We’re creating a new global average standard of living with disastrous consequences.

The poor areas rapidly gain wealth but at great cost to the environment and the whole thing is dependent on a never-ending fire hose of capital and tech transfers from the “wealthy” areas.

The wealthy areas, already unable to offer many citizens the ability to raise a family, are desperately engaging in extreme financialization, ludicrous political distractions, and “make work” shell games just to present an increasingly unconvincing veneer that society is still functioning and fully worthy of participation.

Western civilization is the metaphorical Biblical statue from Daniel: After spending decades replacing the support structures with ever cheaper materials, we’re now finally in the “feet of iron and clay” stage, and it’s likely AI will complete the metaphor by representing the boulder that smashes into the weakened base and topples the entire statue.

I realize this all sounds hilariously alarmist, but I have yet to see a positive spin on the impact of AI that isn’t ultimately the same old decoupled Pete Peterson style nonsense of “it’s gud because worker productivity number goes up”: as if we don’t already have two generations of human beings that grew up in an age of massively increased productivity yet cannot afford a family nor a home to put them in - a state of existence that even some medieval serfs would pity.

My weirdly accelerationist hope is that AI advances quickly enough (and management stays short-sighted enough) to cause a meaningful political coalition to form between the already-marginalized blue collar workers and the newly disrupted paper-pusher/cubicle class.

>> The poor areas rapidly gain wealth but at great cost to the environment and the whole thing is dependent on a never-ending fire hose of capital and tech transfers from the “wealthy” areas.

While I sympathize with your angst at the coming future, a future where the US isn't the highest, I see that for most of the world your prediction is both highly desirable, and inaccurate.

Firstly, let's dispel the great-cost-to-the-environment myth. The US has done, and continues to do great harm to the environment. Indeed many developing nations are skipping the harmful phase and embracing new tech like solar , better urban planning and so on.

Also, while it's fun to posit that thd globe depends on US capital, there's a bigger picture in play. TikTok is developed without western capital, suddenly its a surveillance risk (because Facebook and Google wouldn't spy on me).

Sure there's environmental cost to development, but complaining about the environment of others is a bit rich for the US (as it approves drilling in Alaska). The US accounts for 25% of global emissions, and about 5%ish of thd World population.

So yeah - you want your job yo be remote? Be careful what you wish for.

I agree with most of your comment but comparing Facebook or Google with Tiktok remains a classic "both sides" false equivalency that takes away from other valid points that you make. Yes, US social media companies too have to comply with government requests, which have at times been abused. No, the scale and impact that this has is in no way comparable to Chinese tech companies and their relation to the government.

FWIW you are not crazy. I completely agree with every part of your comment.

There is an "easy" solution - a regulation that would remove copyright protection from AI-generated art, or perhaps even art that has an AI-generated output somewhere in the pipeline. Art could still be AI-generated for efficiency, but large studios would be forced to keep humans on a payroll for accountability.

I mean if you’re creating regulation just require a human to oversee any job done by AI. Instead of just protecting copyrighted works.