Household income is not wages. If people work more hours income goes up while wages are flat. That series only includes full-time workers. High earners are doing better, that's the k-shaped economy. The upside of going to college is being carved out by changes in the labor market. A more representative measure would be average wage for non supervisory roles which is flat since the 1970s. Lower earners face higher inflation than the CPI because more of their paycheck goes to necessities. CPI shelter is what I'm interested in.
You're painting this as some sort of hypocrisy but I don't think that's the case. AI has infinite legitimate uses outside of creating slop. Lots of tools are used in the creation and distribution of slop - do we criticize all those other tools too? Do you like slop? Do you want it on the platforms you visit? Personally, I would prefer for AI companies to take the attitude that YCombinator has here and do their best to remove slop from their platforms. It's not hypocrisy - it's ethical business practice.
When I have AI write things for me, I'm spending a good amount of time on it - certainly longer than it takes to read. I'm also usually editing it quite a bit. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I still don't think it's appropriate to make a blanket statement about using AI to write content violating this social contract you described.
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