Do We Just Want Slaves? The Hidden Truth About AI Automation
After attending OpenSauce, I noticed a shift in how creators view AI. While many express fear about losing creativity, they readily accept automating tedious tasks. From video editing to prototyping, people seem comfortable outsourcing work they find boring. This raises a troubling question: are we only willing to automate roles we consider low-skill or repetitive, effectively treating them like digital slaves?
It sounds like behind the fear of a loss of creativity and inspiration and passion in the world, we are OK with automating away the work that we don't want to do.
- skippyfish
The thesis of the article is spot on. The title is weird - I don't know what's the point of bringing such an emotionally charged term into it. Unless your point is that LLMs are sentient creatures capable of suffering, but I don't think that's what the author is trying to say.
I agree with the author that almost everyone wants to use AI to do the things they have no interest in and don't want to pay someone else to do while being vehemently opposed to AI taking their hobbies or professions away. Which explains one of the greatest social paradoxes of today: approximately everyone is using AI and almost everyone is hating it. I don't mean HN, but public opinion polling for the tech is absolutely awful. In the US, it had an approval level comparable to Iran.
I don't think it's an AI-specific thing, though. It's exactly the same mechanism that makes us object to the government meddling in our profession but think it's high time for the feds to regulate other people's jobs. I guess some balance of holding each other at gunpoint gives us a stable society. I don't know how AI fits into that.
- yunwal
It seems like maybe this person missed why slavery is bad. Which is that it takes away the freedom of a human being. The fact that it takes away work from you is not the problem
- michaelt
If you think of the washing machine and the dishwasher, I'd say humans are broadly OK with automating away some types of work they don't want to do.
Few people, though, would say my washing machine is a slave.