Will the AI backlash spill into the streets?

AI Job Creation vs Destruction

• Central question: if AI can perform “wholesale automation of intelligence,” what new jobs arise that AI itself can’t do?
• Some argue most prior “new jobs” weren’t in maintaining machines but in entirely new sectors (services, commerce), so something similar may happen again.
• Others counter that modern AI can occupy far more roles than past machines, so net job losses are plausible even if some new work appears.
• Several commenters expect partial, not total, automation: 20–30% headcount cuts in white‑collar roles (software, support, sales development) are already visible, and that alone is economically significant.

Pace and Limits of AI Progress

• Disagreement over whether current LLMs are on a path to AGI or a limited paradigm that will hit diminishing returns.
• One side expects continued strong gains, citing immature techniques and past underestimation (e.g., solar, prior IT waves).
• The other side stresses that not all tech follows exponential curves (unlike Moore’s law), so radical “end of scarcity” scenarios may require future paradigm shifts, not just bigger LLMs.

Who Benefits: Distribution, Class, and Politics

• Thread is skeptical that cheaper production will automatically yield cheaper goods or better lives; recent productivity gains have mostly gone to capital, not wages.
• Many foresee AI as primarily attacking white‑collar, higher‑paid work (software, back office, BDRs) after blue‑collar automation already hollowed out manufacturing.
• Class fragmentation and weak unions are seen as key reasons why there may be little broad political resistance to white‑collar displacement.
• Some imagine a future where social welfare plus cheap AI‑produced goods make non‑work viable; others respond that this depends entirely on political struggle, not technology.

Backlash, Protests, and Historical Parallels

• Several commenters doubt there will be large‑scale “AI riots”: unemployment is currently low, and most people experience AI as incremental tooling, not existential threat.
• Luddites are invoked both as a cautionary analogy and as people who were “right” that their own lives worsened even if later generations benefited.
• One long critique argues that elites frame the issue as “helping the displaced” instead of asking who should own and control AI; if displacement becomes massive, the logical demand would be socializing AI’s gains.
• Protests are seen as capable of influencing elections and, in some historical cases, larger policy, but many doubt they’ll overturn entrenched economic power around AI.

Concrete Automation Examples

• Self‑driving: cited as a warning that “almost here” tech can remain limited for decades; others argue recent systems (e.g., Waymo, Tesla) show it is finally scaling.
• Self‑checkout: widely deployed; seen as an example where automation won, but with caveats about theft, customer experience, and still‑needed staff.
• Software work: viewed as unusually automatable due to testing and verification, but also as a field that has survived multiple “automated programming” waves.