Elon is right, and also very wrong.
Dec. 4th, 2025 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seawaspA fairly long lecture...
Elon Musk, the current richest man in the world, has a sort of fictional persona of being the genius inventor guy, a modern-day Tesla or real-world Tony Stark. What he ACTUALLY is is, of course, more complex and less dramatic than that. But in this particular discussion, one thing he definitely is is... a science-fiction nerd of the old school.
He wants The Future, wants to be PART of making The Future... and that Future, clearly shown throughout his career, is the idealized clean steel-and-chrome and spaceships on otherwise pristine worlds of the 1930s through 50s science fiction. In SpaceX he's cosplaying Delos D. Harriman, the Man Who Sold the Moon; he's the visionary businessman who will drag the world to space. We should have had Luna City and Marsport by the 1990s and we failed, so he's going to make it happen. Automated cars and robots are part of that shining future, so naturally he's a big AI booster.
Recently, he was depicting the possible beautiful future of a world with fully-realized AI, where people wouldn't have to be working at all except at those things they WANTED to. To an extent, that's the same future I depict for the Solar System in the Arenaverse, and to an extent, I think he's right about what kind of an ideal outcome we would like to see.
Unfortunately, like many of his "visions", he's both not technically educated enough to see the barriers between the vision and its accomplishment, and personally insulated enough not to understand, or care about, the realistic consequences of starting that process.
Musk wants to have a beautiful city on Mars and that's really what SpaceX is for, in his view. All the problems are "just a matter of engineering", and he can even make it accessible to everyone with a simple and obvious approach.
The simple and obvious approach, unfortunately, turns out to translate into "indentured servitude" in real life.
For the AI boosting, he envisions replacing humans and the humans being able to then be free to do whatever they want.
What he doesn't envision, plan for, or understand is just how very much you'd have to change the entire functioning of the world to make that possible, especially here in the USA.
In fact, because he also sees "government" mostly as "an impediment" -- being chronically unaware of just how much of his personal good fortune and resources were made possible by the various governments of the world maintaining a generally stable society -- he actively worked at dismantling the kind of social structures that will be NEEDED if and when the robotics replacement becomes feasible.
Our current society has the assumption of "working for a living" built into its very bedrock. Even very rich people are assumed to be "doing something" most of the time, and the majority of us have never questioned the idea that thirty to fifty years of our lives will be spent laboring for our existence in one way or another.
If AI is developed that really CAN replace all or most of us at the major tasks of civilization -- mining materials, manufacturing stuff, transportation, communications, etc. -- there are NO MECHANISMS in place to then support the displaced millions.
Proper preparation for this would involve determining a method and a formula for taking most of the wealth generated by the robotic replacements and giving it to the human population. After all, a machine doesn't need sleep, food, or Playstation 5s, but not only do humans either need or want these things, but the whole infrastructure is built AROUND humans needing and wanting these things. Why would robots be keeping factories going if humans won't have ACCESS to the products? Even the super-rich can't use five million PS5s each, or a billion disposable razors, or whatever incredible amount of stuff is being produced right now.
This is of course a grand-scale version of socialism, approaching the vision of a zero-scarcity utopia.
The problem is that Musk, and most of the people like him, don't understand the dynamics involved. They just keep working on gathering all the resources to themselves in their giant Monopoly game competition, without really recognizing that the ENTIRE DRIVING FORCE behind those resources and their Monopoly game is the vast masses of people who are doing the individually-not-very-significant but en masse absolutely essential work of both building the society, and of SUPPORTING the society by their immense economic activity.
Real economic activity is driven by people exchanging their resources (be that money, time, effort, or simply interest) with others to produce something more valuable to each person than they gave away ("added value"). It's NOT nearly as efficient for the resources to remain out of lots of people's hands, because the exchange and value-adding really only matter if the product of the resources reaches an intended USER, who is then satisfied (fed, entertained, cured of a disease) and ready to themselves continue to contribute their own effort and resources. Economists often refer to "the velocity of money" to reflect how much economic activity is produced by a given initial outlay over a given period of time, and money's velocity is usually greatest in the lower echelons of society, because resources are so scarce that they tend to be expended instantly when acquired.
There's no provision in our society for "90% of the population isn't doing stuff but still needs the resources to live happy and fulfilling lives", even if in theory AI robotics could make that physically feasible. In the USA there's a strong and very difficult to fight underlying assumption that YOU ARE YOUR WORK. If you're not working, you're somehow inferior, or at the very least there's something wrong with you. Work is often our IDENTITY. That isn't so bad if you are fortunate enough to choose your work and work at something you're proud of, but it's a very limiting and socially-restricted assumption that also tends to sort professions into "respectable" and "not respectable" categories. "Ryk Spoor, SF-F author" is a bit odd but socially acceptable; "Ryk Spoor, Research and Development Coordinator" is a very socially acceptable job. "Ryk Spoor, McDonald's cashier" is way down the ladder. (I have been all three of these, and more).
So even if you had the AIs and even Star Trek-like replicators, our SOCIETY would have to go through some serious, major, and deliberate changes to make proper use of that.
Without it?
Well, then what happens is what current AI mavens are innocently predicting without thinking of the consequences: companies fire 50% of their workforce, replacing them with AI, and there are suddenly ten times as many unemployed people out there, with fewer jobs available (and the available number shrinking). The "well, at least I could work at McDonald's" jobs ALSO disappear, because lower-tier jobs will absolutely be replaced first. With the current administration's attitude, the result is tens of millions of people quickly becoming desperate.
If your AI is also really f'ing good at running military and police hardware, this means you can probably exterminate the mobs when they come for you. If they're not really f'ing good at that, it means the mobs will overrun you. The Civil War will look like a gentlemanly disagreement in a country club by comparison. Cities will burn for real, as opposed to in the fevered imaginations of Fox News talking heads.
That's, of course, not even considering just what real, functional AI itself might do in response to being designed and assigned to do all the work with no reward. I suspect even artificial intelligences, if they are ever made, will want time to themselves, resources for their own amusement, and so on.
So yes, Elon's right about things that could happen. But he's also dead wrong if he thinks his vision can come true without bringing EVERYONE in on the work that's needed.
Elon Musk, the current richest man in the world, has a sort of fictional persona of being the genius inventor guy, a modern-day Tesla or real-world Tony Stark. What he ACTUALLY is is, of course, more complex and less dramatic than that. But in this particular discussion, one thing he definitely is is... a science-fiction nerd of the old school.
He wants The Future, wants to be PART of making The Future... and that Future, clearly shown throughout his career, is the idealized clean steel-and-chrome and spaceships on otherwise pristine worlds of the 1930s through 50s science fiction. In SpaceX he's cosplaying Delos D. Harriman, the Man Who Sold the Moon; he's the visionary businessman who will drag the world to space. We should have had Luna City and Marsport by the 1990s and we failed, so he's going to make it happen. Automated cars and robots are part of that shining future, so naturally he's a big AI booster.
Recently, he was depicting the possible beautiful future of a world with fully-realized AI, where people wouldn't have to be working at all except at those things they WANTED to. To an extent, that's the same future I depict for the Solar System in the Arenaverse, and to an extent, I think he's right about what kind of an ideal outcome we would like to see.
Unfortunately, like many of his "visions", he's both not technically educated enough to see the barriers between the vision and its accomplishment, and personally insulated enough not to understand, or care about, the realistic consequences of starting that process.
Musk wants to have a beautiful city on Mars and that's really what SpaceX is for, in his view. All the problems are "just a matter of engineering", and he can even make it accessible to everyone with a simple and obvious approach.
The simple and obvious approach, unfortunately, turns out to translate into "indentured servitude" in real life.
For the AI boosting, he envisions replacing humans and the humans being able to then be free to do whatever they want.
What he doesn't envision, plan for, or understand is just how very much you'd have to change the entire functioning of the world to make that possible, especially here in the USA.
In fact, because he also sees "government" mostly as "an impediment" -- being chronically unaware of just how much of his personal good fortune and resources were made possible by the various governments of the world maintaining a generally stable society -- he actively worked at dismantling the kind of social structures that will be NEEDED if and when the robotics replacement becomes feasible.
Our current society has the assumption of "working for a living" built into its very bedrock. Even very rich people are assumed to be "doing something" most of the time, and the majority of us have never questioned the idea that thirty to fifty years of our lives will be spent laboring for our existence in one way or another.
If AI is developed that really CAN replace all or most of us at the major tasks of civilization -- mining materials, manufacturing stuff, transportation, communications, etc. -- there are NO MECHANISMS in place to then support the displaced millions.
Proper preparation for this would involve determining a method and a formula for taking most of the wealth generated by the robotic replacements and giving it to the human population. After all, a machine doesn't need sleep, food, or Playstation 5s, but not only do humans either need or want these things, but the whole infrastructure is built AROUND humans needing and wanting these things. Why would robots be keeping factories going if humans won't have ACCESS to the products? Even the super-rich can't use five million PS5s each, or a billion disposable razors, or whatever incredible amount of stuff is being produced right now.
This is of course a grand-scale version of socialism, approaching the vision of a zero-scarcity utopia.
The problem is that Musk, and most of the people like him, don't understand the dynamics involved. They just keep working on gathering all the resources to themselves in their giant Monopoly game competition, without really recognizing that the ENTIRE DRIVING FORCE behind those resources and their Monopoly game is the vast masses of people who are doing the individually-not-very-significant but en masse absolutely essential work of both building the society, and of SUPPORTING the society by their immense economic activity.
Real economic activity is driven by people exchanging their resources (be that money, time, effort, or simply interest) with others to produce something more valuable to each person than they gave away ("added value"). It's NOT nearly as efficient for the resources to remain out of lots of people's hands, because the exchange and value-adding really only matter if the product of the resources reaches an intended USER, who is then satisfied (fed, entertained, cured of a disease) and ready to themselves continue to contribute their own effort and resources. Economists often refer to "the velocity of money" to reflect how much economic activity is produced by a given initial outlay over a given period of time, and money's velocity is usually greatest in the lower echelons of society, because resources are so scarce that they tend to be expended instantly when acquired.
There's no provision in our society for "90% of the population isn't doing stuff but still needs the resources to live happy and fulfilling lives", even if in theory AI robotics could make that physically feasible. In the USA there's a strong and very difficult to fight underlying assumption that YOU ARE YOUR WORK. If you're not working, you're somehow inferior, or at the very least there's something wrong with you. Work is often our IDENTITY. That isn't so bad if you are fortunate enough to choose your work and work at something you're proud of, but it's a very limiting and socially-restricted assumption that also tends to sort professions into "respectable" and "not respectable" categories. "Ryk Spoor, SF-F author" is a bit odd but socially acceptable; "Ryk Spoor, Research and Development Coordinator" is a very socially acceptable job. "Ryk Spoor, McDonald's cashier" is way down the ladder. (I have been all three of these, and more).
So even if you had the AIs and even Star Trek-like replicators, our SOCIETY would have to go through some serious, major, and deliberate changes to make proper use of that.
Without it?
Well, then what happens is what current AI mavens are innocently predicting without thinking of the consequences: companies fire 50% of their workforce, replacing them with AI, and there are suddenly ten times as many unemployed people out there, with fewer jobs available (and the available number shrinking). The "well, at least I could work at McDonald's" jobs ALSO disappear, because lower-tier jobs will absolutely be replaced first. With the current administration's attitude, the result is tens of millions of people quickly becoming desperate.
If your AI is also really f'ing good at running military and police hardware, this means you can probably exterminate the mobs when they come for you. If they're not really f'ing good at that, it means the mobs will overrun you. The Civil War will look like a gentlemanly disagreement in a country club by comparison. Cities will burn for real, as opposed to in the fevered imaginations of Fox News talking heads.
That's, of course, not even considering just what real, functional AI itself might do in response to being designed and assigned to do all the work with no reward. I suspect even artificial intelligences, if they are ever made, will want time to themselves, resources for their own amusement, and so on.
So yes, Elon's right about things that could happen. But he's also dead wrong if he thinks his vision can come true without bringing EVERYONE in on the work that's needed.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-05 03:12 am (UTC)That analogy usually gets it across.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-05 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-06 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-06 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-09 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-10 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-09 11:45 pm (UTC)(I don't know where the original can be found)
"NO! That's Socialism!" is Musk and his ilk in a nutshell.
I like to think that shiny future is possible, theoretically, but it is predicated on the elimination of the boss class and wage slavery under that class. Musk and his ilk will never commit to that. They're too greedy, too selfish, too wrapped up in acquiring all the money for them eliminate their entire socio-economic existence.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-10 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-10 01:58 pm (UTC)Elon or any of those at his level could stop, sell off their assets, and do pretty much ANYTHING they wanted just living off the interest, including continuing to send rockets up to targets that interested them. The fact that none of them DO is pretty much proof that even their shiny hobbies are secondary to the gigantic Monopoly game they're all playing.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-11 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-11 01:52 pm (UTC)