Re:At Davos, IBM Chief Predicts Artificial Intelligence Won’...
by cutler on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @08:43PM
(#13423327)
You're telling me. My partner here in London works full-time as a cleaning supervisor and after she has paid her rent, bills and travel costs she has a paltry £65 with which to shop for food. And that's renting a room in a house. A 1-bed flat for her is out of the question. I think my parents in the early 60s were better off than her in real terms.
I'll all for technological advancement. As a society, we've accomplished marvelous things. But it's useful to remember whether individuals are actually improving their standard of living or not.
> now you're commanding power roughly equivalent to 100 horses when you hop into your car
The flipside of this is that (for most US) you must have a car to perform basic necessities such as purchasing food to eat. Food that would have otherwise been in your vegetable garden/chicken coop/pond.
Our society is immensely better for well-off city dwellers, but there are large portions of the population whose level of freedom is only slighly better than servitude.