Everyone knows that in the long run the industrial revolution was a positive. But at the time, the disruption caused lots of misery. Farmers were driven from farms that had relatively good living conditions, to cities with awful working conditions, living conditions, and lower wages. Eventually things improved, but it didn't happen overnight.
What does it matter if there are more clothes, if there aren't any consumers to buy them? We are looking at a world where humans are obsolete just like horses. There is nothing an unskilled worker can do that a machine can't, at least in the near future. And many skilled workers do jobs vulnerable to automation as well. The vast majority of the human population is unnecessary, just as horses were after the invention of cars.
Do you really believe this? Horses can become obsolete because they are a domesticated animal, they are a tool. Humans are really something quite different.
It is truly an insult to humanity to think; all these people doing menial jobs which could be automated are now obsolete. That they are somehow incapable of higher thoughts and reasoning and cannot add value beyond the machines.
In fact, while certainly there is a range of inherent potential between humans, my understanding is that the nominal human capacity for creative thought is orders of magnitude beyond the point of obsolescence by any kind of "artificial intelligence" we expect to be able to create at least within the next century.
No, certainly we have not yet created anything even remotely like the machine that will be our master.
The average human, as we have asked each generation of "average" human before us, will use technology to reach farther than you can imagine they would ever be able to reach.
And also, it's worth considering, how very much we tend to under-estimate the intelligence of historical man from our lofty perch of technological superiority, just as we under-estimate our future potential.
My favorite quote from I, Robot is a man questioning the intelligence of a robot. "Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?" The robot replies, "Can you?"
Most humans aren't that special. Long before alphaGo beat one of the best Go players in the entire world, simple Go programs could destroy the majority of players. Sure, AI probably won't be able to do computer programming for a long time. But the average person with an IQ of 100 is not going to retrain to be a computer programmer. AI doesn't need to be as intelligent as the best humans, it just needs to be as intelligent as the average person. Probably much less than that, because the average job is boring repetitive work that doesn't necessarily require much intelligence.
I mean seriously, where do you predict all the unemployed people will go to? What jobs do you think are invulnerable to automation, and can absorb 90% of the population? What jobs have such great economic value, require lots of unskilled workers, and can't be replaced by machines?
What does it matter if there are more clothes, if there aren't any consumers to buy them? We are looking at a world where humans are obsolete just like horses. There is nothing an unskilled worker can do that a machine can't, at least in the near future. And many skilled workers do jobs vulnerable to automation as well. The vast majority of the human population is unnecessary, just as horses were after the invention of cars.