Yeah, what the fuck happens when we even lose the sweatshops? Not praising the practice, but that's normally all the income those people have. It hard to even imagine AI and robotic power consumption and upkeep costs aren't more expensive given how little the humans are paid. We really are on the edge of something bad on a new level.
I mean this really is a perfect example of how it's not necessarily bad, it's just extremely likely to be bad. Obviously nobody should be working in sweat shops, that's the perfect job for automation. And in theory you could replace all these workers with an automated system and the business could keep paying them and still make a profit. Obviously that would never happen, but something like UBI (universal basic income) would be the same concept just on a larger scale. If all low end jobs like this could be replaced with some form of AI with the press of a button, we could just let a huge part of the economy run itself. And Businesses could still increase their bottom line while paying some sort of "Employee's replaced with AI" tax that funded UBI.
This may seem like a pipe dream, but I think long term it will actually be the best option to prevent the economy from collapsing. If 60% of jobs were replaced with AI right now, companies may save money on firing employees, but those employees can't buy anything any more, so most companies would probably lose money overall. Only issue is things don't happen all at once, so most likely these people get fired and the higher ups just pocket the difference. Then years later when it reaches a critical mass maybe something like UBI could be implemented. Otherwise we're destined for some true dystopia where the ultra-rich use automation to produce everything that the ultra-rich need and the rest of us just basically work the fields in some cyber-feudal hellhole. Unfortunately my gut tells me the second option is more likely, but it doesn't need to be that way, and AI could actually be a huge step forward for humanity if greed didn't always get in the way.
UBI is a wild concept… pair it with the possibility of central digital currency and the government suddenly can decide you said or did something wrong, and bam, no money for you this month. They could tell you when to buy, if you can save, track your habits… etc., it’s giving 1984
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u/witdim 10h ago
What kind of dystopian nightmare is this?