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> We will stop being obsessed with money and status and spend much more time with family and friends. Entertainment will be insanely good and so will healthcare.

As nice as this would be, I think there's roughly 0% chance of it happening. Over the past few millenia humans have doubled productivity per capita a ridiculous number of times. None of those leaps led to an end of status seeking or a transition towards mostly leasure time for the masses.

Instead I expect more of the opposite from these developments. Power will get increasingly concentrated with people who have very little interest in the needs and wants of the plebs.

> Power will get increasingly concentrated with people who have very little interest in the needs and wants of the plebs.

At least in OpenAI's case I think they take this thing very seriously (Sam Altman doesn't strike me as evil one bit, quite the opposite in fact https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEvbDq6BOVM). In fact most of the tech elites don't seem evil to me, if they only cared about money Zuckerberg and Gates wouldn't have pledged away all their wealth. Some of them are as you describe but I think most of them are actually somewhere in the progressive axis.

Your argument is that the philanthropy of the ruling class will fulfill the required redistribution of wealth?

So far it hasn't worked out too well...

Not quite. The argument is that our tech elites aren't so evil to try to violently take over and that us masses can simply vote a more (much more) socialist system.

It's up to us. Indeed easier said than done in the current dysfunctional and polarized politics of ours but we can still do it.

We have pretty different views on tech elites. I don't think they are evil per se, but most are greedy and generally lack empathy. It's almost impossible to go from mildly wealthy to multi-billionaire status without some aggressive wealth accumulation.

For the philanthropy, I'll just note that these pledges don't involve literally transferring 99% of wealth out of their control. The vast majority of the pledged money goes to a trust the person controls, organizations they have some relation to, or just stay completely in their control for years with only vague non-binding commitments to eventually donate it. In return for this largess they get significant reputational and tax compensation.

Currently, the economics don't stack up. How does society handle it when the best jobs are automated? When all jobs are automated?

The Star Trek post-scarcity utopia scenario feels very unlikely; Mad Max-style scrapping for leftovers while Musk, Bezos, et. al. live behind walls feels infinitely more probable.

How do you implement UBI when a huge proportion of the political class is vehemently against it. Maybe we need to AI politicians, so they start to figure it out?

I don't have anything figured out but I think we can do it as a society. I do think we have a very negative biased view of the ultra rich. Zuckerberg, Gates and Buffett all give or will give all of their wealth to society. So not all of them are the same. I think Musk will probably also give most back eventually though I'm not sure he has said anything yet.

And remember, we are still a democracy. We get to vote. We control the army and the police and all institutions. If we decide that this capitalism isn't hot sh* anymore we can change it. What will the evil billionaires do? (this sounds like a good straight to DVD movie actually...hey GPT write me a script about this)

> But once most people went through the transition it won't be bad. Society I believe will be better off. We will stop being obsessed with money and status and spend much more time with family and friends. Entertainment will be insanely good and so will healthcare. Possibly medicine to make our moods better. It could be utopia.

First, I don't see "utopia" as likely; furthermore, I have a suspicion it may be impossible, given human nature.

Second, even the argument that society will be "better" demands much more reflection. The implied argument above is only a sketch. I don't find it convincing much less plausible. I'll call attention to four points (implied from above):

1. AI will replace humans in most or all professions

2. AI quality will be much higher than the previous human levels

3. A broad swath of people (using some notion of equity and fairness) will have enough money to live happily

4. "We'll spend much more time with family and friends"

Each of the four points are quite uncertain. Furthermore, even if `k` is true, `k+1` does not follow.

Who would like to flesh out some ways the sequence (1, 2, 3, 4) might happen?

Yes of course you are right, we don't know anything yet I agree. I am speculating a lot here. But I'm a believer in "intelligence as a commodity" as Sam Altman put it after seeing GPT3.5 so I think points 1 and 2 will be reality. 3 follows quite naturally to me but only in Western societies... Putin will have different ideas.

Anyway speculating is fun but you're right its just speculating. My main point is we should always keep in mind this could turn out to be great .

Fair enough :)

_And_ if since we care about our AI-interdependent future, more of us (as in the people here on HN) need to wade into the gory details, including ethics and the current power structures. The "technology" (as in algorithms, data structures, hardware, etc) is arguably the "easy" part. There are plenty of existing incentives and structures to keep those _moving_. But moving in what direction? Even the notion of an "ethical compass" seems antiquated in light of current technology. We may have to reframe everything. This is a big challenge.

I'm not sure 3 follows. A walk downtown of any major city in America shows what society does for anyone who's work can't be commoditized or aren't sitting on an existing pile of wealth such that they don't need to work.

They get nothing but tents and shame.

That's because people like you and me (I'm assuming you're somewhere in the comfortable middle class) vote in for this system. Because so far we've enjoyed a reasonable quality of life. If that's no longer the case, we can vote for other leaders and other systems.

Not really unfortunately, the US hasn't been a democracy reflecting the collective will of it's voters for some time now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

But people under stress might opt for a some sort of religeous acceptance of hardship, or a cult, or fascisim first.

Where are the examples of the middle voting against the extremes when times get really hard?

> It's the transition period - the accounting wizard or the brilliant doctor losing their jobs and status and becoming kindergarten teachers or care takers or unemployed.

Yes, this is a big problem.

However... a lot of people would enjoy being teachers, albeit with significant improvements to the educational systems.

We can enjoy it if there's more of us. Each class can have 5 teachers instead of one teacher on 30 kids. Government can create those jobs, take the hundred of trillions created and redistribute it. Marx was right I think capitalism eventually kills itself ...we won't need it anymore. Arguably we already don't need the aggressive version we have now but soon enough it will be clear we don't need any version of it. The means of production (AI, robots and land) will be transferred to the people who will all receive basic income, free services and (if they want) jobs created by the government for the greater good. I don't think its a dystopia.

> Marx was right I think capitalism eventually kills itself ...

I doubt very much that this is a testable theory. I think it is primarily a normative one.

> The means of production (AI, robots and land) will be transferred to the people who will all receive basic income, free services and (if they want) jobs created by the government for the greater good.

This is a prediction?

Given human nature and the diversity of people (w.r.t. rationality, religiosity, morality, capability, and so on), it is very much an open question about (a) how AI capabilities will develop; (b) how they will be paid for... (c) and by whom; (d) to whom will benefits accrue; (e) how will society change.

These are broad, sweeping questions. Plenty of fodder for imagination, hope, transformation, cynicism, backsliding, or even despair.

If I were to make a bet, on our current trajectory, I see some key factors in tension:

1. educational quality, in absolute terms, increasing _and_ being more equitable

2. educational quality, in relative terms, continuing to be very unequal and probably getting more so. As one example, who has the resources to direct computationally intensive AI experiments? There are (and probably will be for a long time) gatekeepers for these resources. People that mix in this circles have a huge advantage. This makes me wonder if "exclusivity leads to inequality" is a saying from some philosopher.

As a resident of New Orleans I assure you the healthcare is not insanely good