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In the same vein... Rich people are only rich because there are poorer people that are economically relevant. We all use dollars to buy food, money gives you t

by pygy_ 7y ago

In the same vein... Rich people are only rich because there are poorer people that are economically relevant. We all use dollars to buy food, money gives you the ability to have others do your bidding. It is just a social construct though, a convention. Once humans are economically obsolete (Sam Altman plans to have OpenAI make super-human investment decisions, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Alpha Zero take an executive seat at Google in the coming years), human money becomes worthless to the industry, and even rich folks will be powerless.

EGreg 7y ago
No, rich people are rich because money is fungible. It is a medium of exchange and readily convertible to other mediums of exchange. And the rich have a lot of it. So whatever medium of value exchange is used by computers, money can be exchanged for it. Now, it can be that computers (or those with computers) will be able to attract more and more money, as we have had with the speculation bubble in cryptocurrencies, and before that with the Web bubble, there may be new stuff with AI like that. It will attract tons of money and maybe make trillionaires. Ultimately, though, we may have a new phenomenon: autonomous programs earning cryptocurrency endlessly, at all parts of society, for generating content / doing useful computation / facilitating tons of things. At that point they will have most of the money. What will the money the robots earn be used for then? We need UBI to redistribute money back to people continuously, while the robots don’t have an AGI to spend the money on stuff they want :)
- pygy_ 7y ago
  > So whatever medium of value exchange is used by computers, money can be exchanged for it. Money is, quite literally, the power to have others act for you within the rules of society (i.e. laws, for the plebs, and nought for the very rich). Why would computers value human money in a world where human work is worthless (to computers)? There goes fungibility. Provided they don't have the command of the industry, the power of the very rich disappears as well. > What will the money the robots earn be used for then? Making more robots. > We need UBI [...] UBI is lubricant. If we were to take in an even larger dick, it would be humane, but it's a chainsaw that's coming up our collective butt. Lube will only make it spin faster. Less figuratively, UBI is the acceptance of humanity's obsolescence. A large population with UBI is completely powerless and can be unplugged at will.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    > Provided they don't have the command of the industry, the power of the very rich disappears as well. Whoever has control of the industry will be the very rich. If the computers have control of themselves (why would we set them that way?) then we are already toast. By the way, UBI is a form of avoiding some dangerous concentration of power. In a world with escalating automation everything gets cheaper and cheaper, so any money distributed to the masses is enough to avoid making them irrelevant.
    - pygy_ 7y ago
      > Why would we set them that way? Growth? Short-term profit? Whatever, we don't even have to set them up that way, they could also end up accidentally in control. This would be all the more easier now that resource extraction (farming and mining), logistics, resource transformation and firepower are all being automated away. Re. UBI: There are two prongs to power: construction (economy) and destruction (military). The latter is necessary to secure resources to power the former. UBI is about numbing people down to the fact that they are being stripped of their economic power (the only one they still have at this point). I don't see why capitalism would waste resources by feeding billions of idle meat bags.

by pygy_ 7y ago

EGreg 7y ago

No, rich people are rich because money is fungible. It is a medium of exchange and readily convertible to other mediums of exchange. And the rich have a lot of it. So whatever medium of value exchange is used by computers, money can be exchanged for it. Now, it can be that computers (or those with computers) will be able to attract more and more money, as we have had with the speculation bubble in cryptocurrencies, and before that with the Web bubble, there may be new stuff with AI like that. It will attract tons of money and maybe make trillionaires. Ultimately, though, we may have a new phenomenon: autonomous programs earning cryptocurrency endlessly, at all parts of society, for generating content / doing useful computation / facilitating tons of things. At that point they will have most of the money. What will the money the robots earn be used for then? We need UBI to redistribute money back to people continuously, while the robots don’t have an AGI to spend the money on stuff they want :)

pygy_ 7y ago
> So whatever medium of value exchange is used by computers, money can be exchanged for it. Money is, quite literally, the power to have others act for you within the rules of society (i.e. laws, for the plebs, and nought for the very rich). Why would computers value human money in a world where human work is worthless (to computers)? There goes fungibility. Provided they don't have the command of the industry, the power of the very rich disappears as well. > What will the money the robots earn be used for then? Making more robots. > We need UBI [...] UBI is lubricant. If we were to take in an even larger dick, it would be humane, but it's a chainsaw that's coming up our collective butt. Lube will only make it spin faster. Less figuratively, UBI is the acceptance of humanity's obsolescence. A large population with UBI is completely powerless and can be unplugged at will.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > Provided they don't have the command of the industry, the power of the very rich disappears as well. Whoever has control of the industry will be the very rich. If the computers have control of themselves (why would we set them that way?) then we are already toast. By the way, UBI is a form of avoiding some dangerous concentration of power. In a world with escalating automation everything gets cheaper and cheaper, so any money distributed to the masses is enough to avoid making them irrelevant.
  - pygy_ 7y ago
    > Why would we set them that way? Growth? Short-term profit? Whatever, we don't even have to set them up that way, they could also end up accidentally in control. This would be all the more easier now that resource extraction (farming and mining), logistics, resource transformation and firepower are all being automated away. Re. UBI: There are two prongs to power: construction (economy) and destruction (military). The latter is necessary to secure resources to power the former. UBI is about numbing people down to the fact that they are being stripped of their economic power (the only one they still have at this point). I don't see why capitalism would waste resources by feeding billions of idle meat bags.