• Rakonat@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    We’re going to run into a crisis within our life time whether we like it or not. Within 10-20 years, possibly longer if legislation somehow hampers it, pretty much the entire working class will be unemployable because machine labor will be cheaper and more readily available than any human. Yes, some people will still have jobs, but not the working class.

    Long before we have a crisis of too many elderly for the working to care and provide for, we are going to have a crisis of not enough jobs paying a liveable wage for one, let alone a family, because corporations are going to be able to replace large swathes of their workforces with machines that cost less to maintain per unit than minimum wage, so why would they ever hire a person?

    • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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      1 month ago

      I just have to pont out, If you have to have a job, you are working class. It doesn’t matter if it’s a well-paying automation job, you are still working class.

      • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Technically yes, as there are many definitions. But practically, no. Tthe commonly accepted and popular definitions break down with the working class being those without college degrees, those who’se living expenses and day to day expenses is most if not all of their income, where another common definition specifically list unskilled labourers, artisans, outworkers, and factory workers as working class.

        • leftytighty@slrpnk.net
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          1 month ago

          My understanding is that it’s more about where people get their wealth and income. Working class primarily gets it from labour. Middle class has a mix of capital and labour income. And upper class / capitalists get it mostly from capital.

          Degrees and jobs align with those but don’t define them, as far as I understand it.

          Then again in my mind the only distinction worth a damn is “contributor” and “parasite” and so we’re all working class and we should see ourselves as aligned against the individuals and families who have enough wealth that generations of them will never need to work a day in their lives.

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I don’t buy this. What will really happen is that the value of anything AI can produce will drop to near zero, this freeing up money to spend on things only humans can provide. And if you think AI can literally do anything a human can? Well at that point, using that AI should be incredibly illegal, as you’re just enslaving a digital person.

      Maybe we’ll end up with a weird economy where everyone is employed as teachers, caretakers, mentors, life coaches, fitness instructors, physicians, and any other job that people really would prefer to interact with a human while interfacing with.

      Would you let your child be taught by an AI teacher? Not worried about what type of sociopathy that might introduce? No, there are many jobs, specifically those around the growth, development, maintenance, and improvement of human lives that will always be preferable to be done by actual humans. Humans can do the human work, and we can slough the drudgery off to the machines.