Will AI benefit humanity?

Elon Musk has said that AI and robotics can lead to a future of universal high income and eliminate poverty by creating an abundance of goods and services making human work optional.

Elimination of poverty and scarcity means everyone will be wealthy, Traditional concepts like scarcity and saving money will be irrelevant.

Universal high income instead of universal basic income. This will be possible because an abundance of everything you could need will be the result when there is no shortage of production capacity.

Optional work will be possible because you won’t need to work to survive. Work would be a personal choice like a hobby rather than an economic necessity.

Redefining meaning will be needed because if AI and robots can do everything better than humans, what will give human life meaning.

In spite of these pluses Musk still thinks AI can be dangerous and an existential risk to mankind.

I fear he is being very optimistic and somewhat naïve. Has there ever been a time in human history when improvements in productivity have been passed on to the workers. I may be wrong but I can’t think of one. Most companies want to employ as few workers as possible and as cheaply as they can. I find it hard to think these companies will be prepared to share their wealth with the rest of us let alone the people they employ of whom there will be fewer and fewer.

I think the Bill Gates approach is more likely, bump as many of us off as possible because we won’t be needed. He is not the only one with this idea, most if not all of the WEF disciples seem of a similar opinion. None of these disciples seems prepared to put their own existence on the line.

If there is any kind of universal income it is more likely to be basic rather than high. With the basic version the oiks can be kept in their place, if you don’t conform you will get nothing. That will sound attractive to our political class, especially Rodney Spanner.

I just saw a video on YouTube from Jordan Petersen where he was talking about IQ. He was quoting the line of the US military that with an IQ less than 83 there is nothing useful they can get out of you, he didn’t dispute that but he was shocked when he discovered that 10% of the population are in that bunch. These people probably have low impulse control as well, how is that going to pan out except in chimp outs. I assume he was talking about the West rather than sub-saharan Africa where the average IQ is lower than 83 in almost all those countries.

Musk’s idea that strong regulation and a third party referee would guide further developments on a path that would benefit mankind sounds like an unobtainable utopia to me. Who can forget the disaster the Democrats have created in the USA dishing out oodles of dosh to their voting blocs. Who can forget the majority of people wanting to herd us anti-vaxxers in camps where we could be kept away from those idiots who had succumbed to getting jabbed.

In theory it sounds great but humanity would need an awful lot of re-education before it could live within those confines. How would the narcissists and lefties find something to feel superior about and we have all seen how people who already get free things, those on bennies, behave.
 

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