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Yeah yeah we're all going to die... The question is, we know AI is going to do take over doing work, how will that change the system when like 80% of people ha

Yeah yeah we're all going to die... The question is, we know AI is going to do take over doing work, how will that change the system when like 80% of people have no means of earning their income. How will those people abusing those machines earn theirs and who will generate input for those machines. Will those machines be able to solve genuinely new problems? Their knowledge comes from whqt people created. When people are no longer creating because they can't afford to live, who will feed the machines? And who will those few abusing those machines sell their machine generated products to? It will lead to a revolution and it will be bloody. Already the 99% are discontent and it's brewing. With the artificial price increases for the cost of living more will fall into social security. AI replacing workers means the bloat in the IT sector will be reduced and a lot of unemployed people on social security will be left. With steadily less money being available for the 99% they will either turn on themselves or, more likely cut the head off the 1% boiling their water steadily but surely. There will always be people trying to defend their salve masters, if we learned anything from WW2 and even the invasions on Iraq and Afghanistan, it's people suck and want someone they can feel superior to. Add to that the climate disaster...

dv_dt 3y ago
To rephrase the question a little: What if technology (AI just being a recent addition) can produce enough value for everybody to live but the system we live in refuses to provide for them in even the most minimal way? The lower threshold of minimal to zero seems what be what our system seems to be optimizing for - that's what is causing unrest. Does anyone think we couldn't right now, with our current tech, even without AI, provide food, shelter, and healthcare to everybody with everyone only working four or even three day weeks?
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  I'm skeptical we're there yet. But the worse thing is that it's never rational for economic actors (e.g., employers) to pay out a "social dividend" by cutting everyone's hours but paying them the same. 30 workers got replaced by 1 worker at a computer? Cool, but are you gonna pay that 1 worker 30 times the wages of a laid off worker? No; otherwise, why lay the 30 off to begin with? Conversely, are you gonna NOT lay off the 30, pay them the same, but have them work 1/30th of their regular 8 hours because their base productivity just got achievable in 1/30th of the time by computerization? Economically, that's absurd. The only thing that can force those economic absurdities is the government. (Not having slavery is also economically absurd. Voluntarily refuse to have literal, self-replicating, AGI automata working for you? That's crazy! But it's enforced by the government and international norms, so the absurdity is now normal.) The scary thing about that is how hard it would mess with the economy, having the government tell you how many people you can fire and how much to pay them based on some measure of productivity or just business profits. In a future of "AI, math PhDs, and serfs", though, we really need to figure it out. If we're headed toward that, it's going to be insanely asymmetric cyber-feudalism where 9.9/10 people are GrubHub peasants OR The Culture's post-scarcity luxury space communism. The latter seems way better. On the plus side, I think we'd only be GrubHub peasants for like 15 years, max, before that kind of AI ignites the Singularity, at which point who knows what happens? GrubHub would probably be gone though.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >Economically, that's absurd. Only if you're very greedy. The truth is just the opposite, it's not absurd at all to pay well. Lets imagine a hypothetical economy where there is only one company. "Pool party supplies". That is they sell things like beach balls and pool floats. So in your economic system it would make sense for the company to get rid of many employees as possible, and have the ones remain work 16 hours a day... ...and then they go out of business???... People that are working 16 hours a day don't go to pool parties. The small economic upper class doesn't buy enough pool party supplies to justify the companies existence. The unemployed don't buy party supplies. Economic profit maximization lead to less profit in this case! In this derived scenario having more employees that earn well and have plenty of time off leads to more pool party supply sales.
  - dv_dt 3y ago
    I think the technology is there, but maddeningly the system is going the opposite direction in terms of utilizing the technology for human good, or even basic human needs - the system path utilization and distribution is not sustainable. AI will make it worse. In contrast, in the early 19th century, when the western system was disrupted by labor unrest, it was 60+ hr work weeks were common and 40 hour weeks with weekends off was unthinkable. There were literal bloody fights to shift the system - and I hope we have progressed enough to not require that this time around, but it seems within the realm of possibilities in our modern day.
gumballindie 3y ago
> The question is, we know AI is going to do take over doing work, how will that change the system when like 80% of people have no means of earning their income. It will need to grow hands first. We’ve been “replacing” people with robots for a few decades now yet manual labour is still a thing. We have software that can literarily do all accounting tasks for us yet accountants are fine. I think will be an aid but not a replacement.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Eh, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Most companies don't get rid of employees until economic pressure is put upon them. So companies will increase capability for some time into the future. Then we typically run into a trigger of some kind. For example a housing crash that causes a recession. Then mass unemployment occurs and we'll consider this 'normal'. Then we'll start to have an economic rebound, but white collar jobs just won't come back in mass (unlike eventually after 2008 which was very slow). Then people will push hard into manual/blue collar labor, but the new influx of labor will drop pay significantly especially where low skill jobs are under pressure. The economy can generate an unlimited number of jobs... The real question is can it generate 'paying' jobs that allow a person to survive the ever increasing cost of assets.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    That does make sense. But I am wondering. Will we always want what we have today? Did we simply exhaust all need for travel once we developed cars? Or did we remove the need for food once we switched from hunting to farming? My point being that new tech has always led to demand for new services and things. Once everyone has access to ai and ai does everything for us would we not want new stuff? And if as per your comment we have a couple of years until a possible replacement may have taken place wouldnt we have developed a demand for new services and jobs by then? We had no clue we needed a tiktok app before we made the iphone and we had no clue we needed digital artists before we invented the computer.
    - pixl97 3y ago

dv_dt 3y ago

To rephrase the question a little: What if technology (AI just being a recent addition) can produce enough value for everybody to live but the system we live in refuses to provide for them in even the most minimal way? The lower threshold of minimal to zero seems what be what our system seems to be optimizing for - that's what is causing unrest. Does anyone think we couldn't right now, with our current tech, even without AI, provide food, shelter, and healthcare to everybody with everyone only working four or even three day weeks?

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
I'm skeptical we're there yet. But the worse thing is that it's never rational for economic actors (e.g., employers) to pay out a "social dividend" by cutting everyone's hours but paying them the same. 30 workers got replaced by 1 worker at a computer? Cool, but are you gonna pay that 1 worker 30 times the wages of a laid off worker? No; otherwise, why lay the 30 off to begin with? Conversely, are you gonna NOT lay off the 30, pay them the same, but have them work 1/30th of their regular 8 hours because their base productivity just got achievable in 1/30th of the time by computerization? Economically, that's absurd. The only thing that can force those economic absurdities is the government. (Not having slavery is also economically absurd. Voluntarily refuse to have literal, self-replicating, AGI automata working for you? That's crazy! But it's enforced by the government and international norms, so the absurdity is now normal.) The scary thing about that is how hard it would mess with the economy, having the government tell you how many people you can fire and how much to pay them based on some measure of productivity or just business profits. In a future of "AI, math PhDs, and serfs", though, we really need to figure it out. If we're headed toward that, it's going to be insanely asymmetric cyber-feudalism where 9.9/10 people are GrubHub peasants OR The Culture's post-scarcity luxury space communism. The latter seems way better. On the plus side, I think we'd only be GrubHub peasants for like 15 years, max, before that kind of AI ignites the Singularity, at which point who knows what happens? GrubHub would probably be gone though.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >Economically, that's absurd. Only if you're very greedy. The truth is just the opposite, it's not absurd at all to pay well. Lets imagine a hypothetical economy where there is only one company. "Pool party supplies". That is they sell things like beach balls and pool floats. So in your economic system it would make sense for the company to get rid of many employees as possible, and have the ones remain work 16 hours a day... ...and then they go out of business???... People that are working 16 hours a day don't go to pool parties. The small economic upper class doesn't buy enough pool party supplies to justify the companies existence. The unemployed don't buy party supplies. Economic profit maximization lead to less profit in this case! In this derived scenario having more employees that earn well and have plenty of time off leads to more pool party supply sales.
- dv_dt 3y ago
  I think the technology is there, but maddeningly the system is going the opposite direction in terms of utilizing the technology for human good, or even basic human needs - the system path utilization and distribution is not sustainable. AI will make it worse. In contrast, in the early 19th century, when the western system was disrupted by labor unrest, it was 60+ hr work weeks were common and 40 hour weeks with weekends off was unthinkable. There were literal bloody fights to shift the system - and I hope we have progressed enough to not require that this time around, but it seems within the realm of possibilities in our modern day.

gumballindie 3y ago

> The question is, we know AI is going to do take over doing work, how will that change the system when like 80% of people have no means of earning their income. It will need to grow hands first. We’ve been “replacing” people with robots for a few decades now yet manual labour is still a thing. We have software that can literarily do all accounting tasks for us yet accountants are fine. I think will be an aid but not a replacement.

pixl97 3y ago
Eh, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Most companies don't get rid of employees until economic pressure is put upon them. So companies will increase capability for some time into the future. Then we typically run into a trigger of some kind. For example a housing crash that causes a recession. Then mass unemployment occurs and we'll consider this 'normal'. Then we'll start to have an economic rebound, but white collar jobs just won't come back in mass (unlike eventually after 2008 which was very slow). Then people will push hard into manual/blue collar labor, but the new influx of labor will drop pay significantly especially where low skill jobs are under pressure. The economy can generate an unlimited number of jobs... The real question is can it generate 'paying' jobs that allow a person to survive the ever increasing cost of assets.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  That does make sense. But I am wondering. Will we always want what we have today? Did we simply exhaust all need for travel once we developed cars? Or did we remove the need for food once we switched from hunting to farming? My point being that new tech has always led to demand for new services and things. Once everyone has access to ai and ai does everything for us would we not want new stuff? And if as per your comment we have a couple of years until a possible replacement may have taken place wouldnt we have developed a demand for new services and jobs by then? We had no clue we needed a tiktok app before we made the iphone and we had no clue we needed digital artists before we invented the computer.
  - pixl97 3y ago