Musk Envisions Coming AI Dictatorship

Letter to Ephesians: Billionaire Elon Musk says it’s now ok for us John Does to stop “squirreling” $ away for retirement since AI will make it “irrelevant” in a decade or two. Right. And EVs will replace gas cars in a year or so. BTW, my fingers ache correcting wrong AI advice …

Ted Jenkins also wrote “not so fast” in a Fox News op ed as to Musk’s assurance it’s no longer necessary to “bother preparing for your future because robots & automation will take care of it.” Mr. Jenkins gives a lengthy point for pointy refutation to Musk’s “improbable … utopian” view of the coming age. As he begins, “Your retirement isn’t a science experiment” performed on behalf of a man so wealthy that “money no longer matters.” But, Jenkins adds, retirement is about paying for necessities: “It’s groceries. It’s housing. It’ healthcare. It’s dignity. Those bills don’t wait for AI. Those bills can’t be picked up by Tesla.” Most importantly, he says, “Musk’s argument rests on a futuristic idea that artificial intelligence & robotics will create so much productivity that scarcity disappears. In this world, goods become cheap, income becomes universal & money loses importance.” As Jenkins concluded, “That’s an interesting theory. However, since the dawn of time money & power have always mattered.”

Jenkins calls Musk “reckless,” and it is. I also say it’s a misinterpretation of history. In fact, the grossly optimistic Musk sounds like Karl Marx who over 150 yrs ago promised a proletariat revolution & a cataclysmic redistribution of wealth via a world-wide dictatorship of the average man; it was going to do away with the need for filthy money as well. Truth is, Marx was & always will be wrong as every Marxist society forced upon folks since has put money in Marxists’ pockets and out of the average man’s. Elon, we don’t need your repackaging of Marx ideology with a “Dictatorship of the AI.”

Davd Soul