This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I’m fine with the working class being replaced with robots. That was always the dream of robots. As long as it means that everybody gets to live a life of leisure. Because that was also always the dream
We’re all going to live a life of leisure, right?
They want the working class, they just want them to be the corporate town serfs. What is the point of being really rich if you can't feel superior to someone else?
I'm starting to think that serfdom, as an aspect of feudalism, is too modern for the new technocrat caste.
A few days ago, Sam Altman did an interview saying he no longer supported universal basic income for those put out of work by AI. Instead, he supported "shares in ownership" or "shares in compute". That is, instead of a guaranteed income, the lower classes would be gifted some sort of income producing asset based on the value of some particular tech company or the AI industry as a whole. If the industry did well, the lower classes dependent on it would thrive; if the industry failed, they would starve.
That's not serfdom. That goes even further back, to the patron-client system of ancient Rome. The patron, generally the leader of a wealthy noble family, would provide their clients with money, food, and gifts. In return, the clients would vote for the patron and his allies in elections, act as bodyguards and enforcers for the patron, intimidate/beat/kill the clients of rival patrons to keep them away from the polling booths, advertise the patron's businesses, and generally do whatever the patron wanted. The clients helped the patron maintain their wealth and political power, and the patron would share the rewards of that wealth and power with their clients.
Think about the sort of country we would have, the sort of politicians who would be elected and the sort of laws who would be passed, if Altman's idea came to fruition. Imagine if we had a significant unemployed underclass whose financial security depended solely on the success of the AI industry, and who would be rewarded by their technocrat billionaire patrons for electing AI-friendly politicians or blocking AI-friendly regulation.
Mere serfdom would be preferable.
Well, when in Rome, do as the Vandals.
Sir, the struggle is very long and ongoing since the so-called Industrial Revolution. You gotta have enough angry people to end the class struggle once and for all.
What bugs me about this is it’s always been their plan, for hundreds of years.
Why is the average person so stupid and apathetic about this.
the average person doesn't think they are working class, they think that's what poor people are.
my dad made a working class salary his entire life, but he always told us we were middle class and 'better' than those working-class idiot losers.
average people admire rich people and want to be them, and they hate working class people.
i'm a middle class person now, but i live around a lot of upper middle class people, and regularly they let me know I'm subhuman scum in their eyes. and working-class people i grew up with, think i'm a rich effete snob with my graduate degree and my expensive coffee and my compact car.
people generally are much more focused on the differences around them and feeling they are better than their neighbors is a far bigger concern than what rich people are doing. the person living across the street from you gets more upset about you getting a nicer car than them then they do about jeff bezo's wedding.
"John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." (paraphrased)
you’re doing the clouding propaganda to yourself even in your reply; there is no such thing as middle or upper middle or lower class, it’s only working and owning classes. (ignoring the folk who do not work for the purpose of this reply.)
many claim “yeah but middle class is a financial thing or quality of life thing” - cool. then don’t rank it with working class. because working class is about the relationship to capital. A millionaire and a thousandaire are still working class if they both sell their labor for the purpose of an owner’s profit ideals.
(just as an aside, this is why cops are not working class)
When my parents retired, after giving me a lifetime of bad advice on nearly everything, I found out that I earned more than double their combined salaries, even though my mom was a VP.
Her company figured out that they could buy her off with a title or an office, or more responsibility, with the promise that a raise was right around the corner, and she bought it every time. She was always telling me to stop worrying about the salary, and go after the promotions, and the salary would follow. That salary never arrived for her.
Or you might just be a douchebag, and nobody likes you.
Who wins in a scenario like this?
Replace us?
Subjugate, control, and exploit us.
They can’t handle not being feared, worshipped, and having no peasantry to make them feel powerful.
Just going to point out that there are only 3000ish billionaires in the world, and about 8b everybody else. Wouldn't even need 1% of the world's population to slay those dragons. Imagine how much pollution could be reduced, how much wealth could be spread around if we just dedicated ourselves to eliminating the Billionaire class.
Personally I would even say the teams that slay a dragon, deserve a share of the hoard while the rest is redistributed.
The window in which these calculations remain relevant is rapidly closing with the development of robots and drones.
100%
Or, now hear me out, we tax the shit out of the rich and their corps, and implement UBI. That was supposed to be the plan ever since futurism envisioned advanced automation - the tech does the work, human reap the benefits and just do whatever. Capitalism just came along and fucked it all up instead because that's how rich assholes and investors measure their scores.
I'm with you on being against capitalism, but UBI isn't convincing as a solution to me.
UBI pre-supposes that the rich and their corporations should have a monopoly on the means of production, and you still have capitalism, just that the population are guaranteed an income via high taxes. But the power structure, and undemocratic nature of capitalist controlling everything still exists.
UBI is some dystopian stuff if you don't combine it with getting rid of the ruling class and the other tools of capitalist oppression.
But yeah, I agree with you that we certainly ought to be working less than we are (yes, even if standards of living were more fairly distributed to poor countries), and in the future I also agree with you that we ought to be working way, way less of technology allows for it.
Psychopathic capitalists don't feel like they're winning unless everyone else is losing.
They always weasel out of taxes. My idea was to give each person something like carbon coins that works like an emission permit. Give everyone the same amount each month and keep it within nature's limits. Then, if someone wants to do something polluting like run a datacenter, they'll just have to purchase the coins for that from the open market from those willing to sell. The end result is still money going to the poor but not as a tax, and hard limit on pollution.
Who's going to buy their products and services when there are only two classes, one that doesn't need them and one that can't afford them?
Products are being created for rich people. Poor people are being cut out of the economy.
There's already a lot of evidence that the majority of the economy is currently functioning off the economic activity of the upper 10% of society. That 10% accounts for 50% of all economic activity. They just want to take it a step further.
It was 50% at the end of 2024. They're probably closer to 55 - 57% now with inflation, doge firings, wars, tariffs, and off shoring
They will buy their products and services from each other. That can still form a working economy. It would function just like any slavery based economy of the past, just with more slaves than usual
AI oligarchs don’t want to replace anyone.
They want businesses with money paying them huge subscription fees, and they want lock-in so that all businesses out there depend on their tech to continue to function.
It’s the same model as we saw with streaming video.
They couldn’t care less about the working class, one way or the other, which is part of the problem.
Honestly?
I think AI replacing office workers is just a pit stop till AI can operate kill drones...
Billionaires are 100% asking themselves if they really need us, and the fucked up thing is if robots can grow their food, produce their goods and shield their compounds from us...
They don't need us. At that point theyre gonna want to get rid of us for the space if we can't make them money, and where were headed we won't be able to.
They "need" a small buffer population that enjoys the oligarchs protection from us, but are loyal because they can be killed/exiled at any time.
But 99.9999% of the world population, they're probably ok with killing off already.
If not, they definitely will be once they squeeze every last ounce of resources out of us and the planet starts really dying. They'll even convince themselves it's "for the greater good" to save the planet they killed making their billions.
They're just gonna keep getting crazier, there's no logical reason to think the trajectory or acceleration will change. Eventually it'll be a literal class war unless we prevent by taking our resources back.
It would be cool to remove the need for everyone to work jobs they hate just to survive though.
Sure but the system would only work if the rich agreed to pay for our expenses via taxes. Don't expect it anytime soon.
I thought the plan was to use AI to push all of us into a permanent underclass.
Is this not just a jaundiced slant on the future we were all promised where machines do all the work and we lay around in togas eating blancmange.
Found Angus Podgorny's alt account
A quivering glistening mass.
This argument falls apart the second you think it through for more than 30 seconds.
If AI were to “replace the working class” outright, who exactly is left to pay rent, buy products, or participate in the economy at all? Companies don’t operate in a vacuum, they depend on mass consumption. No working class means no customers. No customers means no revenue. It’s not a controversial take it’s basic economic reality.
The idea that large corporations are collectively marching toward eliminating their own consumer base is not just wrong, it’s absurd. Firms adopt automation to reduce costs and increase productivity, not to self destruct their own markets.
What’s actually happening is far less dramatic and far more grounded, specific jobs get automated, new ones emerge, and the labor market shifts. That transition can absolutely be messy and uneven, and yes, it can hurt people in the short term. That’s a real conversation worth having.
But this “AI will wipe out the working class entirely” narrative isn’t serious analysis, it’s just lazy doomposting dressed up as insight.
If you’re going to criticize AI, at least engage with how economic systems actually function instead of defaulting to an echo chamber of half formed panic.
You are imparting rationality on a system known for not acting rationally. Capitalists both act against their own interests and against the larger communities interests quite frequently. Economists sometimes describe it is "economic externalities" and recognised long ago that modelling players as rational actors was flawed. Why would companies risk their own futures by funding climate denialism?
One of capitalisms greatest weaknesses is it greatly rewards short terms gains at the cost of long term profits or failure. Even if you trash a company you walk away wealthy.
Economies are strongest when small amojnts change hands often which is exactly the opposite of what the current concentration of wealth seeks to do. These are people who work and vote against minimum wage increases, unions, and who constantly push propaganda blaming the working class for spending money to deflect from the fact that they don’t pay enough.
It’s not “absurd” to say that the richest among us are trying to drain wealth out of the working class because it’s happening in broad daylight. We can all see it, they don’t give a shit about their employees. It’s to the point were every 4-day work-week experiment has been a success both for employee happiness and productivity but we still aren’t seeing that schedule being adopted.
The rich do not care about you, and if millions of the working class die they don’t give a shit. Slave plantations weren’t actually all that efficient but it didn’t matter because it the abuse was part of it.
