For years I have been in the camp that automation is going to decimate our species in ways we can't even imagine. This is well before Gen-AI entered into the conversation and I could go back to conversations I had in the 90s about it. However, the pushback has always been pretty strong, saying first that "the technology won't be good enough to replace humans" and then that "even if it is, we will go on to other things like we did in past technology revolutions".
Short-sightedness is the condition of the masses.
Even a decade or so ago when the conversation of self-driving cars came about and I would mention the impact on professional drivers and all the industry that supports like roadhouses and cafés, people said things like "they can retrain to do other things, like software programming". Because you know, there is no way in the world that coding can be automated... Again, people are short-sighted. Anything codifiable can be automated, and with the right code to deal with exceptions like we have know with artificial intelligence, essentially we are in the realm of anything a human can do, can be automated.
But at least for now, that isn't completely true. It is only true in the things that we do outside of us, and especially the things we do to add financial value to the economy. And when it comes to the economy and the profit maximisation model used, it means that as soon as it become possible and cheaper to automate a process rather than use a human, it will be done. Even at some point the jobs "safest" from replacement by automation like plumbing, will be automated by robots and AI. Not only that, a lot of the things that makes the difference between plumbers, will become obsolete, because standardisation will very quickly mean that there is massive simplification from what we currently do.
Thankfully, lawyers will become obsolete too.
So, while not all of this is possible now, the way technology advances means that automation capabilities will continue to speedup and with the help of AI improvement also, Something like Moore's Law is an irrelevant model. It described the past for computing power, but it no longer fits for the future, since the speed of AI development has already far outstripped the expression and will continue to do so. This means that a lot of the things most of us are yet to even imagine, will be brought forward in the timeline at an increasing speed, and this shift is going to change everything about how we live our lives.
Very little of what we can do, will be in demand.
So, what then?
I don't know. It is impossible to predict what will actually happen, but the problem we are continually facing already today is that we are living in the past already, trying to maintain what should already be obsolete. Look at the current "energy crisis" and recognise that it isn't necessary. If we had invested into better energy sources decades ago, none of what is currently happening would be possible over oil, because the demand for oil and gas would be so low. Instead though, we live in a world not too distant from the 1800s, still looking for new oil wells and ways to make profit from it. And while the people with the power might not have the desire to solve the energy problem, what if an AI works it out? And once one AI has a somewhat viable solution, all AI's can iterate it further.
As I was saying to a client yesterday, wellbeing of humans is where the only real possible future for humanity lays, because if we focus on anything else we are going to make ourselves completely obsolete. The economy only works because there are people and if those people are not growing themselves, they are going to become an economic burden and left to die.
In Finland, there are thousands of new empty apartments that have no one to live in them, because immigration has been cut, and the birth rate is far below the replacement rate. The housing markets in the regional areas are decimated and you can't even give some of the properties away. This is happening in many places globally. At the same time, some places with high immigration like Australia are having housing crises, where there aren't enough affordable homes. They have the immigration, but they haven't prepared the infrastructure for it, which has then put a lot of emphasis on how bad immigration is.
This point isn't about automation, it is about how people drive the economy. But people who are unable to bring value to the local economy in other ways, become a burden and end up causing conflict, among people. However, it isn't going to only be the immigrants who are out of work, because automation is going to put almost everyone out of work in time, which means that unless there are changes in the way the economy functions, all humans become an economic burden on the economy, unable to pay for goods and services, unable to pay for rents or buy houses, and unable to do anything other than take support to survive. The retirement systems collapse, the welfare systems collapse, the social structures collapse, and wellbeing collapses across the board.
When humans collapse, humanity collapses.
So if humanity collapses, what is the point of doing any of this at all? It doesn't matter how efficient production is if there are no customers. It doesn't matter how brilliant technology is if no one has access. Without humans, none of what we do now, or where we are heading, matters.
That means that if we want to make what we do relevant, we have to ensure that we are relevant in the economic system, and in what the economy does. Currently, in many different forms, we are customers, but we can only be customers because we have something (money) to trade, which comes through work, handouts (work of others) or theft. In a production systems where we are non-producers, we end up with nothing to trade, so can't be customers. Not only does life suck for us, but the economy collapses, which is the opposite of the goal of all the economic activity ongoing now.
Capitalism (as we have used it) doesn't just eat itself because it monopolises, it eats itself because it will eventually lead to a situation where there aren't enough customers to support it. Which is why the focus needs to shift away from making money as the goal, to improving wellbeing as the goal. This doesn't break capitalism, it just shifts the focus of activity from a conceptual token, to human wellbeing. And in so doing, it directs all manner of activity, because the "reward" of the economy is measured in the improvement of humanity. The most rewarded goods and services aren't the ones that make efficiencies for profit maximisation, they make efficiencies for human wellbeing development.
I don't know where the future lays, but I predict that if we continue along the antiquated path we are on, we are going to make ourselves obsolete as a species far sooner than many might think, even if we don't blow ourselves out of the universe with our own technology first.
Taraz
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Some part of this post made me smile. My own measure of AI was for years to have my robot argue with company robots to get me cheaper bills. Well, somebody in a Lithuanian startup actually is working on this now.We are pproaching my point of singularity quickly.
Aparently is hard as the AI are colluding and the company ones are offering the cheapest price they can afford with no negotiation. Too good for customers.
"It will never be able to.." for many people have already been well and truly surpassed.
It is a great idea. I am going to create a logic agent to talk to my wife.
It is a wild and wooly putcome where everything is run like a business…for profit. What we are seeing now is governments taking it WAY past efficiency and leaping right to profitability which is where some of so iety breaks in my opinion.
Imagine gutting an education or healthcare system because it costs the government too much. It is not a cost. It is an investment in the wellbeing of the people who the government is elected by and needs to serve. Well, at least until now where political cesspools like in north america are paid for by the corporations buying favours.
Anyhow, i am not the biggest fan of government and putting my faith in them to do right for our people or planet feels so wrong…which is scary.
Yeah. Profitability doesn't = health.
I have been predicting this for many years. It is a cost, because they aren't going to be hired by the companies. It was a social contract in the past - educate to be employed, and the companies pay a lower tax to employ. Now, the company tax should go well above average income tax. At the very least, it should be on par. Flat 20% for everyone, including entities, and investments...
When government is a corporation yes. Governments should be the defense against blatant capitalism as they are elected by the people to support the people.
The speed of AI development is honestly dizzying... A developer now is basically a technical spec writer and an Agent manager where he is managing a team of AI Agents that actually do the work... And this is all in its infancy...
Yes. It won't take long until all those highly educated and intelligent knowledge workers, are on the bread line too.
The front desk receptionists will be doing the job of Software Engineers and Solution Architects using tools like GitHub Copilot and Claud Code ;)
I need to check some facts, but isn't it creative destruction? Like on one hand we are killing jobs, but on the other, we are creating jobs. However, we are shifting from conventional means to more advanced one, the one which suits the new generation the most. I am just curious whether the machines will take over everything or most of the things or not. Like, in the doraemon cartoon, there are flying cars, some imaginative gadgets etc., but everything is literally machine oriented. So at this stage, I believe, anything is possible.
The humanity has advanced so much. But, at the same time, we are not at our good. There are many diseases - such as cancer - which need some extra work. Sometimes I think, what if we will be able to get immortality? Through some genetic mutation means? Sounds godly though.
Morover, the big oil hungry will never get rid of oil. Although, the whole world know that it is impacting human life at various levels: economically, environmentally etc. In recent COP30, both the USA and Saudi Arabia were against the eradication of oil. Why? Because it was impacting their economy. So rather than working for the humanity cause; they (actually we) are living for the capital :)
Creating jobs where? OnlyFans? The average monthly income there is under $100 a month too.
Technology has advanced a lot - not sure how much humanity has in the last 10,000 years.
US is the largest oil producer in the world. They want higher prices and the strait of Hormuz blocked.
If this were the focus, human well-being I mean, investors would rather channel their resources to areas that impact human existence most. Like agriculture, infrastructure, healthcare, education, etc.
But no, they are investing in seemingly profitless things as the colonisation of Mars. I have not seen anything good that can come from our becoming an interplanetary species, for now, because it would take centuries, and I'm not kidding, to achieve anything of that sort that would really work.
You might just think it's as simple as setting up a colony on Mars. Complications will arise, biologically, ecologically, etc that would need to be fixed again and again. We haven't got our planet all figured out, and it's Mars people think we can comfortably settle in within less than half a century of trying.
This is why selfless people need to become heads of governments and captains of industries more, because they are more likely to give more attention to things that benefit humans than just pilling up the profit. That may be the solution.
Yes.
Or building underground bunkers. Good luck to them, I would rather die in a nuclear blast than survive like that. It isn't living.
Not true! There is lots to be predict on Hive's prediction market :P
https://hivepredict.app/
I will have to check it out :)
Its like Polymarket, just not on steroids :D
Those are some really good thoughts. I have a post planned for later this week that kind of touches on some of these same themes too. Back when I was a kid I really felt like the future was going to be better than this. Not easier like some people seem to think that implies, but better and cheaper, but here we are stuck in the same rut repeating the same follies.
I was the same, but the last decade or two has crushed it out of me.
For real!
I hope that the last people to be replaced by AI will be stock traders and investors.
I honestly think that stock traders are one of the first to be replaced by AI Agents...
And they will also lose money, just like 95% of margin traders.
I think some of the advantages AI Agents have over humans is speed, and flawless recognition of chart patterns as well as lack of emotion...
Already being replaced.
They are already being replaced.
I think the fast development of automation and AI seems to indicate that we are close to a significant change in our understanding of work and value.
yes, yet we aren't doing anything to change the way we operate.
today I got an interesting offer. I am once again going to a day hospital and one man asked if I could paint a ship. He says that he would pay a lot( we have not agreed an amount yet) but he would want this to be a specific type of ship. So my usual style may not work this time. One one hand I would like to try and challenge myself...and having the money be nice. Perhaps I could buy the fridge sooner...On the other hand I prefer creating what I want to create, how I want to create it. And in the past I had a bad experience with commissioned piece- Once I completed the piece the customer disappeared for a year+(?) so I gifted that piece. After a year or few that customer appeared again and wanted to buy again. So I had to paint that piece from start. This time she did pay me the agreed amount(double what I asked the first time), I send her the art piece and she was happy with it. Still this experience was quite bizarre...
EditOn a separate note is it safe to answer messages on facebook from people I don't know( assuming that I don't click any links)?I don't use Facebook :)
When it comes to commissioned pieces, unless the buyer knows and likes your style, it is hard to know what they are going to want. Perhaps negotiate the price and get some percentage up front, just in case.
What do they mean the technology has always been good enough to replace humans, in some cases that was kind of the point x_x
But wind and solar will always be crude and inefficient no matter what and nuclear is bad mmkay.