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Comment by cnelsenmilt | Hacker News Reader

Well, second problem is that we don't have any rules for access to the raised material standards for anyone who's not providing inputs to the system elsewhere. In plainer words you need to be employed to have money so you can buy things, because buying things with money is the only option. That is one of the chief negative impacts that looms: a large amount of people being left out of the economy because they don't meet the new efficiency bar.

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This isn't the first time humanity has improved productivity. Productivity has already been increased by x10 or x100 in the last 10,000 years and yet the unemployment rate is at record low levels. this latest round of efficiency gains is no different.

This time is different because AI has the potential to have a similar impact on efficiency across all work. In the past, efficiency gains created totally new spaces of economic activity in which the innovation could not further impact. But AI is a ubiquitous force multiplier, there is no productive human activity that AI can't disrupt. There is no analogous new space of economic activity that humanity as a whole can move to in order to stay relevant to the world's economic activity.

We don't know that to be true, though, since it's a speculative prediction about where AI will be at some point in the future. So far, automation has always resulted in more economic activity for humans. We haven't seen anything like AI/Robotics that can replace all foreseeable human activity. Saying it will be different this time is just a guess.

It's not just a guess, its a prediction based on an analysis of LLMs and my understanding of human intellectual activity as information manipulators. AI is fundamentally different than what has come before, and those differences are relevant to how we can expect the economy and society to adjust to the new reality.

But yes, I don't know for sure this is the outcome. But then again, why should we wait around for the man made horrors to be realized before we can react? Why not use our ability to understand and predict the future and avoid these horrors?

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