Artificial Intelligence repeats the discussion of automation that was all the rage about half a century ago.
The problem as the professors saw it was that the working clahss would have nothing to do and lose all virtue.
Professors looked at the working class in exactly the same way that their New England predecessors did. They felt that automation would make them lazy and degenerate.
Eric Hoffer, being a workingman himself, went back over history and pointed out that the great breakthrough was made during playtime, not during worktime. This was a truy heretical repudiation of the Puritan Ethic, which says that mankind only makes Great Advances when it must do so for survival.
Under this Puritan Ethic, the only people who should get paid just to think were the professors, the heirs of the Puritan preachers. This Hoffer piece may be hard to find, for the exact same reason that my stuff will be hard to find:
When Mommy Professor gets really put down, the arguments that put him in his place are carefully forgotten.
The only book that Hoffer wrote that is easy to find is The True Believer, which does not criticize Mommy Professor from the point of view of an actual working class spokesman. 
It exposes the so-called Working Class Marxism for the silliness it is without even discussing it.
Hoffer said that the general population with more playtime would outthink the Mommy Professors.
That commentary, like the rest of Hoffer’s real breakthroughs, are now in The Silence.
The True Believer is his only book that gets mentioned.
But unlike automation, AI involves not only artificial, nonhuman work. it also means Artificial Will.
This is the old Frankenstein Complex that AI will produce genius machines who want what they want rather than what we want.
All the commenters asked for was commentary on the old automation idea that AI would take over the WORK.
If you can find it, Hoffer already covered this.
But artificial will is entirely different.
You will have enough trouble finding Hoffer’s common sense approach to automation.
Lots of luck. The Silence is very effective.
#1 by Jason on 06/11/2016 - 8:38 am
Artificial will. That clarifies so much and distinguishes it from just AI. I’ve never heard anyone use the term ‘artificial will’ before. That’s exactly what the Frankenstein fear is about.
Amazon has some Hoffer’s other books as kindle.
#2 by Secret Squirrel on 06/11/2016 - 10:42 am
The A in AI is like the chemicals in I Can’t Believe Its Not Butter! If it fools you into believing it is real, its achieved its design goal.
I was concerned with how the economic system would work. Companies require profit to do anything. If they only employ electronic slaves, there aren’t going to be enough paying customers eventually, so companies lose their motive and die.
Bob is saying people will continue to make new things because they like doing it. I can see that now. Outside of work, many have intellectually demanding hobbies and for many people their work is their life.
#3 by Jason on 06/11/2016 - 12:30 pm
Hoffer’s line about PLAY being important to innovation is spot on.
More leisure time will lead to better science and technology.
#4 by Simmons on 06/12/2016 - 8:57 am
Bob’s point is about the SILENCE not the example he is using, he has already chastised me for focusing on my ramblings about one of his examples of the SILENCE.
In my estimation there is a lot of power in gaming and destroying an example of a SILENCE.
P-O-W-E-R
#5 by Richard on 06/12/2016 - 11:32 pm
The Silence is more important to notice. Yet I also find it almost an agenda to push the idea that we should worry about AI getting out of control. AI seems like a very good scape goat for the more realistic version of oligarchical agents using computers for nefarious reasons. AI has no self-consciousness and no self-will. There is no honest reason to believe humans would not always be able to pull the plug on AI. But someone seems to want us to believe otherwise.
#6 by Undercover Lover on 06/14/2016 - 11:10 pm
“Hoffer said that the general population with more playtime would outthink the Mommy Professors.”
I’ve never considered that before. It’s an interesting thought. I was always under the belief that no work time would turn everyone into mommy professors.