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It will benefit all people but it will disproportionally benefit more rich people.
by javierluraschi 1y ago
It will benefit all people but it will disproportionally benefit more rich people.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoAnd we're not talking a 51-49 disproportion, we're talking about a 99.9999 percent of the benefit will go to the richest people
- twoodfin 1y agoHow so?
- irjustin 1y agoThought experiment - Startrek replicators are real. This basically means almost everything can be built without human involvement. The guy who owns the replicators is the richest. The wealth gap is so massive you get revolts (because we're educated, not serfs, right?) So then government needs to step in. Either tax->ubi?, socialize it, or make it a state asset? Regardless, that's the goal of AGI/robotics/etc.
- twoodfin 1y agoBut these aren’t replicators owned by a monopolist. There are a number of highly funded, highly competitive vendors at every level of the stack.
- moralestapia 1y agoSure, but you're not one of them.
- rogerrogerr 1y agoSure, but who do they sell stuff to if no one has a job? We’re on the brink of some _very_ unexplored branches of human behavior.
- ok_dad 1y agoImagine a few billionaires pay big bucks to keep AGI to themselves and let the rest of us die on the vine.
- rogerrogerr 1y agoOkay, but why would we die on the vine? Wouldn’t we just… make a parallel economy without the AGI? The world works today without AGI.
- lemonlearnings 1y agoParallel economies are banned. Try making a new currency in the US.
- SoftTalker 1y agoEconomies can work without currencies. It's a little inconvenient, but bartering/trading goods for services was common in the depression when nobody had any cash.
- amatecha 1y agoInterestingly, new ad-hoc currencies pop up all over in times like that: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/europes-economic-history/alternative-currencies-of-the-great-depression/ https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/europes-economic-... https://collectingpapermoney.spmc.org/wiki/Scrip_Issued_during_the_Great_Depression_of_the_1930s https://collectingpapermoney.spmc.org/wiki/Scrip_Issued_duri...
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- rogerrogerr 1y agoIf you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. My gut says that _somehow_ the middle class will get screwed as always, but I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome. Maybe because the very few that control the replicators will be able to cut people they don’t like out of partaking from them? That’d make some sense. If replicators were replicatable, that control evaporates quickly. Remember how nervous we all were about LLM censorship, then suddenly a $2000 MacBook Pro could run pretty great open source models that seem a few months behind SOTA?
- SoftTalker 1y agoBut energy is essentially free also, at least on the margin, and if we're talking about sunlight.
- majormajor 1y agoWhat does it mean in practice to have energy instead of money as currency? People would still want to be able to trade with lower friction than lugging batteries around, so don't you just re-invent money on top of it? orrrrrr just keep having the current money around the whole time? -- The general limiting factor with the "one person controls the replicators, only they have income" idea is that they would rapidly lose that income because nobody else would have anything to trade them anymore. (If you toss in the AI/robotic dream scenario, they don't even need humans to manage the raw material.) But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off, or Star Trek utopia?
- noduerme 1y agoYeah, but which tech has not had a homegrown variant that ultimately democratized it? Makes me think of the "feed" vs the "seed" in "The Diamond Age".
- 7952 1y agoUltimately labour goes and works on something else instead. And the availability of free labour makes that possible. New industries and markets develop as a result. But a huge number of people will be left behind. But people will focus on things that were a lower priority before.
- forgetfreeman 1y agoI have bad news for you, we've run out of sectors to pretend labor could be funneled towards. Manufacturing and agriculture are highly automated, service industry is full tf up, and nobody can afford more construction.
- 7952 1y agoWhat about medical, elder care, fitness, leisure. Even service industries that focus on a more human connection. Or jobs focused on nature, the environment etc. And i don't think this would nbe an easy process or something that could or would be managed. But it is probably already happening.
- jfyi 1y agoThe world of Star Trek was fully post scarcity. Rich/poor were not things that existed. They had to get through this before things got better: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots
- jobigoud 1y ago> The wealth gap is so massive you get revolts This never happens. It's not the relative wealth gap that creates revolts it's the poverty/bad conditions in absolute terms. If the lower class conditions improve, even just a little bit, there is no revolt.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoThought experiments in science work because there are falsifiable scientific theories that make definite predictions about the world than can be tested. What you wrote is not that.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoContinuing current trends presumably.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoCite?
- lightedman 1y agoThe entirety of human history.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoThere are many places on earth where people live no different from what we lived like 10,000s of years ago. You can just go there, you know, you can just do things. You are an adult.
- palmotea 1y ago> It will benefit all people but it will disproportionally benefit more rich people. Yes: you'll be homeless and living under a bridge, but you'll have an LLM therapist on your phone to console you. That's a benefit!
- Gud 1y agoDoubtful. More likely that there will be robocops to stop you from loitering in the scenic places.
- lukan 1y agoFor sure, but most bridges aren't in scenic places and robocops will still be limited in numbers, so no worries, just ask your LLM assistance in case of doubt under which bridge you won't get evicted from. Altough, that would probably be illegal advice, but they can try to help you with therapy should you end up in such a situation. Not the top model of course, but hey, it is a benefit.
- stinkbeetle 1y ago
- aborsy 1y agoNot necessarily. The benefits may barely trickle down, and the conditions for the majority could degrade overall.
- daniel_iversen 1y agoYeah it’s a complicated picture and of course nobody knows, but it would be helpful to split “benefits” into things like; - net benefits to the average person (considering drawbacks) - overall relative benefits compared to income groups - benefits in certain areas of society and topics I think there’ll be some “benefits for all” in terms of things like medical advances and health technology. There will also be broader benefits to all in general areas but as a parent poster said it’ll benefit equity holders most and there might be some bad tradeoffs (like we’ll have access to much better information and entertainment but it may also affect the overall employment rate). It’s a very nuanced picture and it’s probably disingenuous of some tech leaders to say “we’ll all benefit) but some do believe that will be the future.
- simianwords 1y agoBased on what evidence? The last few times this happened the whole world benefitted.
- aborsy 1y agoBased on extensive academic research on trickle-down economics, in particular looking into the evolution of real wages of different sectors of population, since 1980s. See the work of recent Nobel prize laureates in economics. Many argue for redistribution and investment back to the society.
- simianwords 1y agoBut the past few revolutions benefitted everyone and we are better off. Look at industrial revolution, digital revolution. Why do you think it is different this time? If trickle down economics don't work, why is world poverty at all time low and consumption at all time high?
- flanked-evergl 1y agoIt will not benefit the rich as disproportionately as the covid pandemic did.
- Lio 1y agoI can’t speak for others countries but here in the UK special “VIP lanes” were used to steal billions using fraudulent PPE contracts. I’m not just talking about Baroness Mone either. PPE Medpro was the tip of the iceberg.
- deadbabe 1y agoRich people will enjoy additional monetary benefits, but everyone will still enjoy the same standard benefits.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- squidbeak 1y agoWhat you mean is those with some form of ownership of the technology. If development eventually results in full automation, with the expense of production reduced to zero, money will be irrelevant.
- sokoloff 1y agoEnergy, raw materials, and logistics still remain. I don't think we'll ever get to a place where there isn't some input to a production process that is not infinite and free.
- squidbeak 1y agoYou don't see full automation with robotics as a possible outcome?
- sokoloff 1y agoTheoretically possible? Maybe (but still an extremely slim chance). Practically possible? No. People (and countries) own land. Raw materials for robots comes from land. Energy for robots consumes land. Farming food requires massive inputs beyond just the land and energy (but also needs those). I don’t imagine we’ll get to a world where my great-great-great^20-grandkids can hold out their hand and have a plate of steak and potatoes (or the then-equivalent) placed into it for free, anytime they want. The expense of production and on-demand delivery of just a simple plate of steak and baked potato will not ever get to zero. If we can’t even get that simple of thing for free, I don’t believe in a world without the notion of money. Expand that to even better dining, vacation, and leisure/recreational activities and I think the argument becomes even more solid that some form of rationing/limiting will be in effect and there will be a unit/notation of ration and trade that will be indistinguishable from money.
- squidbeak 1y ago'Not ever' is a broad statement. Would you rule out off-planet mining and manufacturing? Or the scaling of artificial meat production?
- illuminator83 1y agoThe wealth gap widening is quite independent from AI being involved. A natural progression which was always happening and continues to be happening. Entil some sort of catastrophe reshuffles the cards. Usually a war or revolution. The poor simply rising up or a lazy and corrupt ruling class depriving their country of enough resources and will to defend itself that some outside power can take it.
- visarga 1y ago> It will benefit all people but it will disproportionally benefit more rich people The rich already have a diminishing returns situation with money. Everyone else has much more upswing.
- WhyOhWhyQ 1y agoIf be benefitting you mean displacing all reason to live, then yes, it will solve that problem I face. Now I will be certain.