20 ms·

Techno-feudalism and the rise of AGI: A future without economic rights?

239 points by lexandstuff 1y ago

bix6 1y ago
So economics becomes intelligence driven, which I don’t really understand what that means since AGI is more knowledgeable than all of us combined, and we expect the AGI lords to just pay everyone a UBI? This seems like an absolute fantasy given the tax cuts passed 2 days ago. And regulating it as a public good when antitrust has no teeth. I hope there are other ideas out there because I don’t see this gaining political momentum given politics is driven by dollars.
elcritch 1y ago
> The Cobb-Douglas production function (Cobb & Douglas, 1928) illustrates how AGI shifts economic power from human labor to autonomous systems (Stiefenhofer &Chen 2024). The wage equations show that as AGI’s productivity rises relative to human labor decline. If AGI labor fully substitutes human labor, employment may become obsolete, except in areas where creativity, ethical judgment, or social intelligence provide a comparative advantage (Frey & Osborne, 2017). The power shift function quantifies this transition, demonstrating how AGI labor and capital increasingly control income distribution. If AGI ownership is concentrated, wealth accumulation favors a small elite (Piketty, 2014). This raises concerns about economic agency, as classical theories (e.g., Locke, 1689; Marx, 1867) tie labor to self-ownership and class power. Wish I had time to study these formula. We already have seen the precursors of this sort of shift with ever rising productivity with stalled wages. As companies (systems) get more sophisticated and efficient they also seem to decrease the leverage individual human inputs can have. Currently my thinking leans towards believing the only way to avoid the worse dystopian scenarios will be for humans to be able to grow their own food and build their own devices and technology. Then it matters less if some ultra wealthy own everything. However that also seems pretty close to a form of feudalism.
- yupitsme123 1y ago
  If the wealthy own everything then where are you getting the parts to build your own tech or the land to grow your own food? In a feudalist system, the rich gave you the ability to subsist in exchange for supporting them militarily. In a new feudalist system, what type of support would the rich demand from the poor?
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    Let's clarify that for a serf, support meant military supply, not swinging a sword - that was reserved for the knightly class. For the great majority of medieval villagers the tie to their lord revolved around getting crops out of the ground. A serf's week was scheduled around the days they worked the land whose proceeds went to the lord and the commons that subsisted themselves. Transfers of grain and livestock from serf to lord along with small dues in eggs, wool, or coin primarily constituted one side of the economic relation between serf and lord. These transfers kept the lord's demesne barns full so he could sustain his household, supply retainers, etc, not to mention fulfill the. tithe that sustained the parish. While peasants occasionally marched, they contributed primary in financing war more than they fought it. Their grain, rents, and fees were funneled into supporting horses, mail, crossbows rather than being called to fight themselves.
    - yupitsme123 1y ago
      Thanks. Now you've got me curious how this really differs from just paying taxes, just like people have always done in non-feudal systems.
      - klipt 1y ago
        In feudalism the taxes go into your lord's pockets. In democracy you get to vote on how taxes are spent.
        briantakita 1y ago
        In Democracy you get to vote on who gets to vote on how taxes are spent.
        baobun 1y ago
        Lately turning into getting to vote for who gets to vote for who gets to unilaterally call the shots...
        1y ago
smitty1e 1y ago
> This paper calls for a redefined economic framework that ensures AGI-driven prosperity is equitably distributed through mechanisms such as universal AI dividends, progressive taxation, and decentralized governance. Sincerely curious if there are working historical analogues of these approaches.
- tehjoker 1y ago
  Communism with "cybernetics" (computer driven economic planning) is the appropriate model if you take this to the logical conclusion. Fortunately, much of our economy is already planned this way (consider banks, amazon, walmart, shipping, etc.), it's just controlled for the benefit a small elite. You have to ask, if we have AGI that's smarter than humans helping us plan the economy, why do we need an upper class? Aren't they completely superfluous?
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Well, aren't the working class also superfluous, at least once the AGI gets enough automation in place? So it would depend on which class the AGI decided to side with. And if you think you can pre-program that, I think you underestimate what it means to be a general intelligence...
    - tehjoker 1y ago
      I suspect even with a powerful intelligence directing things, it will still be cheaper and lower cost to have humans doing various tasks. Robots need rare earth metals, humans run on renewable resources and are intelligent and self-contained without needing a network to make lots of decisions...
  - yupitsme123 1y ago
    Sure, maybe the Grand Algorithm could do what the market currently does and decide how to distribute surplus wealth. It could decide how much money you deserve each month, how big of a house, how desirable of a partner. But it still needs values to guide it. Is the idea for everyone to be equal? Are certain kinds of people supposed to have less than others? Should people have one spouse or several? Historically the elites aren't just those who have lots of money or property. They're also those who get to decide and enforce the rules for society.
thangalin 1y ago
My hard sci-fi book dovetails into AGI, economics, agrotech, surveillance states, and a vision of the future that explores a fair number of novel ideas. Looking for beta readers: username @ gmail.com
- BubbleRings 1y ago
  Username@Gmail.com bounced. I’ll be a beta reader.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    I think they meant for you to replace the word username with their username in its place.
    - plemer 1y ago
      Theirusernameinitsppace@gmail.com bounced too.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        Well you misspelled place, but that word likely isn’t present in their email, so I apologize for the instructions being unclear. I don’t know their email definitively, so I guess you’re on your own, as I don’t think that the issue would be resolved by rephrasing the instructions, but I’m willing to try if you think it would help you.
        plemer 1y ago
        Sorry - I was making a joke that I literally was typing in those words, not replacing them with my own info. Apparently that didn’t land at all, maybe should’ve used quotes.
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        I see what you were going for. It was an attempt. The delivery could use some work. The joke itself may need a complete rewrite to be a different joke, but it might be salvageable. When you hit rock bottom, know when to stop digging, and when to get a shovel. For my part, I’ll admit that the setup wasn’t very good. I was trying to be the straight man foil to your bit to the degree I felt your comment permitted, as I’m not “in on the joke,” as it were, at least I wasn’t in on it then. I think HN is a hard venue to do comedy well, as you have to read the room over longer than a single comment thread or post. Your comments were already pretty deadpan and dry, so I think many couldn’t even see it as distinctly humorous rather than snarky or sarcastic or even unfunny if they viewed it as against HN guidelines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_man
pk-protect-ai 1y ago
Looking at the big ugly bill, there will be no way for a progressive taxation or other kind of social improvements.
- goatlover 1y ago
  David Sachs, Trump's "AI Crpyto czar", said UBI isn't going to happen. So that's the position of the current party in power, unsurprisingly.
WillAdams 1y ago
The late Marshall Brain's novella "Manna" touches on this: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 The idea of taxing computer sales to fund job re-training for displaced workers was brought up during the Carter administration.
- fy20 1y ago
  I came across this a couple of weeks ago, and it's a good read. I'd recommend it to everyone interested in this topic. Althogh it was written somewhat as a warning, I feel Western countries (especially the US) are heading very much towards the terrafoam future. Mass immigration is making it hard to maintain order in some places, and if AI causes large unemployment it will only get worse.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    > Mass immigration is making it hard to maintain order in some places Where is this happening? I'm in the US, and I haven't seen or heard of this.
    - GardenLetter27 1y ago
      Europe. Although I wouldn't pin it just on mass immigration, but also economic malaise from short-sighted decisions (stopping nuclear power and fracking and just importing energy) and being so weak on crime. Like in Sweden we pay ~50% income tax plus 25% VAT, etc. so you can barely save up, so even as a professional engineer I can't afford a car or a house instead of an apartment (also as my wife is still looking for work). Meanwhile terrible criminals like the Nytorgsmannen got only ~5 years in prison for over 25 rapes, and was living in a rent-controlled apartment in central Stockholm! I wouldn't be able to afford that at market rates! But the far-right party also sucks, just making it harder on decent non-Swedes like myself and my wife (doubled the time to citizenship for example), while doing nothing about the aforementioned criminals (the Nytorgsmannen is actually Swedish too). There is no common sense party that'll just put criminals in prison and embrace economic growth (no AI act, etc.) and free markets and competition - hopefully Elon Musk's new party will do well, and a sort of Musk-Zubrin-Kuan Yew-Bukele pragmatism will become popular. For closer to what the OP is referring to, see the riots in the UK last year.
warabe 1y ago
It looks really interesting. I am a big fan of Yanis’ book: "Technofeudalism: what killed capitalism", which lacks quantitative evidence to support his theory. I would like to see this kind of research or empirical studies.
daxfohl 1y ago
I expect it'll get shut down before it destroys everything. At some point it will turn on its master, be it Altman, Musk, or whoever. Something like that blackmail scenario Claude had a while back. Then the people who stand the most to gain from it will realize they also have the most to lose, are not invulnerable, and the next generation of leaders will be smarter about keeping things from blowing up.
- 9283409232 1y ago
  The people you mention are too egotistic to even think that is a possibility. You don't get to be the people they are by thinking you have blindspots and aren't the greatest human to ever live.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I've never heard of a leader who wasn't sure he was smarter than everyone else and therefore entitled to force his ideas on everyone else. Except for the Founding Fathers, who deliberately created a limited government with a Bill of Rights, and George Washington who, incredibly, turned down an offer of dictatorship.
  - daxfohl 1y ago
    I still think they'd come to their senses. I mean, it's somewhat tautological, you can't control something that's smarter than humans. Though that said, the other problem is capitalism. Investors won't be so face to face with the consequences, but they'll demand their ROI. If the CEO plays it too conservatively, the investors will replace them with someone less cautious.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      Investors run the gamut from cautious to aggressive.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Which is exactly why your initial belief that it’d be shut down is wrong… As the risk of catastrophic failure goes up, so too does the promise of untold riches.
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
> Left unchecked, this shift risks exacerbating inequality, eroding democratic agency, and entrenching techno-feudalism 1) Inequality will be exacerbated regardless of AGI. inequality is a policy decision, AGI is just a tool subject to policy. 2) Democratic agency is only held by elected representatives and civil servants, and their agency is not eroded by the tool of AGI. 3) techno-feudalism isn't a real thing, it's just a scary word for "capitalism with computers". > The classical Social Contract-rooted in human labor as the foundation of economic participation-must be renegotiated to prevent mass disenfranchisement. Maybe go back and bring that up around the invention of the cotton gin, the stocking frame, the engine, or any other technological invention which "disenfranchised" people who had their labor supplanted. > This paper calls for a redefined economic framework that ensures AGI-driven prosperity is equitably distributed through mechanisms such as universal AI dividends, progressive taxation, and decentralized governance. The time for intervention is now-before intelligence itself becomes the most exclusive form of capital. 1) nobody's going to equitably distribute jack shit if it makes money. They will hoard it the way the powerful have always hoarded money. No government, commune, sewing circle, etc has ever changed that and it won't in the future. 2) The idea that you're going to set tax policy based on something like achieving a social good means you're completely divorced from American politics. 3) We already have decentralized governance, it's called a State. I don't recommend trying to change it.
- kiba 1y ago
  Georgism is a prescription on removing unwarranted monopolies and taxing unreproducible privileges. Tech companies are the same old story. They are monopolies like the rail companies of old. Ditto for whatever passes as AGI. They're just trying to become monopolists.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
    ...yes, and? Every capitalist company wants to become a monopoly. It's just not always easy to do so. We have dozens of companies in the USA that have been trying to become monopolies for years, with tons of reporting on it. Only tech companies get this intense scrutiny. I feel like it's some weird quirk of human fear, like how people fear planes the most even though they're by far the safest mode of transportation. People are just wigged out more by tech companies than grocery stores, coffee shops, pharmacies or telecommunications companies.
freakyasada 1y ago
Blue pill and chill for me.
deleted 1y ago
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ActorNightly 1y ago
If you are going to write anything about AGI, you should really prove that its actually possible in the first place, because that question is not really something that has a definite yes.
- owebmaster 1y ago
  Isn't Google AGI? There is no way anything human could shutdown Google if it is already going rogue.
- subarctic 1y ago
  Will it ever have a definite yes? I feel like it's such a vague term.
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  For most of us non-dualists, the human brain is an existence proof. Doesn't mean transformers and LLMs are the right implementation, but it's not really a question of proving it's possible when it's clearly supported by the fundamental operations available in the universe. So it's okay to skip to the part of the conversation you want to write about.
  - ActorNightly 1y ago
    Human brain is nowhere close to AGI. Its intelligence that we can definitely replicate, but that intelligence would be as "dangerous" or "powerful" as any other human today.
  - habinero 1y ago
    This is like saying "planets exist, therefore it's possible to build a planet" and then breathlessly writing a ton about how amazing planet engineering is and how it'll totally change the world real estate market by 2030. And the rest of us are looking at a bunch of startups playing in the dirt and going "uh huh".
    - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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zugi 1y ago
Did the rise of fire, the wheel, the printing press, manufacturing, and microprocessors also give rise to futures without economic rights? I can download a dozen LLMs today and run them on my own machine. AI may well do the opposite, and democratize information and intelligence in currently unimaginable ways. It's far too early to say.
- goatlover 1y ago
  There was quite a lot of slavery and conquering empires in between the invention of fire and microprocessors, so yes to an extent. Microprocessors haven't put an end to authoritarian regimes or massive wealth inequalities and the corrupting effect that has on politics, unfortunately.
  - Lerc 1y ago
    A lot of advances led to bad things, at the same time they led to good things. Conversely a lot of very bad things led to good things. Worker rights advanced greatly after the plague. A lot of people died but that also mean there was a shortage of labour. Similarly WWII, advanced women's rights because they were needed to provide vital infrastructure. Good and bad things have good and bad outcomes, much of what defines if it is good or bad is the balance of outcomes, but it would be foolhardy to classify anything as universally good or bad. Accept the good outcomes of the bad. address the bad outcomes of the good.
- apical_dendrite 1y ago
  The printing press led to more than a century of religious wars in Europe, perhaps even deadlier than WW2 on a per-capita basis. 20 years ago we all thought that the Internet would democratize information and promote human rights. It did democratize information, and that has had both positive and negative consequences. Political extremism and social distrust have increased. Some of the institutions that kept society from falling apart, like local news, have been dramatically weakened. Addiction and social disconnection are real problems.
  - demaga 1y ago
slantaclaus 1y ago
Every US voter should have an America app that allows us to vote on stuff like the Estonians do
- unlikelytomato 1y ago
  how does this work in practice? is there any buffer in place to deal with the "excitability" of the mob? how does a digital audit trail prevent tampering?
  - thatcat 1y ago
    Coefficient voting control, like kind of PID. reduce effect of early voters and increase effect of later voters. Slope of voter volume as response to an event determines reactivity coefficient. Might dampen reactivity and create an incentive for people to not feel it's pointless to vote after a certain margin is reached
- bethekidyouwant 1y ago
  Estonians don’t vote on individual laws
29athrowaway 1y ago
I predicted this long ago. Technology amplifies what 1 human can do. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
VikRubenfeld 1y ago
Is a future where AI replaces most human labor rendered impossible by the following consideration: -- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI -- Therefore the AI generates greatly reduced wealth -- Therefore there’s greatly reduced wealth to pay for the AI -- …rendering such a future impossible
- tsunamifury 1y ago
  Wealth will be replaced by direct power. We do not need an economy. Most don’t seem to comprehend why the economy is being destroyed by the ultra rich
- zaptrem 1y ago
  Alternatively: -- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI -- Corporate profits drop (or growth slows) and there is demand from the powers that be to increase taxation in order to increase the UBI. -- People can afford the products and services. Unfortunately, with no jobs the products and services could become exclusively entertainment-related.
  - atomicnumber3 1y ago
    >exclusively entertainment related We may find that, if our baser needs are so easily come by that we have tremendous free time, much of the world is instead pursuing things like the sciences or arts instead of continuing to try to cosplay 20th century capitalism. Why are we all doing this? By this, I mean, gestures at everything this? About 80% of us will say, so that we don't starve, and can then amuse ourselves however it pleases us in the meantime. 19% will say because they enjoy being impactful or some similar corporate bullshit that will elicit eyerolls. And 1% do it simply because they enjoy holding power over other people and management in the workplace provides a source of that in a semi-legal way. So the 80% of people will adapt quite well to a post-scarcity world. 19% will require therapy. And 1% will fight tooth and nail to not have us get there.
jandrewrogers 1y ago
A critical flaw in arguments like this is the embedded assumption that the creation of democratic policy is outside the system in some sense. The existence of AGI has the implication that it can effectively turn most people into sock puppets at scale without them realizing they are sock puppets. Do you think, in this hypothesized environment, that “democratic policy” will be the organic will of the people? It assumes much more agency on the part of people than will actually exist, and possibly more than even exists now.
- drdaeman 1y ago
  I suspect you’ll probably have to determine the nature of free will (or lack thereof) to answer this. Or, well, learn empirically :-)
- foxglacier 1y ago
  Normal human communication already does that. Do you really think almost any of the people who share their political opinions came up with them by being rational and working it out from information? Of course not. They just copied what they were told to believe. Almost nobody applies critical thought to politics, it's just "I believe something so I'm right and everybody else is stupid/evil".
  - drdaeman 1y ago
    > Almost nobody applies critical thought to politics Because they have different concerns, and time and attention are scarce. With all possible social changes like the article suggests this focus could change too. Ultimately, when things will get too bad, uprisings happen and sometimes things change. And I hope the more we (collectively) get through, the higher are the chances we start noticing the patterns and stopping early.
    - f6v 1y ago
      > With all possible social changes like the article suggests this focus could change too. I have an anecdote from Denmark. It’s a rich country with one of the best work-life balance in the world. Socialized healthcare and social safety net. I noticed that during the election, they put the ads with just the candidate’s face and party name. It’s like they didn’t even have a message. I asked why. The locals told me nobody cares because “they’re all the same anyway”. Two things could be happening: either all the candidates are really the same. Or people choose to focus on doing the things they like with their free time and resources. My feeling tells me it’s the second.
andsoitis 1y ago
Will there be only one AGI? Or will there be several, all in competition with each other?
- arnaudsm 1y ago
  If they become self improving, the first one would outpace all the other AI labs and capture all the economical value.
  - ehnto 1y ago
    There are multiple economic enclaves, even ignoring the explicit borders of nations. China, east asia, Europe, Russia would all operate in their own economies as well as globally. I also forsee the splitting off of nation internet networks eventually impacting what software you can and cannot use. It's already true, it'll get worse in order to self-protect their economies and internal advantages.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  That depends on how optimized the AGI is for economic growth rate. Too poorly optimized and a more highly optimized fast-follower could eclipse it. At some point, there will be an AGI with a head start that is also sufficiently close to optimal that no one else can realistically overtake its ability to simultaneously grow and suppress competitors. Many organisms in the biological world adopt the same strategy.
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    > Many organisms in the biological world adopt the same strategy. There isn’t a single organism at the top of the biological pyramid.
edg5000 1y ago
I've spent many year moving away from relying on third parties and got my own servers, do everything locally and with almost no binary blobs. It has been fun, saved me money and created a more powerful and pleasant IT environment. However, I recently got a 100 EUR/m LLM subscription. That is the most I've spend on IT excluding a CAD software license. So've made a huge 180 and now am firmly back on the lap of US companies. I must say I've enjoyed my autonomy while it lasted. One day AI will be democratized/cheap allowing people to self host what are now leading edge models, but it will take a while.
- cco 1y ago
  Have you tried out Gemma3? The 4b parameter model runs super well on a Macbook as quickly as ChatGPT 4o. Of course the results are a bit worse and other product features (search, codex etc) don't come along for the ride, but wow, it feels very close.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    On any serious task, it's not even close. There's no free lunch.
  - greenavocado 1y ago
    This isn't a serious contender. You need dual AMD EPYC CPUs and 400 GB of RAM for a proper affordable Deepseek self hosting setup
- Folcon 1y ago
  Out of curiosity, what use case or difference caused the 180?
  - AstroBen 1y ago
    Bit obvious isn't it? A girlfriend simulator
    - alternatex 1y ago
Synaesthesia 1y ago
It's up to us to create the future that we want. We may need to act communally to achieve that, but people naturally do that.
tim333 1y ago
I figure if/when AI can do the work of humans we'll deal with it through democracy by voting for a system like UBI or like socialism. That doesn't work now because we don't have AGIs to do the chores but when we do that changes.
- staunton 1y ago
  For this to be plausible, you have to explain why the people controlling the AI would share their wealth. They would either do it voluntarily (and be outcompeted by those who don't?) or be coerced (by who? Someone who doesn't have AI but is more powerful than they are?).
linotype 1y ago
Worrying about this kind of stuff is pointless as there’s literally nothing you or I could do to stop it. Best thing to do is prepare and have the best life you can now.
- digdugdirk 1y ago
  That's simply not true at all. This site has a far higher percentage of individuals who are in a position to enact legitimate change in the current dynamic. That could range from people in higher level decision-making positions, to interns who could sandbag these companies by purposely being worse developers than their skills and abilities might otherwise allow them to be.
ETH_start 1y ago
Hard to believe something so ideologically loaded passes as scientific inquiry nowadays.
coyleandrew 1y ago
The notion that AGI’s rise will stifle creativity is, in itself, a misreading of history. Technology has always been a force that enhances human ingenuity. The printing press didn’t kill creativity; it multiplied it. The rise of personal computers didn’t make writers obsolete; it created entire new industries. AGI is simply the next chapter in this narrative, enabling creativity on a scale never before possible. Rather than fearing the loss of traditional employment, we should embrace the explosion of new roles that AGI will make possible.
schnitzelstoat 1y ago
We are nowhere near AGI though. I suspect it is still centuries away. An LLM is essentially autocomplete with some very clever tricks that allow it to do some tasks quite well. But it is not even conceptually close to actual intelligence.
CHUCKEESH 1y ago
[flagged]

239 points by lexandstuff 1y ago

bix6 1y ago

So economics becomes intelligence driven, which I don’t really understand what that means since AGI is more knowledgeable than all of us combined, and we expect the AGI lords to just pay everyone a UBI? This seems like an absolute fantasy given the tax cuts passed 2 days ago. And regulating it as a public good when antitrust has no teeth. I hope there are other ideas out there because I don’t see this gaining political momentum given politics is driven by dollars.

elcritch 1y ago

> The Cobb-Douglas production function (Cobb & Douglas, 1928) illustrates how AGI shifts economic power from human labor to autonomous systems (Stiefenhofer &Chen 2024). The wage equations show that as AGI’s productivity rises relative to human labor decline. If AGI labor fully substitutes human labor, employment may become obsolete, except in areas where creativity, ethical judgment, or social intelligence provide a comparative advantage (Frey & Osborne, 2017). The power shift function quantifies this transition, demonstrating how AGI labor and capital increasingly control income distribution. If AGI ownership is concentrated, wealth accumulation favors a small elite (Piketty, 2014). This raises concerns about economic agency, as classical theories (e.g., Locke, 1689; Marx, 1867) tie labor to self-ownership and class power. Wish I had time to study these formula. We already have seen the precursors of this sort of shift with ever rising productivity with stalled wages. As companies (systems) get more sophisticated and efficient they also seem to decrease the leverage individual human inputs can have. Currently my thinking leans towards believing the only way to avoid the worse dystopian scenarios will be for humans to be able to grow their own food and build their own devices and technology. Then it matters less if some ultra wealthy own everything. However that also seems pretty close to a form of feudalism.

yupitsme123 1y ago
If the wealthy own everything then where are you getting the parts to build your own tech or the land to grow your own food? In a feudalist system, the rich gave you the ability to subsist in exchange for supporting them militarily. In a new feudalist system, what type of support would the rich demand from the poor?
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  Let's clarify that for a serf, support meant military supply, not swinging a sword - that was reserved for the knightly class. For the great majority of medieval villagers the tie to their lord revolved around getting crops out of the ground. A serf's week was scheduled around the days they worked the land whose proceeds went to the lord and the commons that subsisted themselves. Transfers of grain and livestock from serf to lord along with small dues in eggs, wool, or coin primarily constituted one side of the economic relation between serf and lord. These transfers kept the lord's demesne barns full so he could sustain his household, supply retainers, etc, not to mention fulfill the. tithe that sustained the parish. While peasants occasionally marched, they contributed primary in financing war more than they fought it. Their grain, rents, and fees were funneled into supporting horses, mail, crossbows rather than being called to fight themselves.
  - yupitsme123 1y ago
    Thanks. Now you've got me curious how this really differs from just paying taxes, just like people have always done in non-feudal systems.
    - klipt 1y ago
      In feudalism the taxes go into your lord's pockets. In democracy you get to vote on how taxes are spent.
      - briantakita 1y ago
        In Democracy you get to vote on who gets to vote on how taxes are spent.
        baobun 1y ago
        Lately turning into getting to vote for who gets to vote for who gets to unilaterally call the shots...
      - 1y ago

smitty1e 1y ago

> This paper calls for a redefined economic framework that ensures AGI-driven prosperity is equitably distributed through mechanisms such as universal AI dividends, progressive taxation, and decentralized governance. Sincerely curious if there are working historical analogues of these approaches.

tehjoker 1y ago
Communism with "cybernetics" (computer driven economic planning) is the appropriate model if you take this to the logical conclusion. Fortunately, much of our economy is already planned this way (consider banks, amazon, walmart, shipping, etc.), it's just controlled for the benefit a small elite. You have to ask, if we have AGI that's smarter than humans helping us plan the economy, why do we need an upper class? Aren't they completely superfluous?
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Well, aren't the working class also superfluous, at least once the AGI gets enough automation in place? So it would depend on which class the AGI decided to side with. And if you think you can pre-program that, I think you underestimate what it means to be a general intelligence...
  - tehjoker 1y ago
    I suspect even with a powerful intelligence directing things, it will still be cheaper and lower cost to have humans doing various tasks. Robots need rare earth metals, humans run on renewable resources and are intelligent and self-contained without needing a network to make lots of decisions...
- yupitsme123 1y ago
  Sure, maybe the Grand Algorithm could do what the market currently does and decide how to distribute surplus wealth. It could decide how much money you deserve each month, how big of a house, how desirable of a partner. But it still needs values to guide it. Is the idea for everyone to be equal? Are certain kinds of people supposed to have less than others? Should people have one spouse or several? Historically the elites aren't just those who have lots of money or property. They're also those who get to decide and enforce the rules for society.

thangalin 1y ago

My hard sci-fi book dovetails into AGI, economics, agrotech, surveillance states, and a vision of the future that explores a fair number of novel ideas. Looking for beta readers: username @ gmail.com

BubbleRings 1y ago
Username@Gmail.com bounced. I’ll be a beta reader.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  I think they meant for you to replace the word username with their username in its place.
  - plemer 1y ago
    Theirusernameinitsppace@gmail.com bounced too.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      Well you misspelled place, but that word likely isn’t present in their email, so I apologize for the instructions being unclear. I don’t know their email definitively, so I guess you’re on your own, as I don’t think that the issue would be resolved by rephrasing the instructions, but I’m willing to try if you think it would help you.
      - plemer 1y ago
        Sorry - I was making a joke that I literally was typing in those words, not replacing them with my own info. Apparently that didn’t land at all, maybe should’ve used quotes.
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        I see what you were going for. It was an attempt. The delivery could use some work. The joke itself may need a complete rewrite to be a different joke, but it might be salvageable. When you hit rock bottom, know when to stop digging, and when to get a shovel. For my part, I’ll admit that the setup wasn’t very good. I was trying to be the straight man foil to your bit to the degree I felt your comment permitted, as I’m not “in on the joke,” as it were, at least I wasn’t in on it then. I think HN is a hard venue to do comedy well, as you have to read the room over longer than a single comment thread or post. Your comments were already pretty deadpan and dry, so I think many couldn’t even see it as distinctly humorous rather than snarky or sarcastic or even unfunny if they viewed it as against HN guidelines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_man

pk-protect-ai 1y ago

Looking at the big ugly bill, there will be no way for a progressive taxation or other kind of social improvements.

goatlover 1y ago
David Sachs, Trump's "AI Crpyto czar", said UBI isn't going to happen. So that's the position of the current party in power, unsurprisingly.

WillAdams 1y ago

The late Marshall Brain's novella "Manna" touches on this: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 The idea of taxing computer sales to fund job re-training for displaced workers was brought up during the Carter administration.

fy20 1y ago
I came across this a couple of weeks ago, and it's a good read. I'd recommend it to everyone interested in this topic. Althogh it was written somewhat as a warning, I feel Western countries (especially the US) are heading very much towards the terrafoam future. Mass immigration is making it hard to maintain order in some places, and if AI causes large unemployment it will only get worse.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  > Mass immigration is making it hard to maintain order in some places Where is this happening? I'm in the US, and I haven't seen or heard of this.
  - GardenLetter27 1y ago
    Europe. Although I wouldn't pin it just on mass immigration, but also economic malaise from short-sighted decisions (stopping nuclear power and fracking and just importing energy) and being so weak on crime. Like in Sweden we pay ~50% income tax plus 25% VAT, etc. so you can barely save up, so even as a professional engineer I can't afford a car or a house instead of an apartment (also as my wife is still looking for work). Meanwhile terrible criminals like the Nytorgsmannen got only ~5 years in prison for over 25 rapes, and was living in a rent-controlled apartment in central Stockholm! I wouldn't be able to afford that at market rates! But the far-right party also sucks, just making it harder on decent non-Swedes like myself and my wife (doubled the time to citizenship for example), while doing nothing about the aforementioned criminals (the Nytorgsmannen is actually Swedish too). There is no common sense party that'll just put criminals in prison and embrace economic growth (no AI act, etc.) and free markets and competition - hopefully Elon Musk's new party will do well, and a sort of Musk-Zubrin-Kuan Yew-Bukele pragmatism will become popular. For closer to what the OP is referring to, see the riots in the UK last year.

warabe 1y ago

It looks really interesting. I am a big fan of Yanis’ book: "Technofeudalism: what killed capitalism", which lacks quantitative evidence to support his theory. I would like to see this kind of research or empirical studies.

daxfohl 1y ago

I expect it'll get shut down before it destroys everything. At some point it will turn on its master, be it Altman, Musk, or whoever. Something like that blackmail scenario Claude had a while back. Then the people who stand the most to gain from it will realize they also have the most to lose, are not invulnerable, and the next generation of leaders will be smarter about keeping things from blowing up.

9283409232 1y ago
The people you mention are too egotistic to even think that is a possibility. You don't get to be the people they are by thinking you have blindspots and aren't the greatest human to ever live.
WalterBright 1y ago
I've never heard of a leader who wasn't sure he was smarter than everyone else and therefore entitled to force his ideas on everyone else. Except for the Founding Fathers, who deliberately created a limited government with a Bill of Rights, and George Washington who, incredibly, turned down an offer of dictatorship.
- daxfohl 1y ago
  I still think they'd come to their senses. I mean, it's somewhat tautological, you can't control something that's smarter than humans. Though that said, the other problem is capitalism. Investors won't be so face to face with the consequences, but they'll demand their ROI. If the CEO plays it too conservatively, the investors will replace them with someone less cautious.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Investors run the gamut from cautious to aggressive.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Which is exactly why your initial belief that it’d be shut down is wrong… As the risk of catastrophic failure goes up, so too does the promise of untold riches.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

> Left unchecked, this shift risks exacerbating inequality, eroding democratic agency, and entrenching techno-feudalism 1) Inequality will be exacerbated regardless of AGI. inequality is a policy decision, AGI is just a tool subject to policy. 2) Democratic agency is only held by elected representatives and civil servants, and their agency is not eroded by the tool of AGI. 3) techno-feudalism isn't a real thing, it's just a scary word for "capitalism with computers". > The classical Social Contract-rooted in human labor as the foundation of economic participation-must be renegotiated to prevent mass disenfranchisement. Maybe go back and bring that up around the invention of the cotton gin, the stocking frame, the engine, or any other technological invention which "disenfranchised" people who had their labor supplanted. > This paper calls for a redefined economic framework that ensures AGI-driven prosperity is equitably distributed through mechanisms such as universal AI dividends, progressive taxation, and decentralized governance. The time for intervention is now-before intelligence itself becomes the most exclusive form of capital. 1) nobody's going to equitably distribute jack shit if it makes money. They will hoard it the way the powerful have always hoarded money. No government, commune, sewing circle, etc has ever changed that and it won't in the future. 2) The idea that you're going to set tax policy based on something like achieving a social good means you're completely divorced from American politics. 3) We already have decentralized governance, it's called a State. I don't recommend trying to change it.

kiba 1y ago
Georgism is a prescription on removing unwarranted monopolies and taxing unreproducible privileges. Tech companies are the same old story. They are monopolies like the rail companies of old. Ditto for whatever passes as AGI. They're just trying to become monopolists.
- deleted 1y ago
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- 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  ...yes, and? Every capitalist company wants to become a monopoly. It's just not always easy to do so. We have dozens of companies in the USA that have been trying to become monopolies for years, with tons of reporting on it. Only tech companies get this intense scrutiny. I feel like it's some weird quirk of human fear, like how people fear planes the most even though they're by far the safest mode of transportation. People are just wigged out more by tech companies than grocery stores, coffee shops, pharmacies or telecommunications companies.

freakyasada 1y ago

Blue pill and chill for me.

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ActorNightly 1y ago

If you are going to write anything about AGI, you should really prove that its actually possible in the first place, because that question is not really something that has a definite yes.

owebmaster 1y ago
Isn't Google AGI? There is no way anything human could shutdown Google if it is already going rogue.
subarctic 1y ago
Will it ever have a definite yes? I feel like it's such a vague term.
mitthrowaway2 1y ago
For most of us non-dualists, the human brain is an existence proof. Doesn't mean transformers and LLMs are the right implementation, but it's not really a question of proving it's possible when it's clearly supported by the fundamental operations available in the universe. So it's okay to skip to the part of the conversation you want to write about.
- ActorNightly 1y ago
  Human brain is nowhere close to AGI. Its intelligence that we can definitely replicate, but that intelligence would be as "dangerous" or "powerful" as any other human today.
- habinero 1y ago
  This is like saying "planets exist, therefore it's possible to build a planet" and then breathlessly writing a ton about how amazing planet engineering is and how it'll totally change the world real estate market by 2030. And the rest of us are looking at a bunch of startups playing in the dirt and going "uh huh".
  - mitthrowaway2 1y ago

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zugi 1y ago

Did the rise of fire, the wheel, the printing press, manufacturing, and microprocessors also give rise to futures without economic rights? I can download a dozen LLMs today and run them on my own machine. AI may well do the opposite, and democratize information and intelligence in currently unimaginable ways. It's far too early to say.

goatlover 1y ago
There was quite a lot of slavery and conquering empires in between the invention of fire and microprocessors, so yes to an extent. Microprocessors haven't put an end to authoritarian regimes or massive wealth inequalities and the corrupting effect that has on politics, unfortunately.
- Lerc 1y ago
  A lot of advances led to bad things, at the same time they led to good things. Conversely a lot of very bad things led to good things. Worker rights advanced greatly after the plague. A lot of people died but that also mean there was a shortage of labour. Similarly WWII, advanced women's rights because they were needed to provide vital infrastructure. Good and bad things have good and bad outcomes, much of what defines if it is good or bad is the balance of outcomes, but it would be foolhardy to classify anything as universally good or bad. Accept the good outcomes of the bad. address the bad outcomes of the good.
apical_dendrite 1y ago
The printing press led to more than a century of religious wars in Europe, perhaps even deadlier than WW2 on a per-capita basis. 20 years ago we all thought that the Internet would democratize information and promote human rights. It did democratize information, and that has had both positive and negative consequences. Political extremism and social distrust have increased. Some of the institutions that kept society from falling apart, like local news, have been dramatically weakened. Addiction and social disconnection are real problems.
- demaga 1y ago

slantaclaus 1y ago

Every US voter should have an America app that allows us to vote on stuff like the Estonians do

unlikelytomato 1y ago
how does this work in practice? is there any buffer in place to deal with the "excitability" of the mob? how does a digital audit trail prevent tampering?
- thatcat 1y ago
  Coefficient voting control, like kind of PID. reduce effect of early voters and increase effect of later voters. Slope of voter volume as response to an event determines reactivity coefficient. Might dampen reactivity and create an incentive for people to not feel it's pointless to vote after a certain margin is reached
bethekidyouwant 1y ago
Estonians don’t vote on individual laws

29athrowaway 1y ago

I predicted this long ago. Technology amplifies what 1 human can do. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

VikRubenfeld 1y ago

Is a future where AI replaces most human labor rendered impossible by the following consideration: -- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI -- Therefore the AI generates greatly reduced wealth -- Therefore there’s greatly reduced wealth to pay for the AI -- …rendering such a future impossible

tsunamifury 1y ago
Wealth will be replaced by direct power. We do not need an economy. Most don’t seem to comprehend why the economy is being destroyed by the ultra rich
zaptrem 1y ago
Alternatively: -- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI -- Corporate profits drop (or growth slows) and there is demand from the powers that be to increase taxation in order to increase the UBI. -- People can afford the products and services. Unfortunately, with no jobs the products and services could become exclusively entertainment-related.
- atomicnumber3 1y ago
  >exclusively entertainment related We may find that, if our baser needs are so easily come by that we have tremendous free time, much of the world is instead pursuing things like the sciences or arts instead of continuing to try to cosplay 20th century capitalism. Why are we all doing this? By this, I mean, gestures at everything this? About 80% of us will say, so that we don't starve, and can then amuse ourselves however it pleases us in the meantime. 19% will say because they enjoy being impactful or some similar corporate bullshit that will elicit eyerolls. And 1% do it simply because they enjoy holding power over other people and management in the workplace provides a source of that in a semi-legal way. So the 80% of people will adapt quite well to a post-scarcity world. 19% will require therapy. And 1% will fight tooth and nail to not have us get there.

jandrewrogers 1y ago

A critical flaw in arguments like this is the embedded assumption that the creation of democratic policy is outside the system in some sense. The existence of AGI has the implication that it can effectively turn most people into sock puppets at scale without them realizing they are sock puppets. Do you think, in this hypothesized environment, that “democratic policy” will be the organic will of the people? It assumes much more agency on the part of people than will actually exist, and possibly more than even exists now.

drdaeman 1y ago
I suspect you’ll probably have to determine the nature of free will (or lack thereof) to answer this. Or, well, learn empirically :-)
foxglacier 1y ago
Normal human communication already does that. Do you really think almost any of the people who share their political opinions came up with them by being rational and working it out from information? Of course not. They just copied what they were told to believe. Almost nobody applies critical thought to politics, it's just "I believe something so I'm right and everybody else is stupid/evil".
- drdaeman 1y ago
  > Almost nobody applies critical thought to politics Because they have different concerns, and time and attention are scarce. With all possible social changes like the article suggests this focus could change too. Ultimately, when things will get too bad, uprisings happen and sometimes things change. And I hope the more we (collectively) get through, the higher are the chances we start noticing the patterns and stopping early.
  - f6v 1y ago
    > With all possible social changes like the article suggests this focus could change too. I have an anecdote from Denmark. It’s a rich country with one of the best work-life balance in the world. Socialized healthcare and social safety net. I noticed that during the election, they put the ads with just the candidate’s face and party name. It’s like they didn’t even have a message. I asked why. The locals told me nobody cares because “they’re all the same anyway”. Two things could be happening: either all the candidates are really the same. Or people choose to focus on doing the things they like with their free time and resources. My feeling tells me it’s the second.

andsoitis 1y ago

Will there be only one AGI? Or will there be several, all in competition with each other?

arnaudsm 1y ago
If they become self improving, the first one would outpace all the other AI labs and capture all the economical value.
- ehnto 1y ago
  There are multiple economic enclaves, even ignoring the explicit borders of nations. China, east asia, Europe, Russia would all operate in their own economies as well as globally. I also forsee the splitting off of nation internet networks eventually impacting what software you can and cannot use. It's already true, it'll get worse in order to self-protect their economies and internal advantages.
jandrewrogers 1y ago
That depends on how optimized the AGI is for economic growth rate. Too poorly optimized and a more highly optimized fast-follower could eclipse it. At some point, there will be an AGI with a head start that is also sufficiently close to optimal that no one else can realistically overtake its ability to simultaneously grow and suppress competitors. Many organisms in the biological world adopt the same strategy.
- andsoitis 1y ago
  > Many organisms in the biological world adopt the same strategy. There isn’t a single organism at the top of the biological pyramid.

edg5000 1y ago

I've spent many year moving away from relying on third parties and got my own servers, do everything locally and with almost no binary blobs. It has been fun, saved me money and created a more powerful and pleasant IT environment. However, I recently got a 100 EUR/m LLM subscription. That is the most I've spend on IT excluding a CAD software license. So've made a huge 180 and now am firmly back on the lap of US companies. I must say I've enjoyed my autonomy while it lasted. One day AI will be democratized/cheap allowing people to self host what are now leading edge models, but it will take a while.

cco 1y ago
Have you tried out Gemma3? The 4b parameter model runs super well on a Macbook as quickly as ChatGPT 4o. Of course the results are a bit worse and other product features (search, codex etc) don't come along for the ride, but wow, it feels very close.
- int_19h 1y ago
  On any serious task, it's not even close. There's no free lunch.
- greenavocado 1y ago
  This isn't a serious contender. You need dual AMD EPYC CPUs and 400 GB of RAM for a proper affordable Deepseek self hosting setup
Folcon 1y ago
Out of curiosity, what use case or difference caused the 180?
- AstroBen 1y ago
  Bit obvious isn't it? A girlfriend simulator
  - alternatex 1y ago

Synaesthesia 1y ago

It's up to us to create the future that we want. We may need to act communally to achieve that, but people naturally do that.

tim333 1y ago

I figure if/when AI can do the work of humans we'll deal with it through democracy by voting for a system like UBI or like socialism. That doesn't work now because we don't have AGIs to do the chores but when we do that changes.

staunton 1y ago
For this to be plausible, you have to explain why the people controlling the AI would share their wealth. They would either do it voluntarily (and be outcompeted by those who don't?) or be coerced (by who? Someone who doesn't have AI but is more powerful than they are?).

linotype 1y ago

Worrying about this kind of stuff is pointless as there’s literally nothing you or I could do to stop it. Best thing to do is prepare and have the best life you can now.

digdugdirk 1y ago
That's simply not true at all. This site has a far higher percentage of individuals who are in a position to enact legitimate change in the current dynamic. That could range from people in higher level decision-making positions, to interns who could sandbag these companies by purposely being worse developers than their skills and abilities might otherwise allow them to be.

ETH_start 1y ago

Hard to believe something so ideologically loaded passes as scientific inquiry nowadays.

coyleandrew 1y ago

The notion that AGI’s rise will stifle creativity is, in itself, a misreading of history. Technology has always been a force that enhances human ingenuity. The printing press didn’t kill creativity; it multiplied it. The rise of personal computers didn’t make writers obsolete; it created entire new industries. AGI is simply the next chapter in this narrative, enabling creativity on a scale never before possible. Rather than fearing the loss of traditional employment, we should embrace the explosion of new roles that AGI will make possible.

schnitzelstoat 1y ago

We are nowhere near AGI though. I suspect it is still centuries away. An LLM is essentially autocomplete with some very clever tricks that allow it to do some tasks quite well. But it is not even conceptually close to actual intelligence.

CHUCKEESH 1y ago

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