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The horse anecdote has always struck me as stupid as hell. Horses were replaced because they have no political power, they are tools. As long as we live in a de

The horse anecdote has always struck me as stupid as hell. Horses were replaced because they have no political power, they are tools. As long as we live in a democracy people will not become horses.

pmfgpmfg 3y ago
Good point! People are already horses in russia.
Nathanba 3y ago
People have political power ultimately because they have military and economic power. That would potentially change if politicians have artificial people under their control that can patrol the streets and enforce any law they want and man the factories.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  There are 400 million guns in America. The citizen's military power is not going anywhere.
  - Nathanba 3y ago
    In relation to artificial robotic power it will go down
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      You think the government is going to create an ai military to kill millions of civilians without being overthrown by the other hundreds of millions of armed civilians in this country?
      - Nathanba 3y ago
        This is ironically a simple issue of demographics. Whether the biological humans like it or not there will be a larger demographic of artificial entities that do more of the economic and military work and therefore will have more weight in all things political.
      - didibus 3y ago
        I think the question is more, will there be a country somewhere that emerges as an AI/robotic super power. You shouldn't just be worried of your own government here. And the other issue is, why would the post-revolt government/businesses abandon AI/robotics? The truth is, this won't happen over night. People will have less work over time, be paid less and less, the gap between classes will grow bigger, etc. I guess another way to put it, take a country like India with lots of unemployment and high corruption, I don't think if they had guns they'd all revolt. You have to believe there's a point to revolting, an alternative that's better and worth the risk.
        wincy 3y ago
        Maybe we’ll need to have a real life Butlerian Jihad.
    - chatmasta 3y ago
      The citizens will have artificial robots too. Or do you think there's some reason why AI shouldn't be protected by the second amendment? Either AI can be weaponized - in which case it's protected by the second amendment - or it can't, in which case there isn't a threat from it in the first place.
      - lucubratory 3y ago
        I'm not ideologically opposed to what I think you're saying, but it is actually the case that many weapons are not allowed to be owned regardless of the second amendment. Nuclear weapons, for example. It doesn't matter if you build it entirely yourself using completely novel processes not owned by anyone, and acquired all inputs legally, it is still 100% illegal for a private citizen to own a nuclear weapon. There is no legal reason why AIs couldn't be governed under the same principle.
- didibus 3y ago
  I think the idea that this will come from the politicians and government is misguided. This will come from the capitalist system, businesses will be driving the obsolescence of humans, not governments. Once the owners of the means of productions don't need humans in their workforce, what value to they bring? It will be much harder to "revolt" against capitalism/businesses than a central government. And the biggest danger here, is it means the end of the capitalist system as the best way to increase living standards. If capitalism doesn't work as a means of redistribution anymore, because humans have been devalued, what economic model can replace it and be as successful? We're re-entering an era where economic systems are all going to favor a few classes, and impoverish the rest.
  - ux-app 3y ago
    >This will come from the capitalist system, businesses will be driving the obsolescence of humans, what's the point of owning the factories if there is no one to buy the crap you produce? they need us more than we need them, at least until they have their own spaceships with AI and robots to fluff their balls for them.
    - Nathanba 3y ago
      Numbers still go up for whatever human sits at the top, that's the demand. But the general principle of demand and supply exists even among AI internally. AI trading bots are their own economy, it would be the same for intelligent robot factories. They will have demand for things no different from a human that has a demand for food, robots need to be repaired, maintained. They will produce whatever they were told to produce. This is even without any human or human level intelligence involved. Once robots are truly as intelligent as humans they can even have entirely fanciful demands like buying cards or flowers.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      > what's the point of owning the factories if there is no one to buy the crap you produce You produce things you yourself want to consume. Why produce things for others if they have nothing you need? The only reason there is a need to sell to workers today is so you can pay them a salary to work in your factories, and then take a portion of that for yourself. When you don't need workers you don't need to sell to workers, you just take the entire output for yourself. Edit: If you can't imagine how someone could consume that much, then think of a golf enthusiast so he tells his AI factories and builders to prepare new golf courses at the same rate he can finish them, so he can play gold all day long and never replay a course. Basically production will become almost 100% luxury focused instead of median consumer focused like it is today.
dmix 3y ago
Horses were bread for that work as well, there was a direct 1-to-1 correlation between the two. Not so with humans.
- superchroma 3y ago
  So what exactly is it you do all day? How do you pay rent?
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    I think they make weird horse related spelling errors
  - dmix 3y ago
    Survive. My survival is my own will. My parents didn't have me to benefit themselves in industry, they only want me to survive in the best capacity possible. I'm not sure how that distinction is not 100% obvious in 2023. It's not the 1700s in a planet covered in subsistence farms who need kids to work. This is handwringing over the decline of paper or pencils after computers came about when paper didn't magically come about by itself. Horses were not wild animals in North America at any point in modern history and barely in other continents. They were purely bred for industry, travel, and hobby. When industry and travel no longer became a thing we stopped producing them: a clear 1-to-1 correlation. There's already been reductions in human populations without AI from leisure, abundance, culture, etc, - a very very different causality than horses.
    - andsoitis 3y ago
      > My parents didn't have me to benefit themselves in industry, they only want me to survive in the best capacity possible. I'm not sure how that distinction is not 100% obvious in 2023. It's not the 1700s in a planet covered in subsistence farms who need kids to work. You make a very compelling argument. It made me think from another angle. Consider that there's evolutionary pressure on humans to want to procreate. So in a certain sense, we are conceived to serve the gene and to survive we have to labor.
    - 3y ago
superchroma 3y ago
To wrench the metaphor, if horses had banded together, they could have fought back against humans and seized some power and rights for themselves. Instead they were conditioned to accept their bad conditions. The same is true of humans. Most humans accept terrible indignities and injustices routinely through apathy.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  No, horses could not have banded together and fought back. Humans have almost never accepted a backslide in quality of living. All the examples I can think of are because of short lived war time austerity.
  - dclowd9901 3y ago
    What is your basis for this statement? We have absolutely _numerous_ examples of people throughout history receiving and accepting horrible conditions cast upon them. Even today. And as far as I can tell, we still have similar power structures that would enable those situations to continue occurring.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Name some examples of large, militarily powerful groups accepting living conditions that were worse than the previous generation experienced, not due to natural disasters. People have never accepted that. Sure they've had shitty living conditions, but they started shitty, they didn't get worse. Sure they've been enslaved, but the civilians in this country are heavily armed enough to fight back against a government they see as allowing living conditions to slip.
      - trealira 3y ago
        In many societies, the rights of women have declined from one period to the next, although I guess "women" don't constitute a "large, militarily powerful" group. For example, in Korea during the Joseon/Chosŏn period, the status of women gradually declined due to Neo-Confucianist ideology. Women stopped inheriting property in the seventeenth century. They lost the right to intiate divorce, while men could still intiate divorce under seven grounds (disobedience to parents-in-law, failure to bear a son, adultery, jealousy, hereditary disease, larceny, and talkativeness). Widows lost the right to remarry, and were seen as inconvenient for the family. Women were forbidden from playing games, partying outdoors, and riding horses. The decline of women's rights happened in other societies, too; I just happened to have a book about Korean history on my desk.
dclowd9901 3y ago
… I can’t tell if you’re being very clever here. At the risk of being whooshed, I’m going to say that the common man has a lot more in common with horses than billionaires.
andsoitis 3y ago
> Horses were replaced because they have no political power, they are tools. How much political power do you think the purveyors of AI wield? > As long as we live in a democracy people will not become horses. It’s estimated that 2.3 billion people—about 29% of the global population—lived in a democracy in 2021 (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/how-many-people-live-in-a-political-democracy-today/#google_vignette https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/how-many-people-live-in-...) And if you live in a democracy today, as you yourself state, it is not guaranteed to remain that way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gwern 3y ago
A democracy of whom? When AGI comes and the AIs are as smart or smarter than you, what's going to keep you enfranchised? Huang's suggestion is that it will be your ability to... type faster than a computer can. (Good luck with that.)
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  The 400 million guns owned by the people of this country. Humans will not go quietly into the night. They might lose some sense of purpose as they work less, but they will never accept a government that is not fundamentally based on humanism and they will never accept reduction in quality of life as GDP expands.

The horse anecdote has always struck me as stupid as hell. Horses were replaced because they have no political power, they are tools. As long as we live in a democracy people will not become horses.

pmfgpmfg 3y ago

Good point! People are already horses in russia.

Nathanba 3y ago

People have political power ultimately because they have military and economic power. That would potentially change if politicians have artificial people under their control that can patrol the streets and enforce any law they want and man the factories.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
There are 400 million guns in America. The citizen's military power is not going anywhere.
- Nathanba 3y ago
  In relation to artificial robotic power it will go down
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    You think the government is going to create an ai military to kill millions of civilians without being overthrown by the other hundreds of millions of armed civilians in this country?
    - Nathanba 3y ago
      This is ironically a simple issue of demographics. Whether the biological humans like it or not there will be a larger demographic of artificial entities that do more of the economic and military work and therefore will have more weight in all things political.
    - didibus 3y ago
      I think the question is more, will there be a country somewhere that emerges as an AI/robotic super power. You shouldn't just be worried of your own government here. And the other issue is, why would the post-revolt government/businesses abandon AI/robotics? The truth is, this won't happen over night. People will have less work over time, be paid less and less, the gap between classes will grow bigger, etc. I guess another way to put it, take a country like India with lots of unemployment and high corruption, I don't think if they had guns they'd all revolt. You have to believe there's a point to revolting, an alternative that's better and worth the risk.
      - wincy 3y ago
        Maybe we’ll need to have a real life Butlerian Jihad.
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    The citizens will have artificial robots too. Or do you think there's some reason why AI shouldn't be protected by the second amendment? Either AI can be weaponized - in which case it's protected by the second amendment - or it can't, in which case there isn't a threat from it in the first place.
    - lucubratory 3y ago
      I'm not ideologically opposed to what I think you're saying, but it is actually the case that many weapons are not allowed to be owned regardless of the second amendment. Nuclear weapons, for example. It doesn't matter if you build it entirely yourself using completely novel processes not owned by anyone, and acquired all inputs legally, it is still 100% illegal for a private citizen to own a nuclear weapon. There is no legal reason why AIs couldn't be governed under the same principle.
didibus 3y ago
I think the idea that this will come from the politicians and government is misguided. This will come from the capitalist system, businesses will be driving the obsolescence of humans, not governments. Once the owners of the means of productions don't need humans in their workforce, what value to they bring? It will be much harder to "revolt" against capitalism/businesses than a central government. And the biggest danger here, is it means the end of the capitalist system as the best way to increase living standards. If capitalism doesn't work as a means of redistribution anymore, because humans have been devalued, what economic model can replace it and be as successful? We're re-entering an era where economic systems are all going to favor a few classes, and impoverish the rest.
- ux-app 3y ago
  >This will come from the capitalist system, businesses will be driving the obsolescence of humans, what's the point of owning the factories if there is no one to buy the crap you produce? they need us more than we need them, at least until they have their own spaceships with AI and robots to fluff their balls for them.
  - Nathanba 3y ago
    Numbers still go up for whatever human sits at the top, that's the demand. But the general principle of demand and supply exists even among AI internally. AI trading bots are their own economy, it would be the same for intelligent robot factories. They will have demand for things no different from a human that has a demand for food, robots need to be repaired, maintained. They will produce whatever they were told to produce. This is even without any human or human level intelligence involved. Once robots are truly as intelligent as humans they can even have entirely fanciful demands like buying cards or flowers.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > what's the point of owning the factories if there is no one to buy the crap you produce You produce things you yourself want to consume. Why produce things for others if they have nothing you need? The only reason there is a need to sell to workers today is so you can pay them a salary to work in your factories, and then take a portion of that for yourself. When you don't need workers you don't need to sell to workers, you just take the entire output for yourself. Edit: If you can't imagine how someone could consume that much, then think of a golf enthusiast so he tells his AI factories and builders to prepare new golf courses at the same rate he can finish them, so he can play gold all day long and never replay a course. Basically production will become almost 100% luxury focused instead of median consumer focused like it is today.

dmix 3y ago

Horses were bread for that work as well, there was a direct 1-to-1 correlation between the two. Not so with humans.

superchroma 3y ago
So what exactly is it you do all day? How do you pay rent?
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  I think they make weird horse related spelling errors
- dmix 3y ago
  Survive. My survival is my own will. My parents didn't have me to benefit themselves in industry, they only want me to survive in the best capacity possible. I'm not sure how that distinction is not 100% obvious in 2023. It's not the 1700s in a planet covered in subsistence farms who need kids to work. This is handwringing over the decline of paper or pencils after computers came about when paper didn't magically come about by itself. Horses were not wild animals in North America at any point in modern history and barely in other continents. They were purely bred for industry, travel, and hobby. When industry and travel no longer became a thing we stopped producing them: a clear 1-to-1 correlation. There's already been reductions in human populations without AI from leisure, abundance, culture, etc, - a very very different causality than horses.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > My parents didn't have me to benefit themselves in industry, they only want me to survive in the best capacity possible. I'm not sure how that distinction is not 100% obvious in 2023. It's not the 1700s in a planet covered in subsistence farms who need kids to work. You make a very compelling argument. It made me think from another angle. Consider that there's evolutionary pressure on humans to want to procreate. So in a certain sense, we are conceived to serve the gene and to survive we have to labor.
  - 3y ago

superchroma 3y ago

To wrench the metaphor, if horses had banded together, they could have fought back against humans and seized some power and rights for themselves. Instead they were conditioned to accept their bad conditions. The same is true of humans. Most humans accept terrible indignities and injustices routinely through apathy.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
No, horses could not have banded together and fought back. Humans have almost never accepted a backslide in quality of living. All the examples I can think of are because of short lived war time austerity.
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  What is your basis for this statement? We have absolutely _numerous_ examples of people throughout history receiving and accepting horrible conditions cast upon them. Even today. And as far as I can tell, we still have similar power structures that would enable those situations to continue occurring.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Name some examples of large, militarily powerful groups accepting living conditions that were worse than the previous generation experienced, not due to natural disasters. People have never accepted that. Sure they've had shitty living conditions, but they started shitty, they didn't get worse. Sure they've been enslaved, but the civilians in this country are heavily armed enough to fight back against a government they see as allowing living conditions to slip.
    - trealira 3y ago
      In many societies, the rights of women have declined from one period to the next, although I guess "women" don't constitute a "large, militarily powerful" group. For example, in Korea during the Joseon/Chosŏn period, the status of women gradually declined due to Neo-Confucianist ideology. Women stopped inheriting property in the seventeenth century. They lost the right to intiate divorce, while men could still intiate divorce under seven grounds (disobedience to parents-in-law, failure to bear a son, adultery, jealousy, hereditary disease, larceny, and talkativeness). Widows lost the right to remarry, and were seen as inconvenient for the family. Women were forbidden from playing games, partying outdoors, and riding horses. The decline of women's rights happened in other societies, too; I just happened to have a book about Korean history on my desk.

dclowd9901 3y ago

… I can’t tell if you’re being very clever here. At the risk of being whooshed, I’m going to say that the common man has a lot more in common with horses than billionaires.

andsoitis 3y ago

> Horses were replaced because they have no political power, they are tools. How much political power do you think the purveyors of AI wield? > As long as we live in a democracy people will not become horses. It’s estimated that 2.3 billion people—about 29% of the global population—lived in a democracy in 2021 (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/how-many-people-live-in-a-political-democracy-today/#google_vignette https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/how-many-people-live-in-...) And if you live in a democracy today, as you yourself state, it is not guaranteed to remain that way.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gwern 3y ago

A democracy of whom? When AGI comes and the AIs are as smart or smarter than you, what's going to keep you enfranchised? Huang's suggestion is that it will be your ability to... type faster than a computer can. (Good luck with that.)

HDThoreaun 3y ago
The 400 million guns owned by the people of this country. Humans will not go quietly into the night. They might lose some sense of purpose as they work less, but they will never accept a government that is not fundamentally based on humanism and they will never accept reduction in quality of life as GDP expands.