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This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but here goes... The rise of AI does not mean that everyone will lose their jobs and the economy will collapse. That

This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but here goes... The rise of AI does not mean that everyone will lose their jobs and the economy will collapse. That is an utter fallacy. It's important to ask two questions: - What happens to the workers? - What happens to the capital? For the first category, it's obvious. The workers lose their jobs. For the second category, the author and many others are under the presumption that the added value of the new added efficiency simply goes into some sort of hemetically sealed vault. That's not how the economy works at all. The wealth goes to investors, who put it in banks. The banks lend out the money to get a return on investment. The added value must circulate in the economy. The workers do not need to get the money at all to make it circulate. In fact, even today, the majority of wealth is held by the investors/capitalists (many of whom are also the workers). It's actually the investors who get to decide what to do with the capital. And the most obvious target is EVEN MORE AUTOMATION. Once white collar work is automated, then blue collar work with robotics. Once robotics is automated, then increasing amounts of capital will go to ever diminishing returns on R&D -> fundamental science. During this process, the educated worker economy and billions of capital will spread like plasmodium fungus into every unoccupied crag and niche in the economy not yet touched by AI to basically add more AI. Investors will necessarily pour billions of dollars into things like robotics, biomedical research, and much more. As new machines come online, millions of jobs will be created, but at the same time millions of jobs will be created to aid the process along b/c for a long time there will be jobs that machines cannot do as we are in the process of doing the R&D and manufacturing for those machines. These are all overall good things for the world. By the end of the process, from which we would expect massive massive inequality, the overall standard of living may still be massively improved for the majority of people who do not contribute to this process, and ever more improved to the minority of people who are still involved in the AI based production economy.

Sol- 5mo ago
Thanks for this post. I am always amazed on how people only ever look at nominal wages (which might collapse for the "obsolete" class) but ignore the wealth being generated in the process. What do I care if I don't earn money if the robot builds my house and customized medicine better than what we have today is available in abundance? I will be much poorer than the elites, but perhaps still much better off than today. A very idealized scenario for sure, though. Personally I am still on the "AI as a normal technology" track with the various bottlenecks. Productivity will be a bit higher and that's it, no mass unemployment.
- LarsDu88 5mo ago
  I think people's imaginations are overfitting on current reality or the past 20 years where people's vision of technology is something like Facebook (a multibillion dollar college yearbook app) or Netflix (TV, but on the internet), and the economy needs a horde of subscriber consumers binging on a buffet of digital mind slop to keep the whole system running. The (sad fucked up) reality is that Joe Schmo consumer never had most of the wealth in the first place. Not since the 1970s at least. Just like Nvidia makes a lot more money selling GPUs to megacorps rather than to people playing games on their XBox, future corps can make plenty of money serving each other rather than retail consumers. An autonomous fleet of delivery vehicles needs an autonomous fleet of vehicle service robots, etc, etc. At some point the entire stack will be automated. Will the working classes be at the bottom of the pyramid and wealth inequality skyrocket. Absolutely. It's practically inevitable. But will the economy collapse? No way. Just like how DOOM used to require a luxury scale $5,000 home PC to run and now the same level of compute can be found on disposable vape pens, at some point armies of robot servants built by the "tech companies" will be integrated into every facet of human life, from the lowest plebians to the wealthiest patricians.
  - joquarky 5mo ago
    > Just like how DOOM used to require a luxury scale $5,000 home PC to run and now the same level of compute can be found on disposable vape pens Do you have anything resembling a source on that claim?
    - greycol 5mo ago
      He's roughly wrong if you're pedantic, a pc with 4mb of ram in 1993 cost about $1125 (bottom of the premium market as only premium pc's had 4mb of ram) which has about the same value as $2600 usd today. Really though considering the development speed at the time (going back even a year and you'd pay a higher price for similar specs) and that someone buying a "premium pc" when doom was realeased could easily spend twice as much without being able to blow away dooms requirements I wouldn't argue the point they made. Plenty of stories about doom on a vape pen. Here's one: https://www.thegamer.com/doom-running-vape-usb-connection-pc/ https://www.thegamer.com/doom-running-vape-usb-connection-pc... Other notables include doom on a pregnancy test, and doom on a sbc powered by a potato battery. Some actual pc prices in 1993 if that's what your after, look at premium pcs for 4mb ones https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php
marcocampos 5mo ago
The things some people on HN believe leaves me baffled.
- FridgeSeal 5mo ago
  “It’s totally fine guys, if we give billionaires even more money it will totally all work out and be fine! Everything is ok and our benevelont overlords will take earnest care of us, despite literally never having shown the merest inclination to do that ever before”.
  - 2fdsed 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - LarsDu88 5mo ago
    You jest, but the wonderful thing is billionaires are mortal. The known anti-semite and Hitler admirer Henry Ford's chartiable foundation added DEI to its mandate in 2021. Andrew Carnegie, an infamous monopolist and strike crusher...his charitable foundations helps fund science education to this day, and his university has graduated countless engineers. The point is... billionaires will die... their capital can continue to work both in the economy and society. I mean... unless someone figures out immortality. I dread the thought of Jeff Bezos invoking prima noctae
    - danaris 5mo ago
      Billionaires are mortal. Money isn't. When Jeff Bezos dies, someone is going to inherit his money. There's no particular reason to believe that whoever he chooses as his heir(s) will be less disposed toward funding fascism and destroying the ability of regular people to have a voice in the world. You invoke Carnegie, but the current generation of robber barons have shown no real propensity toward philanthropy—they donate to charity, to be sure, but in tiny (relative) amounts, and frequently to their own foundations, which make it legally charity, but in practice just another way for them to control their own money. The proposals that the billionaires of today will give away their money (and thus power) within their lifetimes, or that their heirs will suddenly become champions of labor and the downtrodden, require some fairly significant evidence—from today, not just comparisons to the Gilded Age—before they can be considered credible.
lz400 5mo ago
I feel there are like 50 load bearing assumptions in this piece of fiction that are dubious at best, definitely speculation. When you put all of them together and chain them in a product of probabilities it becomes tech bro wish fulfilling fantasy. But as usual this is expressed with total confidence and inevitability. This is a perfect encapsulation of all that is wrong with rationalists, TPOT, etc. IMHO. I'll just suggest that you track your predictions and "update your priors" once they start domino falling.
- LarsDu88 5mo ago
  Could you elaborate on some of these load bearing asumptions? Maybe your thinking that underneath the corporate SAS economy, theres a giant sea of consumer spending that props it all up. That might be reasonable, but remember that in this future hyper unequal AI economy, only a handful of ultra wealthy people, most likely through agent proxies, make up more purchasing power than the bottom 95% combined. We're already past the 50% mark in the real world, so this is not implausible. I'm not saying this is a good future. In fact its absolutely dystopian. But its way more plausible than the fantasy world the author is describing.
2fdsed 5mo ago
[dead]
insane_dreamer 5mo ago
maybe lay off the kool-aid for a while, my friend

Sol- 5mo ago

Thanks for this post. I am always amazed on how people only ever look at nominal wages (which might collapse for the "obsolete" class) but ignore the wealth being generated in the process. What do I care if I don't earn money if the robot builds my house and customized medicine better than what we have today is available in abundance? I will be much poorer than the elites, but perhaps still much better off than today. A very idealized scenario for sure, though. Personally I am still on the "AI as a normal technology" track with the various bottlenecks. Productivity will be a bit higher and that's it, no mass unemployment.

LarsDu88 5mo ago
I think people's imaginations are overfitting on current reality or the past 20 years where people's vision of technology is something like Facebook (a multibillion dollar college yearbook app) or Netflix (TV, but on the internet), and the economy needs a horde of subscriber consumers binging on a buffet of digital mind slop to keep the whole system running. The (sad fucked up) reality is that Joe Schmo consumer never had most of the wealth in the first place. Not since the 1970s at least. Just like Nvidia makes a lot more money selling GPUs to megacorps rather than to people playing games on their XBox, future corps can make plenty of money serving each other rather than retail consumers. An autonomous fleet of delivery vehicles needs an autonomous fleet of vehicle service robots, etc, etc. At some point the entire stack will be automated. Will the working classes be at the bottom of the pyramid and wealth inequality skyrocket. Absolutely. It's practically inevitable. But will the economy collapse? No way. Just like how DOOM used to require a luxury scale $5,000 home PC to run and now the same level of compute can be found on disposable vape pens, at some point armies of robot servants built by the "tech companies" will be integrated into every facet of human life, from the lowest plebians to the wealthiest patricians.
- joquarky 5mo ago
  > Just like how DOOM used to require a luxury scale $5,000 home PC to run and now the same level of compute can be found on disposable vape pens Do you have anything resembling a source on that claim?
  - greycol 5mo ago
    He's roughly wrong if you're pedantic, a pc with 4mb of ram in 1993 cost about $1125 (bottom of the premium market as only premium pc's had 4mb of ram) which has about the same value as $2600 usd today. Really though considering the development speed at the time (going back even a year and you'd pay a higher price for similar specs) and that someone buying a "premium pc" when doom was realeased could easily spend twice as much without being able to blow away dooms requirements I wouldn't argue the point they made. Plenty of stories about doom on a vape pen. Here's one: https://www.thegamer.com/doom-running-vape-usb-connection-pc/ https://www.thegamer.com/doom-running-vape-usb-connection-pc... Other notables include doom on a pregnancy test, and doom on a sbc powered by a potato battery. Some actual pc prices in 1993 if that's what your after, look at premium pcs for 4mb ones https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/1993.php

marcocampos 5mo ago

The things some people on HN believe leaves me baffled.

FridgeSeal 5mo ago
“It’s totally fine guys, if we give billionaires even more money it will totally all work out and be fine! Everything is ok and our benevelont overlords will take earnest care of us, despite literally never having shown the merest inclination to do that ever before”.
- 2fdsed 5mo ago
  [dead]
- LarsDu88 5mo ago
  You jest, but the wonderful thing is billionaires are mortal. The known anti-semite and Hitler admirer Henry Ford's chartiable foundation added DEI to its mandate in 2021. Andrew Carnegie, an infamous monopolist and strike crusher...his charitable foundations helps fund science education to this day, and his university has graduated countless engineers. The point is... billionaires will die... their capital can continue to work both in the economy and society. I mean... unless someone figures out immortality. I dread the thought of Jeff Bezos invoking prima noctae
  - danaris 5mo ago
    Billionaires are mortal. Money isn't. When Jeff Bezos dies, someone is going to inherit his money. There's no particular reason to believe that whoever he chooses as his heir(s) will be less disposed toward funding fascism and destroying the ability of regular people to have a voice in the world. You invoke Carnegie, but the current generation of robber barons have shown no real propensity toward philanthropy—they donate to charity, to be sure, but in tiny (relative) amounts, and frequently to their own foundations, which make it legally charity, but in practice just another way for them to control their own money. The proposals that the billionaires of today will give away their money (and thus power) within their lifetimes, or that their heirs will suddenly become champions of labor and the downtrodden, require some fairly significant evidence—from today, not just comparisons to the Gilded Age—before they can be considered credible.

lz400 5mo ago

I feel there are like 50 load bearing assumptions in this piece of fiction that are dubious at best, definitely speculation. When you put all of them together and chain them in a product of probabilities it becomes tech bro wish fulfilling fantasy. But as usual this is expressed with total confidence and inevitability. This is a perfect encapsulation of all that is wrong with rationalists, TPOT, etc. IMHO. I'll just suggest that you track your predictions and "update your priors" once they start domino falling.

LarsDu88 5mo ago
Could you elaborate on some of these load bearing asumptions? Maybe your thinking that underneath the corporate SAS economy, theres a giant sea of consumer spending that props it all up. That might be reasonable, but remember that in this future hyper unequal AI economy, only a handful of ultra wealthy people, most likely through agent proxies, make up more purchasing power than the bottom 95% combined. We're already past the 50% mark in the real world, so this is not implausible. I'm not saying this is a good future. In fact its absolutely dystopian. But its way more plausible than the fantasy world the author is describing.

2fdsed 5mo ago

[dead]

insane_dreamer 5mo ago

maybe lay off the kool-aid for a while, my friend