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Helen's avatar

Honestly, I have been waiting for this article all my life....as a doctor 30 years of being shut down every time I even hint at the really obvious (to me) fact that our jobs benefit us a million times more than they could ever benefit almost any patient....we are though on the edge of patients choosing the free AI with it's 98% accuracy over the human doctor with our 74% accuracy. Additionally no chance of being sexually abused, no power dynamic. Great point about the make work involved in infantilising everyone and setting up a structure where some humans arbitrarily decide what treatment other humans can have compared to a simpler automated system with some safeguards for the truly ridiculous etc. but my experience is that most patients are perfectly capable of interacting with a medical AI and choosing treatments based on that. Also, medical litigation collapses as you can't sue an AI and with that money in the system instead of lawyers' pockets we can all have all the MRIs and genetic testing we might want. Happy to be out of a job in a world where honesty rules, bring it on....the part of me that sees all this stuff feels very lonely so thanks for this article....

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Oscar Brigstocke's avatar

I think that make-work or UBI (or "welfare," as you call it) are two sides of the same lousy coin. Neither really honors the wealth of literature on positive psychology, which suggests that the sense of dedicating oneself to something profoundly useful is of fundamental importance to people’s lives, neither promotes "eudaimonia" or "flourishing," and both could lead to profound ennui, as Carl argued, potentially making society worse off on balance. In general, I don't really see a scenario in which maximal automation doesn't lead to some form of cultural, economic, and/or political disempowerment with an accompanying psychological impact.

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