Not wanting to derail the intriguing and educational offshore thread of our fine upstanding member for Korat, I thought I would respond to your pertinent points here, Betty.

This thread is not so much to discuss other related issues such as the alignment problem, but more to address the workforce skills usurpation challenges.

Quote Originally Posted by Bettyboo View Post
Even if that's true Mr Adam Smith, the wealth is not spread equally - the wealth divide will just increase even more.

Have you looked at the wealth divide gap's massive increase in "advanced" western countries over the last 40 years? Your statement, Sir, is at the very least, questionable.
I think the problem of managing wealth inequality and wealth distribution is a subtly different issue to that of AI skills usurpation.

Most societies, and Western societies in particular, have a keen sense of fairness when it comes to wealth and generally do a significant amount of wealth redistribution.

The impact of AI and robotics is primarily that the workload will be done more efficiently and, overall, less work will need to be done by humans.

It is indeed likely that the individuals at the helms of the organisations that implement these AI and robotics solutions will profit greatly as individuals. But it is also true that society will see great total wealth generation gains through these automation productivity gains.

The net result is very likely to be that humans lead lives of greater leisure, without diminished individual wealth, even at the less wealthy end of things.

If you are enterprising enough then there are likely to be opportunities to be enterprising. Many people are not enterprising and just want an easy life with as much free time as possible. I think those people will end up more comfortable than they are today due to the workload being shouldered by AI.

I think the fretting over wealth inequality is a little overdone. Wealth inequality seems to be a necessary feature of capitalism. I think it is very difficult to compare wealth inequality between generations living different periods since the stuff that is available to the richest and poorest in each period varies so dramatically. The poorest westerners lead lives more physically comfortable than the lives of royalty of previous eras due to technological advancement in what creature comforts are available.