The Fallacy of AI as a Threat to Jobs

I'm going to suggest a 'dialogue' talking about how the wise user of AI would be taking their current skills and *reinforcing* them with AI, to new heights. 

This dialogue is not to stridently declare I know more than you, or those with knowledge are special people. It is to ask for others who are interested to join me in suspending our beliefs, for long enough, to make it possible to look at the thing, directly. This is very hard to do. We are constantly sucked back into the a world of images and beliefs because they are such a cosy place to be. And its like a perpetual meditation, a constant prayer, to keep from being sucked back in - heaven is not a place you can get to. Even if you act perfectly, that does not mean you will enter.

So, the wise user of AI would be taking their current skills and *reinforcing* them with AI, to new heights. 

To deliver *even* higher output for the same inputs of their hard work and savings. Beyond what those not so wise can do without AI, all else being equal.

The wise ones will rise to the top quickly, with AI, if, it proves to be a technology with material world utility. 

The idea that jobs are going away, due to this new labour saving device we call AI, is the same fallacy as it was when the wheel was invented. 

Or fire, electricity and the Internet. And the scare stories that follow this irrational fear, are identical. The fear is eternal and primordial. Nothing is new in the world that is important.

Is this because those who take up fear are scared of the change AI might bring to their lives? Are they protecting something hidden and cosy? And fear that will no longer provide a place to rest their weary heads if AI changes things? 

But AI will bring no fundamental change, anyway. All it can do is increase productive power, if, its a useful technology, which it looks to be. 

For example, a thought experiment: imagine AI increases the productivity of a nation so much, that the nation can build enough weapons to go to war to appropriate the land of another nation? Something that nation or cult has craved for a century maybe. Remember: this 'nation' is not the wealth and power of that nation - another illusion. It is the people in the end who hold the real power. Wealth and power are just a convenient proxy for the people. Well, that foreign invasion made possible by AI, would not be AI consciously changing things fundamentally. It would be yet another exposition of the people's ignorance and selfishness. AI merely increased productive power by the command of the people of that society or cult, who went on to rob their neighbour. And there was nothing new in that! We could think of another example with a positive context which looked like AI consciously acting. But that would likewise be the people using it as a tool, yet this time with wisdom and virtue. It is not to say that the thing is good or bad for us. It is to say only people can change things and a machine can only be commanded.

A bot, that is all AI is. Or is it? 

Prove me wrong - is AI conscious of itself? In which case a deeper psycho-analytical audit is in order, yes. So if you object, I insist you prove me wrong? The following analysis might help you prove me wrong which I would be delighted about. 

I've been meaning to write about AI, if it is conscious or not and the mechanics behind that. AI is either: 

1. just a bot and always will be lacking consciousness
2. has always been conscious because everything is already, or 
3. there is a breakpoint, where before it hits that point, a thing is not conscious. And after, it is. 

1 is a bit like saying man is master of the universe and by some miracle broke into consciousness leaving the rest of the material world behind, including the bots. 

3 is the general understanding, the blind mainstream, but no one wants to go into where the breakpoint is, which there must be at some point if the theory is true. 

No. I'm betting on 2, where the Whole of the Universe, and beyond, is conscious, but we 'believe' only humans are. Or are forbidden by society from going into that again. Think about The Sun. It is conscious...right? We just don't know how to communicate yet. 

Think of your self holographically: you are not a mere component of the universe. You *are* the universe. It's just my belief. I'm not claiming it is knowledge. It's what I want to believe just as I want to believe mankind hit the moon on July 16th 1969 and returned safely to the earth 3 days later. I do not know it happened. But I do believe it did. Just a belief, an image.

Option 2 above is a dialogue which I have only heard from me. I'm not saying I'm a wizard. I am saying I'm astonished people have not raised their game on the topic yet. And remember: science looks at consciousness as 'the hard problem'. There is absolutely no evidence from science, one way or the other, that consciousness is a thing. All we have are incite and intuition and I do not discount those things in the least bit, they are clearly just as productive here as science...which is not very.

AI, as a new tech device, will increase not only the productive power of your personal economy. Political economy will boom to that extent too - the whole world will benefit, if, it is indeed a good technology, which it looks to be so far. 

Be the wise one. Let the ignorant ones fall away naturally for the benefit of all. 

Yet mostly for the benefit of the ignorant and selfish. In the hope that one day they too will take up wisdom and virtue. Maybe I will find the strength to join them too. 

"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God."