I agree with all that you wrote today. I am especially concerned about mass unemployment. If Trump could successfully remove all undocumented workers, millions of jobs will open up, but almost all of them are manual labor. How many white collar workers are physically able to muck out corrals, stack hay bales, pick strawberries, live in temporary cow and sheep camps, work in slaughterhouses, mop floors? And many of these jobs are vulnerable to robotics, indeed many in agriculture already have been automated. There even now are dairy operations where nearly everything is automated.
When I was a kid, many science fiction stories and even articles in major magazines projected a world of delightful leisure. I don't see how this could happen unless there is revolutionary change. Perhaps even a Butlerian Jihad? Or would it unfold as suggested in the book Superintelligence, where people by the billions will opt for life in paradise inside a computing system, their messy, enmiserated, useless bodies disposed?
I agree this is concerning. The "delightful leisure" vision from old sci-fi assumed we'd distribute the benefits of automating tedious manual labor while living intellectual lives, but we're instead heading toward the literal reverse where AI captures white-collar work and manual labor becomes one of the last human refuges.
I'm hopeful that potentially AI can create a lot of wealth and economic growth that can lift a lot of society, thus still giving a different variant of "delightful leisure", though trickier than we first thought. I'm worried this will be realizable but blocked by policy, and we get a tragedy where we have the tools for post-scarcity while maintaining artificial scarcity out of ideological habit.
I agree that the ATM is an important data point for understanding technological impact on jobs, but I think it's probably also important to notice that the number of bank teller jobs has been falling since ~2010, likely due to online banking. (https://datausa.io/profile/soc/tellers)
Regarding Jensen Huang's loyalties, it might be worth pointing out that he is originally from Taiwan, and that there are geopolitical implications for Taiwan if the U.S. cuts off the supply of chips to China completely. Right now Taiwan makes those chips. If China can't have any access to those chips, and it looks like the U.S. is going to win the AGI race, then China has an incentive to blockade or invade Taiwan. If they can't have the chips anyway, then attacking Taiwan to stop the flow of chips to the U.S., might be a strategic option to delay U.S. AGI dominance, possibly giving China enough time to catch up with their own foundries.
Mr. Huang and the Trump Administration may well be aware of this, which could explain why they aren't cutting off the H20 exports yet.
I agree with all that you wrote today. I am especially concerned about mass unemployment. If Trump could successfully remove all undocumented workers, millions of jobs will open up, but almost all of them are manual labor. How many white collar workers are physically able to muck out corrals, stack hay bales, pick strawberries, live in temporary cow and sheep camps, work in slaughterhouses, mop floors? And many of these jobs are vulnerable to robotics, indeed many in agriculture already have been automated. There even now are dairy operations where nearly everything is automated.
When I was a kid, many science fiction stories and even articles in major magazines projected a world of delightful leisure. I don't see how this could happen unless there is revolutionary change. Perhaps even a Butlerian Jihad? Or would it unfold as suggested in the book Superintelligence, where people by the billions will opt for life in paradise inside a computing system, their messy, enmiserated, useless bodies disposed?
I agree this is concerning. The "delightful leisure" vision from old sci-fi assumed we'd distribute the benefits of automating tedious manual labor while living intellectual lives, but we're instead heading toward the literal reverse where AI captures white-collar work and manual labor becomes one of the last human refuges.
I'm hopeful that potentially AI can create a lot of wealth and economic growth that can lift a lot of society, thus still giving a different variant of "delightful leisure", though trickier than we first thought. I'm worried this will be realizable but blocked by policy, and we get a tragedy where we have the tools for post-scarcity while maintaining artificial scarcity out of ideological habit.
But who knows? This is tough to track.
I agree that the ATM is an important data point for understanding technological impact on jobs, but I think it's probably also important to notice that the number of bank teller jobs has been falling since ~2010, likely due to online banking. (https://datausa.io/profile/soc/tellers)
Good point. I wonder to what extent this has shifted employment versus resulted in just fewer jobs.
Regarding Jensen Huang's loyalties, it might be worth pointing out that he is originally from Taiwan, and that there are geopolitical implications for Taiwan if the U.S. cuts off the supply of chips to China completely. Right now Taiwan makes those chips. If China can't have any access to those chips, and it looks like the U.S. is going to win the AGI race, then China has an incentive to blockade or invade Taiwan. If they can't have the chips anyway, then attacking Taiwan to stop the flow of chips to the U.S., might be a strategic option to delay U.S. AGI dominance, possibly giving China enough time to catch up with their own foundries.
Mr. Huang and the Trump Administration may well be aware of this, which could explain why they aren't cutting off the H20 exports yet.
I'd also add that there are some unconfirmed reports that Nvidia may have included location tracking and a backdoor in the H20s sent to China.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/china-claims-nvidia-built-backdoor-into-h20-chip-designed-for-chinese-market/
This is one of the clearest policy docs I've ever read. Wow