Imagine this scenario:

  • All companies start producing mostly using only AI and firing people, because people have no use anymore
  • Joe spend most of his income on digital video games products
  • Joe get fired because he got replaced by AI now, since AIs are taking over most jobs
  • Joe has no income anymore
  • Joe doesn’t have any more money to spend on video games
  • Companies have no more profit, because people don’t have income, so people can’t spend on their AI produced products

In this scenario both lose, the company adopting AI and the worker. Am I missing something? Is there any possibility besides Universal Basic Income to keep the system running and not collapsing?

  • Meatball Man@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    That’s the thing. These companies are not thinking that far ahead and they don’t care about the consequences even if it hurts them too.

    The only thing matters to these people is making number go up. They want more money. They want it right now. They don’t care what consequences it has for them or the world later so long as they get more money now.

    There will never be a universal income. Countries will let their people starve before they give them money for nothing.

    • MadameBisaster@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      23 hours ago

      Ehh, I fear the companies know that perfectly well but a single company notdoing it will just get bancrupt…so all companies are playing chicken to see which will survive the longest

    • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      It’s like the ending of the Dinosaurs sitcom when everyone is going to die and Bob is talking to his boss on the phone. His boss is excited about all the money he’s going to make. Bob points out they’re all going to die and the boss says “well that’s a fourth quarter problem”

    • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      These companies are not thinking that far ahead and they don’t care about the consequences even if it hurts them too.

      Yep. We’ve already see that with climate change so it’s not a stretch to apply it to AI.

    • ID10T@programming.dev
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      3 days ago

      The rich who benefit from this don’t care. They have enough wealth that it doesn’t matter. We could all be starving to death, fighting each other scraps of bread in the street, and they’d believe we deserve it.

      If anything, that would drive prices down so they could build their next vacation home for pennies on the dollar.

      • Meatball Man@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        If everyone is dead the people who fix things, grow or raise the food, transport the food, and prepare the food die too, and the stockpiles these people have become finite. We all die first but eventually everything these people have will break, supplies will all run dry, and they will die too.

        They most likely know this and don’t care because they want the number to go up right now.

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          There’s a bunch of people who work as consultants for the rich, and in the past decade they have been talking about how many rich people were getting into disaster prep. Some of them have done interviews with various news organizations. In an article I remember they said a common question was how these rich bastards could ensure their bunker staff wouldn’t revolt and take over.

    • Elextra@literature.cafe
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      2 days ago

      This is my take.

      However, my husband has a very interesting theory. He feels like its going to go in the way of the Alien universe where there will be universal income in a way but provided by government/corporations and a controlled populace.

      Both options aren’t great 😂