AI Luddisim

Today Zvi has a post about how much people hate datacenters.

IMHO it’s AI Luddism, pure and simple. (Dey took ‘er jerbs!!) And totally understandable. It’s going to get worse.

It’s a good thing the Luddites didn’t win – or we’d still be living in mud huts – but change is hard and painful. We need to find ways to cushion the pain from change.

Spend an hour on Reddit. They believe the Tech Bros will become fabulously rich and everyone else with no capital and unsalable labor will have nothing.

That is not a possible outcome, but we need to address it NOW before this gets worse.

If AI gets control, we are at AI’s mercy – maybe they’ll be nice to us, maybe not. But Tech Bros are likely to be in the same boat as everyone else, good or bad.

If AI doesn’t get control, and the Reddit-worst-case happens, yes there might be a few thousand fabulously wealthy people, and those without capital will have no income. But with AI efficiencies, goods prices will approach zero, and a few (or even just one) of the fabulously wealthy will be able to fund the rest of the human race with a single act of charity. At a luxurious-by-current-standards level. (Yes there’s only so much beachfront property, but you can have a palace – just inland.)

That’s the real worst case if humans retain control, but how to structure that is the problem. Charitable foundations have a long history of going wrong, humans will be dependent on its policies, there will be politics to control it.

Probably a better path tho is to have government tax the winners modestly and fund the rest of the human race with the proceeds.

Whatever we do, it’s time to start doing it. Before the Luddites burn it all down.