6 ms·

It's either: 1) the rich voluntarily share the means of production so everyone becomes equal, 2) the poor stage successful revolutions so they gain access to th

It's either: 1) the rich voluntarily share the means of production so everyone becomes equal, 2) the poor stage successful revolutions so they gain access to the means of production and everyone becomes equal, 3) the poor starve or are otherwise eliminated, and the survivors will be equal. All roads lead to equality when the value of labour becomes 0 due to 100% automation.

theopsimist 6mo ago
If truly 100% automation (including infantry/police) the most likely scenario is not any if the above; most people will be kept on some kind of minimum sustenance enough to keep them from rebelling (“UBI”) and those who disagree will either be coopted into the elite or eliminated.
- skeledrew 6mo ago
  There's no reason to keep anyone on minimal sustenance though. They're absolutely useless alive from an economics perspective, and so would probably be better served ground up into fertilizer or some other actually useful form.
  - ben_w 6mo ago
    > There's no reason to keep anyone on minimal sustenance though. No reason, except their (the rich or the AI) own personal desire to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly > They're absolutely useless alive from an economics perspective, and so would probably be better served ground up into fertilizer or some other actually useful form. Indeed. "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." But while some may care about disassembling this world and all non-rich-human life on it to make a Dyson swarm of data centres, there's also the possibility each will compete for how many billions of sycophants they can get stoking their respective egos.
    - 3fsd 6mo ago
      [dead]
ben_w 6mo ago
There's plenty of outcomes besides those three. Over history, lots of underclasses have been stuck that way for multiple generations, even without the assistance of a robot workforce that can replace them economically. Some future rich class so empowered would be quite capable of treating the poor like most today treat pets. Fed and housed, but mostly neutered and the rest going through multiple generations of selective inbreeding for traits the owners deem interesting.
- skeledrew 6mo ago
  Non-human pets don't have the capacity to rebel though; make humans into pets and there will again be the constant danger of rebellions as with slavery in the past. Without the economic incentive to offset.
  - ben_w 6mo ago
    I disagree on both counts. On the first, non-human pets rebelling is seen every time an abused animal bites their owner. On the second, the hypothetical required by the scenario is that AI makes all human labour redundant: that includes all security forces, but it also means the AI moving around the security bots and observing through sensors is at least as competent as every human political campaign strategist, every human propagandist, every human general, every human negotiator, and every human surveillance worker. This is because if some AI isn't all those things and more, humans can still get employed to work those jobs.
    - simonh 6mo ago
      Right, such a society would have no need of human capitalists, government workers, experts, etc. The question is, to what extent would humans still set goals and priorities, and how.
      - ben_w 6mo ago
        > The question is, to what extent would humans still set goals and priorities, and how. From what I hear about the US and UK governments, even the elected representatives of these governments don't really set goals and priorities, so the answer is surely "humans don't".
parineum 6mo ago
> 2) the poor stage successful revolutions so they gain access to the means of production and everyone becomes equal Or a handful of the poor become the new rich, which is usually what happens in that scenario.
- skeledrew 6mo ago
  It would just mean the loop repeats itself until equality is achieved. Even if in the end only 1 human remains alive.
  - ben_w 6mo ago
    Humans reproduce, there is no requirement that even destruction and death would lead to equality, not even if the elites still put themselves close enough to the rest of us as to be attackable. For the latter point, consider that no matter how much the people of North Sentinel Island hate outsiders, they're not going to pose any risk to the rest of us. Now, an elite whose membership includes those who want equality for the rest of us, that may create conditions for such a rebellion to succeed, but absent such from an insider (which could be encoded into the AI via either a bug or deliberately from whoever created the AI), some elite whose defence is handled by the kind of AI under consideration would not face any more of a threat from the wider population than we here in the west today face from the North Sentinel Islanders. Note however that I'm not saying what will happen, but what is possible in various conditions. There's no guarantee of anything at this point.
culopatin 6mo ago
In 1, 2 and 3, any progress stops because no one is making new means of production, so we must stop population from growing. No? Who’s building the factories or whatever those means of production are?
- ben_w 6mo ago
  In the hypothetical where humans can no longer be employed because of AI, it is necessarily the case that AI must be able do any job at least as well as the best human for that job. That includes building factories, doing research.
- skeledrew 6mo ago
  The means of production are AI+robots, which self-maintain and self-replace as necessary to ensure everything else continues smoothly.

theopsimist 6mo ago

If truly 100% automation (including infantry/police) the most likely scenario is not any if the above; most people will be kept on some kind of minimum sustenance enough to keep them from rebelling (“UBI”) and those who disagree will either be coopted into the elite or eliminated.

skeledrew 6mo ago
There's no reason to keep anyone on minimal sustenance though. They're absolutely useless alive from an economics perspective, and so would probably be better served ground up into fertilizer or some other actually useful form.
- ben_w 6mo ago
  > There's no reason to keep anyone on minimal sustenance though. No reason, except their (the rich or the AI) own personal desire to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly > They're absolutely useless alive from an economics perspective, and so would probably be better served ground up into fertilizer or some other actually useful form. Indeed. "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." But while some may care about disassembling this world and all non-rich-human life on it to make a Dyson swarm of data centres, there's also the possibility each will compete for how many billions of sycophants they can get stoking their respective egos.
  - 3fsd 6mo ago
    [dead]

ben_w 6mo ago

There's plenty of outcomes besides those three. Over history, lots of underclasses have been stuck that way for multiple generations, even without the assistance of a robot workforce that can replace them economically. Some future rich class so empowered would be quite capable of treating the poor like most today treat pets. Fed and housed, but mostly neutered and the rest going through multiple generations of selective inbreeding for traits the owners deem interesting.

skeledrew 6mo ago
Non-human pets don't have the capacity to rebel though; make humans into pets and there will again be the constant danger of rebellions as with slavery in the past. Without the economic incentive to offset.
- ben_w 6mo ago
  I disagree on both counts. On the first, non-human pets rebelling is seen every time an abused animal bites their owner. On the second, the hypothetical required by the scenario is that AI makes all human labour redundant: that includes all security forces, but it also means the AI moving around the security bots and observing through sensors is at least as competent as every human political campaign strategist, every human propagandist, every human general, every human negotiator, and every human surveillance worker. This is because if some AI isn't all those things and more, humans can still get employed to work those jobs.
  - simonh 6mo ago
    Right, such a society would have no need of human capitalists, government workers, experts, etc. The question is, to what extent would humans still set goals and priorities, and how.
    - ben_w 6mo ago
      > The question is, to what extent would humans still set goals and priorities, and how. From what I hear about the US and UK governments, even the elected representatives of these governments don't really set goals and priorities, so the answer is surely "humans don't".

parineum 6mo ago

> 2) the poor stage successful revolutions so they gain access to the means of production and everyone becomes equal Or a handful of the poor become the new rich, which is usually what happens in that scenario.

skeledrew 6mo ago
It would just mean the loop repeats itself until equality is achieved. Even if in the end only 1 human remains alive.
- ben_w 6mo ago
  Humans reproduce, there is no requirement that even destruction and death would lead to equality, not even if the elites still put themselves close enough to the rest of us as to be attackable. For the latter point, consider that no matter how much the people of North Sentinel Island hate outsiders, they're not going to pose any risk to the rest of us. Now, an elite whose membership includes those who want equality for the rest of us, that may create conditions for such a rebellion to succeed, but absent such from an insider (which could be encoded into the AI via either a bug or deliberately from whoever created the AI), some elite whose defence is handled by the kind of AI under consideration would not face any more of a threat from the wider population than we here in the west today face from the North Sentinel Islanders. Note however that I'm not saying what will happen, but what is possible in various conditions. There's no guarantee of anything at this point.

culopatin 6mo ago

In 1, 2 and 3, any progress stops because no one is making new means of production, so we must stop population from growing. No? Who’s building the factories or whatever those means of production are?

ben_w 6mo ago
In the hypothetical where humans can no longer be employed because of AI, it is necessarily the case that AI must be able do any job at least as well as the best human for that job. That includes building factories, doing research.
skeledrew 6mo ago
The means of production are AI+robots, which self-maintain and self-replace as necessary to ensure everything else continues smoothly.