this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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The natural outcome of making jobs easier in a profit driven business model is to either add more work or reduce the number of workers.
This is exactly the result. No matter how advanced AI gets, unless the singularity is realized, we will be no closer to some kind of 8-hour workweek utopia. These AI Silicon Valley fanatics are the same ones saying that basic social welfare programs are naive and un-implementable - so why would they suddenly change their entire perspective on life?
This vision of the AI making everything easier always leaves out the part where nobody has a job as a result.
Sure you can relax on a beach, you have all the time in the world now that you are unemployed. The disconnect is mind boggling.
Universal Base Income - it's either that or just kill all the un-necessary poor people.
If you haven't read this, it's short and worth the time. The short work week utopia is one of two possible outcomes imagined: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
Yes, but when the price is low enough (honestly free in a lot of cases) for a single person to use it, it also makes people less reliant on the services of big corporations.
For example, today’s AI can reliably make decent marketing websites, even when run by nontechnical people. Definitely in the “good enough” zone. So now small businesses don’t have to pay Webflow those crazy rates.
And if you run the AI locally, you can also be free of paying a subscription to a big AI company.
Except, no employer will allow you to use your own AI model. Just like you can't bring your own work equipment (which in many regards even is a good thing) companies will force you to use their specific type of AI for your work.
No big employer... there are plenty of smaller companies who are open to do whatever works.
Presumably “small business” means self-employed or other employee-owned company. Not the bureaucratic nightmare that most companies are.