Is style the next revolution?

Submitted by nitebear t3_11d38h1 in singularity

What is your purpose?

Your purpose is to work.

omg.

(edit: the above is a meme)

I keep seeing post about how important work is in relation to our purpose, meaning, and life planning. Specifically, I believe a lot of professionals or upcoming professionals are now getting a slap in the face to the reality that ai (not even agi) is going to replace a lot of jobs, and a lot of professional white collar jobs at that. This is leading to people having some major anxiety, and those with certain philosophies on work viewing ai as a threat to our way of living. Specifically how will people react a in system that can sustain people essentially required to do nothing to maintain their life or maintain a governmental system. Would people go crazy if they have no career to work in and feel that they have a purpose in society?

In some ways this is already occurring, the "crazy" part at least. People are already losing their jobs to agi, admittedly not enough people to have a large enough impact for ubi to start coming in. However, the people who are going "crazy" are the people getting ready to start a career or in the processing of getting educated for a career. By crazy, I specifically mean people in tune with ai are acting out of the norm with their career planning. They are changing careers from what they wanted to be to what is practical in an ai future or they are outright not bothering and either waiting for ubi or looking into trade schools.

My main point of this post is perhaps to act as a warning. Technical, laborious, or skilled jobs are going to disappear, which includes anything from art to plumbing. It is now more important than ever to do what you like/love and if you don't have anything you like or love take that ubi when it comes and find it. The future where ai feeds you any entertainment you like by targeting you specifically is likely much farther away than all the jobs disappearing. What this means for you is that just like the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, or the scientific revolution, we are moving into a new revolution where everything is changing quick and wealth(which will be interchangeable with influence) is going to get concentrated on some more than others even with ubi.

So, why did I say you should do what you love? Because it appears to me that the only way into this revolution is with style. Specifically, style is something that ai might be able to create but currently it is almost forced to copy it. If ai were to make a movie how many people would prefer their lead actor to be someone they already know/watch such as Brad Pitt? How many people are going to watch an ai generated mission impossible? Style is unique to yourself and its implementation in what you do is what will make you successful and the easiest way to do that is to do something you love. Perfection is now a given, which means the premium is in style, which is just a way you do things imperfectly that is unique to yourself.

Perhaps I'm too optimistic, and there is no style to be implemented in very, very, technical jobs like hardware programming or plumbing. But I wonder sometimes in an ai future what would competition look like, if all internet providers provide the exact same service in the future why pick one over the other? The only conclusion I could think of is style, someone likes the green logo of "ai isp type 1", and someone likes the font in "ai isp type 4". Then again, perhaps all companies merge together, and style is just a desperate grasp that humans have something to offer that ai doesn't.

(This post was written with the help of ai)

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Comments

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Spire_Citron t1_ja6o8sz wrote

It's so weird to me that so many people think having a career is a crucial part of our lives when careers are a modern invention. There's no reason why we couldn't find satisfaction in other things. Things we actually enjoy.

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V_Shtrum t1_ja6qty9 wrote

>careers are a modern invention

Learning and practicing a trade is as old as human civilization.

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Spire_Citron t1_ja6rh52 wrote

Sure, but my point is that humans existed and got on just fine when we were just living in small communities and taking care of our day to day needs. The rest came later.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja6w65c wrote

That « Noble savage » vision by Rousseau has been debunked.

Northern American native cultures were very often waging constant extermination wars, maintaining their population at quasi steady state despite high natality rates.

If I am not mistaken, one of the most violent culture in the world were native inhabitants of the San Fernando valley.

Not politically correct, Im sorry.

But the old days were not always amazing…

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Spire_Citron t1_ja6wjzo wrote

What does that have to do with careers? I made no claims that they were perfect and pure people, just that established careers aren't some innate part of human existence.

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V_Shtrum t1_ja6s0mn wrote

Yes but taking care of the day to day needs of a community meant work: blacksmithing, farming, carpentry, architecture etc etc. Those trades became specialised, not in the last few decades, but literally thousands of years ago.

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UnionPacifik t1_jaaoojh wrote

You might enjoy “The Dawn of Everything” - it’s a recent work on early human civilizations that debunks a lot of what you’re saying in this post.

Human civilization is much more diverse and many society’s operated as truly egalitarian, with no centralized authority just fine. Also, many of those so called “dark ages” when kingdoms collapsed managed just fine without a structured society.

“Trade” as you’re describing it is also not a common feature. Humans are generalists usually or that social role wasn’t defined by what you did, but by your birth or the season of the year or any other number of factors.

I really would urge you to challenge this notion that “work” or “labor” is a natural part of the human condition. We live in a super hierarchical society at the moment, with power concentrated in a handful of humans, so it might seem “natural” but we’re a lot more than our ability to produce goods, services and capital in exchange for economic security.

I think humans should still explore and contribute and make things, because that is in our nature, but if we can automate the necessity for labor and work out of existence so that our efforts are directed towards our interest and not our needs, I think we would wind up with an infinitely more productive, diverse and happy society. Do what you want!

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_jabnruo wrote

Well that book is very explicitly written by a anarchist activist with the intend of making the concept relevant in modern politics again.

It is not a scientific book, and I must say I have some sympathies towards anarchy myself.

Problem is, those very primitive and unspecialized cultures weren’t advanced enough to invent writing, so most if not all of their culture is lost in time, forever.

People with a political agenda have time and time again tried to make them say thing we are mostly unsure.

I am more interested in living ethnology, especially the study on native cultures around the world.

Their societies obviously are not very specialized, individuals mostly segregated by sex, age and power.

An interesting point is their demography, if life was so great, a “saturating” fertility level should easily allow their population to double every generation.

And that was never seen.

Life witnesses, for example in very early colonial Brazil seem to point that those native cultures were far from being food limited (they had plenty of free time to increase harvest intensity), but they were waging constant extermination war with “neighboring” tribes.

In fact, land was plentiful, they had to travel extensively to meet those adversaries.

The goal was genocide of all the opposing men (and not land as said by the natives themselves), either directly or after a variable period of slavery followed by ritual torture, execution and often cannibalism. Women were taken as brides by the young winners (not much polygamy in what I read it seems).

This live experience bears much stronger witness about the quality of life in those happy times.

What saved those cultures was in fact that they were not specialized enough to create more advanced weapons…

IMO

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Spire_Citron t1_ja6txzt wrote

Originally it was just collecting food and basic cooking and crafting, raising families, etc. No huge aspirations and a lot more down time than we get today. Heck, there are still communities of humans today that live that way.

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V_Shtrum t1_ja70czs wrote

So collecting food (hunter gathering) had an absolutely colossal learning curve, it takes years upon years to learn how to track and kill wild animals. Gathering wild fruit and vegetables requires an intricate knowledge of the landscape, knowledge of which plants are poisonous, which aren't etc. Crafting has a similar learning curve: fashioning baskets from reeds and clothing from animal hides (for example) are highly skilled.

The point I'm making is that "work" - however you define it, has been part of the human experience since prehistory. It has shaped all human cultures and all our psychology, I don't think it's trivial for that to disappear and I wonder what is going to replace it.

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Spire_Citron t1_ja70sgm wrote

Sure, but we will still be able to work on things, just maybe not have paid careers. You will always be able to learn a skill, raise a family, travel, make a garden, etc.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja77eez wrote

Exchange means you have something of value to trade.

Who is going to let you have his seat on his plane, have his spot at Machu Pichu, have his quiet spot of land to grow kale or have his bio baby milk formula, if you don’t give him something he wants in return?

AI is not going to make everything plentiful, and those simple thing we have today (automagically because you live in the US), may become what’s gonna be scarce in the future.

Even a WOW player develops a career in game because it is more efficient for him to acquire scare ressources that way…

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V_Shtrum t1_ja7w2yu wrote

This

Money is just influence, the ability to influence others and make them do what you want. Looked at this way, it's totally unsurprising that we still work long hours in jobs even though almost all our material needs can be met through automation. People will always want money because they want to influence others.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja82o2r wrote

Indeed, it is the abstraction of value.

It seems that the set of all the different representations of what money could buy, is just influence…

Funny thing is that, you don’t have to spend money to gain influence, just to show it.

I find it quite ironic :-)

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V_Shtrum t1_ja8ed3m wrote

Have you read Yuval Noah Harari's books? He talks about this:

He makes the point that throughout history, human beings have been exploited: feudalism, communism, capitalism, slavery etc etc. However unpleasant it is to be exploited, no-one could deny that human beings had value, economic and otherwise.

With developments in biotech, infotech and robotics, we're fast approaching a point where humans have no value, there's literally no need to exploit them, and nothing to gain by doing so.

Globalisation and offshoring have already rendered the manual classes in the West essentially obsolete, and the arguement goes: this is behind the recent resurgence in authoritarianism and xenophobia. We're likely going to see another wave of this - only this time of all classes and all countries simultaneously.

I think that a lot of people on this sub have a utopian view of these developments. Why would our governments and corporations be interested in providing us a utopia? What do they gain by providing it? What can we exchange with them when we have no value?

Having a job is having value in the economic system - however small; to hope that all work becomes obsolete is to hope that we all lose our value.

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RabidHexley t1_jaemcgf wrote

People still act & work in the absence of a need to work as well, in the current world (i.e. people who can afford to retire early). People also take on additional tasks, hobbies, and trades in their lives that have no practical benefit.

Gardening, musical instruments, hiking, fan fiction, all manner of crafts. Most hobbies can take a lot of work and don't have a practical return. An AI (or a supermarket, amazon, midi software, etc.) being able to do something for you doesn't replace the desire to do and experience things yourself.

Many people's actual jobs already don't serve any practical function outside of the narrow scope of something like a corporate structure. Middle manager, bureaucrat, many accounting roles, and all of the people serving in support positions for these roles. Completely divorced from any fruit of labor besides a paycheck.

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V_Shtrum t1_jaep48h wrote

All of what you say is true, the circle I'm trying to square is that, on the one hand, people often find work dull and unfulfilling etc. On the other, it's been widely observed that unemployment and underemployment correlate with all sorts of negative outcomes such as crime, poor mental and physical health etc. I'm not sold on the idea that more generous unemployment benefits (AKA UBI) alone are going to solve that*

I was convinced by Victor Frankl's book 'Man's Search For Meaning' that (most) people aren't at their core hedonistic, what they really want is meaning in their lives. Many people get this from work, others from having a family (and so on). I think that if AI were to eliminate work, it would eliminate a lot of the meaning that a lot of people get in their lives, and something needs to replace that. If nothing positive fills that vacuum, then something negative will.

EDIT:

I would also add, as you intimate, that the death of meaningful work predates AI, and that the gross dissatisfaction that many people feel at work (and in their lives) is a consequence of this. I don't know what the solution is.

*There will of course be a subsection of people who will be perfectly happy on UBI.

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RabidHexley t1_jaf0j2e wrote

I feel like a lot of the malaise that comes from unemployment/underemployment are due to employment being the standard structure of society. The constant fear and anxiety of failure and poverty hanging over your head while you ponder how you actually want to live your life. Without employment you're not a functioning member of society, our cities are entirely built around there being places to work.

There would certainly be a transition, we and everyone else currently alive are born into this world. Accepting change is always difficult. But I don't see why society wouldn't be able structure itself around different systems. Clubs, associations, societies, performance, athletics, childcare (we're not gonna have robots overseeing kindergarteners), education (people still want to learn things that are already known), friends, family. Hell, join a farmstead.

Structures and systems that could replace obligatory employment have already been conceived. They're just limited by the need to function within a capitalist system. They're marginal to employment because almost everyone requires employment to function within society.

There'd probably be a meteoric rise in virtuosos and elite athletes in less financially rewarding sports given there'd be no fear of failure and poverty preventing talented people from pursuing their chosen craft to the utmost. Doesn't matter what AI or a computer can do, we'd still want to push human capabilities to the limit. And there'd still be prestige associated with such pursuits. (People still care about Chess and Go in a post Deep Blue and AlphaGo world)

The generation leading into this world would certainly have its members who struggle without the societal structure of employment. A UBI/welfare-based society would encounter challenges since we'd still be talking about a world based around economic (un)employment.

But I can't imagine the people born into and growing up in a truly post-employment world would view ours - riddled with poverty and people performing tedious busywork such as it is - with anything but horror.

Along with all of the intangible benefits that come from children no longer starving, people no longer living in eternal debt and eliminating the crime and instability that comes with systemic, generational poverty.

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UnionPacifik t1_jaankgc wrote

Another post pointed out that nobility managed to live life without jobs or careers just fine.

Requiring people to contribute to building your pyramid as requirement for them to live is stupid. Let people contribute to society on their terms, not “ours” (aka whoever the ruling power is) and then we’ll have a just world.

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Spire_Citron t1_jaaxli2 wrote

That's a very good point, actually. We don't look at the rich today and say wow, their lives must be so sad an empty because they don't have to work unless they choose to.

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turnip_burrito t1_ja6mf21 wrote

> style is just a desperate grasp that humans have something to offer that ai doesn't.

I think this is the correct assessment. But we may choose human media/products/services for other subjective reasons, like a "journey, not the destination" mindset or social connection.

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RabidHexley t1_jaemizx wrote

I think this would definitely be the case. We already like handcrafted items that machines can make just as well or significantly better. It's just a means of connecting with other people and the world around us. AI or machines being able to do it as well doesn't replace that dynamic.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja6sd9k wrote

Economic relationships are widely defined by « the exchange of rare goods ».

I have the chance to be able to personally witness quite wealthy and successful people in an advanced economy.

With the coming of efficient web crawlers and intellectual outsourcing since about a generation, the importance of non physical production has already greatly diminished.

In the positions expressly designed for such jobs, payed to produce something sounding « intelligent » and « innovative », well, that has been a side business for them since maybe 20 years.

That freed time has been invested in giving value to the individual personal characteristics instead.

That time is spend in daily training for the monthly ultra trail competition (thise people are in their late 40s early 50s), perfecting the new rich sport (often combining workds like free, foil, surf, …) for a good insta profile, strengthening political ties by participating in exclusive clubs and competing for rich mates.

IMO, the coming of AGI, will only unbuild what the Renaissance has done and I see a very strong chance for Feudalism to come back.

Communists will be happy, production through work will indeed mean nothing anymore, only your very personal « value » will.

Pray to look beautiful and for your family to own the big castle on the heights, because nothing you can do could make you have a piece (apart marriage, good luck with that :-))

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CesareGhisa t1_ja76fxz wrote

If the social ladder will be completely removed by AGI as you say, the very essence of society will change. When that happens, also political systems change, its a natural consequence. I am european, and its quite natural for me to think this way. But I see that americans are so strongly rooted in hardcore capitalism (the old american dream and bla bla..) that, as the motto goes, its easier to think about the end of the world than the end of capitalism (for the average american Joe).

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja7811s wrote

Per Marx, the act of overproducing and investing the surplus is what capitalism is.

He wasn’t against that, quite the opposite in fact, he was just arguing that the laborers were not payed the amount of value they put in their work. (Quite debatable, problem of « transferance » still stands today)

Communism would put an end to this by creating a « man of a new type » with socially determined needs and abilities (aka, ants).

The intermediate stage towards that goal would be the « dictatorship of the proletariat », guided by the genius vision of the central committee and the gentle authority of the KGB.

But it didn’t work.

And capitalism remained, and will remain always.

Because the act of investing overproduction will also stand true with AI, only this time the workers won’t work anymore and the capitalist will reside in a GPU.

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CesareGhisa t1_ja792t7 wrote

well, I was not thinking communism, but a strong form of social democracy where robots are taxed at a very high rate, ubi for the unemployed and so on. But it looks to me that most americans think about capitalism just as it is today in US, which is an ultra liberistic form. In fact US is one of the country in the world with the highest income imbalance among developed countries.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja7x7i3 wrote

I see what you mean, “Social democracy” is often used a synonym of Sweden or Germany.

We must be careful because those are peculiar protestant cultures (in the grand scheme of things).

They have very specific value sets hidden behind socialism and democracy, I don’t think those models would world that well in India or Nigeria for example…

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CesareGhisa t1_ja83cej wrote

yes, my reference model is the scandinavian. And I was referring about implementing it in other western countries, like US or Italy (where I am from). I think USA and Italy and an average contemporary developed country would be ready to embrace such a political system.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja8d8aw wrote

You are optimistic:-)

In my experience, Southern Italians have already some troubles properly paying their taxes as of now lol

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CesareGhisa t1_ja8jmlc wrote

northern italian here. agreed, south italy does not belong to eu standards. anyway, with more abundance maybe it would be easier to implement such a system elsewhere.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_jabkwc2 wrote

Well that is the point, is abundance a cause or a consequence of a political system.

See some rich Sicilian acquaintances, I already have an idea :-)

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CesareGhisa t1_jabxrgm wrote

for the past and present I see what you mean, but for the future we expect the singularity, the technology itself to create more abundance than before, not a specific political system. so when/if that happens, with abundance to spare, then I think a socio democratic system will be the best political solution to implement.

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Paid-Not-Payed-Bot t1_ja781i5 wrote

> were not paid the amount

FTFY.

Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:

  • Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.

  • Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.

Beep, boop, I'm a bot

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja7xodw wrote

Well considering it was 7 in the morning and not my native language, I decide to leave that quirk as it is :-)

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gangstasadvocate t1_ja7imqh wrote

I’ve got this I’m ready for the transition. My purpose already is fuck working. I’m trying to get into the most altered euphoric states.

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No_Ninja3309_NoNoYes t1_ja7om6u wrote

Some people want to leave a legacy be it through ideas, passing in their genes, or building literal or metaphorical empires. So if humanity's legacy is AGI or ASI, what will AGI or ASI's legacy be? I hope it's not just getting really good at chess or Go.

Something intangible like style or personal preferences seems fleeting. Brad Pitt is replaceable. Anyway these kind of preferences are subjective. But there must be something fundamental to certain works of art and stories. The ones that were made thousands of years ago.

And you need to consider how tastes and ideologies evolved over time. Much of what was acceptable in the time period of William Shakespeare is now unacceptable. ASI could play a role here. It could simulate human society through alternative futures. A crystal ball of possible tomorrows...

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PurpedSavage t1_ja6vfrf wrote

I think it’s integral for humans to have some kind of “work” they do. We’re a balance of individuation and collectivity. The ego excels when we can be creative and bring forth our vision, but veering too much into this state can put us into perpetual childlike fantasy. The monotony of work, gardening, chores; whatever it may be, allows us to ground ourselves to reality. Just because we reinvented the hammer for the nth time doesn’t mean we’re gonna suddenly never work again. It’s just the nature of our work has changed.

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[deleted] t1_ja76q7j wrote

[deleted]

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king_of_england_bot t1_ja76qp3 wrote

>king of England

Did you mean the King of the United Kingdom, the King of Canada, the King of Australia, etc?

The last King of England was William III whose successor Anne, with the 1707 Acts of Union, dissolved the title of Queen/King of England.

####FAQ

Isn't King Charles III still also the King of England?

This is only as correct as calling him the King of London or King of Hull; he is the King of the place that these places are in, but the title doesn't exist.

Is this bot monarchist?

No, just pedantic.

I am a bot and this action was performed automatically.

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isthiswhereiputmy t1_ja7cn79 wrote

I think post-style is already a thing. That is, being concerned with individuality and recognizability or legacy is more of a 20th Century development and many people don't occupy themselves with standing out or moving against the grain of society.

As an example, as a professional artist I am one of these people using AI to to jobs in many styles.

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