People Mastodon

A significant amount of the AI money is going into/coming from surveillance and "defense" sectors. Also, the ultra-wealthy obviously see it as a tool to disempower labor through automation, so much so that they're laying off masses of people before the thing actually works. The amount of money being invested into AI only makes sense if it does take a large percentage of people's jobs. And, automation/industrialization has indeed made people's lives worse for multiple generations. E.g. extremely long shift work, soot-filled cities, two-penny hangovers, urban squalor, etc. "Engel's pause" is one example of this.