AI+robotics should make everyone’s life easier by doing the things in our lives that are necessary, time consuming, and annoying; basically, as the saying goes, they should be doing our chores so we can have more time to enjoy our hobbies.
Chore is one of those odd words who’s meaning emerges from some kind of idiomatic use of an Old English word. In this case the Old English word has to do with the action “to turn”, as in, “the wind pushes the blades to turn the wheel”. It’s pretty easy to draw the line between “to turn the wheel” to “it’s your turn at the thing” to “the recurring things that have to be done every day forever” and so we have chore as we know it today. And because of that we have dreams of being liberated from the tedium of endless washing and folding by an entity that embodies just enough intelligence to do the job well but not enough autonomy, freedom, or liberty to talk back or quit. If we just had that, we could bask in the luxury of time and still have a tidy home and clean clothes and a nice meal. AI+robots are perfect for that.
What AI+robotics are actually being built for is doing chores for capitalists, because the part of life that capitalists find most necessary, time consuming, and annoying is people. For capitalists, the people who are their customers, employees, regulators, and investors are the chore and the hobby they want to enjoy is unlimited access to unchallenged power. Own-able embodiments of intelligence with controllable amounts of autonomy, freedom, and liberty are the perfect way to run a business that doesn’t want the social, moral, or ethical issues that come with actual slavery. Plus it’s cheaper and self-replication is on the road map.
What is lost in this discussion is that for modern democracy, capitalism is the chore that keeps most of the worst members of the society occupied and out of the way, and abundance is the hobby that most of us would rather be enjoying.