I like your summarised table here! 👍🏻

It’s the same here. Employee search notices everywhere. But the people in the workforce AND the employers still pretend like it’s the jobs that are scarce and not the workers and the wages have not improved much beside the government-imposed minimum wage policy. It’s still hard to get a well-paid job and people are still being treated badly in their work environment. It’s the mind that needs to change. The market will follow.

In our western countries we all have a „rather good“ life (exceptions do exist, for example in the US). But the world is global now (oxymoron?…). There are people working for really low wages where else and we profit from that. Or do you see it differently?

I see! Yes, your argument is valid in this case. You are not one of those who see amorality in wanting to establish UBI. I am glad to read that. Thank you!

I would want to work (in my profession which I love, not necessarily in my current well-paid but morally questionable - in my opinion right now - job, and that is why I plan to return to academia instead of continuing doing what I do now; sometimes people need time to realise they are fighting for the wrong side and I needed lots of time for that sadly).

The work we shouldn’t want to be necessary is exploitative and underpaid work. I am not arguing that laziness is the way to go.

Humans are curious and creative creatures. Imagine a world where all menial and physically or mentally damaging work could be done by robots (non-sentient ones) and planned and supervised by humans or AI. A world where humans could pursue their creative endeavours, use their brains to plan and supervise or care for other humans or contribute to research as work. Wouldn’t that be a good world?

Very good questions!

My prediction is that UBI will not be implemented world-wide instantly. Europe will probably try to do it first as there is already some intent present to implement it in politics. The stress here is on TRY. Not on it being successful.

Why am I a bit pessimistic on it? Because I have been watching the political debate about Bürgergeld (a low-grade version of UBI) going on in Germany and seen the idea being torn to shreds by the PUBLIC opinion itself due to resentment, jealousy, scarcity politics and misunderstood Christian values (misunderstood, I say, not actual real Christian values!!!). Even my most leftist friends are against it mostly.

UBI is a big political change that needs a change in morals/ethics first.

As long as „working“ is conflated with „being a good person“, people will oppose UBI morally.

So basically the article says:

„Green hydrogen IS the fuel of the future but humans are cheating bastards and will make it all go to shit once again.“

Since I cannot work in my job due to health anymore anyway, I already did what I would do.

Apply to university for a new degree which will help me help people design better bots.

Bugs? Pill? Don’t care, I am pretty anhedonic when it comes to food. But insects are actually rather tasty, flies for example taste sweet.

My grandkids marrying gynoids and androids? If my son already wanted to, I‘d congratulate him on making a wise decision.

AI rights? I am pretty much with Lemoine on that - not because I consider AI to be sentient already but because it’s better to prepare in advance.

Brain chips to access the internet? I am a neuropsychologist applying to university to acquire a computational science degree so I can finally work in exactly this field. Neuralink, Synchron, yes to it all.

But I draw the line at matchmaking apps. Just no. I don’t want to be matched to some human, give me a robot girlfriend instead!

Okay now the serious answer: we cannot know where we would really draw the line until we do it. Sometimes even not then - only recognising we drew the line in hindsight.

Very interesting view! Do you think such a system could be obtained with the help of AGI? Or would a change of perspective help here, i.e. human alignment to new values and goals?

Behavior can be interpreted as narcissistic without being such. I am very sceptical of the „every person that behaves offensively in any way is a dysfunctional or even malignant narcissist“ hype, as there are other personality flaws or peculiarities that produce similar behavior. There are psychopaths and sociopaths (both summarised as antisocial personality disorder), there are neurotypical humans with strong „dark triad“ traits, there are other personality disorders like histrionic or borderline personality disorder that also show similar symptoms etc. etc.

I am not a fan or judging people by their silly behavior on Twitter and such. I prefer judging by deeds in science and market - and Elon Musk has good ideas and has done lots of interesting things. So I suspect that what he does is strategic more than disordered.

But that’s just me maybe.

I have already noticed that this subreddit prefers older accounts. Do you think this is a good tactic?

I think yes. If I was a billionaire with an idea or two, and knew that humanity is pretty stupid in general and would not listen to my ideas if presented seriously, I would DEFINITELY do things like this to make myself heard.

Seriously suspecting it’s a method, no joke here. Trump is doing the same by the way just a bit more obviously.

How do you know what he really cares about? Do you know him personally?

Creating scandals is a way of attaining popularity too. He could totally be trolling you all.

Refined sugar has allowed us to make tasty cakes and helped in creating medicine (medium for pills).

Therapy or social interaction is good even if it’s a robot providing it - better than none, at least.

We have to redefine dysfunctional.

Is Elon Musk dysfunctional? Is Sam Altman? I bet there are more functional than average Jane and Joe, to be honest, simply because they can afford better healthcare and have people flying towards them like moths towards a lantern. They are probably not lonely, they don’t suffer from debilitating yet easily treatable disease due to lack of finances.

Natural friction in a relationship might be good, until it isn’t - spousal and partner violence show this.

The whole point of your post is mental health from how I see it.

This is why I would like to see how you define „mentally healthy“.

Automation has already gone very far.

Maybe no one will serve in coffee bars as you will just serve yourself, just as it is already done with grocery shopping (here in Germany increasingly). Maybe plumbing will be improved in a way that will not need much maintenance - or what about self-maintenance systems?

With me too! I do own a piece of land plus a house but I could imagine sharing if I can also share the financial responsibility (the prices of heating and electricity have gone insane since the beginning of the Russia/Ukraine war and the destruction of Nord Stream, and I am thinking of reconsidering owning a house as a good way to live).

You are definitely right in that Sam Altman is not an economist. He is a computer scientist.

And sadly I have to agree with your Titanic metaphor. But what I am thinking of is that we don’t have to be the guests dancing while the ship already collides with the iceberg. Instead we could learn from rats and leave the sinking ship in advance - maybe at the start of the journey and before we land in icy waters.

Now enough with the metaphors, I would love to see how KISS and YAGNI would apply to the problem. Since I am not an economist either - my background is neuroscience and psychology, and despite work and organisation psychology has been one of the directions I was interested in during studies and is basically even the reason why I got my job, I thirst for input from those more knowledgeable on this topic since in work/organisation psychology it’s more about the HR component and less the financial one.

A possibility to solve the „best house“ problem could be collective responsibility and ownership for long lasting goods, or a rotation system in which no one would be allowed to own the „best house“ for ever, the next owner being chosen by lottery or a similar randomised way.

This is a good question.

I think that relative deprivation is a big factor here.

The reason why we would want jets in the first place is the perception that others have them and we don’t.

Maybe if it was easily possible for everyone to have a private jet, the interest in having one would diminish. Or it would be considered weird to not have one (I am often ridiculed for my decision to get rid of my car and use public transport instead due to idealistic reasons) and people for whom being integrated into society and „part of the normal crowd“ would think they need one even if they were flight phobic.

I like the way you think! Thank you for the specification.

With the on-site manufacturing, do you mean private manufacturing (printer), or regional production of goods?

If it’s the latter, do you see risks in that (for example monopolisation of agricultural production by AI, unethical treatment of farm animals by AI/robots for production maximising etc.)?

And thank you for the comment!

The article addresses a lot of topics on a very superficial level.

The one thing that did appeal to me as interesting was the idea that the advent of the deadly paperclip maker could be prevented by implementing „common sense“ in AI.

My opinion on that is that this would be already be possible with a LLM, as long as further scaling of processing power can be economically justified. Common sense depends on semantics and is tied to language and verbal reasoning. AGI would not be necessary for that.

The big problems I see here is the „mesa optimiser“ and its hidden goals as well as reward hacking (my pet peeve…).

Why?

Because common sense is overridden in humans by the pursuit of reward. Humans „wirehead“ and cheat all the time, and about 99% of the population is only partly able to apply common sense in ambivalent/ambiguous situations.

Ah thank you for the specification! 👍🏻