this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Not only the pollution.

It has triggered an economic race to the bottom for any industry that can incorporate it. Employers will be forced to replace more workers with AI to keep prices competitive. And that is a lot of industries, especially if AI continues its growth.
The result is a lot of unemployment, which means an economic slowdown due to a lack of discretionary spending, which is a feedback loop.

There are only 3 outcomes I can imagine:

  1. AI fizzles out. It can't maintain its advancement enough to impress execs.
  2. An unimaginable wealth disparity and probably a return to something like feudalism.
  3. social revolution where AI is taken out of the hands of owners and placed into the hands of workers. Would require changes that we'd consider radically socialist now, like UBI and strong af social safety nets.

The second seems more likely than the third, and I consider that more or less a destruction of humanity