If AI were cost effective and in demand, he’d be right, but it’s not and it’s not. There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow because the moment they start having to charge what this stuff actually costs to run it’ll be obvious that it’s cheaper to just pay a person to do people things.
People are fucking expensive, if you ran the same uncharitable calculations people do for AI on people they would rapidly conclude that there is almost nothing more expensive then having a whole person do something, needing clean water and air all the time, destroying the environment by inefficiently cramming it into their face and then shitting it out a short time later.
Right now, it’s on the line (our current generation of AI is just a little more efficient then something which spends literally years in diapers and needs over a decade of careful and often misguided education just to punch a clock and read some email), but one of these things is getting more efficient and the other one is definitely not.
You can get emotional, maybe burn a data center to the ground or something, but the idea that, ‘what this stuff actually costs to run’ is going to land anywhere close to cost of the people doing it, you’re out of your mind.
How about figuring out how to use this disruption to create systems and technologies which are better? Imagine if the OSS and maker movements started in 1880 instead of 1980.
The cost comparison on the table isn’t whether birthing a human is worth it for them to answer an email 20 years later, it’s whether an already existing human sits idle or not.
If AI were cost effective and in demand, he’d be right, but it’s not and it’s not. There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow because the moment they start having to charge what this stuff actually costs to run it’ll be obvious that it’s cheaper to just pay a person to do people things.
Except it is, and it won’t be.
People are fucking expensive, if you ran the same uncharitable calculations people do for AI on people they would rapidly conclude that there is almost nothing more expensive then having a whole person do something, needing clean water and air all the time, destroying the environment by inefficiently cramming it into their face and then shitting it out a short time later.
Right now, it’s on the line (our current generation of AI is just a little more efficient then something which spends literally years in diapers and needs over a decade of careful and often misguided education just to punch a clock and read some email), but one of these things is getting more efficient and the other one is definitely not.
You can get emotional, maybe burn a data center to the ground or something, but the idea that, ‘what this stuff actually costs to run’ is going to land anywhere close to cost of the people doing it, you’re out of your mind.
How about figuring out how to use this disruption to create systems and technologies which are better? Imagine if the OSS and maker movements started in 1880 instead of 1980.
The cost comparison on the table isn’t whether birthing a human is worth it for them to answer an email 20 years later, it’s whether an already existing human sits idle or not.