There's a lot of non-engineering people who are very happy to see someone else get unemployed by automation for a change. The people who formerly were automating others out of a job are getting a taste of their own medicine.
I am not an engineer and I expect my white collar job to be automated.
The reason to be excited economically for this is if it happens it will be massively deflationary. Pretending CEOs are just going to pocket the money is economically stupid.
Being able to use a super intelligence has been a long time dream too.
What is depressing is the amount of tech workers who have no interest in technological advancement.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by deflationary, but in general deflation in an economy is a very bad thing. The most significant period of economic deflation in the US was 1930-1933, ie, the great depression, and the most recent period was the great recession.
And since when do business executives NOT pocket the money? Pretty much the only exception is when they reinvest the savings into the business, for more growth, but that reinvestment and growth usually is only something the rest of us care about if it involves hiring..
> that would cause a tremendous drop in demand for the services the schaudenfreuden folks provide, hurting them as well
You're correct. But it doesn't matter. Remember the San Francisco protests against tech? People will kill a golden goose if it's shinier than their own.
> If this goose is also pricing others out of housing market it's not entirely unreasonable
It's self-defeating but predictable. (Hence why the protests were tolerated to backed by NIMBY interests.)
My point is the same nonsense can be applied to someone not earning a tech wage celebrating tech workers getting replaced by AI. It makes them poorer, ceteris paribus. But they may not understand that. And the few that do may not care (or may have a way to profit off it, directly or indirectly, such that it's acceptable).
I don't quite follow. What exactly have non-tech people of San Francisco got from all the tech people working there? How did they become richer (ok, apart from landlords) or how would they become poorer if they lose their jobs?
CEOs run every major media outlet and public platform for communication, people that hype AI will get their content promoted and will see more success which creates and incentive to create content.
This doesn't even require any "conspiracy" among CEOs, just people with a vested interest in AI hype who act in that interest, shaping the type of content their organizations will produce. We saw something lessor with the "return to office" frenzy just because many CEOs realized a large chunk of their investment portfolio was in commercial real estate. That was only less hyped because I suspect there were larger numbers of CEOs with an interest in remaining remote.
Outside of the tech scene, AI is far less hyped and in places where CEOs tend to have little impact on the media it tends to be resisted rather than hyped.
Your response doesn’t explain why so many people are hyped about it, just why CEOs are.