Automation is a good thing? It definitely made the rich richer, but I'm not sure it made the average person happier. Depression rates are at an all-time high, after all.
If AI provides even a 1% productivity boost, they will, and we'll all be worse off for it when everyone forgets how to code without relying on fallible, proprietary services. Sure, local LLMs are a thing, but they currently are vastly inferior to the cloud offerings, and I don't see the status quo changing any time soon.
We all agree that employers shouldn't be allowed to force the employees to use drugs for short-term productivity boosts. I hope we'll see something similar for AI - it has the potential to be equally damaging to employees in the long term.
