Chapter 161: Second Monday (6)
"Okay, but why? What good is A.I.? What problems does it solve?" Jack asked Madison.
"I can use it to write code. Something that would have taken me days, I can accomplish in hours with A.I. And I can make decent art with it, or get it to summarize documents, or answer questions. It allows me to be more productive."
"So you can use A.I. as a productivity booster now, but what happens when it becomes advanced enough to be considered AGI? When it’s good enough to not merely help you with your job, but able to do it for you?"
"Sit back and play games while the A.I. does the work?" she said hesitantly.
"And why would a company pay you to sit on your ass and watch an A.I. do your job? If an A.I. can do your job, then they’ll get rid of you and just keep the A.I."
"Yeah, but they would still need people to keep an eye on the A.I. To tell it what it what to do."
"Sure, the company will need a few managers. At least until AGI is good enough to do that job too. And what happens when you put AGI in a robot? All those manufacturing jobs. Maintenance, landscaping, cleaning, menial labor. All those workers will be replaced by robots. What then?"
"But robots are expensive, like hundreds of thousands of credits. Why would a company spend so much money on a robot when they can just hire someone for minimum wage?"
"Robots might be expensive now, but once you have enough demand, the cost will drop like a rock. And companies are too greedy to pass up the opportunity to replace expensive human liabilities with less expensive machines. Companies have been doing this for centuries already."
"But most people still have a job. So manufacturing automation didn’t destroy the job market. And besides, it’s going to happen. As fast as things are going, I’ll be surprised if we don’t see the first home assistant robot in ten years."