People are not simple machines or animals. Unless AI becomes strictly better than humans and humans + AI, from the perspective of other humans, at all activities, there will still be lots of things for humans to do to provide value for each other.
The question is how do our individuals, and more importantly our various social and economic systems handle it when exactly what humans can do to provide value for each other shifts rapidly, and balances of power shift rapidly.
If the benefits of AI accrue to/are captured by a very small number of people, and the costs are widely dispersed things can go very badly without strong societies that are able to mitigate the downsides and spread the upsides.
> I found it quite frustrating how teams would be legitimately actively pursuing ideas that would be good for the world, without prioritizing short-term Google interests, only to be met with cynicism in the court of public opinion.
This is part and parcel of working for a visible/impactful organization. People will constantly write things, good and bad about the organization. Most of them, good and bad, will be wrong. They'll be based on falsehoods, misinterpretations, over-simplifications, political perspectives, etc.
This becomes a problem when people in the company assume that because most of the feedback is nonsense, that all of it is nonsense. That is especially temping when the feedback is hurtful to you or critical of your team or values.
I found a bit of Neil Gaiman's MasterClass very helpful when reading such feedback. Very roughly Gaiman said that when someone is telling you something doesn't work for them, and what you should do to fix it, you should believe them that it doesn't work for them, but that the author is much better placed than the reader to know how and if to fix it.
In my context I try to understand why someone is saying something, what information I can take from it, and whether there is anything within my expertise, control, or influence that can or should be done about it.
(If you take anything from this comment, I think it should be to go listen to Neil Gaiman talk about anything!)
The question is how do our individuals, and more importantly our various social and economic systems handle it when exactly what humans can do to provide value for each other shifts rapidly, and balances of power shift rapidly.
If the benefits of AI accrue to/are captured by a very small number of people, and the costs are widely dispersed things can go very badly without strong societies that are able to mitigate the downsides and spread the upsides.