A Spanish agency became so sick of models and influencers that they created their own with AI — and she’s raking in up to $11,000 a month::Founder Rubén Cruz said AI model Aitana was so convincing that a famous Latin actor asked her on a date.
A Spanish agency became so sick of models and influencers that they created their own with AI — and she’s raking in up to $11,000 a month::Founder Rubén Cruz said AI model Aitana was so convincing that a famous Latin actor asked her on a date.
Why must we value how a person “contributes to society” via their output for capitalism?
Is studying philosophy useless? Is making art? Is reaping the benefits of a society built upon tens of thousands of years of human innovation to just sit back and relax a bit?
Humanity worked hard to get to a point where this is even a question. If you listen to the capitalists saying “If you’re not working you’re worthless” then you’ve been tricked. Tens of thousands of years of human innovation and suffering to advance society to a point where we don’t all have to work, but the rich want you to think that’s a bad thing. It is not natural that the benefits of all of that effort and suffering should all collect in the hands of a few at the top while everyone else suffers.
The “simple answer” is UBI because there literally is no alternative short of outright killing people that don’t work to maintain automation. You and everyone else deserves a cut of that pie, we and all of our ancestors put blood, sweat, and tears into it. Let the people relax and enjoy the fruits of that society.
Well unfortunately that’s the proposed solution too. When you ask an AI optimist what their solution is for workers after their jobs are replaced by ai, a common answer is a universal basic income. But if you believe it’s unsustainable to pay a person to do a job that could be done by a robot (which for the record isn’t really accurate, as we’ve been sustaining that), then it probably isn’t sustainable to pay that same person for doing nothing…
So we’re left with the same problem, what do we do about the workers?
I wonder if UBI is more unsustainable, or unsustainable at all - imagine a future where most things can be produced so efficiently without the involvement of humans that the idea of not doing so is simply preposterous, akin to insist on using horses after motorization became widely available. Employing humans might incur a higher lost opportunity cost than simply paying everybody to do “nothing”. I’m using “” since all those people would of course do something, just not grind for bare survival or “the economy”, which is arguably isn’t necessary anymore, or at least not as necessary as it once was.
In a way, overcoming work (as in “unwanted compensated grind”) is a way to truly live up to our potential as humans because it asks the very basic question of “how to be?” outside of what for millennia was basic necessity or narrowly defined by society.
Why is that unsustainable?
That person isn’t going to spend their life doing “nothing,” humans have an intrinsic need to do something. Psychology has shown us pretty conclusively. The difference is once we’ve automated so much, that can be whatever we want instead of focusing on the bare necessities to survive. The only way “paying someone to do nothing” is unsustainable is if you’ve bought into the lie that our value as human beings is inherently tied to what we produce for capitalism.