The long-shot gubernatorial candidate has much to say about Artificial Intelligence and humanity's lack of preparedness. So why aren't enough folks paying attention?
I gleaned a couple things about Istvan from this interview. I have nothing complimentary to say about any of those things. I will leave it at that and wish him the best.
Istvan is right that nobody wants to talk about AI displacement, and I respect him for putting himself out there on it. But I part ways with him on UBI as the answer.
He actually says it himself in this interview: with a basic income "you'll have food and security and hopefully housing, but the American dream is lost." That's not a solution — that's managed decline. And managed decline is exactly what I watched happen in the industrial region where I grew up.
I was born in Gelsenkirchen, in Germany's Ruhr Valley — the steel and coal heartland that lost its economic base starting in the 1960s. Germany threw everything at it: retraining programs, public investment, new industries, subsidies. Sixty years later, Gelsenkirchen still has the highest poverty rate in Germany. The jobs that replaced steel and coal paid less, arrived late, and never reached the scale needed. The region survived, but it never recovered.
UBI has the same structural problem. Istvan himself asks: "Can we create an environment where we have enough funding and enough income based on those multi-trillion dollar companies? Will they pay us enough money? Is there enough money out there? Can we make abundance for everyone?" Those aren't rhetorical questions. He doesn't have the answers, and neither does anyone else — because the companies capturing the gains from automation have every incentive, and increasingly the political power, to resist the taxation levels required.
The displacement AI is bringing is real and I agree the timeline is short. But a monthly check doesn't solve a power problem. It just makes the dependency official.
As someone who's involved in the robot business and is working on robot AI, among other things, I take issue with his apocalyptic concerns for the near term. He says "robots are going to be tied in with these AI systems, those robots are going to be able to do plumbing jobs, going to be able to do construction jobs, not just white collar jobs."
I am confident that robots will not, in any meaningful way, start fixing pipes or hanging drywall any time in the next 5-10 years. The state-of-the-art robot we built just a couple of years ago would snap in two if it tried to loosen a rusted pipe or install a water heater. The arms and hands simply aren't strong enough to do that sort of work. We broke our hands picking up water bottles the wrong way. Trying to apply 100 pounds of pressure to a pipe wrench while lying upside down under a sink would not be practical, and I see no current technology with that level of power. All of the glamorous dancing robots couldn't pick up a toilet if they tried.
Furthermore, I do not see how AI will displace all software developers. There's a facile illusion of efficiency and effectiveness that's created by "vibe coding," which leads people to think that AI code is just as good, effective, secure, and maintainable as code written by experienced humans, but it's not, and we're quite a ways away from AI just taking over and doing my entire job as a senior software developer. It helps me, but the tech we have today cannot possibly replace me. Maybe in 5-10 years, but certainly not today.
Zoltan is absolutely right. People don't truly understand how society is going to change. What he alluded to, but didn't outright say, is that we have two paths in front of us: one, moving towards that "star trek" type society where we improve everyone's lives through AI/automation.
The second is a situation where 90% of people live in converted shipping containers, with a TV and minimal subsistence provided by the 10%, who live in walled enclaves. We have the ability to choose the better path, but I'm not optimistic.
While Zoltan is a quixotic candidate and obviously will not be the next governor of California, I actually agreed with a lot of what he had to say. Just sayin.
Very interesting conversation. There is so much automation and robotics going on in our communities, but none of it saves the Consumer any money. Humans are being replaced by automation everywhere - Retail stores, fast food restaurants, not-so-fast food restaurants - and the price of the goods or services being sold has risen at a steady rate since 2020. Automation and robotics only benefits the Shareholders. They reap the benefits while we finance all the profits for them. It's a Lose (Consumers) - Win (Owners/Shareholders) situation. Consumers should get a discount when they interact with an automation/robot but that will never happen. We can just choose where we spend our precious dollars.
I gleaned a couple things about Istvan from this interview. I have nothing complimentary to say about any of those things. I will leave it at that and wish him the best.
I just supply the info :)
Istvan is right that nobody wants to talk about AI displacement, and I respect him for putting himself out there on it. But I part ways with him on UBI as the answer.
He actually says it himself in this interview: with a basic income "you'll have food and security and hopefully housing, but the American dream is lost." That's not a solution — that's managed decline. And managed decline is exactly what I watched happen in the industrial region where I grew up.
I was born in Gelsenkirchen, in Germany's Ruhr Valley — the steel and coal heartland that lost its economic base starting in the 1960s. Germany threw everything at it: retraining programs, public investment, new industries, subsidies. Sixty years later, Gelsenkirchen still has the highest poverty rate in Germany. The jobs that replaced steel and coal paid less, arrived late, and never reached the scale needed. The region survived, but it never recovered.
UBI has the same structural problem. Istvan himself asks: "Can we create an environment where we have enough funding and enough income based on those multi-trillion dollar companies? Will they pay us enough money? Is there enough money out there? Can we make abundance for everyone?" Those aren't rhetorical questions. He doesn't have the answers, and neither does anyone else — because the companies capturing the gains from automation have every incentive, and increasingly the political power, to resist the taxation levels required.
The displacement AI is bringing is real and I agree the timeline is short. But a monthly check doesn't solve a power problem. It just makes the dependency official.
I wrote about this in more detail here: https://open.substack.com/pub/wernerglinka/p/ive-seen-this-before
As someone who's involved in the robot business and is working on robot AI, among other things, I take issue with his apocalyptic concerns for the near term. He says "robots are going to be tied in with these AI systems, those robots are going to be able to do plumbing jobs, going to be able to do construction jobs, not just white collar jobs."
I am confident that robots will not, in any meaningful way, start fixing pipes or hanging drywall any time in the next 5-10 years. The state-of-the-art robot we built just a couple of years ago would snap in two if it tried to loosen a rusted pipe or install a water heater. The arms and hands simply aren't strong enough to do that sort of work. We broke our hands picking up water bottles the wrong way. Trying to apply 100 pounds of pressure to a pipe wrench while lying upside down under a sink would not be practical, and I see no current technology with that level of power. All of the glamorous dancing robots couldn't pick up a toilet if they tried.
Furthermore, I do not see how AI will displace all software developers. There's a facile illusion of efficiency and effectiveness that's created by "vibe coding," which leads people to think that AI code is just as good, effective, secure, and maintainable as code written by experienced humans, but it's not, and we're quite a ways away from AI just taking over and doing my entire job as a senior software developer. It helps me, but the tech we have today cannot possibly replace me. Maybe in 5-10 years, but certainly not today.
Just my two cents....
Zoltan is absolutely right. People don't truly understand how society is going to change. What he alluded to, but didn't outright say, is that we have two paths in front of us: one, moving towards that "star trek" type society where we improve everyone's lives through AI/automation.
The second is a situation where 90% of people live in converted shipping containers, with a TV and minimal subsistence provided by the 10%, who live in walled enclaves. We have the ability to choose the better path, but I'm not optimistic.
While Zoltan is a quixotic candidate and obviously will not be the next governor of California, I actually agreed with a lot of what he had to say. Just sayin.
Very interesting conversation. There is so much automation and robotics going on in our communities, but none of it saves the Consumer any money. Humans are being replaced by automation everywhere - Retail stores, fast food restaurants, not-so-fast food restaurants - and the price of the goods or services being sold has risen at a steady rate since 2020. Automation and robotics only benefits the Shareholders. They reap the benefits while we finance all the profits for them. It's a Lose (Consumers) - Win (Owners/Shareholders) situation. Consumers should get a discount when they interact with an automation/robot but that will never happen. We can just choose where we spend our precious dollars.