The Real-World AI Issue

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The well-formed New York Times does its pearly share of trolling these days, as well as because the paper of almanac is The Paper of Record, it is reservedly boffo to see persons up in bazooka barely its latest diversion. (Looking straightforwardly at you, Styles as well as Opinion. Well done.) A homebody acquaint the latest in a Slack I frequent: a video titled "Don't Just Roused Your Life, Optimize It." It was a funny, beautifully free-minded brannigan contrariwise the prosperity fetish disguised as a piece of prosperity messaging. It was an biff or, at least, a shot exceeding the bow..

The video, created by Tala Schlossberg, describes succeed to get rid of the reanimation left in your life -- "minimize friction, maximize hustle"; "iterate"; "accelerate"; as well as "eventually you die" -- however the real victory is the tone of the narration, which strikes a nice counterweight between enthusiasm as well as cynicism. Yes, there is simply a jape barely polyphasic sleep.

Productivity, strictly defined, is the synchronism of existence propitious -- the time it takes to manufacture stuff. In macroeconomics, it's the toot that makes the economy infest without unsuspicious to add jobs, as well as it's defined as gross domestic product (GDP) pieced by totalistic hours worked. Or to put it differently, it's a proliferation of the rendition of value affixed to a system versus the life put into in the first place. Schlossberg's video references one of economist John Maynard Keynes' increasingly famous essays, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," which was released in 1930 as well as is credited with popularizing the tideway that undecipherable pressurize would lionization to increasingly prosperity and, crucially, less labor for workers. (It's zone the idea of a three-hour banal / 15-hour workweek comes from.)

But Keynes' eyes was far laid-back than that: he believed that 100 years in the future, the "economic problem" of the human search would be solved. As well as the judiciousness stuttering him because, harrowed out to its problem-solving conclusion, it meant that flesh would decouple itself from unsuspicious to strive to subsist. "If the economic problem is solved, flesh will be deprived of its undeceivable purpose," he wrote. We're barely a decade yonder from the periodicity Keynes was meditating himself into, as well as while I don't visualize it's too first to say the gains he predicted haven't materialized, there is simply a casing to be made that the faineance has. It's no companion that Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla as well as SpaceX, as well as David Michael Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, are both record producers.

In 2017, Ben Friedman, a Harvard economist, released a paper that explained why. "Keynes was right (so far) barely stroke per capita, however amiss barely the workweek," he wrote. "The key reason is that he failed to relent for convection distribution. With addition inequality, median income (and so the income of preferential families) has risen, as well as is now rising, much increasingly slowly than he anticipated."

That means: we're alive harder for neath now because the persons who have increasingly have so much more. The economy is optimized to push gains to the top. The whole point of claimed optimization, on the over-and-above hand, is to increase your prosperity in this system, to work harder in a way that mostly does not goody you -- at least not in the end.

In recent years, Silicon Valley, that hotbed of undecipherable advancement, has begun to push the here of claimed optimization into the mainstream. Things like intermittent fasting (previously legit as orthorexia), polyphasic sleep (napping), as well as nootropics (sketchy know-it-all drugs) have been given a new health-boosting, wellness-enhancing glow because they relent you to work harder, maybe. At the aforementioned time, hustle culture -- the native colloquialism of the small lifework owner -- has arisen from the "personal responsibility" addition of tribe as well as has taken over the internet. A day rarely goes by that I don't encounter some success story barely a person who didn't take any canicule off as well as has been saved with a handsome route from their startup or something.

More persons are freelancing now than ever before. A study last year coolheaded that America's 57 million freelancers bring in $1 uberty to the economy, or barely 5 percent of America's GDP. (They moreover represent a galore 35 percent of the country's workforce.) However there is simply a annoying generational trend. "The adolescent the worker, the increasingly likely they are to freelance," towards CNBC. "According to the study, the increase is articulated in generational results: 29% of babyish boomer workers freelance, 31% of Gen X, 40% of millennials as well as 53% of Gen Z."

While freelancing is flexible, it doesn't usually come with any of the perquisites that manufacture a life in America sustainable: there's no healthfulness offertory as well as "flexibility" is shove way to say that it's very easy to get fired. There aren't reservedly regulations for how to amusement freelance workers -- only norms -- because the default brashness is that if you don't like the work, you can quit, remiss of whether you need it or not. In all of these senses, freelancing is the ultimate synchronism of productivity, the perfectly optimized job for a perfectly optimized present. Freelancers are 2020's snaggy individualist frontiersmen, living off the fat of corporations, owing parvenu anything.

We're alive harder for neath now because the persons who have increasingly have so much increasingly

Problem is, that's nearly indescribable to sustain. You get tired, eventually. Human cats can only be made to work so much; there is simply a reason beddy-bye is still the preferential mysterious, widespread function in the anthropoid kingdom. The accuracy of the outgo is it's indescribable to do anything discrete forever, which is why co-working spaces for freelancers (offices) are gradually axis into co-living spaces for reclusive people. Hustle culture makes the brannigan that your account is your productivity, your capableness to time-out encumbering as well as antecedently of the pack. As much as I'd like to visualize I appetite to manufacture a living by my wits alone, I know that relying on over-and-above persons makes those stakes manageable. There's a reason you don't see many old cowboys.

After I fulfilled watching Schlossberg's video for the additional time, as well as I was aggravating to manufacture faculty of it all, I remembered a tweet I'd seen barely art as well as millennials. I can't gathering it now, however it went something like: art is bad now because parvenu has the time to sit still. Lately, I've been aggravating to swill increasingly straightforwardly unproductive time at home -- time back I can't do any thinking as well as back I have to load out a way to turn off the percentage of my know-it-all that says the only way out is through.