How should we respond to the A.I. Disruption?

2PhiloVoid · Thursday at 3:53 PM

Psychologist, Neuroscientist (and futurist), Joel Pearson, emphasizes the psychological fact that most people are not ready for the wide variety of societal disruptions that A.I. is, and will increasingly be, bringing upon our communities. This is what he states in the video below and he proposes that leaders of the world need to urgently begin to create measures to address the onslaught of change that will leave people in dysfunctional states of uncertainty, conflicted or confused by all that will transpire.

The central question in this thread is, then: How do you think we should ethically respond to the oncoming societal disruptions that A.I. is bringing with it?

AI is disrupting everything. Here's the human change plan. | Joel Pearson | TEDxSydney (17 minutes)

Hans Blaster · 2026-06-21T12:45:36-0500

2PhiloVoid said:
Psychologist, Neuroscientist (and futurist), Joel Pearson, emphasizes the psychological fact that most people are not ready for the wide variety of societal disruptions that A.I. is, and will increasingly be, bringing upon our communities. This is what he states in the video below and he proposes that leaders of the world need to urgently begin to create measures to address the onslaught of change that will leave people in dysfunctional states of uncertainty, conflicted or confused by all that will transpire.

The central question in this thread is, then: How do you think we should ethically respond to the oncoming societal disruptions that A.I. is bringing with it?

Just tell people that push their AI nonsense at you to knock it off and move on from there.

2PhiloVoid · 2026-06-21T13:10:47-0500

Hans Blaster said:
Just tell people that push their AI nonsense at you to knock it off and move on from there.

From what Joel Pearson says in the OP video, it's not going to simply be a matter of us taking our votes somewhere else.

BUT if it's that easy as you seem to imply, I'm all for it.

Hans Blaster · 2026-06-21T13:25:04-0500

2PhiloVoid said:
From what Joel Pearson says in the OP video, it's not going to simply be a matter of us taking our votes somewhere else.

BUT if it's that easy as you seem to imply, I'm all for it.

OH, there was a video. Excuse me a moment:

HEY SYSADMINS! Please stop letting your sales bots inject ads into the middle of posts. The black rectangles of YT links look just like the black rectangles of your ads. For the love sanity put the ads at the bottom of the page, or between posts. We're trying to have a conversation here and your ads are making that impossible.

OK, I'm back now. I might take a look at your video later. From my experience, most of these claims about the intrusiveness of AI in our lives are vastly overblown. Most of the "AI" I encounter is text generated answers o this site (which I mostly skip as I don't care what some bot said) or AI "images" on other social media sites.

jacks · 2026-06-21T13:28:43-0500

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

AI is coming whether we rally against it or not.

Interesting Video, though I'd like to hear his details on the "National AI Change Plans."

2PhiloVoid · 2026-06-21T13:33:19-0500

Hans Blaster said:
OH, there was a video. Excuse me a moment:

HEY SYSADMINS! Please stop letting your sales bots inject ads into the middle of posts. The black rectangles of YT links look just like the black rectangles of your ads. For the love sanity put the ads at the bottom of the page, or between posts. We're trying to have a conversation here and your ads are making that impossible.

I agree.

Hans Blaster said:
OK, I'm back now. I might take a look at your video later.

That's reasonable. If you can, I'd like to hear your feed back on the video. If you can't, though, I understand.

Hans Blaster said:
From my experience, most of these claims about the intrusiveness of AI in our lives are vastly overblown. Most of the "AI" I encounter is text generated answers o this site (which I mostly skip as I don't care what some bot said) or AI "images" on other social media sites.

I agree with you that some of the A.I. invasion currently being cited is slightly overblown. But, I don't trust that this will be the case moving forward one or two decades from now. ........... I hope I'm wrong. I hope Joel Pearson is wrong.

2PhiloVoid · 2026-06-21T13:52:22-0500

Hans Blaster · 2026-06-21T14:03:33-0500

2PhiloVoid said:
Psychologist, Neuroscientist (and futurist), Joel Pearson, emphasizes the psychological fact that most people are not ready for the wide variety of societal disruptions that A.I. is, and will increasingly be, bringing upon our communities. This is what he states in the video below and he proposes that leaders of the world need to urgently begin to create measures to address the onslaught of change that will leave people in dysfunctional states of uncertainty, conflicted or confused by all that will transpire.

The central question in this thread is, then: How do you think we should ethically respond to the oncoming societal disruptions that A.I. is bringing with it?

AI is disrupting everything. Here's the human change plan. | Joel Pearson | TEDxSydney (17 minutes)

OK, I watched that thing. It was all a con-man's pablum. Selling fear and optimism at the same time with the promise that we have a plan (or at least he does) and then concluding when it is all over "governments should make an AI plan for what changes". (Duh!) Perhaps I should have expected no better of a "neuro-futurist" as all "futurist" pudits are just fantacists seeking cash with no useful expertise or solutions.

2PhiloVoid · 2026-06-21T14:27:09-0500

Hans Blaster said:
OK, I watched that thing. It was all a con-man's pablum. Selling fear and optimism at the same time with the promise that we have a plan (or at least he does) and then concluding when it is all over "governments should make an AI plan for what changes". (Duh!) Perhaps I should have expected no better of a "neuro-futurist" as all "futurist" pudits are just fantacists seeking cash with no useful expertise or solutions.

Ok. You're response is interesting and suggests that we ignore the hype and that if we vote right, things will get better for the human job market.

Am I phrasing this as a reasonable representation of your current view of the A.I. Disruption?

Hans Blaster · 2026-06-21T14:50:40-0500

2PhiloVoid said:
Ok. You're response is interesting and suggests that we ignore the hype and that if we vote right, things will get better for the human job market.

Am I phrasing this as a reasonable representation of your current view of the A.I. Disruption?

I don't think I said anything about voting.

As far as AI goes:

1. The general hype out there is off the scale. Way ahead of the technology.

2. The "hyper"exponential growth specified in the video is not supported in his claims. I don't even know how you measure that. LLMs have gotten more efficient. Some models get less error prone. (Though it does seem possible that any such LLM can be poisoned with bad info or its own output.) LLMs are still just "next response" probability models. No different than the thing on my phone that displays three guesses of what I am trying to type (thankfully no such annoyances appear on this computer), but with a broader range of responses and knowledge bases. The hype/fear of "general AI" is just that -- I see no reason it can happen.

3. The market for LLM products seems ridiculously overestimated. Companies are building for markets that aren't there.

4. The latest thing is to properly account for the actual resources used by the AI model (counting "tokens" used) and companies are realizing that the modest benefits they are getting from using the AI tools require access to "unlimited token" plans that would cost way more if they were metered. This "promotional" cost model will end and AI usage will go down rather than the AI companies getting lots more money.

5. Much of the general public is rather sick of the AI output people push into their faces: memes and images, summarized bullet lists, etc.

Finally, the biggest threat to our society from AI is not advanced AI deciding to rule over/kill us (cf. Butlerian jihad), or destroying large numbers of jobs, or environmental damage, but the circular investment schemes and overbuilt infrastructure that may collapse the stock market and parts of the economy.

Neogaia777 · 2026-06-21T23:05:09-0500

AI will take/is taking a lot of human jobs. Wherever a Bot or a program can be made/developed to do the job that a human would normally do, or soon, used to do, they'll do it, or put a program or Bot in it's place, and they are finding out this can be done with a lot of jobs, or in a lot of places, and coupled with robotics technologies, a lot of human jobs are going to be replaced soon, and it's happening now.

They are able to create more and more increasingly complex programs that is replacing a lot of human jobs, etc. And they are able to alter the program on the fly, if it needs modifying, to become even better at those jobs, etc. And they are even able to create self modifying programs/AI's, that will become better at their jobs all by themselves, on the fly, programming themselves to be, or do, or get better at those jobs, all by themselves, on the fly, or as they are doing those jobs, or are operating/learning at those jobs, becoming superior at those jobs, to humans that would normally do, or used to do those jobs, etc. For a lot of jobs, bots/programs/AI's are quickly making a lot of humans that would normally do those jobs, or used to do those jobs, obsolete.

And this/these are the corporate goals surrounding programs/bots/AI right now, etc, to make a lot of humans unnecessary/obsolete, etc. And that's exactly what is already in the process of happening right now, etc. That's why they're spending all this money on it, and are competing with one another hard right now about it, etc, those various corporations are right now, etc, because they all want to be the one that comes out on top with it over the others with it, etc, and they could care less about human jobs losses, etc. They know it's the future, and they want to be the one that comes out on top with it, etc.

If I was a human who probably wasn't already receiving what will probably become some sort of UBI system soon, or had on work on a job for a living, etc, I would probably focus on getting training on a job or in those areas that are probably still going to be around for a while, and getting used to that income level, whatever income level that might be, or hoping that the government comes up with some sort of reasonable UBI system that is livable soon, cause that's where it's going, etc.

God Bless.

2PhiloVoid · 2026-06-22T07:14:29-0500

Hans Blaster said:
I don't think I said anything about voting.

As far as AI goes:

1. The general hype out there is off the scale. Way ahead of the technology.

2. The "hyper"exponential growth specified in the video is not supported in his claims. I don't even know how you measure that. LLMs have gotten more efficient. Some models get less error prone. (Though it does seem possible that any such LLM can be poisoned with bad info or its own output.) LLMs are still just "next response" probability models. No different than the thing on my phone that displays three guesses of what I am trying to type (thankfully no such annoyances appear on this computer), but with a broader range of responses and knowledge bases. The hype/fear of "general AI" is just that -- I see no reason it can happen.

3. The market for LLM products seems ridiculously overestimated. Companies are building for markets that aren't there.

4. The latest thing is to properly account for the actual resources used by the AI model (counting "tokens" used) and companies are realizing that the modest benefits they are getting from using the AI tools require access to "unlimited token" plans that would cost way more if they were metered. This "promotional" cost model will end and AI usage will go down rather than the AI companies getting lots more money.

5. Much of the general public is rather sick of the AI output people push into their faces: memes and images, summarized bullet lists, etc.

Finally, the biggest threat to our society from AI is not advanced AI deciding to rule over/kill us (cf. Butlerian jihad), or destroying large numbers of jobs, or environmental damage, but the circular investment schemes and overbuilt infrastructure that may collapse the stock market and parts of the economy.

I appreciate the extensive response and I agree with much of what you've shared, but I admit that my own perception of the current A.I. situation is colored over by shades of John of Patmos and John Lennox, along with many other voices both old and new. Unlike Joel Pearson who says that he's an "Active Optimism" in handling the uncertainty of the onset of A.I. as a fixture of society, I'm more of a "Passive Pessimist." I don't trust people to do what is best.......................FOR PEOPLE, and I don't think there's a whole lot we can do about it. Vote. Pray. Be helpful.

I sincerely hope----deeply hope----that I'm off the mark in my own perceptions in all of this, but my uncertainty feels substantial. And, I don't see anyone out there in the world who has the position or the mindset to make a significant and positive change for everyone economically affected.

Maybe my feelings about the current state of the Economy and Politics will improve when I finally find an office job like the sort I would have had 20 years ago. (What's that you say?..................... Those aren't coming back????!!!!!

) I guess I have some more praying to do.

Hans Blaster · 2026-06-22T09:03:48-0500

2PhiloVoid said:
I appreciate the extensive response and I agree with much of what you've shared, but I admit that my own perception of the current A.I. situation is colored over by shades of John of Patmos and John Lennox, along with many other voices both old and new.

I don't know this "Patmos", but Lennox is a self-absorbed doddering fool. He should stick to mathematics. Perhaps he sucks at that too, but he won't be demonstrating it in public.

2PhiloVoid said:
Unlike Joel Pearson who says that he's an "Active Optimism" in handling the uncertainty of the onset of A.I. as a fixture of society, I'm more of a "Passive Pessimist." I don't trust people to do what is best.......................FOR PEOPLE.

Pearson seems to be some sort of fantasist, but that seems on par for the fool who call themselves "futurists". I get the pessimism. I am pessimistic that even the more modest claims of AI will happen. I am pessimistic that companies will use "AI" as an excuse to shed employees. I am seriously concerned that the AI-hype investment cycle will 2008 us. I'm with you here.

2PhiloVoid said:
I sincerely hope----deeply hope----that I'm off the mark in my own perceptions in all of this, but my uncertainty feels substantial. And, I don't see anyone out there in the world who has the position or mindset to make a significant and positive change for everyone economically affected.

Maybe my feelings about the current state of the Economy and Politics will improve when I finally find an office job like the sort I would have had 20 years ago. (What's that you say?..................... Those aren't coming back????!!!!! )

Unfortunately, none of this is likely to help you find a job. Qapla'.

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