I heard an interesting point the other day: What about interns? Think about it for a second. Right now (and likely for the foreseeable future) AI is handling the simplest, most mundane and/or, least impactful duties; think making a new logo, or entering data into a spreadsheet. These are tasks that, historically, have been done by the newest and greenest employees. Busy work. Things that need to be done correctly, but that can act as both learning experiences, as well as helping an individual potentially advance in a trade or company.
So unless a company is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, why would they have interns to do tasks that AI is already doing for them? And if they don't need to hire humans for entry-level grunt work, how do they find individuals with the expertise and skills to work in more technical areas? And this could expand even further into our education system. We could see a systematic domino effect directly related to an increasingly large knowledge gap within the human population.
I do see unemployment going up as AI continues to infiltrate the economy and our daily lives. But it's not some paradise of hunting, fishing and gardening waiting for us. That would mean that capitalism is no longer a thing. Or that they create universal income. Neither of which makes any sense for the Top 1 percent. We're literally seeing some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet actively sucking in even more wealth and power. You think they'd give all that up if we suddenly didn't need to spend money?
To put it plain: I think we're unequivocally fucked.
Then again, we're always one war, or comet, or natural disaster away from some cataclysm. So just chalk this up as one more thing that could potentially wipe us off the planet.
