Were probably? That’s a giant understatement and you know it.
Ai will save billions of lives and improve the living standard for everyone on the planet, it’ll be just like mobile phones where the biggest benefits come to the poorest communities - tech haters often ignore this reality, millions of children in Africa, Asia, etc were only able to get access to education through mobile infrastructure.
The internet has given everyone access to huge amounts of education resources and it’s only increased as they technology matures - current LLMs are amazing for language learners and for people who need things like English articles explained in their own language, I just asked chatgpt to explain the code I’m working on in Tagalog and it did it without hesitation (I can’t speak for the accuracy personally but looks legit) it even translated variable names but not function calls.
And this before we’ve scratched the surface of it’s utility, I’ll tell you one thing if you ever say to your grandkids ‘o I was against ai when it came out’ they’ll look at up like you’d look at someone who said they didn’t think math would catch on or that iron would never be as popular as bronze.
It’s more a problem of all the human people want to live good lives, look at how many threads on the front page are talking about cost of living crisis and etc as serious social problems which need to be fixed - there’s a thread where everyone says we should all be in walking distance to all key amenities, I bet they all think that the average persons wage should be able to afford to enjoy those things regularly too and have access to healthy fresh food, good clothes, etc etc
The world people want where everyone has access to a good life has never existed, even in America there is still generational and regional poverty but globally it’s much more intense - it would be very unfair to say ‘sorry we’re not going to try and continue progress so you can live the same life I do, we’re actually going back so you get less and work harder - it’s not because further progress is impossible or anything but I personally don’t really like new technology so, well, sucks to be you I guess.’
The technology which you’re talking about carbon capture is an incredibly good technology and just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist. It’s not a magic wand of course but no one said it is, the uses with SAF and bioavailable carbon for example open up a lot of possibilities not just in rich nations but actually more so in developing nations allowing growth without oil infrastructure.