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The logical conclusion that people don’t like to hear is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy. AI will, in the not so distant f

The logical conclusion that people don’t like to hear is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy. AI will, in the not so distant future, eliminate the vast majority of jobs. The choice will then be between a socialized economy or barbarism.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
In practice so far, socialized economy is barbarism. But next time will be different due to .... magical AI god?
jacquesm 3y ago
There are many pathways to such a restructuring and not all of them are wide enough to accommodate 8 billion people.
monero-xmr 3y ago
[flagged]
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Those have all been authoritarian. There are anarchist visions of "socialized economy"
- philistine 3y ago
  A socialized economy does not need to come with the death of democracy. The idea that communism can only be achieved if power rests on workers through something else than legislative elections is poison.
- antris 3y ago
  Same goes for capitalism currently. If the bar for the economic system is no more genocide, barbarism, hunger, exploitation of the workers or wars then you're aiming for something utopian immediately. Capitalism definitely has not solved these issues. In fact it's currently destroying the whole ecosystem.
- chc 3y ago
  Why do you think that? To the extent that a correlation exists between the level of social benefits offered by a country and the amount of horrors committed by its government, I would expect it to go the opposite direction (i.e. brutal dictators are more likely to hoard resources than share them freely). I have heard some attempts to substantively make the argument that socialized economies lead to brutality before, but every one I have seen has relied on a pretty blatant sleight of hand where laissez-faire economics is conflated with democracy. If you're aware of an analysis that does an apples to apples comparison and comes to that conclusion, that would be very interesting.
- renewedrebecca 3y ago
  strawman. socialism != communism.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  It's hard to take a comment like this seriously given all the bloodshed that has come about because of capitalism. Now, it could just be that people who accumulate power also accumulate the means to defend that power, and that to accumulate it in the first place you've almost got to be a sociopath, but that's actually being thoughtful instead of bringing up context-barren boogeymen.
jstx1 3y ago
I don't think it will eliminate the vast majority of jobs, more likely that it will significantly reduce the demand for certain jobs in an uneven way. I guess some of this depends on the time horizon you're looking at too.
jarjoura 3y ago
Sure, but I'm not really a believer that any government will have the political power to restructure the economy. At least nothing would actually change unless states utterly collapsed and there's loss of life. I don't think AI is going to replace everything either. It will be a cheap knockoff replacement for a lot of decent low paying middle class jobs, enough to do real damage, but not catastrophic. We will be forced to adapt like we always do and the wealth disparity continues to widens like it has been. I guess if anything, we'll make life so efficient that people will start to question if we need our life to be so efficient. There comes a point when you start having diminishing returns on all that efficiency. We'll still have the same problems we always do, with bad relationship breakups, or addiction, or whatever. AI will never fix those things. So in my mind, the logical conclusion is just a march toward mediocrity and feeling handcuffed to whatever situation you were born into.
Joeri 3y ago
Just because we can’t imagine the jobs that would exist in an AI future doesn’t mean they won’t be there. And there are many ways this thing plays out where we don’t get a world of cheap AI abundance where the AI provides without limit. If nothing else the copyright maffia will do its best to prevent that future from occurring.
- philipkglass 3y ago
  The intellectual property lobby doesn't have much sway outside of countries with significant cultural exports, software businesses, and/or patent-protected manufacturing. That's basically the Anglosphere, richer parts of Europe, South Korea, and Japan. If countries outside this group can grow prosperous faster by pirating intellectual property than by continuing to play by WTO rules, they will. If the only thing standing between poor countries and a world of cheap AI abundance is law, respect for those laws won't last. Why should e.g. India play by the normal rules of trade if foreign companies have developed do-everything robots that they want to license on a restrictive basis? India can obtain a few do-everything robots by means of normal trade, jailbreak or reverse engineer them, then duplicate do-everything robots domestically while ignoring the impotent griping of the original company and its government. There's no big IP lobby inside of India itself and it's really hard to see what "carrot" other countries could offer for compliance that tops the prize of having unlimited do-everything robots.
bushbaba 3y ago
Totally disagree. You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Yet here we are living better lives from the technological breakthroughs. AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era.
- mouse_ 3y ago
  Totally disagree. The Industrial Revolution is the catalyst for a major extinction event, and our current trajectory is to certain doom.
- diatone 3y ago
  Worth pointing out, we live better lives not just from the technological breakthroughs, but also from the social movements that have brought us things like the 40-hour work week and keeping children from labour for a reasonable time. Which were direct responses to the Industrial Revolution.
  - tmpz22 3y ago
    And we're starting to see the repeal of Labor laws in the US - newly passed or pending laws allow companies to hire children without work permits and allow children to work longer hours under more dangerous conditions in places like construction sites, meat packing plants, and automobile factories. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are-rolling-back-regulations-on-child-labor https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are...
    - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      There are states in the US who want to enjoy all the benefits of living in an advanced society but also want the social and political status quo of the 1910s.
  - didibus 3y ago
    This is an incredibly relevant point. Take North Korea, they have access the the know how of all the same advancements and yet because of social conditions, it's population is not thriving. This is true of many countries honestly. The impact of social justice, equality, and all that are huge. And can't be understated. In fact, we can all easily imagine an Elite ruling the world at the helm of AI powered robots, leaving the rest of us to scrape the bottom. Social breakthroughs are going to need to keep pace with technological advancements, otherwise those same advancement can also help to bring minority holding power even more stronghold on the rest.
solardev 3y ago
Barbarism usually wins. It always has so far.
labster 3y ago
I’ll bet one hundred dollars on barbarism. Seems like a sure thing.
coldtea 3y ago
>is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy Yes, and basically a fundamental restructuring of the power relations in the economy.
polote 3y ago
The vast majority of jobs could be eliminated today without AI and still they are not, so we are very safe. Even with AI getting better and better we will be
0xDEF 3y ago
>socialized economy Here in Denmark a significant fraction of the population (students, elderly, long-term unemployed) are already on some kind of pseudo basic income. Why not just do basic income in this future "total AI automation" scenario? Why do so many people on the Internet think only radical socialist revolutions can solve all our problems?
- Shekelphile 3y ago
  Basic income is a horrible idea. It resigns 80%+ of the population to being unproductive for life and living in abject poverty. If AI is going to automate away all 'meaningless' low and middle class jobs then the government should be stepping in to tax the productivity gains and use the money to educate and employ those people in roles that AI can't (maybe ever) fill. Having the government pay tens of millions of people to further scientific research and innovation would be a massive boon for our society rather than the current ratcheting incrementalism and lack of innovation the pervades in our current system where innovation is always shunned unless it can provide immediate short-term gains. Unfortunately it's moot to even think about. Nothing will change and the elites will simply let the majority of the population starve to death.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > Why not just do basic income in this future "total AI automation" scenario? The oligarchy doesn't want to fund this future, and the federal, state and local governments in the US don't have the wherewithal.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

In practice so far, socialized economy is barbarism. But next time will be different due to .... magical AI god?

jacquesm 3y ago

There are many pathways to such a restructuring and not all of them are wide enough to accommodate 8 billion people.

monero-xmr 3y ago

[flagged]

wahnfrieden 3y ago
Those have all been authoritarian. There are anarchist visions of "socialized economy"
philistine 3y ago
A socialized economy does not need to come with the death of democracy. The idea that communism can only be achieved if power rests on workers through something else than legislative elections is poison.
antris 3y ago
Same goes for capitalism currently. If the bar for the economic system is no more genocide, barbarism, hunger, exploitation of the workers or wars then you're aiming for something utopian immediately. Capitalism definitely has not solved these issues. In fact it's currently destroying the whole ecosystem.
chc 3y ago
Why do you think that? To the extent that a correlation exists between the level of social benefits offered by a country and the amount of horrors committed by its government, I would expect it to go the opposite direction (i.e. brutal dictators are more likely to hoard resources than share them freely). I have heard some attempts to substantively make the argument that socialized economies lead to brutality before, but every one I have seen has relied on a pretty blatant sleight of hand where laissez-faire economics is conflated with democracy. If you're aware of an analysis that does an apples to apples comparison and comes to that conclusion, that would be very interesting.
renewedrebecca 3y ago
strawman. socialism != communism.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
It's hard to take a comment like this seriously given all the bloodshed that has come about because of capitalism. Now, it could just be that people who accumulate power also accumulate the means to defend that power, and that to accumulate it in the first place you've almost got to be a sociopath, but that's actually being thoughtful instead of bringing up context-barren boogeymen.

jstx1 3y ago

I don't think it will eliminate the vast majority of jobs, more likely that it will significantly reduce the demand for certain jobs in an uneven way. I guess some of this depends on the time horizon you're looking at too.

jarjoura 3y ago

Sure, but I'm not really a believer that any government will have the political power to restructure the economy. At least nothing would actually change unless states utterly collapsed and there's loss of life. I don't think AI is going to replace everything either. It will be a cheap knockoff replacement for a lot of decent low paying middle class jobs, enough to do real damage, but not catastrophic. We will be forced to adapt like we always do and the wealth disparity continues to widens like it has been. I guess if anything, we'll make life so efficient that people will start to question if we need our life to be so efficient. There comes a point when you start having diminishing returns on all that efficiency. We'll still have the same problems we always do, with bad relationship breakups, or addiction, or whatever. AI will never fix those things. So in my mind, the logical conclusion is just a march toward mediocrity and feeling handcuffed to whatever situation you were born into.

Joeri 3y ago

Just because we can’t imagine the jobs that would exist in an AI future doesn’t mean they won’t be there. And there are many ways this thing plays out where we don’t get a world of cheap AI abundance where the AI provides without limit. If nothing else the copyright maffia will do its best to prevent that future from occurring.

philipkglass 3y ago
The intellectual property lobby doesn't have much sway outside of countries with significant cultural exports, software businesses, and/or patent-protected manufacturing. That's basically the Anglosphere, richer parts of Europe, South Korea, and Japan. If countries outside this group can grow prosperous faster by pirating intellectual property than by continuing to play by WTO rules, they will. If the only thing standing between poor countries and a world of cheap AI abundance is law, respect for those laws won't last. Why should e.g. India play by the normal rules of trade if foreign companies have developed do-everything robots that they want to license on a restrictive basis? India can obtain a few do-everything robots by means of normal trade, jailbreak or reverse engineer them, then duplicate do-everything robots domestically while ignoring the impotent griping of the original company and its government. There's no big IP lobby inside of India itself and it's really hard to see what "carrot" other countries could offer for compliance that tops the prize of having unlimited do-everything robots.

bushbaba 3y ago

Totally disagree. You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Yet here we are living better lives from the technological breakthroughs. AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era.

mouse_ 3y ago
Totally disagree. The Industrial Revolution is the catalyst for a major extinction event, and our current trajectory is to certain doom.
diatone 3y ago
Worth pointing out, we live better lives not just from the technological breakthroughs, but also from the social movements that have brought us things like the 40-hour work week and keeping children from labour for a reasonable time. Which were direct responses to the Industrial Revolution.
- tmpz22 3y ago
  And we're starting to see the repeal of Labor laws in the US - newly passed or pending laws allow companies to hire children without work permits and allow children to work longer hours under more dangerous conditions in places like construction sites, meat packing plants, and automobile factories. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are-rolling-back-regulations-on-child-labor https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are...
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    There are states in the US who want to enjoy all the benefits of living in an advanced society but also want the social and political status quo of the 1910s.
- didibus 3y ago
  This is an incredibly relevant point. Take North Korea, they have access the the know how of all the same advancements and yet because of social conditions, it's population is not thriving. This is true of many countries honestly. The impact of social justice, equality, and all that are huge. And can't be understated. In fact, we can all easily imagine an Elite ruling the world at the helm of AI powered robots, leaving the rest of us to scrape the bottom. Social breakthroughs are going to need to keep pace with technological advancements, otherwise those same advancement can also help to bring minority holding power even more stronghold on the rest.

solardev 3y ago

Barbarism usually wins. It always has so far.

labster 3y ago

I’ll bet one hundred dollars on barbarism. Seems like a sure thing.

coldtea 3y ago

>is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy Yes, and basically a fundamental restructuring of the power relations in the economy.

polote 3y ago

The vast majority of jobs could be eliminated today without AI and still they are not, so we are very safe. Even with AI getting better and better we will be

0xDEF 3y ago

>socialized economy Here in Denmark a significant fraction of the population (students, elderly, long-term unemployed) are already on some kind of pseudo basic income. Why not just do basic income in this future "total AI automation" scenario? Why do so many people on the Internet think only radical socialist revolutions can solve all our problems?

Shekelphile 3y ago
Basic income is a horrible idea. It resigns 80%+ of the population to being unproductive for life and living in abject poverty. If AI is going to automate away all 'meaningless' low and middle class jobs then the government should be stepping in to tax the productivity gains and use the money to educate and employ those people in roles that AI can't (maybe ever) fill. Having the government pay tens of millions of people to further scientific research and innovation would be a massive boon for our society rather than the current ratcheting incrementalism and lack of innovation the pervades in our current system where innovation is always shunned unless it can provide immediate short-term gains. Unfortunately it's moot to even think about. Nothing will change and the elites will simply let the majority of the population starve to death.
sangnoir 3y ago
> Why not just do basic income in this future "total AI automation" scenario? The oligarchy doesn't want to fund this future, and the federal, state and local governments in the US don't have the wherewithal.