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People are not simple machines or animals. Unless AI becomes strictly better than humans and humans + AI, from the perspective of other humans, at all activities, there will still be lots of things for humans to do to provide value for each other.

The question is how do our individuals, and more importantly our various social and economic systems handle it when exactly what humans can do to provide value for each other shifts rapidly, and balances of power shift rapidly.

If the benefits of AI accrue to/are captured by a very small number of people, and the costs are widely dispersed things can go very badly without strong societies that are able to mitigate the downsides and spread the upsides.

It may not be obvious if you are in the US but the reaction of Canadians to Trump’s 51st state garbage is extremely strong in Canada.

The tariffs are one thing, and pissed people off, but the rhetoric is what has really done the damage.

It’s viewed as a complete betrayal, and as a real and serious threat to Canadian sovereignty.

I work for an American company from Canada, and have changed my financial planning because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep doing that.

When I see a 70% drop I’m surprised it isn’t more.

I tried it and it was laughably bad. The auto park was worse than it was years ago, leaving me a foot out from the curb in an easy spot. Trying to use the self driving on city streets resulted in it stuttering and stopping immediately. The only thing that worked decently was highway driving, which it does without the self driving package anyway.

Given its performance I wouldn't dare trust it with any of my daily driving even if it was free.

Even on a law and implementation effort like this with such large impact there are maybe 10,000 people in the world involved who actually understand it in any significant sense, and they all have a strong reason not to post about it on a public forum, or even a private one.

And even those people will only understand a limited aspect or perspective.

So the people commenting can only comment based on their outside impressions and emotions about generalities and how the specific implementation details seem to affect they as an end user.

I try to take anything said with that in mind. There is information in the comments about user experience but anything else is at the level of bullshitting at the bar with your friends, and not to be taken personally.

> I found it quite frustrating how teams would be legitimately actively pursuing ideas that would be good for the world, without prioritizing short-term Google interests, only to be met with cynicism in the court of public opinion.

This is part and parcel of working for a visible/impactful organization. People will constantly write things, good and bad about the organization. Most of them, good and bad, will be wrong. They'll be based on falsehoods, misinterpretations, over-simplifications, political perspectives, etc.

This becomes a problem when people in the company assume that because most of the feedback is nonsense, that all of it is nonsense. That is especially temping when the feedback is hurtful to you or critical of your team or values.

I found a bit of Neil Gaiman's MasterClass very helpful when reading such feedback. Very roughly Gaiman said that when someone is telling you something doesn't work for them, and what you should do to fix it, you should believe them that it doesn't work for them, but that the author is much better placed than the reader to know how and if to fix it.

In my context I try to understand why someone is saying something, what information I can take from it, and whether there is anything within my expertise, control, or influence that can or should be done about it.

(If you take anything from this comment, I think it should be to go listen to Neil Gaiman talk about anything!)

Automation and/or higher pay tends to make that not a problem.

This is actually a great argument for a strong social democracy/welfare state.

Though based on dasickis comment, it seems there may not have been bad behaviour in the first place.

I don't think that analogy applies. Both parties in this story did things in a 'work' context.

If I go on a work forum and describe my bad behaviour, behaviour that is harmful to others, and advocate for others to do it, I'm going to get in trouble, and possibly fired.

If I publicly discuss private work information, I'll definitely get fired.

If I mention the bad behaviour of someone at work publicly, without naming names, I might get a talking to, but probably won't be fired.

How a group reacts to those different things over time defines the norms and culture of the group.

What an excellent demonstration of what values/norms a group really cares about.

Biggar violated the all time favourite in-group rule: Don't talk out of school. Don't talk about fight club. Don't snitch.

The other founders violated a norm against pushing yourself ahead and taking advantage of others that doesn't even seem to hold in many groups, especially upper class/wealthy ones.

Other issues aside, "A is just a complicated B, so apply the same rules to A as B" is not a formula for good decision making.

It's a common way to make bad mistakes though.

Trying to design for many unknown futures is expensive.

Changing in the future costs something.

Designing for future changes up front makes sense if cost(future change) > cost(future proofing)

SAAS? Do virtually no future proofing.

IOT, do some.

Space probe? Do lots.

Also, if you haven't built quite a few relatively similar systems, don't do future proofing without talking to people who have.