capitalism.
I wonder if UBI is more unsustainable, or unsustainable at all - imagine a future where most things can be produced so efficiently without the involvement of humans that the idea of not doing so is simply preposterous, akin to insist on using horses after motorization became widely available. Employing humans might incur a higher lost opportunity cost than simply paying everybody to do “nothing”. I’m using “” since all those people would of course do something, just not grind for bare survival or “the economy”, which is arguably isn’t necessary anymore, or at least not as necessary as it once was.
In a way, overcoming work (as in “unwanted compensated grind”) is a way to truly live up to our potential as humans because it asks the very basic question of “how to be?” outside of what for millennia was basic necessity or narrowly defined by society.
It’s just so hard to see where we transition from here.
We went from a resource economy to a manufacturing economy to a service economy… And now many services are being automated. So what’s next?
I’m in favor of the automation but recognize it’s going to cause pain in the near future.
I’ve seen people tout a ‘creative based economy’, but to be honest LLMs and GANs seen poised to grab that sector before anyone in service can transition to it.
You’d hope all of this would mean an easier life, but so long as capitalism is the name of the game there is zero incentive to spread the benefits among all.
Why do you feel this is different from the Industrial Revolution et al? They also made certain jobs redundant. People were either given different tasks or had to find different a new job. It was certainly not easy and I would certainly like things to go over smoother this time around, but in my mind, worst-case is that it will simply go over like in the Industrial Revolution.
Thanks for asking. Good I suppose. It means all this talk and moaning about being too hard to implement and there’s no system in place is prooven to be a lie. I mean, we already knew it was a lie but this is as close to proof as we’re going to get. It’s already in place, no big shocks, just tag it onto the system that’s already in place all that really changes is the name. First step is change it from welfare to basic income. Then we add the universal part afterwards. Not so scary anymore
