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Comment on Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry"parent

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That's like saying "the problem isn't the unmaintainable cost of healthcare, it's that we haven't eliminated all diseases and aging". I.e. the latter is a long way off, and might not ever be 100% feasible, so it's horrifying and inhumane to imply we should allow the suffering caused by the former in the meantime.

I think it's a stretch to call having to make a living in a career other than your preferred job "suffering". Even before AI, there were surely millions of people who grew up wanting to be an artist, or an astronaut, or an architect, or any number of things that they never had the skills or the work ethic or the resources to achieve. I'm sure before cars there were people who loved maintaining stables of horses and carriages, and lamented the decline of the stable master profession. It's no different now.

No we shouldn't allow the suffering. Nor should we force people to work bullshit jobs. That's my point. Treating humans with dignity isn't even that hard but people need to believe it's important or it won't happen

So what? Mandate that AI can’t be used to do jobs? That will increase the cost of everything (relative to the world where we are allowed to use AI) and that cost will be bore by everyone in society.

Compare with something like unemployment benefits. The cost of benefits can be covered by taxes (which unlike the example above) can be progressively targeted and redistribute wealth to those most in need.

A social safety net is progressive, feasible (countries all around the world have them), and does not hinder technological or economic progress. What are the alternatives?

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