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Or it will create enough wealth to pay the wealthiest 1% $1.3M a year, which seems the more likely outcome given that most AI infrastructure will be owned by a

Or it will create enough wealth to pay the wealthiest 1% $1.3M a year, which seems the more likely outcome given that most AI infrastructure will be owned by a small fraction of the population. FTA: "However, if the government collects and redistributes the wealth that AI will generate, AI’s exponential productivity gains could 'make the society of the future much less divisive and enable everyone to participate in its gains,' Altman says." There is nothing special about AI wealth---comparable technologically-assisted gains have dramatically increased the income of the wealthy over the past few decades, and government has so far shown little interest in taxing and redistributing those gains. It's hard to see why the future would be different, absent some dramatic social shift.

rsj_hn 6y ago
I disagree that distributing wealth would reduce division and strife. It would only increase it. Which is not to say that it's a bad idea -- there are many positive benefits to having social insurance, for example it encourages risk taking and entrepreneurship if you know that failing wont cost you your ability to get healthcare. Losing a job stops being an existential tragedy, which means it can be easier to lay people off. But one thing it does not do, is reduce division, which increases with equality and decreases with inequality. Equality is an unstable equilibrium in which everyone jockeys for power as the society is torn apart by constant strife. This is why the upheavals of the late 60s occurred after rapid reductions in inequality in the 40s and 50s. Make one small group the boss, make it clear no one ever stands any chance of challenging them, and suddenly you have stability. Make everyone equal, or within a stone's throw of the boss, and you see a lot of stones being thrown.
- cromwellian 6y ago
  What actually seems to happen is people, with all the extra free time, and lack of conflict, seem to seek out conflict and elevate minor disagreements, catastrophizing everything. That is, people become Karens on a bunch of subjects which barely matter to the quality of life for most people.
  - vannevar 6y ago
    What actually seems to happen is people, with all the extra free time, and lack of conflict... Whether true or not, that argument pertains to wealth, not equality. Everyone could be poor, with very little free time and lots of ordinary daily struggles to occupy them. Your argument seems more like a caution about the idle rich.
- vannevar 6y ago
  I disagree that distributing wealth would reduce division and strife. It would only increase it. History would seem to contradict you---periods of high wealth inequality do in fact seem to be historically correlated with division and strife. See, eg, https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-uncovers-grim-correlation-violence-inequality-millennia/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-unco.... Or for a more short term analysis, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228173822_Income_Inequality_and_Social_Dysfunction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228173822_Income_In.... What leads you to believe that equality creates more division? The single example of strife in the US in the 1960s seems unpersuasive, given that the divisions then revolved largely around the draft and civil rights, both issues heavily rooted in inequality.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    > History would seem to contradict you---periods of high wealth inequality do in fact seem to be historically correlated with division and strife No, this study is dominated by wars between states as well as death rates due to crime, which is primarily a function of the efficiency of the healthcare system to provide emergency services. It is basically a rehash of the observations of Stephen Pinker that death rates have been falling over time, and thus is a measure of technological progress. One can argue that as the arrow of time moves forward, technological progress has been increasing overall and inequality has been decreasing -- historically most people had a subsistence level of income and the middle class is a relatively modern innovation -- so it's easy to make a correlation between the two which is not particularly meaningful as a proxy for social stability or as a causative argument.
    - vannevar 6y ago
      It seems overly convenient to gerrymander the definition of strife so that it excludes anything that might contradict your thesis. One can argue that as the arrow of time moves forward, technological progress has been increasing overall and inequality has been decreasing... One could argue this, but again, the facts don't support the proposition. While it may be true that average and even median wealth has increased, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has never been greater---the poorest people in the world live much as their ancestors did centuries ago, while the richest have massively increased their wealth even in the last couple of decades. Technology indeed raises all boats, but it raises them proportionately to their wealth, and so is highly non-linear, and certainly not equalizing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

rsj_hn 6y ago

I disagree that distributing wealth would reduce division and strife. It would only increase it. Which is not to say that it's a bad idea -- there are many positive benefits to having social insurance, for example it encourages risk taking and entrepreneurship if you know that failing wont cost you your ability to get healthcare. Losing a job stops being an existential tragedy, which means it can be easier to lay people off. But one thing it does not do, is reduce division, which increases with equality and decreases with inequality. Equality is an unstable equilibrium in which everyone jockeys for power as the society is torn apart by constant strife. This is why the upheavals of the late 60s occurred after rapid reductions in inequality in the 40s and 50s. Make one small group the boss, make it clear no one ever stands any chance of challenging them, and suddenly you have stability. Make everyone equal, or within a stone's throw of the boss, and you see a lot of stones being thrown.

cromwellian 6y ago
What actually seems to happen is people, with all the extra free time, and lack of conflict, seem to seek out conflict and elevate minor disagreements, catastrophizing everything. That is, people become Karens on a bunch of subjects which barely matter to the quality of life for most people.
- vannevar 6y ago
  What actually seems to happen is people, with all the extra free time, and lack of conflict... Whether true or not, that argument pertains to wealth, not equality. Everyone could be poor, with very little free time and lots of ordinary daily struggles to occupy them. Your argument seems more like a caution about the idle rich.
vannevar 6y ago
I disagree that distributing wealth would reduce division and strife. It would only increase it. History would seem to contradict you---periods of high wealth inequality do in fact seem to be historically correlated with division and strife. See, eg, https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-uncovers-grim-correlation-violence-inequality-millennia/ https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-unco.... Or for a more short term analysis, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228173822_Income_Inequality_and_Social_Dysfunction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228173822_Income_In.... What leads you to believe that equality creates more division? The single example of strife in the US in the 1960s seems unpersuasive, given that the divisions then revolved largely around the draft and civil rights, both issues heavily rooted in inequality.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  > History would seem to contradict you---periods of high wealth inequality do in fact seem to be historically correlated with division and strife No, this study is dominated by wars between states as well as death rates due to crime, which is primarily a function of the efficiency of the healthcare system to provide emergency services. It is basically a rehash of the observations of Stephen Pinker that death rates have been falling over time, and thus is a measure of technological progress. One can argue that as the arrow of time moves forward, technological progress has been increasing overall and inequality has been decreasing -- historically most people had a subsistence level of income and the middle class is a relatively modern innovation -- so it's easy to make a correlation between the two which is not particularly meaningful as a proxy for social stability or as a causative argument.
  - vannevar 6y ago
    It seems overly convenient to gerrymander the definition of strife so that it excludes anything that might contradict your thesis. One can argue that as the arrow of time moves forward, technological progress has been increasing overall and inequality has been decreasing... One could argue this, but again, the facts don't support the proposition. While it may be true that average and even median wealth has increased, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has never been greater---the poorest people in the world live much as their ancestors did centuries ago, while the richest have massively increased their wealth even in the last couple of decades. Technology indeed raises all boats, but it raises them proportionately to their wealth, and so is highly non-linear, and certainly not equalizing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]