edc117

Completely broken on multiple levels. In a lot of industries now, as an employer you can't win even if you buck the trend and lead out your competitors on wages and benefits. The highest paid warehouse worker, waitress, etc. will still barely make ends meet, never be able to afford a house, so on. Decades of devaluation of labor (automation, venture capital, bad laws & regulations, etc.) has really done a number, and I don't see a way to easily reverse the damage. IMO, the top end of the economy needs to be brought back closer to the bottom end, but I just don't see it happening.

It's just absolute lunacy. If that's the stated goal (and it sure looks like it), the 'academic left' is at least partially responsible for a large majority of the prosperity of this country over the last few decades. How can you have a successful, rich country when you're antagonizing your allies and roughly half of your citizens?

These people will burn down their own house and wealth to make sure others don't feel welcome. How hard is it to just learn to live with people that don't agree with you?

I hope you're right, because his dopey supporters have destroyed any balances or opposition to him other than the courts (which he is also busy attacking and undermining).

Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.

Pretty hard to forget when he keeps reminding people how abrasive he can be every five minutes.

Will they? Trump has said he's in favor of the H1-B program and has given no indications that he plans to lessen or stop it. Tariffs will likely be used as bargaining tools - you won't see tariffs directed at a country because a US corporation has outsourced labor there. There's a lot of noise about changes to immigration right now, but I'd be very unsurprised if little or nothing changed.

I understand, and broadly agree for what it's worth - as someone with friends and peers in those groups, I'm very worried about the tone of the discourse.

That said, I think it's good to recognize it's not a 0 or 1, open minded vs racists, or however it could be framed. There are a whole host of people in the middle, and actions like the one I mentioned push people towards the crazier views we see. It makes good people stand to the side and say nothing, maybe, instead of pushing back against it.

Far too extreme a view. I'm very unhappy with the H1-B program and how it has been used to depress wages for engineers, but I understand (and agree with) the need for us to compete globally and not stagnate. I have nothing but respect for a lot of overseas engineers and have worked with some very intelligent, kind, generous individuals in my time.

What I strongly oppose is - and I've seen this up close and personal three times in the last five years - large companies or investment companies buying/merging smaller companies, then gradually offshoring/firing (about 10-20% per year) US jobs in favor of overseas jobs while keeping their customer base. These companies, their revenue streams, their customers exist because of US employees and engineers, and yet they're thrown out at the first chance because someone overseas will do the work for less (often one third of a US salary). This is a complete betrayal of the people who worked to build these companies in the first place. These revenue streams would not exist without them.

H1-B is used in a very similar way: they get anyone they can over here, and pay them 10-20% less than a US counterpart, then use that to justify lower wages/raises to existing employees.

I agree that some people unfairly blame the overseas engineer, but don't simply write them off as racist or hateful - they're having their livelihoods taken from them, and leadership is very good at hiding or shifting blame.

And then they don't respond to email or slack. Are they missing it? Ignoring it? No one knows. Meanwhile, time sensitive deadlines come and go.

There's no clear, easy protocol that works for everyone, unfortunately. Some people are always going to operate on the 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' model. And I say this as someone who is often in the 'always busy' camp.

If you don't have any proof of that, you're no different than those that believe he exists. (Respectfully) Agnosticism really is the only correct scientific approach.

Good catch, hadn't seen that.

So the researchers, shareholders, and leadership of OpenAI will be happy to give up being ridiculously wealthy so they can be only moderately wealthy, and everyone else gets a basic income?

I'm also just skeptical of UBI in general, I suppose - 'free' money tends to just inflate everything to account for it, and it still won't address scarcity issues for limited physical assets like land/property.

I've love to be wrong about both of these things.

A little bittersweet for me, lost an uncle to this about 10 years ago...but still happy and a little inspired, proud of our species. I really hope ours is the last generation(s) that have to suffer through that awful disease.

I think kids act like this because society has created this problem, and continues to ignore it because it's financially expedient. There's a great deal of frustration about their impotency to affect environmental change - hell, any change that would result in less money for the wealthy. Pessimism and hyperbole is a natural outcome.

Some might fall into the category you've described, but I'd hazard a guess that a lot more are afraid of the rise of AI due to its owners. The cost to develop and operate these machines is high, and you can be sure whoever is using them to replace work done by people today will capture and hold every possible penny.

People are afraid that AI will not serve the common good, and will instead serve a very rich few. Why? Because that's how it's always been with new advances, and more than ever how it is today. The vast gaps in wealth inequality will grow much larger with AI - it needs to be addressed first.