OpenAI. X.ai. Anthropic. Robots. Self-driving cars. Just keep going, and you’ll begin to wonder: what will be left for humans to do? We’re not talking about labor-saving creations like washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners, and photocopy machines here. We’re talking about replicating almost all human capabilities.
Some argue that being liberated from drudgery will free people to do what they REALLY want to do. Create art. Write music. Craft poetry. Compose plays. Become athletes.
To which I can only reply: are you KIDDING me? Do you realize how dull and lazy most humans are? I mean, let’s be fair: I’ve written DOZENS of published books, TENS OF THOUSANDS of posts, a full-length screenplay, a 73-chapter novel, and have also created several small successful companies, so I think you’ll allow that I’m pretty much in the 99%+ level of creativity, and yet even I would lose my freaking mind if the one and only thing I was left to do was to create content. And I’m good at it!
Go to Walmart. Look at the people. Do you think any of them have anything to say you want to know about? Is there a novel in each of them? If there is, would anyone read it? Are these “let everyone be creative and artistic” folks out of their blinking minds? Oh my GOD!
See, when I think of the mass of humanity, and what it contributes, the image in my mind is much closer to this:
………….than this:
What I’m trying to say is that if AI does, in fact, make humans unnecessary……………that’s great! Fantastic! We have, what, eight billion people on this planet now? Can you imagine an Earth with, let’s say, only 500 million people on it? Sixteen times the room! One-sixteenth of the resource consumption! I mean, with the exception of all the empty apartments, office buildings, and houses, it would be absolutely marvelous.
Thus, what’s bizarre to me is that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the owner of x.ai, thinks people should start knockin’ boots and creating babies to avoid a population collapse. Why? Why on Earth? Why in the world would someone who is creating the exact same technology to make humans unnecessary ALSO want to create more humans??? What for?
So they could sit on their giant asses and play video games? So they could become so bored that they light buildings on fire? So that they could enter such depths of despair that they jump off the highest bridge they can find? It doesn’t make sense.
I have no idea where AI is taking us, and neither does anyone else. What I can say, however, is that AI replaces human functionality as much as it purports to, then I see no need for humans to keep making more of themselves. Let ’em die off by the billions and have a tiny fraction of the people that we have today. Is there’s no real need for human beings anymore, do like the rural families of America did between the late 1800s and now……………..realize you don’t need to have 13 kids to help out around the farm, and just have one or two!
It’ll be better for them, and better for you. Bring on the robots.
