Because no one thinks the owners of the tech would be so benevolent.
People don’t love their families though. We saw that during COVID when parents went nuts because they were force to stay home with their kids.
I loved having us all home together, and I actually grew closer to my kid during COVID. Our relationship got stronger as father and son because he saw me so much more since I wasn’t in an office and commuting for like 10-12 hours of my day. It was so fun to do little science experiments and teach him some fun life lessons.
I’m an outlier though. I love being with my wife and kid, and they love being with me. So many parents are always bitching about their kids or spouses and then pawning the kids off on others. Our house is the hangout house and so many of my son’s friends feel safe stopping by just to say hello on their way home from school.
I guess this is why I have successfully made a career switch to teaching. I genuinely think kids are pretty cool and worth our time!
In america
We see it every summer when parents ship their kids off to summer camp.
exactly, parents use K-12 schools as daycare and parenting, disciplining. thats why some grow up dysfunctional in some form or another(usually way after HS).
also getting pets for the wrong reasons during covid, to cope, and when its lifted they were back at the shelter eventually.
That’s not how the economy works. Unless there’s no human work to do at all, most will just be pushed out of their comfier thinking jobs into physical labor jobs.
Thats not how productivity works. We dont just stop at slave labor we industrialize everything.
run a business. it’s unsustainable to be kind to your employees because your competition won’t. capitalism is fractal, you can understand it at every level by comprehending any individual level. you need secrets, cleverness, ruthlessness and sustainability.
Sorry but thats just not true. You better believe the kind employer has the best talent. Its just… well if youve never experienced what it is to work with talented people…
You are filled with life and love and optimism and that combination deserves to thrive. I don’t think you understand markets yet, but I hope you have the greatest success.
This guy is part of the real problem.
Our little chimp brains equate power over others with success, detached from results.
If someone isn’t hurting, it’s not working, so the infinite leisure created by automation becomes infinite time to discover how to hurt people and torture each other.
If it’s not suffering, it’s not hustle.
What fresh new horrors await when results are even MORE detached from individual power trips.
No, youre just stuck in the mindset of the ruthless manipulator. No good thing came about though ruthless capitalism. Capitalism feeds on the rotting corpse. The left overs of innovation.
The ruthless manipulator is the dominant group. I’ve grown empathy on purpose over decades, so yes it’s natural that i understand bad people better than people who didn’t work hard to do so
The dominant force is only 30% of whatever group. The other 70% are sympathetic. The foundation is held up by belief and fear. It would only take a small group with a united message to shake it to the ground.
Lots of people are saying that what are you talking about? It’s just not any of the Epstein class.
‘supposedly love’… someone didn’t get enough hugs growing up.
How many hugs is enough hugs?
Another question, what was the appropriate amount of hugs that you obviously recieved?
One of my secondary school teachers once remarked that you need at least 3 hugs a day. She also qualified that by saying you get to decide what counts as a hug, because some people are more comfortable with handshake (or analogous) than a hug.
Having a 5 year old, 3 hugs a day is insane. I get more than 3 hugs in the first minute of my kid waking up. I’m already scared knowing their cuddliness won’t last forever. The first time I’ve spent one day/night away and I got so touch deprived by 5 pm I almost started cuddling my friend.
I like hugs but wont go in for one. People scare me, or really, they make me anxious.
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons the “Free Hugs” persons at PLUR-positive festivals and events exist. They want to give hugs to the people that want them but are scared to initiate. The sign is supposed to puncture the anxiety cloud, but it doesn’t always work.
I hope you get all the hugs you want, even if you never find the “courage” to go in for one.
I have kittens, they are less scary and more cuddly.
Speak for yourself. I have been a 4 day work week advocate for eons.
In order to work less (fewer hours or more time off), we need legislation that restricts work hours and requires companies to grant a minimum amount of time off. I agree with the sentiment that AI could free us up for more leisure, but in the absence of legislation, companies will just squeeze more productivity out of each worker without granting more leisure time.
Blood from a stone.
Legislating capitalism is like cupping your hands under a tap and hoping the sink below never gets wet.
Very true
HELL no! We can work even more overtime and make even more money for our billionaire masters!
Why didnt I think if that. My bad.
The techbros advocating for the ai don’t have families they love. At best, they have trophy family.
Really flipped that on its head
There has never been a case of capitalism using improvements in efficiency to let people work less, use fewer resources, etc.
It’s always more, more, more.
This is about it. If you can produce 2x output per worker you’re not going to give each worker half days, you’re going to cut down your workforce until supply once again matches demand. As this cycle repeats jobs become more and more competitive as workers fight for placements at these more efficient firms. They’ll pursue advanced degrees and extra certifications to stand out. This produces a lot of stuff, but ultimately creates a warped standard of living. Higher productivity ironically makes time spent not working or pursuing prerequisites to work more expensive.
As some wise boys said 40 years ago, “you gotta fight, for your right, to party”.
i have been , hell go all the way back to Bertrand Russel, he does as well, see his treatise “In Praise of Idleness”, famous economists like Maynard Keys projected we’d all be broking 15 hrs a week now for the same pay.
Productivity increases have gone to the very wealthy and we’ve voted for it, over decades, over and over and in the face of all that evidence ? we’d fuck in’ do it again, Leopards Eating My Face is full of examples. Solutions ? there arent any, the world has to many hateful and stupid people easily led by physcopaths and grifters . Not just the US, it’s near ubiquitous.
AI will do all the white collar jobs, robots will continue doing more of the tedious manual work. What will be left is insane competition for jobs that are like custom maintenance, nursing, etc. But the question becomes, what does a society look like with over 30% of workers no longer needing to work because AI is doing it, while about 30% of worker’s positions are still extremely necessary?
Everyone pictures the final outcome so clearly… like we just going to pretend we are good at predicting the future with pinpoint accuracy?
People fail to realise we have already reached the threshold for nonessential jobs; that’s why people can make millions from being an influencer.
The competition for jobs is so tight that its a luxury to have a job; think about how fucked up that is.
I don’t agree with that at all, “it’s a luxury to have a job”? There are many problems still needing to be solved. Most people work out of necessity.
Most people work out of necessity because they need money, which is a separate issue.
I’d just rephrase what you wrote to be correct, “it’s a luxury to have a high paying job that you enjoy doing”. And then I’d say “a lot of jobs are worked due to necessity”.
And then to top it off I’d say “AI is making those high paying jobs that people enjoy doing less necessary, while leaving the harder manual jobs for everyone to scramble to compete for”.
It doesn’t even have to be a high paying job that’s enjoyable, just having a stable job where youre not abused is a luxury lol
the only ones making millions as influencers, are usually people that are already well off, or rich.
Yeah but have you met those fucking kids…?
… pharsing
Until less youre trying to summon the epstein class.
They’re probably not saying that because they are too busy asking the far more important question of “If Ai takes all the jobs, how can I afford to feed and shelter the family and children I love”
You do understand why people work right? Very few people work just for funsies. They work so they can afford to eat, pay rent, pay for utilities, and be able to afford essentials like clothing, health insurance, transportation.
Almost everything we need to actually live and function costs money. You primarily get money by having a job. So if someone gets laid off, they’re probably very busy trying to find another source of income so they can actually keep their children alive and healthy.
Ill grant you all those things but what youre describing is the exact chains the oppressor use to keep you enslaved.
Why would the owners willingly give up those chains? If AI removes the need for work and money, then Elon Musk is just another guy on the street. Can’t see billionaires accepting that.
I think its way more likely a Elon Musk would harness AI and Robotics to create personal fiefdoms whilst the rest of us live in the “bad lands”
Maybe we can swoon the oppressor with a song?
Not unless you can afford the pro plan
Gptsus, he subscribed and account shared so that we all may slop.
But why do we need to work to earn money? Because if those jobs didn’t get done we couldn’t survive. What OP is asking, I think, is if those essential jobs were automated, nobody would need to work, so why aren’t we talking about that?
I have yet to see AI pick up garbage,now a lawn, fix a toilet, make a bed… AI won’t take all jobs, just the ones that actually paid well because it required mental skills and experience e.g.coding, graphics… We will fight for the low paying manual labor Jobs and there will not be enough of those to satisfy demand, so wages will decrease.
Its a dystopian future for us.
All that stuff is coming. It’s taking longer than people would have expected, but it’ll happen sooner or later. You’re right that we seem to be stuck with the dystopia, though. We’ll fight over an ever dwindling pool of work until there’s nothing left, and then we’ll die or live at the sufferance of those in charge. The only hope is complete systemic change, but that seems further away now than it has ever been, mainly because not enough people even care. They’re pacified by their streaming content and drip fed carefully cultivated outrage-bait to keep them from even imagining that uniting is a possibility.
The ai won’t take all the jobs! There will be at least a few thousand prompt engineers!
The oldest profession might just be the longest lasting one
No technology has ever resulted in lighter workloads for the average person. Different, and sometimes less strenuous, but never less time consuming.
Washing machine.
Also, lighter work loads and less time consuming are different arguments - unless you mean no technology has ever resulted in neither, which is a rather bold statement.
Counterpoint: The cotton gin. It was supposed to make slavery obsolete, but actually reinvigorated the practice of slavery by making slaves able to do more work.
Then everyone should be happy for the new job creators
What new job creators?
The ai over lords
They haven’t created any jobs.
Sure
Whoosh
I mean, this read sarcastic, but it seems Lemmy disagrees.
Before washing machines, people would hand off washing to professionals. Now the expectation is that the person who can afford it must wash things themselves. More time spent on that.
Before washing machines, people would hand off washing to professionals.
Uh, maybe for rich people…
Let me introduce you to the washboard and the bucket.
Lol. Who washed the cloths?
The professionals, who obviously could wash clothes just by staring at them.
Quite the jutsu.
Then it takes more hours to pay for the machine.
Pretty sure every piece of technology past the wheel can be considered to save humans time with their tasks.
No the tasks increase to fill the saved time.
Better technology frees more time for other tasks. Whether that’s work or leisure depends on the individual. Everyone has the same 24 hours a day independent of how you use them. Most people don’t just sit and do nothing. To even suggest that things like an electric stove, washing machine, lawnmower or a bicycle aren’t saving people real time on tasks they’d have to do either way is ridiculous.
Seems like we still must work the same amount regardless of how much we’d “like” to do other things though. What you’re talking about happened, but happened a long time ago.
In most cases people get paid by the hour. The wage is compensation for your time, not effort. If a new technology comes along that increases your work productivity you’ll still end up working the same hours because that’s what you’re being paid for. I’d say that there’s still a real difference between spending 8 hours a day swinging an axe compared to running a chainsaw. Same amount of time is spent working but the effort needed goes down while productivity increases.
However, this isn’t always the case. I work in construction and it’s not untypical that someone has a fixed price for completing a job. There you are not compensated for your time per se but effort. If you’re quick you do get to “go home early.” However this doesn’t lead to people working less either - quite the opposite. They get greedy, hoard too much work, rush it, the quality suffers and they tend to get really stressed out and easily irritated.
In olden times before washing machines people were expected to change into clean (washed) underclothes daily, and an apron got washed when dirty, but their main clothing went a long time between cleanings. Even longer than the clothes on the chair, like months.
Similarly, expectations of manicured pool-table lawns with the advent of lawnmowers.
Better stoves/ovens I’ll totally grant you. I have enough trouble adjusting from my old “runs hot” oven to my new “runs cold” oven, I can’t imagine trying to bake a cake in a wood or coal oven.
And the horse that preceded the bicycle took more maintenance, not less.
👍🏻
Why constantly add more tasks? There’s only finite amount of maintenance on a house or things that need to get done.
human innovativeness ensures there’s always new things that people want to do.
I thought we were talking about capitalism. I misread the comments.
The post was about jobs, so we are…
Dish washer, laundry washer, laundry drier, lawn mower, a vehicle, there’s thousands dude.
All things that save time at home, not at work.
Do people not do laundry for work? Mow lawns? Drive? Anything you could use for personal use can also help with work… what about a restaurant? No washing machines there apparently….
Do you have any specific examples that are solely “home saving” pieces of technology? Or do other peoples jobs not exist past your desk?
The whole point is that those technologies don’t save the workers time at all, because the time saved just gets filled up with more work. The business owners are the one who benefit from the increased productivity, not the workers.
The workers don’t get more free time as a result of the technology. In many cases, they take a pay cut because the technology makes their job “easier” or “less skilled.” So they still work 8 or more hours a day, and they still make barely enough to get by on (if they even make that much), while their boss only gets richer for their efforts.
This is the entire point that seems to be going over your head.
[Edit: “easier” and “less skilled” were in scare-quotes because they don’t represent my personal point of view, but it’s how the employers justify it. Thought that would be obvious.]
No I get that, but both topics can happen at once.
Sorry this need to be explained that your view isn’t the only one ;)
We have all these things to use at home because they originally started at work, can’t have one without the other. But you would need to look at this objectively for that, but clearly you are biased and just want to whinge that capitalism is bad! Even though that wasn’t brought up by anyone in this chain. But bloviate if you want!
You’re loading so much strawman and ad hominem into that comment that I can only assume you’re not arguing in good faith. Did you use your alts to upvote yourself? Cause I can’t imagine anyone on this sub would go for that drivel
Even though that wasn’t brought up by anyone in this chain.
This entire post is about “AI taking over jobs,” and now you want to pretend the topic isn’t about work life (i.e., under capitalism)?
Sorry this need to be explained that your view isn’t the only one
What are you even trying to insinuate? Did I ever claim that my viewpoint is the only one? No, I just said you’re wrong. I can do that without claiming some sort of monopoly on facts.
Besides, you’re the one who seems to be having trouble admitting that you’ve been mistaken. Instead of saying “Oh, that makes sense, yeah I get it now” you’re launching into this tirade of personal attacks? Not rational behavior. And yet you want to preach to me about “looking at it objectively”?
Objectively, the topic of this conversation was about whether technology saves workers time, and the fact is, it doesn’t, as can be demonstrably proven.
Nobody was talking about whether or not washing machines save you time on your chores. A person who works at an industrial laundromat facility isn’t getting a 4-hour workday with UBI just because somebody invented a more efficient machine. He’ll be doing the same amount of work, not getting paid more for the increased productivity. Only difference is his boss will get richer. Do you want to continue denying that reality?
As an analogy for AI in the workplace, which is where this conversation started, the pattern holds true. It doesn’t save the workers time. It doesn’t make them more money. They get worked just as hard for just as long, sometimes even moreso as the expected output increases. And their bosses reap the benefits of any increase in productivity.
Any attempt by you to retreat behind a motte-and-bailey by trying to subtly change the topic to basic housekeeping tasks (which again, is not the topic of this discussion), is doing nothing more than obfuscating the situation for the benefit of the owner-class. So what is your goal here?
Someone has never heard of flat rate or piece rate work.
Have you seriously never heard of jobs that pay by the sq/ft or piece…?
Drywall mudding with the right tools you can mud a house in a day instead of 5 and make the same money. Lawns are typically by the house as well, so the better the mower, the faster you can earn, or the sooner you can go home in the same day.
So how does that not save someone time? They could do the same amount of jobs and make the same money if the want, or make more, it’s entirely their choice.
Don’t have such a narrow and ignorant view of the world.
But bloviate if you want!
I see you went and did exactly that! Lmfao.
You apparently have no concept about how much technology saves for manual labor, yes it doesn’t always mean less work, but you’re working less in a lot of cases. Take that however you want, but you’ve already shown your view is apparantly the only valid one.
Would you rather use a scythe and blow your back out, use a push mower and be dead at the end of the day, or use a ride on and be comfortable all day? I know which one I would prefer, but go ahead and use your sciccors so you get less done, do a worse job, and be too sore and have no energy for you own shit.
That cost labor to buy.
Which is less labor than the original task? What’s your point? I can get a lawnmower for a few hours of work and it would save me hundreds compared to whatever they used before.
Tbh scythes are pretty fun to use.
can get a lawnmower for a few hours of work
Not everyone has such a magical job.
A push mower is like $50, you can also get them used for $10 or free as well.
Is there a piece of technology that doesn’t?
Even making your own wheel would cost your time first…
This is a good point, and it’s often much longer workhours. People used to have to stop when it got dark, because candles and oil lamps were too expensive, but not with electric lights. Mules refuse to work more than about six hours a day, but trucks will keep going as long as you refuel them.
not even a neo-luddite. a good old fashioned luddite
So you really want to unpack that?
Labor competition prevents productivity gains from generating excess labor in capitalist systems.
Then supply and demand must follow.
Can I just cut you off at the pass and say its a myth that you can work your way out of poverty. The system isn’t set up like that.
Exactly. The system is set up so that people work for barely enough to survive. Introducing better tools doesn’t give labor more free time, it gives their bosses more money. We’ve seen this with every technology since the cotton gin now: that’s why no one imagines that AI will give people more time with their families.
Except piecework and flat rate jobs still exist. You don’t have to work for someone else especially with how affordable most of these tools are.
Nowadays I’m self-employed but back in my previous job I was paid by the hour. I earn exactly the same amount of money independent of whether I spend the whole day cutting steel with a hacksaw or an angle grinder but from my perspective as an employee, the angle grinder sure saves me a ton of effort. Same applies to other tools, better workwear and so on. Yeah, I don’t get to go home at 12pm because the better tools were so much faster but it sure made the 8 hours I spent at the jobsite that much less unpleasant. Naturally that is even more so the case now that I’m the beneficiary of the work that got done quicker.
I honestly can’t believe how cynical some people are here. I truly don’t envy you.
Back in the day, half of jobs were literally death sentences lol. Weird to see this amalgamation of technophobia and historical honey moon syndrome.
Then then the argument isn’t about jobs and feeding that narrative is unproductive
You’re the one who asked “Why isn’t anyone saying that [great labor saving technology] will give us more free time?”
Its not my fault you havent accepted youre a wage slave yet and havent become the right amount of cynical that you can recognize dripping sarcasm when its right in front of you.
Then supply and demand must follow.
Demand for human labor lowers. So they hire fewer people and capture the savings themselves.
It’s never about spending more time with the family. It’s all about paying less for labor.
Which they already optimize for. If we all make less we only widen the gap between the oligarchs and labor. Two classes that dont ever mingle anyway.
100%. We should be using AI as the catalyst for a new union movement
We should.
I had no intention of making the claim that work could lead to wealth, and honestly don’t see how my comment would lead to it.
I think OP simply has very poor reading comprehension.
You just havent followed that path enough.
I worked my way out of poverty so although I agree with you, I think the wording needs specificity.
You cannot work your way out of poverty by working harder at a poverty job. You have to switch jobs and grow your skill set until you become a valuable enough commodity to trigger competition for you.
That just gets you out of poverty.
That world is gone.
No it isn’t. Go work a trade job like being an electrician. Start early enough and put it in a 401k and other such investments and you will retire a millionaire.
That presumes educational, physical, finances aren’t obstacles.
It is not. Don’t fall for that defeatist bullshit.
I would posit that rose-colored glasses serve the capitalist class, and that it serves the interest of labor to make realistic assessments and adjust behavior accordingly. That is a message of strategy and success.
Im saying, you can spend every day working very hard but that alone will not get you out of poverty. There are always political and social menuevrors you have to do or hit the lottery.
Yes, I am agreeing with you, and I figured that’s what you meant. I am just clarifying for anyone else reading.
No hate
