This is doomerism. Yes, everything will get worse. But everything will also get better. Such is progress. (for every one of these examples of annoyances, I can think of two ways to use AI to get around the annoyance. not clever programmer things, but things an average person who learns to use Codex or Claude Desktop to operate their desktop will know)
Most of these annoyances are also things that existed before AI, and will continue to exist after, because consumerist capitalism. The good little obedient consumers get abused because they don't stand up for themselves. Customer service is an enfuriating maze? Yeah, because you voted with your dollars (and political indifference) to allow companies to make customer service (the thing you pay for) worse. We bring these problems on ourselves. It's pointless to complain if you aren't willing to do anything to change it. (And if you think you can't change it, there's other nations to look at, as well as the fact that you live in a democracy - for now - unlike the rest of the world)
Hell, we already have companies whose sole purpose is to manage your subscriptions for you because you're too lazy to do it yourself. You could look at this and say, man, the world is terrible! Or you could look at this and say, man, how great is my life that I can not only subscribe to a lot of things without going bankrupt, but I have extra cash left over to pay a company to manage my subscriptions?
Don't let the hedonic treadmill and complacency trick you into A) accepting a worse life, or B) convincing yourself your life is bad when it's actually better than most people's.
>(for every one of these examples of annoyances, I can think of two ways to use AI to get around the annoyance. not clever programmer things, but things an average person who learns to use Codex or Claude Desktop to operate their desktop will know)
As the author said:
>I suspect that like the job market, everyone will wind up paying massive “AI” companies to manage the drudgery they created.
It could also lead to a massive crash of capitalism and reevaluation of how our society functions.
It could lead to significant progress in every single research area.
I'm at least very impressed about the amount of open models and that it doesn't hold up that the gap between public and private diverges massivly. Public is probably one year behind.
> Yes, everything will get worse. But everything will also get better.
That is not known. Things could easily just get worse, and IMO that is far more likely. Every civilisation has collapsed, ours is clearly in decline, and AI could likely accelerate that decline.
I'm not exactly seeing the progress here. AI helps us write some software a bit faster? Doesn't seem revolutionary to me. Is it having any significant impact on peoples lives other than the various economic forces? I'm not seeing it.
> Yeah, because you voted with your dollars
In our system? No. In crony capitalism the companies who win do it through manipulating the political system. And when the government inflates the currency and destroys people buying power they simply cannot afford to "vote with their dollars". This is hilariously naive.
> That is not known. Things could easily just get worse, and IMO that is far more likely. Every civilisation has collapsed, ours is clearly in decline, and AI could likely accelerate that decline.
This is the definition of doomerism. Of all the ways each society has adapted to industrializaion, of all the technologies we've adapted to, and our continued use of all of them despite any negative impacts, you think an LLM is going to end things? An overcomplicated autocomplete?
There is no evidence whatsoever that suggests our society would collapse under AI. An imagination is not evidence. I mean, it's just a tool! Like the car, the telephone, the genetically engineered seed. Humans always freak out when they see something they don't understand. But it turns out there's no tool we have created that we can't control. We're stupid, but we're not idiots.