Comment by NoOn3

Comment by NoOn3 3 days ago

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Quote from Max Tegmark book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: “In his 2007 book Farewell to Alms, the Scottish- American economist Gregory Clark points out that we can learn a thing or two about our future job prospects by comparing notes with our equine friends. Imagine two horses looking at an early automobile in the year 1900 and pondering their future.

  “I’m worried about technological unemployment.”
  “Neigh, neigh, don’t be a Luddite: our ancestors said the same thing when steam engines took our industry jobs and trains took our jobs pulling stage coaches. But we have more jobs than ever today, and they’re better too: I’d much rather pull a light carriage through town than spend all day walking in circles to power a stupid mine-shaft pump.”
  “But what if this internal combustion engine thing really takes off?”
  “I’m sure there’ll be new new jobs for horses that we haven’t yet imagined. That’s what’s always happened before, like with the invention of the wheel and the plow.”
Alas, those not-yet-imagined new jobs for horses never arrived. No-longer- needed horses were slaughtered and not replaced, causing the U.S. equine population to collapse from about 26 million in 1915 to about 3 million in 1960. As mechanical muscles made horses redundant, will mechanical minds do the same to humans?"...