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[–]Promyka5When in the course of human events... 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Those "in charge" will ultimately have to use them against us, since no one worth his salt will stand to defend them, and they are congenitally incapable of physically defending themselves. The enormous genocide necessary to kill the masses and leave only themselves behind will thus simply have to be automated.

[–]kingsmegLiberté, égalité, fraternité 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They are indeed going to try to eliminate us dirty unwashed masses, the untermenschen, because they haven't had any contact with us in years and they don't understand us. They fear us.

The problem, if they succeed, is that we're the ones who do all the work that enables them to live their lives of fabulous luxury. What they're going to attempt is the exact same thing as a medieval lord deciding to kill all his peasants because he's afraid they're going to revolt because of his taxes. In fact, the lords measured their wealth more by the number of peasants they could enslave than by the acreage of land they owned. Because they understood who produced the wealth and who lived by siphoning the wealth from the producers.

They think they can survive by keeping just a small coterie of trusted slaves, and that the work will get done by magic, somehow. AI, robots, whatever, they have no understanding of the work that is required to maintain their lifestyles. They also don't understand that their wealth is mostly imaginary, their 'money' and 'shares in stocks' only exist as bits and bytes in computer networks, and that once the power goes out, that wealth vanishes.