AI might be creating a ‘permanent underclass’ but it’s the makers of the tech bubble who are replaceable | Van Badham
www.theguardian.com
Despite the relentless insistence of tech’s grifters, AI is not industrially inevitable – or even sustainable. Which is why it is time to push back

Bad news, baby. The New Yorker reports the rapid advance of AI in the workplace will create a “permanent underclass” of everyone not already hitched to the AI train.

The prediction comes from OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner, who claims AI will “reach or exceed human capacity” by 2027. Once it develops capacity to innovate, AI superintelligence will supersede even a need for its own programmers … and then wipe out the jobs done by everyone else.

Nate Soares, winner of “most sunshine in book title” and co-author of AI critique If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies suggests “people should not be banking on work in the long term”. Math tutors, cinematographers, brand strategists and journalists are quoted by the New Yorker, freaking out.

The consolation here is that if you are among those panicking about being forced into the permanent underclass, you are already in it. Inherited wealth makes more billionaires than entrepreneurship, the opportunity gap is growing; if your family don’t have the readies to fund your tech startup, media empire or eventual presidential ambitions, it’s probably because they were in a tech-displaced underclass, too.

  • SpikesOtherDog@ani.socialEnglish
    14·
    2 days ago

    OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner, who claims AI will “reach or exceed human capacity” by 2027

    Sure, but is that before or after full self driving cars?

      • SpikesOtherDog@ani.socialEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        I was expecting more progress after the two big fusion times recently. My question now is what is limiting these reactions.

        • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
          1·
          10 hours ago

          So far as I’m aware, magnetic fields. But that’s for the best … uncontrolled fusion doesn’t sound like a good path forward.

          • SpikesOtherDog@ani.socialEnglish
            1·
            7 hours ago

            Technically correct, but in this case I’m wondering what is stopping fusion from continuing longer than about 20 minutes.

            Is it like rail gun technology, where the hardware fails after so much use and there is no realistic way to keep it in tolerance?

            Are we having trouble keeping a balance between fuel and the reaction, causing it to fizzle out or breach containment?

            Is the fuel actually too expensive?

            Is all this ok and we are now stuck with a scaling issue where the reaction can sustain itself, but we can’t actually use it to boil more than a kettle.