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Comment by mg | Hacker News Reader

   Will ChatGPT make the already troubling income and
   wealth inequality in the US and many other countries
   even worse?

It is an interesting question if the concept of "wealth" will survive in a world where all productivity is done by artificial intelligence.

As soon as computers surpass humans in every aspect, there is nothing left for humans to do. So the only reason for wealth inequality would be inheritance. But why should the poor accept this inequality? Will AI protect the wealth of the rich who inherited it? Why should it?

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> But why should the poor accept this inequality? Will AI protect the wealth of the rich who inherited it? Why should it?

Why do they accept it now? The best predictor of financial success is the parents' wealth [1]. Society as a meritocracy is a myth, yet we all plow on. I don't see what would change this.

1: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/

We surpassed what plants and ants do long ago, have they stopped doing what they do? Do we protect them?

I, for one, am not thrilled by the idea of being analogous to an AGI's version of a bonsai tree.

If it's better at taking care of my health than the American Healthcare System, sign me up!

How many species have humanity driven to extinction?

why should AI serve humans at all?

I would expect it to do that for the same reason that we humans feed and protect endangered species.

There are two reasons we do this. First, emotional, which many suspect will not be present in the AI. Second, because it benefits us due to the ecosystem, of which is likely to be irrelevant to the AI.

Finally, when there is an order of magnitude difference in intelligence, bugs, bacteria, we are generally not very kind at all. We could just as easily become the new lab rats.

Why should we create one that doesn't?

At least, that's the ideal answer, but we don't really know what we're doing.

This isn't like giving birth to a new human, where the new mind has a sense of self and individuality by default and it would be immoral to take it away, works of artifice begin their existences as we construct them; and right now we don't even know how to tell if an artificial intelligence has an inner world, much less how to imbue an AI with one or prevent it.

We don't need to create one that doesn't serve humanity, one bad actor - a company or govt could create AI embodied assassin drones to take out competitors. I mean being a Bond villain was never so easy, lol.

This wouldn't wipe out humanity but could lead to fascism at a world-wide level.

That's still serving a human.

If we have an AGI (as opposed to just an AI), then can't it decide who it's going to be? We're really naive if we think that we can decide (or even limit) who it's going to be.

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