“As an economist, I understand productivity; people lose jobs when technology changes. But the valuations of these AI companies are literally based on the assumption that hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs and employers will buy AI services instead of labour services.”
Dr Denniss said that while much of the attention was focused on the technology itself, he was more concerned about the broader economic consequences.
“What is the ATO’s plan? What are the state government plans?” he asked the committee.
“Again, all that money that Anthropic is betting on is coming from somewhere, and that’s going to have very real consequences for individuals, for communities, for the economy, for the way Commonwealth budgets are drawn up.”
Dr Denniss also challenged the argument that Australia risked being left behind unless it rapidly embraced AI, warning that national security concerns should not be used to justify an unrestricted rollout.
This would be fabulous if people had some sort of income to fund their living costs. In the past the Universal Basic Income has been touted. If there were a UBI it would have to be above the poverty line. Right now JobSeeker payments are well below the poverty line. Would any of our govts provide a decent UBI? I'm doubtful.
Even people with jobs are struggling for all the reasons we know. So, what makes you think that if there were a lot more unemployed people they could manage to live a life of leisure in the likely situation that they would not have the income to get out of poverty?
I agree that you don't have to be productive (in the industrial sense) to lead a satisfying life. You do need to have in place a system that looks after the basic needs of all people, otherwise you would create an even more unequal society and a lot more suffering and social unrest.
I know what does income even mean in our world of (still, for now) abundant resources and energy?