> That same VC invests in AI companies and by what I heard about her, has done phenomenally well.
Her kids will be fine, its the vast majority of other, non wealthy, kids who are in trouble.
This is the problem in a nutshell - people are happy to do things they know are harmful for personal profit.
Not that we're in any way in that path, of course, with the people making the working machines also accumulating all the wealth. But still, there's something intrinsically good about automation, even when the system is not suited for it.
I want my ai to do dishes and laundry so I can write, draw, do deep cognitive work.
Not for it to do cognitive work and write and draw while I don dishes and laundry.
Personally, I think until real AGI, the current LLMs will automate a lot of tasks, but the market will adapt and humans still end up with about the same percentage of employment and wages.
My own take is very much “wait and see and make sure to stay aware/skill up”
My automation point is just that at least in my career (20 years), my workload has rarely gone down even with plenty of automation around.
I will encourage my kid to gain independence, but of course I'm worried about it! The fact that there is uncertainty in her independence and that I can imagine bad outcomes does not mean I'm working against her interest by encouraging it.
"I don't know what jobs there will be to do" is a statement of uncertainty, and, given how you are relaying it, there must have been fear there as well. But it doesn't seem like it's a statement that the world will be worse. You can be fearful and hopeful at the same time, and fear tends to be the stronger of the two, and come out more strongly, again especially in parenting I find, even if you find the hopeful outcomes more likely.
(note that even the "her kids will be ok" isn't true at the limit. If wealth concentrates sufficiently enough it will lead to societal collapse)
I'm not saying one person can do that alone, but if we collectively believe we should focus on capitalization instead, then there's no one present to influence a more constructive, pro-social, sustainable course for society.
So I don't think it's ridiculous to think it's acting against their interests. Money won't get your kids very far if the thing that made you wealthy also pulled the rug from under them. There needs to be more of a strategy than capital.