Will AI destroy capitalism?

[Jarhyn]

What will people without the abilities to get a strong education when everything from yard work to Uber driver, to hair dresser is taken over by robots?

Same thing they do now. Struggle.

But at least in principle their necessities should be cheaper in real terms.

Well, at first they will. The thing is, humans won't tolerate the robots being the only robots on the block. We'll become robots ourselves before long, and then the "not-originally-human" robots will have some competition..

I'll be that competition.

 

[JohnG]

I've heard it argued (and it makes sense) that AI can help make business more predatory.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

EVERY technology has resulted in vast numbers of jobs disappearing, and in great fear that this will make human workers a needless and redundant expense.

And yet, we have six or seven billion more humans today than we had a century ago, and a larger fraction of them are in paid employment than ever before.

It's almost as though technology doesn't eliminate jobs, but instead just replaces old jobs with new ones.

Except it is disruptive to those trained in the old skills. We do not have an adequate system to retrain them to new skills--but that's a failing of our system, not a wrong in deploying the new technology.

Always has been though. People will adapt.

The basic issue is how fast things change and how much training is needed for the new job.

 

[JohnG]

EVERY technology has resulted in vast numbers of jobs disappearing, and in great fear that this will make human workers a needless and redundant expense.

And yet, we have six or seven billion more humans today than we had a century ago, and a larger fraction of them are in paid employment than ever before.

It's almost as though technology doesn't eliminate jobs, but instead just replaces old jobs with new ones.

Except it is disruptive to those trained in the old skills. We do not have an adequate system to retrain them to new skills--but that's a failing of our system, not a wrong in deploying the new technology.

Always has been though. People will adapt.

This is certainly true, but I don't think it's ever a good thing to throw a big swath of people under the bus. You could probably draw a straight line from the decline of manufacturing post NAFTA and the attempted fascist coup on Jan 6, for one small example.