I think people wildly underestimate how protectionist people - particularly educated software engineers and PhDs will get once an AI model directly impacts their source of wealth.

Red state blue collar workers got their candidate to pass tariffs. What happens when both blue state white collar workers and red state blue collar workers need to contest with AI. Perhaps not within the next 10 years, but certainly within 20 years!

And if you think 20 years is a long time... 2004 was when Halo 2 came out

> I think people wildly underestimate how protectionist people - particularly educated software engineers and PhDs will get once an AI model directly impacts their source of wealth.

I don't know what power you imagine SWEs and PhDs posses, but the last time their employers flexed their power by firing them in droves (despite record profits); the employees sure seemed powerless, and society shrugged it off and/or expressed barely-concealed schadenfreude.

They were sued for collusion and the lawyers got a massive payout and the employees got a fraction of lost wages. I was one of them. (Employees not lawyers.)

The Apple et al suit was many years before the post-covid layoffs: which I was referring to in my comment.

That settlement favored Apple, Google and the other conspirators because they only paid out a fraction of what they would have paid in salaries absent the collusion - so the settlement was not exactly a show of force by the engineers. Additionally, this was after a judge had thrown out a lower settlement amount the lawyers representing the class had agreed to.

It's not going to stop it though even if they try though. You can't stop technical progress like this any more than you can stop piracy.

But agreed, between the unions with political pull and "AI safety" grifters I suspect there could be some level of regulatory risk, particularly for the megacorps in California. I doubt it will be some national thing in the US absent a major political upheaval. Definitely possible in the EU which will probably just be a price passed on to customers or reduced access, but that's nothing new for them.

I keep seeing people say you can’t stop progress (social, technical, etc.) but has this really been tested? There seems to be a lot of political upheaval at least being threatened on the near future, and depending on the forces that come into power I imagine they may be willing to do a lot to protect that power.

Tucker Carlson at one point said if FSD was going to take away trucking jobs we should stop that with regulation.

There are amistics - the voluntary non-use of technology once it's available - which all cultures engage in to greater or lesser degrees. All technology has a price and sometimes it's not worth it - see leaded gasoline for an extreme example.

But in the general sense, I think it's tautologically correct to say better models always lead to better predictions, which always give an edge in competitions on an individual or societal level. So long term I do believe learning trumps ignorance, not in all cases but on average.

Hopefully that time AI will be working for us in our homes, stores and farms so we don't need to work as much and this is ok.

People will still need purpose, which for better or worse is often provided by their job.

Most of the new policies and court decisions, including the one I linked in my reply, have been disjoint with the will of the people. I don't see how your point about shifting sentiment (which I very much agree with) means we'll see any sort of regulatory action from the federal government, especially in the US. Maybe in the EU, someday, after most of the damage has been done?

> What happens when both blue state white collar workers and red state blue collar workers need to contest with AI. Perhaps not within the next 10 years, but certainly within 20 years!

Populism. Probably the fascist right-wing kind, but I expect some form of populism. Related, if we're talking about a 20 year time horizon, I'm genuinely unsure if society will still exist in any recognizable fashion at the rate we're going...

The only upside is state-level minimum wage increases. The federal minimum wage is still a complete joke at $7.25 an hour.

But there's bigger fish to fry for American politics and worker obsolescence is not really top of mind for anyone.