Two years ago, I was enjoying a drink with my wife, her friend, a very senior female VC partner, and another friend.
Somehow we talked AI in some depth, and the VC at one point said (about AI): “I don’t know what our kids are going to do for work. I don’t know what jobs there will be to do.”
That same VC invests in AI companies and by what I heard about her, has done phenomenally well.
I think about that exchange all the time. Worried about your own kids but acting against their interests. It unsettled me, and Kyle’s excellent articles brought that back to a boiling point in my mind.
Assuming “phenomenally well” means what it says, the conversation would have suddenly gotten a lot more real if she had said that more precisely: “I don’t know what your kids are going to do for work.”
In the other hand, shouldn't it be the objective of humanity to not HAVE to work for the most basic survival and to fit into society?
Not that we're in any way in that path, of course, with the people making the working machines also accumulating all the wealth. But still, there's something intrinsically good about automation, even when the system is not suited for it.
I don't want to be rude, but I find it ironic that your comment about cognitive work is a copypasted tweet that doesn't even make sense in this context.
I'm precisely talking about automating work so people can write, and draw, and whatever.
But in another world doesn’t automation just produce yet another set of things to do? Perhaps i am doing this all wrong but in my world more automation has never produced less work unless I conveniently told no one and therefore filled “free” time how i wanted.
You're sending mixed messages here. Automation is going to put us all out of jobs, or automation isn't going to produce less work and so we'll still have lots to do?
Personally, I think until real AGI, the current LLMs will automate a lot of tasks, but the market will adapt and humans still end up with about the same percentage of employment and wages.
My original post was about her comment. It seemed like she was both concerned about the presence of jobs for kids while also investing in the very thing possibly taking away those jobs. The contrast was unsettling.
My own take is very much “wait and see and make sure to stay aware/skill up”
My automation point is just that at least in my career (20 years), my workload has rarely gone down even with plenty of automation around.
There's plenty of things you can be simultaneously worried and optimistic about, and I find this is constantly true of parenting.
I will encourage my kid to gain independence, but of course I'm worried about it! The fact that there is uncertainty in her independence and that I can imagine bad outcomes does not mean I'm working against her interest by encouraging it.
"I don't know what jobs there will be to do" is a statement of uncertainty, and, given how you are relaying it, there must have been fear there as well. But it doesn't seem like it's a statement that the world will be worse. You can be fearful and hopeful at the same time, and fear tends to be the stronger of the two, and come out more strongly, again especially in parenting I find, even if you find the hopeful outcomes more likely.
I really hope they increase taxes and stop letting VC firms gamble with pension funds. These people shouldn't have their current jobs already, and you're telling me they're also dictating how technology is being shaped in the country as well?
At the beginning of the industrial revolution we didn't know what people would do for work but we eventually figured it out. Human demands are effectively infinite so there will always be work for other humans to satisfy those demands. The transition period may be disruptive.
Sounds like she's acting in their best interests to me. Her kids will find something to do - the same things everyone else will find to do. There's just going to be a lot less working-for-a-living, and it's going to be glorious.
Hm. Well, certainly one way to look at it. I don’t feel confident that we have a clear idea in either direction. That’s one reason I found the statement peculiar - sort of a rooted fear in no jobs.
Perhaps but it’s more the concept/contrast presented that stuck with me more than the persona. That said - that VC isn’t alone along with many other capital allocators.
False Consciousness was the old marxist term for this inadvertent working against your own ultimate self-interest. It's rife in capitalism. If you look closely you'll see it everywhere.
(note that even the "her kids will be ok" isn't true at the limit. If wealth concentrates sufficiently enough it will lead to societal collapse)
But, what if people putting their energy into ensuring society adapts with the technology safely and positively would be better than focusing on finding ways to capitalize off of whatever happens to occur instead?
I'm not saying one person can do that alone, but if we collectively believe we should focus on capitalization instead, then there's no one present to influence a more constructive, pro-social, sustainable course for society.
So I don't think it's ridiculous to think it's acting against their interests. Money won't get your kids very far if the thing that made you wealthy also pulled the rug from under them. There needs to be more of a strategy than capital.
Somehow we talked AI in some depth, and the VC at one point said (about AI): “I don’t know what our kids are going to do for work. I don’t know what jobs there will be to do.”
That same VC invests in AI companies and by what I heard about her, has done phenomenally well.
I think about that exchange all the time. Worried about your own kids but acting against their interests. It unsettled me, and Kyle’s excellent articles brought that back to a boiling point in my mind.
Edit: are->our