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Comment by Aaargh20318 | Hacker News Reader

Aaargh20318

The big oversight here is that Priya does not want a job, what Priya wants is an income. The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We should strive to eliminate as many jobs as we possibly can, the less we have to work the better it is.

To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income.

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What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair. I've been through some of that before. We humans are not built for it. We need something valuable to do and most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether.

"Work" above is being used in a more specific form than you are using it. GP is not referring to all productive work, they are specifically referring to employment on the market. Yes, human beings are better in relationships and better when they help each other, but GP is not talking about abolishing helping other people or doing meaningful things.

There are a huge number of things people can do to meaningfully make the world a better place outside of traditional jobs. And a non-trivial number of people work at jobs that aren't aligned with producing value or helping people in the first place.

Value on the market in specific is not the be-all end-all measure of whether work can be personally fulfilling and validating. A market job can be meaningful, yes. But it's not the entire category. If I never had to work for income I would still "work", but what I worked on would be very different and would probably focus a lot more on non-scalable non-commercial smaller projects and volunteering.

There are things that are valuable and meaningful to do that don't involve working specifically for a company and don't involve looking at that work primarily through the lens of "how can I make money off of this?"

I generally agree with you in principle, but it’s not a given that you can find meaning outside of the job market if the market doesn’t find your labor valuable.

What if nobody actually wants your “help”? What if your labor is not only worthless in the job market, but also in general, where people prefer assistance from AI instead of from a live human person? What if no matter what you do, some AI does it better? How will humanity find our own value and meaning when that happens?

I think the point where that is the case is pretty far off, since it requires endless fully-autonomous robots and no demand for human-created media or connection.

But regardless, people throughout history have found happiness and meaning in their life completely separately from what they did to put food on the table.

That would really only be a problem if majority decided to not do anything and we had actual shortage, not just "corporations don't want to pay decent wage so they can't find people"

If the incentive is "here is basic income, you can afford flat on outskirts of the town or in some small town and basic necessities", there is still plenty motivation to do better and get better stuff (whether just for living, or for your hoobbies or interest), just not a pressure of taking first job you can find just to afford being alive.

So average person have option of just going on 6 month hiatus to learn some life skill, or artist have time to develop their skill enough to make art or music that gets enough interest to make it into income.

I don't think this is something people should be worried about. There is so much stuff to do in the world, and quite frankly, there are not enough people to do all of it. And a lot of that stuff is not particularly suited to AI.

But what I would question if you want to get a little existential -- do people value being helpful or do they value feeling helpful, because those are two different things. And I think that if the idea of "people need help and what if an AI can help them better than I can" is actually terrifying to people, that should maybe prompt a small amount of reflection about our motivations for helping others.

But the shorter answer is that there is just so much stuff to do in the world right now.

I'm so disappointed in the other replies to this comment.

> Don't worry about it, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done

> pretty far off

> chess grandmasters are ok

We are on an exponential curve of being able to create agents on demand that can essentially act in human ways, at least digitally/online. If you're working on a computer (aka all white collar jobs or anything that can be done remotely), it will soon enough be trivial to create an agent and task it with "Unqueue tasks from the backlog and implement fixes in the codebase. Ask questions if you need help." and it will do it. And you can create as many of these agents as you like.

As many as you like! On demand! How the hell are humans supposed to compete with that?

I mean, that isn't a "what ever will happen to my job?" level of concern, that's more "will society handle transitioning to a post-job reality once everyone is useless without revolving into a war" or "maybe humanity will cease to be relevant and we'll all get killed by the computer we design", which is a fundamentally different level of problem, right? Like, the last thing I am going to be concerned about is my silly job in the future you are positing where all white collar jobs are replaced, as to be quite frank about it: my job as a low-level software developer is harder to replace than the jobs of the people who hired me or the people who hired them or the people who invested in their company to begin with... once the computer flips from the regime of being worse than a human and yet helpful to them into a theoretical one where it is better than a human, I think the answer is going to very rapidly change from "maybe you should just consider it to be helpful!" to "maybe that will be the end of human civilization" with very very little in between.

The professional chess community has been living in this world for a long time. The engines crush us, and their games can be fascinating too but Magnus’s and Hikaru’s make a helluva lot more money. It’s not a winner take all market in general but the human element is actually very important; the creation is more than just the game on the board.

> it’s not a given that you can find meaning outside of the job market

That's bleak af, how old are you ? where do you live ? what do you do ? do you have a family ? do you have friends ? hobbies ?

I can guarantee you the vast majority of min wage workers would absolutely find a meaning in things other than flipping burgers or triaging the shit people buy on Amazon

I think there are 3 factions in a world where AI took out most jobs (with UBI of course):

#1 There will always be jobs requiring humans - jobs that require human interaction. The supply will be much smaller, but so will be the demand.

#2 By the time AI replaces all jobs, we will most likely have a very realistic VR with multiplayer capabilities. I think that many people will live adventures in such world and spend most of their waking hours in it. Metaverse sucks but it's only because it's so artificial. If you could have tech that could integrate with your senses directly, giving experiences on par with the sharpest lucid dream... that's going to be much different and for better or worse, a lot of people will get sucked into it. Of course, it's going suck - life is about yin-yang, endless pleasure is not good. People who will end up spending the majority of their time in such VR will not be unlike drug addicts, unless they will also be doing activities that require mental & "physical" engagement (I think one of the coolest thing that could arise out of it are new sports that would not be possible in the real world), however, that yin-yang balance would be hard to achieve when there's no evolutionary pressure combined with overabundance of simple pleasure that's just available all the time.

#3 Walking the path to mastery in some pursuit - i.e. artistic, athletic, a craft. There's pure joy in just getting better at something and enjoying every day of practice and most importantly - feeling challenged which is a primal need. It may be competitive as heck to get some recognition or play in the big leagues (which would be more like #1), but that would be just a bonus from that perspective.

If AI leaves us nothing to do, then #3 will always be available. AI will not take away our own engagement but engagement requires effort and so, I would bet that a significant majority will overindulge in #2 to their unconscious doom - I guess it will still be a pretty cool experience though and it's not like those people will not have a choice to get out.

I your work is not producing anything valuable for other people it's void and you will get bored pretty fast, it's a human nature. If it does you can always find a way to monetize it as people need it and ready to share their wealth for something they need. No, it doesn't have to be a work "for a company", but if you can't "make money off of this" it probably means your "work" is only relevant to you, or somebody else will "make money off of this" using what you have created. It's how society works, and we are social animals.

> I your work is not producing anything valuable for other people it's void and you will get bored pretty fast, it's a human nature

I think this is plain wrong. There are plenty of pursuits that are “work” on the mental or physical side, but do not produce economic value. Developing artistry by mastering a medium or an instrument, climbing mountains, running ultra marathons, tending to a garden or bonsai, modifying a vehicle… These are things could produce economic or social credit, but are largely solo “work” which can be (and often is) self satisfying without external motivation.

Good to bring up.

People are very attached to the idea that humans don't want to master things unless they're the best at them, and I feel like that philosophy was pretty solidly disproved right about the time that video games were invented. People master skills in non-competitive, solo settings.

Learning a skill can be inherently satisfying on its own. Personal development is satisfying regardless of where the people around you are. Or at least, it should be.

And it's also kind of a bad approach to value as well -- what I've found is that you can actually be pretty average at things and still provide a lot of value to the people around you, because of ignoring economies of scale and because of how much stuff there is to do in the world to begin with.

There are software niches that are underserved where genuinely earnest programmers who look to help could do tremendous good even if they're kind of average/bad programmers. In fact, as one example that's close to HN, that's how the majority of Open Source programming happens. Open Source is not a meritocracy, it's a Do-ocracy, and a ton of the most valuable stuff is built by average programmers who look at underserved niches and say, "but what if there was a non-predatory solution for them?"

A lot of what makes a good Open Source solution is just that it was built by someone who cares and who isn't trying to maneuver you into a predatory relationship. And sometimes it turns out that there are only a few people available in a niche that have both the resources to do that and the inclination. So they're not competing with anyone, they're just the people who happened to be available and willing to do the work.

I didn't say "economic value". Let's take "modifying a vehicle" as an example. Will you keep it in your garage guarding it from anybody's sight? Why are you doing it? What's coming to your mind? It's not always as straightforward as "economic value". You want somebody to look at your vehicle, you want to show it to somebody. What for? Keep it in your garage, you are doing it for your "mental side", aren't you? Money and economic value is not the only way of keeping society together, there are others. If you are showing your vehicle to somebody, you _are_ expecting something in return. Acquaintance? Friendship? Help when you need it? Continue yourself.

This is kind of a circular definition. When you get this broad with your definition of value/payment, basically what you're saying is that work is meaningful if you derive meaning and/or personal value from it. Which, sure, I agree with that.

But that doesn't mean it'll be monetizable in the traditional sense, and it doesn't mean that traditional employment is the only place to get that value. Many of the things you're talking about aren't representable in dollar form, and it's not clear to me how decoupling income from traditional jobs would mean that those activities would stop being meaningful. Certainly, a lot of those activities are already activities that you can't really make money off of (or at least the vast majority of people engaged in those activities can't).

I specifically mentioned that you don't have to work "for a company". Jeff Bezos is not a traditional employee last time I checked. Neither are mom and pop shops or self-employed contractors. Just not everybody wants to deal with a hassle of being the one. But aside from that a lot of "no money" activities bring you friends (AKA connections), position in a society (think about OSS, can it help you to find a good paying and interesting job if you are Linus Torvalds?). Sometimes you get benefits where you don't expect. It's still "monetizable" in my books as opposed to "I'm doing something nobody needs and enjoying it while living on a basic income".

I think that's completely reasonable to have as a definition, I've got no issues with you there. I don't think it contradicts anything in the above thread though.

The "monetizable" activities you're talking about here under your definition will still exist in a theoretical world where AI takes over traditional employment. Separating "making a living" from "having a traditional job" wouldn't get rid of any of the social monetization you describe.

AI won't take over traditional employment either, humans tend to congregate and choose leader(s) as many tasks are not possible to accomplish alone, with AI or not. If there are leaders, there will be an employment of some kind, it's a fundamental thing. Money is only an equivalent of a value in exchange, so "monetizable" in the wide sense of this word is "exchangeable", and it almost always applies to social activities even like running a marathon, otherwise people would run those 26 miles alone in the forest.

> otherwise people would run those 26 miles alone in the forest.

This is kind of a side note, but have you never learned an ability or tried to master a skill in secret? There's nothing wrong with being motivated by social capital, but if you extrapolate out from that to assume everyone is primarily motivated that way, you might be universalizing a personal trait that isn't really universal.

There are a lot of things I practice and do alone that never get exchanged for social capital: drawing, I play single-player games, I cook. These are activities where I either master a skill on my own (sometimes purely for the intrinsic motivation of mastering it even though it produces no value outside of that), or because (in the case of things like food/personal-programming/etc) because it produces "value" for myself that isn't exchanged with anyone else.

I'm not saying community and social capital doesn't exist, but if you are defining value purely in a transactional sense, you are missing out on a lot of human motivation. People do things alone without ever entering into a community around those activities or showing the results to anyone else.

> People do things alone without ever entering into a community around those activities or showing the results to anyone else.

Of course! I'm not saying that "everything is for sale" or we always need to contribute to a society. But if you don't do it you may quickly find that your life is boring and you need to share with somebody. Obviously all people are different, some need (or can bear) more solitude, some hate it, but on average we are social animals and it's inside us. Even when you cook for yourself, aren't you ever discussing it with somebody? Hell, why am I typing all this? It has no transactional value for me, none whatsoever, in fact I wasted half of my Saturday :) I could have just created my theories in secret and enjoyed them, but for some reason I need to post here. Maybe because I want to know what other people think, what if I'm dead wrong with my theories? So there is a transactional value even in these posts as I learn something new which may help me later :) No, "later" is not a conscious reason why I'm doing it, it's a subconscious thing, our internal program.

> If it does you can always find a way to monetize it as people need it and ready to share their wealth for something they need

I disagree with this entirely. If this was true, the main question we would ask in a business is whether or not the output was useful. We don't ask that, we ask if it's "sustainable", "profitable", etc... We ask what the moat is around it.

There are many useful things you can do that you won't be able to make money off of. I don't think it's uncommon either. Business is a great way of extracting value, I like business as a value extractor. But it's a specific way of extracting value. There are lots of things that are valuable that don't happen because it's not clear how they would be profitable.

I mean, the simplest example here is you can build things for people who don't have money. It's not the only example, but it's a pretty obvious one. And you are not going to make a lot of money doing that unless you build a predatory or exploitative business.

> or somebody else will "make money off of this" using what you have created

I will also point out that if other people making money off of the things you do is a turn-off, it's not clear to me what value you think you're creating. I would argue that "meaningful work" very often benefits other people, that's... that's the point. If you're not giving people more value than you're taking from them, you probably aren't doing useful work. Are you arguing that it's less valuable if people are extracting extra value from the things we do?

Let's start from basics. People need to eat, so somebody needs to make food. Those people need tools. Somebody needs to make tools. Now for this to work they need to make extra food and exchange it for tools. This exchange has been in development since before human existed (look at wolves pack) -- never perfect, but kind of worked. So you want to make something you like and nobody needs? No problem, go for it. Where are you supposed to get food? Do you want a government to pay you the basic income? That means those who make food will give it to you for free, which means they won't get tools, which in turn means they won't be able to make that food. Oops. In a balanced system you are never "taking more than giving" or vice versa, because, as you know, price is a result of supply/demand. How do you know you Java library is worth a breakfast?

I'm not sure this has anything to do with the original comment or point I was trying to make.

That being said:

> In a balanced system you are never "taking more than giving" or vice versa, because, as you know, price is a result of supply/demand.

Literally all of economic development and growth is predicated on the idea that this is not true. If work was actually zero-sum and all of the transactions gave you the exact value that you sold, there would be no point in forming a society around this.

Society works because combined labor produces more value than is put into the process. That has always been the case. You get more food out of farming than you put into it, otherwise it wouldn't be worthwhile to farm.

> That means those who make food will give it to you for free, which means they won't get tools, which in turn means they won't be able to make that food.

Also, the only reason we're having this conversation is because the "tools" that are being made will (very theoretically) be made for practically free by AI.

We're not talking about a world where the tools stop existing. This entire conversation started with someone asking "but what if there's no more need for humans to make the tools?"

You are talking about added value and it's beyond "basics" :) The point was "if your work has no value, there is no breakfast to exchange it for".

> You are talking about added value and it's beyond "basics" :)

I don't know, I think it's pretty important to a conversation about automating jobs that we not treat jobs as if they're an optimized equivalent exchange. The whole premise there is that the machines are going to start producing a lot of value without any human input. If it happens, it's not going to be equivalent exchange.

If we're not talking about added value, then there's nothing to worry about because then the machines can't automate the jobs, because that would be added value.

> if your work has no value, there is no breakfast to exchange it for

My point more specifically here is that there's a lot of value in the world that can't be exchanged for breakfast, something that (as far as I can tell from your other comments on this thread) you actually agree with, right? There's value that exists outside of traditionally monetarily compensated jobs.

In a (again, entirely theoretical) world where AI gets rid of the need to earn your breakfast, that doesn't mean there's not going to be anything of value to do anymore and that everyone's life is going to be meaningless.

Machines don't produce a value, humans do. Simply because the "value" (added or not) has a meaning only when you exchange goods or services. Nail gun makes things much faster but it's a carpenter who produces the value.

Money is simply a universal equivalent of that value, nothing more. So if you give me a breakfast for help with unloading your truck, it's still an exchange, and my work's value is equal to "one breakfast" even no money was involved.

AI is just a nail gun, there still needs to be somebody who trains/operates it (like with ChatGPT) and who will ask for something in exchange. It may eliminate some jobs (happened before), but it will create others because human society is not only about food (not sure ChatGPT can help here though), but about interactions which are not going to be automated by ChatGPT (think of sex, power).

> Simply because the "value" (added or not) has a meaning only when you exchange goods or services.

I feel like your definition of value is jumping around quite a bit. In another comment you described "value" as essentially any kind of social capital or personal reward. Now it's explicitly transactional?

In any case, this is a very narrow definition of value that I don't think matches up with what most people who worry about automation are talking about. It's certainly not what the original thread was talking about when it worried about people without jobs not being able to find meaning in work. What most people think of as useful or meaningful purpose in their lives does not strictly map to transactional value.

> AI is just a nail gun, there still needs to be somebody who trains/operates it (like with ChatGPT) and who will ask for something in exchange.

Then there is no problem! This isn't an issue if AI isn't going to take jobs away.

But it's not how economy works.

People on top of the company don't make anything but earn more than anyone that does, Not like 2x more or 5x more but 10-1000x more. There is no person on earth that produces million of value a month in actual improvement of society, aside maybe a world leader that stops a wary from happening. Not a man in widget company making beepy boxes that spends time on meetings about barely related to that. And then neither them or corporation gets taxes nowhere close to what the normal employee is, so the corporate wealth doesn't even benefit the country it is in.

The whole problem is that any improvement in production is only tangentially passed to society and mostly exploited to make few wealthy

> And then neither them or corporation gets taxes nowhere close to what the normal employee is

How did you figure that? Corporate tax rate in the US is 21% which is roughly equivalent to an effective tax for a single filer with about $180K in income. Can't say we are talking about "normal employee" here. Besides if you are talking about dividends (which are distributed _after_ 21%), there is a dividend tax on top of that, which, depending on your share class, can be the same as a normal tax rate. So yeah, nowhere close, usually +21% for the preferred stock.

Also don't fall to that communist idea. I grew up in the USSR where we had a "fair" distribution (no, it wasn't fair) -- trust me, you don't want to live in that world. There were some upsides, but still, and it didn't end up well.

>If this was true, the main question we would ask in a business is whether or not the output was useful. We don't ask that, we ask if it's "sustainable", "profitable", etc...

To be fair, we do ask that: if you have no revenue, then you don't have a business, because the output is not useful. An output can be both useful and not sustainable. Giving away $100 to everyone that high fives you is not sustainable, for example, even though it's very useful to the recipient. It's certainly not profitable.

> if you have no revenue, then you don't have a business, because the output is not useful.

I'm having some trouble reconciling this with the rest of your comment. You go on to describe an output (giving money away) that is useful but provides no revenue.

I would agree that a useless product will very often have a hard time generating revenue, but I would not say that a lack of revenue is a strong signal that an organization is not producing useful output. I mean, the software industry is filled with examples of projects that are wildly useful to everyone but are perpetually underfunded and produce very little money for the people working on them.

I would definitely agree with the truism that "if you have no revenue then you don't have a business", but it's just not clear to me where the "because the output is not useful" addition to that truism is coming from.

People who have enough wealth to not work for a living seem to manage their boredom pretty well.

People who have earned enough wealth to not for a living do, though those who've worked hard enough to do that typically don't have much in their life but work.

People who simply have enough wealth to not have to work are on a hedonistic treadmill most of the time

However, the previous argument was about boredom, not about being "on a hedonistic treadmill", which sounds pretty vague, not to mention judgmental.

You think so? Have you been in that position? I was. It's not what you think it is. Also unless you want to spend your wealth pretty fast (money has a half-life time like radioactive elements, doesn't depend on quantity) you have to work to keep your wealth, and it's not less nerve-racking than spending your 8 hours at work and forgetting it until next morning.

No, I haven't been, just know some people who are.

I don't understand what you're referring to. Where was your money going? I understand you still have expenses when you aren't working, but the expenses don't scale up on their own.

By this argument, hobbies do not exist.

Hobbies are relevant personally. Fits his definition.

Hobbies aren't necessarily only relevant to oneself, so no, they don't fit. Running a marathon can be a hobby, and lots of people compete in those together.

Not necessarily, but more often so than not. Even the competitions that you mention are only valuable to other hobbyists, and only in so far people's free times allow. Non-hobbyists are not likely to pay much to see those competitions. And when free time runs out, those hobbies are amongst the first things to go.

Someone has to grow, process, and ship your food. Mine the coal, or build and maintain the energy infrastructure. And roads. They expect to be paid because in many cases its work more than keeping busy. Those things that are more valuable or meaningful are valuable and meaningful to you, so not really a fair trade to the people doing work to support you.

I want to be polite about this, but I hate how I can correct one specific point on HN, and then I instantly need to defend an entire philosophy.

The comment I was replying to argued that we were talking about abolishing all meaningful human activity, and I pointed out that "meaningful human activity" and "gainful economic employment" are not the exact same category.

I don't really think that warrants having an extended debate about whether or not decoupling income from "work" is fair or not. And it's kind of a weird sequitur anyway, because all of the jobs you're talking about are paid noticeably less than white-collar jobs even though they are arguably way more essential than any of the programming work that we do. So for this to suddenly be a conversation about fairness... I mean, what conversation do you want to have, do you want to have a conversation about AI or about the entire history of wages and about how human beings value blue-collar jobs?

It's not a problem, it's just... people read way too much into comments like this. I'm just pointing out that "meaningful work" can happen outside of an economy, something that I think is a pretty obvious, uncontroversial point to state.

I think your response is equally naive. I am still largely undecided on whether something like a universal basic income would actually be a net positive for society, but the fallacy that receiving a fixed income immediately means that people won't do something productive with their time is ridiculous. I can't imagine _not_ working, I develop open source software in my free time and I would spend more time producing software others find value in if I spent less time working for my livelihood.

This doesn't just apply to software development. There are a lot of garbage jobs, dead end positions, where the people are effectively not doing anything. That is a weight on our economy but we can't just cut them out. What would those people do if they didn't have to waste so much of their time to live? Sure there are going to be people that go all in on becoming puddles on the couch, but I'd argue more people have passions they would actually have the energy to pursue.

People could spend more time with their families without being stressed out and burned out by everything else in the world. I'd argue that would most likely lead to healthier childhoods for kids, likely with better supplemental education as well leading to a smarter society in the long run.

People get tired of partying, and the people that don't make good examples for the next generation of what not to do. You can see that in our current society as the younger generation is drinking significantly less and doing fewer drugs to the point major alcohol manufacturers are concerned about their bottom lines.

There will always be degenerates, but people want the fulfillment that comes with actually doing things like you said. They will find that one way or another.

What do you consider as "productive"? Look at animals in a zoo, do they look productive to you? They have "a universal basic income", they simply don't need to be productive. Humans, just like animals, are productive when they are trying to achieve something (catch food, find mates, and for social animals to establish their position in a society which leads to food, mates etc.). E.g. you are developing OSS -- ask yourself why? Forget about money for a second. Are you doing it for yourself only, just for a pure fun of manipulating characters? Or you expect your software to be used by others? Revered by others? So if it's useful for others do you expect them to use it for free and pay you through taxes via the universal basic income (relying on a government to do a "fair" distribution), or maybe just pay you directly thus showing that very reverence? So it's just a distribution problem. If you don't want to worry about selling your software, then let others do it (it's called "working for a company"). As opposed to a government, which can pay for a work not needed for anybody (not very efficient, but that's what governments do all the time). Want to spend more time with your family? Don't buy the latest iPhone or an expensive car and work remotely part time, you will be able to spend more time with your family. There are tons of possibilities. Yet people do want the latest iPhone and then complain they don't have time to spend with their family or do "what the like".

> Look at animals in a zoo, do they look productive to you? They have "a universal basic income", they simply don't need to be productive.

They are also functionally in a prison...

So is all of humanity, we call them jobs and debt. Almost all of those animals lives would be considered luxury by human standards. No worries about food, a safe place to sleep, or predators.

A lot of people have to work two jobs just to afford food and shelter. Granted there are also people trying to live a Champaign lifestyle on a lemonade budget, but how do you address the first group?

This world is not fair, do you know how to fix it? I don't. There are different models with different degrees of fairness, but all have their downsides.

You not being able to imagine it only means your imagination doesn't go far enough. I have personally had experience with people who in fact would rather live off their parents' wealth in a hedonistic manner rather than working. One person hasn't finished his studies after 10 years and still spends his days traveling world wide first class using his parents' allowance. These are not isolated cases, they are common amongst a certain population subgroup.

My hypothesis is your drive to work is a product of your education and environmental conditions. When education and environmental conditions are different, you may not have that drive.

It isn't about productivity by itself. It is about aligning production with consumption. It is wildly naive of Westerners to believe there is so much excess production in the world that we can just pay people to not work. The US got their "UBI" in 2020, and it was Americans sitting around while foreigners labored in factories, docks, and ships to produce and deliver the consumed products.

Yes, there is a tremendous amount of waste in the global economy, but if we want to improve quality of life then we should focus on the mechanisms which cause that waste in the first place (e.g. targeting GDP growth.) If we solved those excesses (a very tall order), then why would it be fair for one group to be over-consume at the cost of another groups over-production?

Lockdowns were already a test of exactly what you're saying here.

When almost no one had to work economics became ridiculous, people were paying $40 for a $15 meal to be delivered to them, fiscal policy became clinically insane, tech stocks minted a new bubble. Are you proposing that bubble should be more permanent? The real economics of 'figure it out or lose your lunch' is much better policing than 'figure it out or go back to UBI'.

Burning an entire generation so the next one will be better isn't good policy.

> What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working [...]

Agreed. I just spent a week volunteering. (At the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, repairing machines.) It actually cost me money to do, but it was incredibly satisfying to just go and do a concrete thing that made the world better and was immediately beneficial to people. Especially in the company of other good people doing the same.

But I think a lot of people have had only terrible jobs (valuable work in inhumane conditions) or bullshit jobs (meaningless work in whatever conditions), so I get how so many people have been conditioned out of seeing the personal, emotional, very human value in work.

You did work and enjoyed it without it being your job. Maybe that’s the difference?

No. I also like jobs. I like them better, as they're cash-positive. I haven't liked all my jobs, but that's because some of them were terrible or bullshit.

If only ChatGPT could somehow be used to find us jobs rather than take them away ...

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value

You think people get meaning and fulfilment from flipping burgers at McDonalds ? Talk about naive. Frankly, it's quite elitist to assume that a majority of people are performing meaningful and fulfilling jobs, a lot of people do jobs they absolutely hate.

> Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair

You're presenting a false dichotomy. I'm not talking about not doing any work, I'm talking about not a having a job. There is a huge difference between doing something because you enjoy it and it gives you meaning, and doing something because you need the money to survive.

Not having a job doesn't mean you have to sit on your ass all day, it means that you get to decide what to do with your time. You can do any number of things that are meaningful to you. It's about having the freedom to decide how you spend your time on this earth. It's quite condescending to assume that people can't find a meaningful and fulfilling way to spend their time if there isn't someone who tells them what to do.

If no people like doing that, than who will do it? Who will do the hard or nasty jobs that nobody likes to do? Where are you going to eat your next McDonald's burger? Cuz all restaurants will be closed cuz nobody really likes doing that full time but it pays the bills.

There are just so many jobs that need to be done and there's nobody that likes them. Who would pick the garbage up? Who would unclog the sewer? Who would drill for petrol or mine for coal? If I got my regular salary without needing to do anything, then I wouldn't go into any of these jobs for sure. Would you?

Well, that's the whole point of the article you're replying to! His whole problem is that AI will do those jobs and he doesn't like that.

The words "most" and "many" there are doing some herculean lifting.

Look at the kind of people who do not have to work. Do they still work? No. Some sit on a beach and never lift a finger again, some become creatives and some try to recreate their successes again. None work what would be an engaging and productful job at a take-away joint.

That is in fact not true. Plenty of retirees seek out job-like things. I have a couple of examples.

A small one is my dad. He was a software developer, but thanks to Y2K consulting, he made bank and retired early. After, he spent half the year in Mexico. One of the friends he made there was a teacher. My dad ended up volunteering in the school. He had a part-time-job-like schedule and did teacher's aide things. He loved it.

On a bigger scale: In Michigan there is an arcade chain, Pinball Pete's. It was founded by Tim Arnold in 1976. I grew up there gave them a lot of quarters over years. He sold it in 1990 and retired to Las Vegas, bringing his extensive collection of arcade machines.

For a while he was doing an open house; once a month he'd let people in to play some of his collection. By 2009, he had started the Pinball Hall of Fame, a nonprofit arcade. A couple years back they moved to the Strip and expanded significantly. I was there recently and he spends hours a day there. Opening up. Collecting the quarters. Fixing machines. Telling kids to stop running.

The guy is circa 70 and he can do whatever he wants. What he wants to do is work at an arcade. He'll keep doing it until he dies.

The labor force participation rate among the general population is ~60%. Among those 65-74, it's 25%. And that's not accounting for people who can't retire. It also doesn't account for those who want to work but are unable.

Ok. How does that relate?

People who do not have to work work much less than people who do have to.

I don't think that's particularly good evidence for that. You're confusing "has a job" with "is working" and you are ignoring the age effects that are the whole reason retirement exists in the first place.

So what you're saying is that when people have more guaranteed income uncoupled from a job they have to do, in this case in the form of a retirement, they can and do choose to do lots of meaningful, enjoyable work? Which I think is the original point in this discussion?

I am responding to somebody who said:

> Look at the kind of people who do not have to work. Do they still work? No.

I'm not sure HN discussions have original points, really. But people do have specific points, and it sounds like you and I both agree that the one I'm replying to is too broad.

I know a bunch, and all of them work.

Also, you’re posting on a forum made by hand by a person who didn’t have to work.

And the whole OpenAI thing is being run by a person who is a retiree as well.

You should come here and find some meaning painting my fence.

While you are at it, the toilet in the basement is clogged, there is shit water all over the place. You could find meaning there too.

Just because I find reward in work, doesn't mean that all work is equally rewarding to me, or that I have an infinite desire for work.

Humanity learning to automate art before toilet plumbing is a travesty of scale not previously imaginable.

Humanity hasn't learned to automate "art". Humanity has learned to automate some aspects of technical aspects of creating images and to imitate some prevailing styles.

So they've learned to automate art.

I mean, we've done the same with farming. Is it 100% automated? No, not at all, but we've removed something like 99% of the human labor involved that would have occurred around 200 years ago.

Player pianos were invented in 1896, yet we don't consider piano playing to be a dead art. Indeed I don't believe people even pay to see player pianos play, where as they will flock to see even the most mediocre and novice players if they're the right humans.

Art without humanity isn't art. Farming can exist without humanity because we need the output to sustain ourselves. But take the humanity out of art, and no one is interested in it.

The difference is that player pianos can only replay previously existing songs, while Midjourney can create something novel in under a minute. The problem that's being solved is not everyone wants to spend thousands of hours learning how to draw in order to have the (artistically competent) end product in their hands.

That doesn't mean art has been automated; it means we've invented a better paint brush.

A paint brush that will paint a painting for you, no artist needed.

As if the main thing behind being an artist is using a paint brush competently...

I think AI is terrible for a lot of midrange commercial graphics. I don't think it's bad for "art."

Most cases of people paying to see human performers are of performing already-written music though, so I doubt think that's the drawcard. Actually I don't think anyone truly knows why we obviously gain something from watching live performers that can't be obtained from watching them even on the best quality home entertainment system imaginable (*), but at least part of it is feeling like you're part of the performance, knowing that the performers feed off the reactions of the audience etc.

(*) And why has there never been a market for broadcasting music performances in cinemas?

We pretty much do consider piano playing to be a dead art. You're much more likely to hear recorded music of some sort than a live performance. It's very niche today.

Watching live piano performances has always been niche. The point is that the player piano didn’t replace them, but moreover player piano concerts aren’t even a thing. The human element turns out to be an important factor here.

No it wasn't. Time was almost every British pub had a piano and that's where your musical entertainment came from. All music was live because what other choice was there? The particular form varied by culture of course: mine was more ceilidh oriented.

I dunno, I feel like there's something qualitatively different between pub music used to liven the atmosphere of a venue, where the primary activity is socializing with your friends and consuming alcohol; and art, which is what we're talking about. That is, just because a piano is used to create art, doesn't mean that everything that comes out of a piano is art. I think that applies to Midjourney as well.

> Watching live piano performances has always been niche.

Having live piano performance at a bar or other venue was extraordinarily common. There's still piano bars, but...

But electronic computer music (including pianos) allows us to enjoy many more genres of music nowadays than it was some while ago when only "the elevated" afforded to go to a piano concert.

You're right of course. I should have tapped 'most commercially viable art.'

Graphic designers, corporate advertising, media productions; video game artwork, the artistic channels where many creatives earn a square meal even if it isn't the most human and soulful type of art.

Maybe if you didn't need to work you would have time to fix those problems yourself and get satisfaction out of doing something that directly benefits you.

Ya know, I have helped neighbors with those exact problems. For free. It was nice to be helpful. I would not however do it for fun every day for strangers.

No one is arguing for you to either stop helping your neighbors for free nor to do it every day for strangers, so I really don't see the point in this.

GGP: people find meaning in work

GP: yeah? find meaning in my shitty chores

P (me): I've found meaning in helping others with shitty chores

You: I don't see the connection, nobody says don't help others

Huh? I'm not sure where you are coming from.

GGGGP: The point of life is not to need jobs in order to survive, the point of life is enjoyment

GGGP: Well, for most people, if they don't have to have a job, their life becomes a sucking void of boredom. These are the only two options

GGP: Nope, plenty of jobs can be a sucking void of boredom for people. It's not like having to clean toilets in order not to starve is incredibly meaningful for the people that have to do it

GP: Well, I like helping neighbors for free sometimes. But I wouldn't want to do it every day for strangers

P (me): I don't see the connection. You literally said you enjoyed doing something for free, so you're not talking about jobs. You could still do it if you didn't need a job to survive, nor would not needing a job to survive force you to do it for fun for strangers.

In any case, it's clear we interpreted the previous messages in a very different manner. In particular, as I've said elsewhere, people seem to be confusing jobs with work. Not needing jobs is not the same as people having to stop working, usually quite the contrary - people would be free to work more on stuff that they enjoy.

People here are extremely privileged and most likely have been for the entirety of their lives, keep this in mind.

Jobs, for the vast majority of people, is just a mean to make ends meet. There's nothing transcendental about it. Just a blunt "gotta pay the bills".

I may make 6 figures now, but I remember life when I didn't know if I was gonna be homeless next month. Perhaps that helped me keep my feet on the ground.

I know many people in my circles who would find literal religious meaning in the work of painting your fence.

Why does it cost money to get your fence painted then?

Because food and housing still costs money?

A lot of people use their free time to have religious experiences.

Sounds like the toilet will remain clogged then?

I guess god doesn't care for shit water all over the floor.

It sounds like you simply haven't experienced the full spectrum of humanity. There are plenty of people who find pleasure in shit.

Fitting username, have my upvote.

The French have a saying "Life begins after retirement". They find meaning, fulfillment and contentment in, for example, stretching a meal out over 4 hours through conversation.

Whether the French viewpoint or the American viewpoint is healthier can be found in the mortality rates.

Given that you listed the American viewpoint, what exactly do you think it is?

Well I guess that explains “My Dinner With André” then

> We need something valuable to do and most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether.

If quitting a job leaves you with no apparent valuable work to do in your life, that's probably a sign of being only engaged with the world through your job. There are never-ending lists of useful things to for family, for friends, for groups/organizations/churches you're part of, for the neighborhood you live in... and that's before even thinking about personal projects that are useful to yourself.

Sorry, I really bristled at this comment. People who are engaged in the world and have accepted responsibility in areas that aren't solely their job don't have to summon valuable ideas and tasks from the ether. You won't find the bottom of the to-do list. Not bullshitting.

Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value.

You can do that without it being a job. I enjoy making things out of epoxy resin. It's fun, creative, hard work. I'd do it a lot more if we had universal basic income. It's not my job.

> You can do that without it being a job

Yes, you can, but his argument is that most people don't -- and he's right.

I think people are confusing having a job with work. Making things out of epoxy resin takes a lot of work and it's satisfying. If everyone had UBI people would absolutely still work a lot. It's just that they wouldn't have to have a job in order not to become destitute.

Yeah, I am confused by the idea that not being forced to work to stay alive means your can't (or won't, whatever) find anything of worth to do with your life.

Where did that unexamined assumption come from? Do they care about nothing other than standard employment based "work" and so never considered doing something other than staring at a wall when they're not doing it?

Family. Friends. Volunteering. Gardening. Games. Hobbies. Learning to play music, or cook, or who knows... studying biochemistry and doing that because it's rewarding and easier to do in a setting with more people in the same place. Or starting a company if that's your thing, or call it an open-X project and build a community that doesn't require "work" to contribute.

I'm so confused, why on Earth would the agency to choose be bad, it's so patronizing.

There's some serious class bias going on here. There is a certain segment of the population that will find productive work to do that give their life meaning if left to their own devices. There is another segment that absolutely will become blobs or worse (engage in mischief, anti-social behavior, etc). Those who have only ever known folks from the former category see only positives from a future without the necessity of work. Those who know folks from the latter category, well we fear such a future.

Another strange class bias is that those from the (lets call it) "productive" class are absolutely convinced everyone is like them and if only given the opportunity they would be just as productive and fulfilled as they are. Some of us know better.

> There's some serious class bias going on here.

"Class bias" is a really weird word to use here to talk about that. It's class bias to assume that blue-collar workers aren't intrinsically lazy and that they might find meaningful activities to do if they had the time/energy to do so?

This is the first time I've ever seen "people need work for meaning, and they literally don't have the inclination/drive to find meaning in their lives unless they're forced to work under the threat of losing their livihoods" represented as solidarity with the working class. I don't think most people would consider that perspective to be synonymous with class consciousness.

I think it's more subtle than that - I'd suggest for many of us, regardless of class, the whole reason work gives us meaning is because you know you're providing services that contribute towards society. That knowledge partly comes from seeing that the company you work for (or even run yourself) brings in at least enough revenue to pay its workers' salaries in order for them to enjoy a decent standard living. It's not so hard to believe that a future where there's simply no need for the vast majority of us to work at all will leave many of us feeling like we no longer contribute much towards society, which is likely to be at least somewhat detrimental to our sense of self-worth and purpose etc. But whether that's likely to be a widespread catastrophic issue I don't think anybody really knows. After all, for centuries the undeniable contribution women made towards society was never recognised via a pay cheque.

Yes, this will be a major catastrophe if we don't plan ahead.

I think it's coming one way or another.

For an increasing number of us, the costs of automation will be lower than the cost of living. It will happen quickly. We absolutely need a serious safety net or it will be chaos.

And we need to discover another way to find meaning in what we do, or else it will be a mental health catastrophe.

I have thought on this long and hard and am confident I can find meaning in my life even if a computer can do what I enjoy more productively. It will take getting used to. It won't be comfortable. It is necessary.

It will be very bad if only a tiny fraction of people have financial security.

I use the term class bias mainly because I couldn't find a better term. But it is unique to a particular class to see oneself as the ideal that others are held back from reaching due to environment or circumstance. It's the reason why progressives think conservatives vote against their own interests and would see things the way progressives do if only they were better educated. It's just a fundamental inability to recognize that other people are different and aren't motivated by the same things. What's so insidious about this thinking is that its framed as benevolence. But the mistake is thinking that your way is intrinsically more valuable and so it must be a disparagement to assume that not everyone can reach the intrinsic good that you have reached.

You want to see what people get up to when they have endless free time, just see what idle young men get up to.

Adding on what the sibling comment said, meaning and fulfillment aren't just about the work one does, its about the social role that work facilitates. You may hate your job yet derive meaning from being a provider, from being the man of the family, being a hard worker, and so on. We're already in the process of destroying social connections with ones community and we're seeing a widespread crisis of loneliness as a result. Take away the meaning that work provides (regardless of job) and you basically destroy whats left of meaning in a good portion of people's lives.

> What's so insidious about this thinking is that its framed as benevolence.

Again, I want to remind the context of this: the context is that you're saying we need to force people to work under the threat of losing their livelihood or they can't be fulfilled.

And you're phrasing this as if I'm coming in and colonizing blue-collar workers or pushing my ideals on them. I don't think "benevolence" is the right word to use here, I just don't think there's anything noble about forcing people to work and saying that it's for their own good. It's an interesting turn of phrase to write about this like it's a "culture" when -- again -- the conversation is about whether or not people in blue-collar positions are too lazy and unmotivated to find meaning unless they're forced to work.

I just... it's wild to hear that phrased using the terms you're using. And I wonder if those blue-collar workers would agree that guaranteed income would be "taking away" their purposes, because most of the blue-collar workers I know are much more engaged in social institutions than the white-collar workers around them, and are therefore probably more prepared to find meaning within their communities and families outside of work than the average programmer on HN is.

> You want to see what people get up to when they have endless free time, just see what idle young men get up to.

This is me imposing my culture on other people? Pointing out that you're basically comparing blue-collar workers to lazy youth? Come on.

We derive tremendous value from blue-collar workers that hold up white-collar jobs and allow society to continue to function, even though they're often paid significantly less than us for what is arguably more important work. The least we can do is not pretend that this arrangement is somehow created for their benefit. This has all the energy of the proletariat complaining that the rabble can't take care of themselves and how the actually offensive thing is suggesting that they can.

If only HN could get out of its bubble and empathize more with the average worker, then it would realize that the average worker is lazy and unmotivated and needs to be managed /s

If only gpt4 could tell people what to do in order to find meaning. Surely it understands the human condition at least as well as market forces.

Wait, no actually from what I've seen gpt4 might be more empathetic to the idea that people deserve to find their own meaning in life without their betters giving them a purpose.

"Idle young men", oof. So, so patronizing, like people who think fast food jobs are only for high school kids.

>the context is that you're saying we need to force people to work under the threat of losing their livelihood or they can't be fulfilled.

That's one (bad) way to frame the context of the conversation. The better way is that the need to work is intrinsic to our psyche and core to our self-worth, but the ability to self-actualize is not. The need to constantly work has been a steady feature of our environment ever since we left the trees. Self-actualization, on the other hand, has not historically been a part of this. Meaning in human lives has largely been external, deriving from one's place in the social hierarchy. And work was a key facilitator in securing ones social status.

It should be a given that drastically changing the environment away from the historical baseline will have serious psychological ramifications. The progress of technology has had strong impact, but the social environment overlaid on the technological milieu has largely remained constant. So people got by mostly just fine. The internet has changed this calculus and we've seen widespread psychological damage as a result. AI stands to explosively accelerate this transformation.

What I am asking is whether people as a whole will be better off without necessary work being a driving force in their lives. People like you take it as axiomatic that a post-work society will be better, and offer misplaced moralistic arguments in favor of it. All I am saying is that its absolutely not axiomatic and should be considered directly on its merits and demerits. We've already seen many of the problems I'm talking about materialize.

>And I wonder if those blue-collar workers would agree that guaranteed income would be "taking away" their purposes

For gods sakes, this has nothing to do with the blue collar, white collar division. It's a division between the self-actualizers and non-self-actualizers. I used "class" as a generic grouping term. Although I expect the non-self-actualizers to be overrepresented among blue collar workers. That is, people who don't have the skill or the interest to engage in intellectual pursuits, but just want to make an honest living and take pride in their work.

>The least we can do is not pretend that this arrangement is somehow created for their benefit.

That's obviously not what I'm doing. Spare me these silly moralistic arguments. We need to be willing to discuss this issue as plainly as we can, not be hamstrung by misplaced political correctness.

> That's one (bad) way to frame the context of the conversation.

Is it actually a bad way to frame the context? Are you not saying that people need to be forced to work for their own benefit under the threat of losing their income? What you're saying is:

> What I am asking is whether people as a whole will be better off without necessary work being a driving force in their lives.

So... yeah, you're saying that people will be worse-off without an external force making them work, and it's good for them that they're forced to work. I think my phrasing is entirely accurate here. Losing the income requirement to work is the part you're concerned about, because stuff like UBI only gets rid of the requirement to work for income, it doesn't get rid of any social status that would be associated with work.

You're worried about people not needing to work for their financial security, and you're saying it's bad for them if they don't have a requirement to work for their financial security.

> although I expect the non-self-actualizers to be overrepresented among blue collar workers. That is, people who don't have the skill or the interest to engage in intellectual pursuits, but just want to make an honest living and take pride in their work.

You keep phrasing this like it's a compliment, but being able to make an honest living and being able to take pride in one's work has nothing to do with one's ability to self actualize. I'd push back again on this characterization -- the "non-self-actualizers" I know that make an honest living tend to be very involved in their communities. They go to church, they have social connections, they form meaningful relationships, they marry and have kids. They actually do stuff outside of work.

Self-actualization is not at all the same thing as whether or not you like academic pursuits.

----

I don't know whether or not a post-work society will have its own challenges or if it will be better, and I don't know if it's feasible to build one in the first place. I don't even know that people should be worried about GPT at all, I'm not sure it actually is going to take everyone's jobs. I don't think we're particularly close to a post-work-society, and I think programs like UBI are severely under-studied for the amount of praise they get.

But I do know that we're not doing people a favor by threatening them with financial destitution if they don't work.

And call that moralizing if you want, I'm fine with that. Call it politically correct, call it denying reality, whatever. But don't pretend that it's less empathetic to suggest that someone who doesn't go to college or learn to program isn't going to be intrinsically worse at self-actualization than everyone else. Don't phrase that like it's some kind of solidarity to call people unmotivated.

Yes, people struggle with deriving meaning outside of work, but that does not fit neatly into any singular social category, and it has a lot more to do with one's relationship with one's community and integration into non-work social institutions than it has to do with whether or not someone went to college.

> There is a certain segment of the population that will find productive work to do that give their life meaning if left to their own devices. There is another segment that absolutely will become blobs or worse (engage in mischief, anti-social behavior, etc).

Even if that is true, and I very much doubt that it is, a big chunk of the "productive" segment's work will be to help the other segment. People already do that a lot by volunteering. Imagine how much more people could psychologists, social workers, and others help if they don't have to worry about their own livelihoods?

I don't find that plausible. People volunteer to help those who naturally garner sympathy (poor, homeless, invalid, etc). There won't be much sympathy for those that don't have the disposition to self-actualize meaning like the "productive" class. On the other hand, those in the unproductive class won't want this kind of "help" either.

What we need are new institutions to fill the role of providing social connection and meaning. Things that churches and clubs used to provide. But how to revive those things is its own issue.

> Things that churches and clubs used to provide. But how to revive those things is its own issue.

Would reviving communal institutions be a meaningful and useful activity for people to do? Part of the reason why we rely less on community and social institutions is because we are relying on other things (like work) to fulfill that same role. It's not really surprising that people volunteer less at their local church if they're told that their life meaning ought to come from their job.

> People volunteer to help those who naturally garner sympathy (poor, homeless, invalid, etc).

Not really? Plenty of people volunteer to help people in jail, for example.

>On the other hand, those in the unproductive class won't want this kind of "help" either.

People won't want help to find meaning in their lives? I find it hard to believe. Churches and clubs, as you also said, used to (and still do) help provide people with that as well, so I'm not sure you truly believe it either.

>Not really? Plenty of people volunteer to help people in jail, for example.

Of course there are always some number of people that find even unlikely targets sympathetic. But what you're talking about is some kind of widespread movement to help close the meaning gap when something like a third to half of the world is having a crisis of meaning. To have that kind of a movement needs a naturally very sympathetic target, like victims of police brutality. The movement to improve prison conditions is practically non-existent by comparison. I don't find it plausible that the non-self-actualizers will be similarly sympathetic.

>Churches and clubs, as you also said, used to (and still do) help provide people with that as well

I wasn't talking about "help" like how psychologists provide help to their clients. What I mean is an attractive gathering place where people naturally find connection and meaning. People don't want to be "helped", i.e. being made to feel like a charity case, they want to come by meaning and purpose naturally.

Sure some people will be useless. But they are useless now, in the job, producing barely any "value". Might not even be of their own uselessness, there is plenty of useless jobs to go around.

Also, even the "useless" always want more. Even if it is bigger TV and bigger pick-up truck, that would still require work

I agree, for some segment of the population the current definition of "productive" is "meaningful". That's why it will be okay to let people do things they find meaningful.

If Priya had preferred to stay with her family, and there was no financial pressure, the situation would be unambiguously better. Her family may have encouraged her to go to study for family pride -- what if studying and living while studying were free for her and her family had no financial pressure for her to get a job and send money home? I struggle to see who benefits here. Maybe she would have preferred to stay home with her family, maybe she has siblings that she will miss, why would it be up to me at all? I don't get to define productive.

UBI (or whatever mechanism for providing basic needs) also doesn't mean there is no financial reward for employment. She could still go and study and earn money and send it home to a family that doesn't need it badly except now if the job is automated by GPT4 somehow no one suffers. No harm is done other than that she wasted her time studying this thing, but no one is going to suffer because of bad luck beyond wasted time.

There are a number of things that I do think people don't find meaning in doing. Many of these things can be increasingly automated like being a teller or working in a call center, but not all of which can be (for now), like repairing sidewalks. These are a set of things that aren't very fun to do which still need to be done, sure. Oddly the ones I can list off my fingers are not the ones that pay well, so something is certainly not working right on the incentives, sure. I agree that society should reward jobs less if they are meaningful and enjoyable than jobs that no one wants to do, but that's not really how capitalism works.

Plenty of people don't tend to do things even they would consider "productive" in their spare time, but how much of that is because they are under constant financial stress and have so little free time? I believe that if basic needs are met people will generally find more genuine sources of meaning, for them, whether or not I consider those things productive.

But my opinion isn't important here, that's the patronizing part.

I simply do not believe people will sit around and watch TV all day if they are in good health and aren't required to work all the time for security. Or if they do then that's their business, I'd rather try to inspire them to do other things than force them to by withholding food and shelter.

Let people be people and learn what makes their human life meaningful to them rather than trying to starve them into action that you consider productive.

> These are a set of things that aren't very fun to do which still need to be done...[they] are not the ones that pay well

Because they're generally things that don't require extensive training/exceptional skills/abilities to do, hence there lots of possible candidates to take on such jobs. I wonder what a world where there's billions of us with no job options other than the few remaining disgusting/dangerous jobs that automation can't yet handle will look like...

Here's how I do that thought experiment. Maybe your answer is different.

It will depend on who owns the machines that do the work.

It's not comfortable to think about, but I think it's silly to ignore completely. I've worried about it a lot and am at peace with it, for what it is worth.

If there's a strong safety net and regulations on corporations

No matter who owns the machines that produce things people need, people are able to live comfortably. In that scenario, the world looks like one where those undesirable jobs pay exceptionally well, gain increased respect, and improved working conditions until they're desirable -- because starvation and housing is no longer under immediate threat of being withheld. I don't hate that world, it seems frankly more fair. I think we can agree that more rational decisions are likely to be better, and that forcing people to make decisions that are only rational to them under threat of food and shelter is bad.

It's not like my friends and I in middle school loved doing engineering because we saw dollar signs. We did it because we had a knack for it and liked doing it with no ulterior motive. Forcing people who weren't interested in engineering to be engineers has honestly just never seemed like it worked that great. Give kids opportunities to discover that they find engineering fun instead... there are other means to get to a good place without the threat of food, health, and housing. Much of it education.

But maybe for me, meaningful means going and helping with my friends projects until I'm inspired to make some kind of art or work on a project to make a new idea. Who knows, being productive financially is just not necessarily always what will give me a meaningful life, and we only get one. Lots of things that are meaningful to me aren't productive financially.

If there's not a strong safety net

God help us all. If you don't own the increasingly small number of things that do an increasingly large fraction of all production you are way, way, way more screwed.

I think that is unrealistic.

If everyone gets free money the optimal move as an individual is to speculate on assets because everyone else will be. The financial rewards from gambling will be higher than working with much, much less effort.

I don’t think many people will find meaning in that world.

The financial reward of "gambling on assets" is already far higher than working with much, much less effort. Except that now only rich people get to do it safely.

Housing is an asset that must be "gambled" in order to live securely and control your residence. I agree that is horribly broken, but everyone deserves a chance to buy assets without my permission.

I also argue that currently poor people under less financial stress will be more able to avoid getting fleeced, and that arguably many are already better at it than plenty of people with inherited wealth.

As a concrete example, mortgage rates being higher for poor people than rich people is already abusive.

If people followed the "optimal move" all the time, assuming you mean it in a financial sense, there wouldn't be any teachers or social workers or librarians.

If everyone gets the relief of knowing they are free to pursue what they like without risk of starving, I imagine it'd be way easier to find meaning in the world than it is now.

What if the reason is that when they come back from 8h job that also took 2h to even get there (coz they are not rich so they live far from it) they just don't have energy to ?

I swear, it's like nobody here actually worked hard for any extended period in their life..

> most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether.

Is this really true? It's absolutely not a personal problem for me. I haven't worried about boredom or lack of purpose in decades. My worry is that I'd need a hundred lifetimes to give proper attention to everything I find interesting or meaningful, and the problem gets worse the older I get, the more I learn, the more I find interesting.

What a profoundly naive opinion. The overwhelming majority of paid work available is not fulfilling to anyone, and the overwhelming majority of people who are wealthy enough to not need to work to subsist can find things to do with their time, and for the most part seem to find more fulfilling things to do than people stuck in the labor market

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working

Only because it’s the only thing they know. If “work” wasn’t a constant in human life you’d see people adapt to finding meaning and fulfillment in something else.

> Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair

I’ve taken multiple year hiatuses from work (living very cheaply) and they are the best years of my life. Wake up, go for a run/walk, go to the gym, read a book, go to the coffeeshop, make lunch, go to the movies, go on dates, use the internet. Absolutely incredible.

> What a profoundly naive opinion.

I would prefer if you expressed your disagreement without denigrating GP like this.

You can be working without it being your only source of income. If everybody was given let’s say ten million dollars in capital (and endless social security), those who wanted could work. The rest of us wouldn’t mind letting the machines do the work.

As any student who takes Econ 101, or reads history, (or has heard of a country called Argentina? or has opened a newspaper during the past year of post-Covid inflation?) will learn, this assumption is factually incorrect. If you give everyone ten million dollars, there will be a phenomenal and rapid increase in the price of goods, especially consumer staples (since everyone got that money, and everyone buys staples).

You can't really just throw money at the demand side of the equation and expect everything else to stay the same. Supply side will raise their prices because they can (when everyone's got $10M in the bank, why not charge $50, $500 or even $5,000 for a loaf of artisan bread? And eventually other producers of bread follow suit because the consumer has become less price sensitive).

If you want to improve everyone's standard of living, what has repeatedly worked throughout history is to lower the cost of production through technology, and ensure there's lots of competition on the supply side. With enough competition, producers are unable to behave like a cartel. Eventually someone cracks and sacrifices part of their margin to attract more customers, and then a price war ensues. A textbook example is salt, which for most of human history was quite expensive, but after mechanized mining techniques were developed it became so cheap that for the average household it's practically free.

Technology + competition. At this moment in history we're quite good at the technology part of the equation but we have allowed many monopolies and oligopolies to form, so we're struggling at the competition part.

Sure if you give everybody 10 million dollars in pieces of paper, what you described happening will happen.

Money is the measure of the productive capacity of an economy. If you increase the money without increasing the capacity then you get inflation. But let's be charitable and assume that "Gud" was talking about increasing the capacity commensurately. Because that's what's happening. AI, robots and almost zero marginal cost green energy are going to increase the productive capacity of economies dramatically over the next decade or two.

> AI, robots and almost zero marginal cost green energy are going to increase the productive capacity of economies dramatically over the next decade or two.

Oh boy, maybe much much later on, 15-30 years from now if we're lucky, and maybe just the opposite. But as for coming decade? Forget it. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risks_Report_2023.p...

Execting green energy to produce zero marginal cost is probably a bit too optimistic at this point. We have been adding green energy for at least 20 years now and energy keeps getting more expensive. Not even addressing whether its sustainable, but expecting a point at which additional solar panels or wind installations are going are going to produce extra energy at close to zero cost is expecting too much.

You might have that argument with nuclear energy, because most of the cost is upfront. But approval process for that will have to be expedited by congress.

Price is set at the margin. Right now the marginal energy is fossil fuel powered and the quickly increasing share of low cost renewable energy doesn't impact price.

The problem is often technology becomes a barrier to entry especially when it requires scale to operate. AI is the extreme example of this kind of technology - needs large compute, and large amounts of data, and requires a actor with enough capital to create it. In effect a lot of modern technology has helped create monopolies.

The barriers to entry definitely exist, but is it the technology itself that creates them, or is it the intellectual property laws we've adopted? Capital is a barrier but it's far from an insurmountable one -- there's plenty of capital floating around in the world. As a thought experiment imagine what the tech industry might look like if the US introduced some form of compulsory licensing for software (for patents? for copyrighted source code?) like what exists for music.

Natural monopolies certainly exist in sectors of the economy like public utilities, but I don't think they are so strong in tech.

For me monopolies, even natural ones, are maintained due to power structures in society. If you see most natural monopolies that are privately owned there's usually a political system that allows that to occur and a well connected powerful actor. AI has the ability to break the one power structure keeping the middle class intact - that being they still technically need people to "think on the ground" to provide the things they want. i.e. output is still a function of labor. AI breaks the need for "labor" to be a required input into the production line long term - i.e. it will no longer be a large economic factor of production.

My personal view: AI makes most of the world's population in the long run surplus to requirements for people who own capital, societal power and the planet's scarce resources. That's a form of monopoly.

By whom?

...and what will happen when every single person goes and tries to buy a 50" TV? Hm? Did we suddenly invent a magical TV making machine?

Come on... this is Real Life, not Magical Fairy Land.

We're not talking about a magical cornucopia that generates an endless amount of physical goods that can be used to accommodate the needs of every person.

We're very specifically talking here about technological shift that will eliminate a large pool of skilled jobs.

People will still need jobs, or they will become homeless / starve / have to leave the country.

AI is not going to feed the world any time soon.

Why do we need jobs? I’m genuinely curious. If the machines can produce the food, goods and luxury items traditionally made by mankind and their domesticated animals, I genuinely don’t see the problem.

Naturally this is purely hypothetical, parent argued that work gives meaning to life(which I generally agree with). I argued you can still be working, even if less efficiently than the machines.

Maybe it will be a gradual change. Agriculture and manufacturing is already highly automated, for better or worse.

> Why do we need jobs? I’m genuinely curious. If the machines can produce the food, goods and luxury items traditionally made by mankind and their domesticated animals, I genuinely don’t see the problem.

In principal you're right, we can in theory live like you suggest and expand on leisure culture / volunteering / 'made up' jobs by the government.

In practice, we're super far from the utopia. Energy is expensive, food is expensive, housing is expensive in ChatGPT can't do squat about it. What it CAN do is possibly replace me as a worker. So that's the conundrum.

> Did we suddenly invent a magical TV making machine?

I mean ... we already have 3D printing, and car making robots, and electronics making robots. Most of the TV is robots.

All that's needed is the equivalent of 3D printing that adds an extra step of "TV-making-robot"-making robots. One reason we don't have that is that it turns out the robot making robot costs more than certain as-yet non-globalized labor markets.

It's not that we can't, it's that the ROE is bad.

How is this relevant to GPT4?

What you're saying was already true... so what. Now people are unemployed because of GPT4 we're going to start making free TVs for everyone?

Dang. That's sure not what happened when all those people lost their jobs during covid (eg. restaurant staff).

I guess this time will be different?

That's uh... well, very optimistic.

How is "Did we suddenly invent a magical TV making machine?" relevant to GPT-4? I replied to that.

And:

> already true so what

OK, so we did invent it. Then we agree on that.

> I replied to that.

Out of context.

This entire thread is in the context of “gpt is going to destroy jobs”; the arbitrary “we need to disassociate working and basic necessities” isn’t an isolated socialist discourse.

You can wax philosophical all you like, but you’re failing to address the fundamental reality.

There is a physical limit of good and services available right now and no amount of magical posturing will make that untrue.

Anything is possible in the future given unlimited time and resources, but this thread is not about that.

It is about right now, people losing their jobs.

What is being proposed here is not a solution to that problem. The ability for people to build things doesn’t mean they will. It’s pure speculation about what might possibly happen in the future.

> Then we agree on that.

I do not agree with you. You’re just making arbitrary speculative statements.

Would be nice to also have infinite minerals to prepare all those goods, or will the TVs be made of wind and solar?

Sadly, one of the lessons of Covid Era I think is I think like this kind of windfall would just destroy everyone spending discipline, and then prices would just inflate correspondingly.

You can be meaningful and work very hard for other humans and be very valuable without any economic activity.

That’s the point. Working for money is only tangentially related to purpose insofar as your job matches your particular style of “purpose”. If you are free, truly free, would you work in some soulless corporate?

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value.

Sure they do. But "value" is not simple one dimensional "I get money for food and rent".

If value of your work is just money, you have to mostly do the things that work toward money

Not making other people's life better or more interesting. Not something that you find fulfilling. But things that make money first, are any of the above second.

Having the basics (let's say "food, money, internet + some spare change to get what you need want") allows individual to pursue things that are risky and might not be profitable in the end without stress of not being able to pay rent next month. You can be a musician that "only" have 10k listeners. You can make niche little gadget that earns maybe $500 a month in sales but enriches other people's lives.

And now corporations would have to offer something substantial (whether in term of being interesting, or profitable enough) to find someone to hire. Less "bullshit jobs", or soul-crushing work that barely affords you a living just because your skills don't align with what is profitable.

> Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete.

Did you never had an interesting hobby in your life ? I have enough that if money was not an issue I'd keep my brain and body involved for years to come.

I agree completely.

Additionally, people who hold this belief fail to realize that “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.”

For example, how are you going to eat? You are either going to grow, cultivate, and harvest your own food (i.e. work) or you’re expecting others to do that work for you.

Oh, you say it can be “automated”? Well, who’s going to design, build, and maintain the automating machine? That’s all work too!

Given that the article we're discussing is about robots replacing workers, the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions.

2 years ago we would both have agreed that that would be impossible. My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs. But if I'm wrong and the pace of change of the last 2 years continues for another 10...

> the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions.

Then who designs, builds, and maintains THOSE AI & robots? It can’t be “AI & robots” all the way down.

>My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs.

I agree (although it may or may not be “soon”). As history has shown us, technology advancements just cause us to reimagine possibilities and start solving problems that were previously impossible.

For example, as computers have gone from a few bytes of RAM to billions of bytes of memory, humans didn’t say, “ok, we’re all set now.” — we invented whole new classes of software that do all kinds of things unimaginable to the early computer scientists.

The same will happen with AI and robots.

> people who hold this belief fail to realize that “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.”

No, it means "I am working to generate more wealth which flows predominantly to the owners of capital, who often do no work and sometimes have never done any work at all - can't we do something fairer than this?"

> No, it means "I am working to generate more wealth which flows predominantly to the owners of capital, who often do no work and sometimes have never done any work at all - can't we do something fairer than this?"

It always starts with this, then the next step is "ohh we can't really tax rich people and corporations ('owners of capital' that you speak of) since they have a lot of ways to move their capital out of our reach so let's just fleece the middle class instead!".

Over a hundred countries agreed to a 15% global minimum corporate tax rate starting this year. It's not nearly enough, but it's a start, and it shows we can tax rich people and corporations.

> “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.”

Or maybe it means: "if, thanks to automation, we become 2x as productive, I would like to work half the time, while still being able to pay my bills."

> Oh, you say it can be “automated”? Well, who’s going to design, build, and maintain the automating machine? That’s all work too!

Which requires 10x, or 100x less people. And the "savings" go mostly to company owners, not to making product cheaper.

The work that I find meaning and fulfillment in pays about 1/20th of what I get paid at my job, if it pays at all. I do my job because it allows me to allocate the most possible time to fulfilling work (through early retirement), when I can spend all of my time doing nourishing things like cooking for my family and raising children.

What about all the work that's a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, anhedonism, and despair? You're naive and privileged if you think that there's not plenty of that.

And, as others have mentioned, not working for living at a subsistence level does not mean not doing rewarding and value-producing things. Quite the contrary.

Spoken like someone with the privilege of choice and completely blind to it.

How many in this world simply have not had the chance to educate them selves, been lucky with timing or knowing the right people to get the nice jobs where they are listened to and even looked up to?

Where they not only get a salary where they can survive off it without working a second or third job, but are also able to save up some buffer.

That they might actually afford to get out from under landloards that continuously increase their rents, and buy a property of their own.

And so on and so forth.

Your comment drips ignorance on the daily hardships huge swaths of the human population on this planet (including a large group in the rich western world as well) have to go through every day, and the propable relative luxury of your situation compared to theirs.

OP means work as in "working for a company", not as in "doing something besides sitting on the couch".

I don’t know, I think maybe the midwit meme applies here.

(Early) retirement is an adjustment. It takes time to find them, but there are alternative ways of finding fulfillment and I’m happy to have them. N=1 but my revealed preference seems to be that yes, being financially secure is good, it reduces working, and it’s possible to find better alternatives.

Removing the need of wage labor is not the same as promoting idleness.

How many people want to experiment and try new ideas but are stopped by economic insecurity? (In arts, crafts, engineering, and science)

How much _very valuable_ non-paid work doesn't get done because no one is paying for that? (Such as maintenance, community building, teaching, etc)

You can work without doing so for income.

There is a difference between "work" and "job" that you ignore here.

Yes, most people find meaning in some kind of work. That doesn't imply that having a boss and worrying about paying your bills is more meaningful than working without a boss and without worries.

> . Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete.

You're straight up projecting your own personal experiences as a generalized truth. Seriously, grow up and learn that there are a lot of differences in people. You might need this, that doesn't make it into an universal truth that everyone needs it or gets it by having a dayjob.

The only thing that you can say, generally is this: humans can gain happiness by getting acceptance from other people when they care about the people that accept them.

I agree with the other sibling comment about a “job” not being the only way to have that fulfillment.

Also apart from the “real” disabled, a lot of people are just disabled enough mentally or physically to be deemed fit for Jobs with a capital j but are miserable.

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value.

The opposite, actually. Most people, for whom a reasonable fulfilling job exists, do not have the opportunity to work such a job. AI does not promise to increase the availability of fulfilling and contentful jobs, meanwhile the cost of living will continue to rise with no end in site while wage stagnation continues another decade.

> The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it.

This holds if the way you enjoy life is working. Your comment isn't at all at odds with the GP's, yet it calls theirs naive.

this assumes that we wouldn't still be doing "work".

the work that gives me most meaning, fulfillment, and contentment in working doesn't pay enough for me to make a living from it.

wish i could get paid an income so i could do that "work".

The market doesn't owe your hobby any value. You know how few people get to enjoy the job that pays their bills? You live in a privileged bubble.

A comment calling someone "naive" for thinking that work-for-income is the only possible way to find happiness.

Good god, corporate America has utterly brainwashed multiple generations. You lost your creativity, your imaginations and your aspirations. Even your entrepreneurial spirit.

"Here's a machine which can automate the intellectual labor of multiple professions, enabling it to simply execute on ideas you come up with." and the only thing any of you can think of is "but would I do with all this free time if I wasn't desperately struggling for food and shelter?"

Probably more than half of all jobs are unfulfilling.

Is there data to back this claim? Otherwise, this looks a lot like classic "protestant work ethic" (e.g., Max Weber) repackaged.

Extrapolating your experience to all of humanity is not useful.

Especially since the readers of this site are very non-representative.

A job != work

You can work without having a job, all day everyday

This is a nice thought that isn't going to happen. AI will eliminate jobs and rich people will get richer while also widening the moat so you can't use that same tech to compete.

Its really a function of who is paying for the tech, who owns it and what do they want to do with it.

The only reason the middle class was born was because trained workers could pull their labor and affect upper class wealth. They had power. AI takes that power away.

This is exactly what will happen. There will be no Star Trek like future.

This is the most likely outcome.

That would be great. It’s also not going to happen without a massive uprising. The people profiting off automation have zero intent of sharing the wealth and every intent of hoarding it.

To over-simplify, revolutions happen when young men get bored, gather into mobs to entertain themselves, and then somebody with a cause directs that mob into action.

The standard way to prevent revolutions is to channel the energy of young men into a productive job and a family.

But today, bored young men entertain themselves with video games etc rather than gathering in mobs to entertain themselves. We don't have large gatherings of aimless young men anymore.

tell that to the french gov't right now!

Except when there are robot armies, you won’t be able to protest anymore, you will do what your told or be eliminated.

We were all fine with having a bunch of pretty poor people around us (let alone other countries where people live horrible lives). Why should anyone care white collar people are going to get hurt? Who said we have enough power/motivation to meaningfully revolt?

Why haven't the poor revolted already?

I hope you're right but I don't think its a given this will happen.

When has an uprising (or revolution) been anything other than a disordered mob? I wouldn't expect any such transition to be orderly and well-planned. It will be reactionary in order to quell the chaos.

Yep. That's why there WILL be an uprising. When? I don't know. When the pressure becomes too high to bear, and risking your life seems like a good option compared to just hanging in there. But maybe by that time most humans have been genetically engineered to be happy to be serfs, and oligarchy is a genetic condition now.

I expect we'll adjust the status quo for decades yet. The internet projects a lot of negative sentiment, but I suspect most people are happy scraping by so long as they have a roof and some entertainment.

Even proactive people are made to believe they are just one more "rise and grind" away from being a millionaire, they want to be succesful in this society, so they have no desire to tear it down.

What could bring the stack of cards coming down I think, is a housing affordability crisis. For anyone who has ended up without a home or even just the threat of losing a place to live, you wake up to that reality real quick. If there is suddenly a majority without work and without a home, that's a bunch of people who just found out the system is broken and will want answers.

Heh, I see we're following the Manna timeline

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Still a potential possibility - sadly IMO more so than the utopia vision of AI; thanks for reminding me of this. We simply become fodder for the things AI can't reasonably do in the "real world" until it can with the owners of the systems living it up. At that point the rich/political class have no need for the "rest of us", live the high life and the rest of the population is a "problem" that has to be managed by the state creating mass inequality.

Jobs often make people feel useful. While many can be the happy unemployed person playing Counterstrike 24/7, many others need some sort of occupation for self-realization. This is actually a common problem, which can even became a major psychological issue, with people entering retirement.

Maybe one day we can live in a world where machines are doing all the work and there are fulfilling hobbies for everybody, but I fear this will require more changes, on a much longer time horizon, than the short-term issues just around the corner due to the recent AI advances.

The people at the top of society never had any problem enjoying life while everyone else worked for them. We're just need machines at the bottom of society so that all humans are in the owning class and can enjoy not working.

Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness, 1932 seems increasingly true to me. The richest has kept a monopoly on idleness while tricking everyone else to see work as their purpose in life (to work to make it possible for the rich, idle, people to have nice lives without having to work).

"Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever."

Anyone who has been unemployed may know how badly it affects a persons self-worth.

Because modern adult life is built around working. If working wasn’t the default state then being unemployed wouldn’t feel bad.

Does an 8-year old feel “bad” because they are unemployed?

It would probably be much less impact if you knew you won't get kicked out of your apartment in few months coz you run out of money to pay rent.

Like, sure, "nobody wants to have me working" isn't great, but going to job that barely covers your rent isn't much better.

That has more to do with discrimination against the unemployed.

Discrimination against poor people, more specifically. No one cares how unemployed you are if you're rich. Or at least well off enough to be reclassified as "eccentric" and thus okay.

Eh I’ve read plenty of essays by people who have retired early and it was not good for their psyche even though they were loaded.

Sounds like self projecting

I don't see it

Perpetual victimhood is also devastating for one's sense of self-worth.

[deleted]

This is more a problem with the non-existing income stream

Yes, exactly! Imagine as a thought experiment that we can produce everything we do today, but with zero labor due to automation. This would be a miracle for humanity!

For one thing, we could use all our free time however we want, including working to produce still more stuff, or just go hiking.

The real problem is how to distribute the goods and services produced - and there a UBI is probably the right answer.

Machines do all the (necessary) work, UBI ensures that everybody benefits, and humans are left to do as we please.

What's not to love?

You’re glossing over a lot of specifics. Who owns the machines? Who dictates how much food you get? Medical care? Who says who can have children? And how many?

Or will this result in infinite food, water, and shelter?

As soon as you rely on UBI to live you’ve lost all control of your own life. Your a child with an allowance. The state has absolute authority over you.

The government is already controlled and influenced primarily by nefarious interests. I can’t even begin to imagine how nasty it gets when the entire population relies on them for mere sustenance.

It doesn't have to be that way. For one thing, you don't need to means test it. Just give the same amount of money to everyone. Then if you work you still end up ahead. So no dis-incentive to work. For another, if implemented properly the amount would go down if production declined, or up if production increases. This way it's self-correcting in the aggregate. As people leave the workforce, the UBI goes down, nudging some people at the margin to go back to work.

But this still leaves people free to choose for themselves, without interference from the government.

Yes. That’s why UBI is a neat idea as a replacement or enhancement for welfare, and other social services. That’s not the context in which we’re discussing it though. We’re discussing it as an alternative to work in a world where almost all human jobs have been automated. In that context it’s not a good solution, and in fact it’s dangerous because it leaves everyone reliant (and obedient) to the government, and a select few mega corps.

If everybody makes the same amount then all you’ve done is inflate the currency. Money is used to control access to finite resources, with the goal to get more tokens than the other person. If you give everybody X tokens per month, then in aggregate things will cost X tokens more.

No inflation required. People buy things from whoever owns the production, and the producers pay high taxes to fund the UBI. No net money creation required.

Then you've created a net deficit. You can't ignore algebra and pay more than it costs to make something and put it on the shelves. Without those paying people to put it on the shelves making more than it costs to pay those people there's no incentive. This is a pipe dream without causing inflation and doing nothing in aggregate.

The state already controls your money.

Good luck trying to tax AGI companies 95% of profits. Perhaps you could strike but you'll be unemployed.

I guess we'll just have to cross our fingers that Sam Altman and friends will pity us enough to give us some pocket money to survive. That's assuming the AGI created is aligned with our values.

I mean, we can keep hoping that AGI will be a good thing with zero evidence or we can take action to slow progress now so we can proceed with caution.

In the history of political movements, have there been any that have been successful with slowing progress? The Luddites failed to. stop the industrial revolution, despite all the looms they broke. The cat's been released from BagGPT, and even if all the world's countries ban AGI research (somehow), that's just going to drive the work underground, and the first ones to get usefully further along the curve will be able to outcompete any who haven't.

It's a real life prisoners dilemma, with 8 billion prisoners, and the first one to defect get to decide what the fate of the rest of humanity looks like.

Let's just try to tax the progress so the billions of profits from making people's jobs obsolete won't just go back to billionaires again

So then they move to another country, who maybe wants to use it for nefarious reasons, who won’t tax them.

Yeah, that's kinda the problem, same with tax evasion; at worst the company would make a subsidiary in country and only make it cost center on balance sheet with all profits going to the tax-haven company

> In the history of political movements, have there been any that have been successful with slowing progress?

Not an argument, unless you believe "we failed in the past so why bother trying now" is sound reasoning.

> The cat's been released from BagGPT

Do you say the same thing about nuclear weapons? I mean, given that the nuclear weapon cat is now out of the bag we might as well see just how big a bang we can make, right? Anyone who wants to stop progress of nuclear weapon development is obviously a Luddite.

And while we're at it, is the fossil fuel cat out of the bag too? Is any effort to try to limit the release of CO2 as a global community pointless?

--------

Please keep an open mind and let me reason with you.

I assume you believe AGI poses some level of risk to humanity. The exact nature of that risk isn't too important – it could be economic risk, political risk, existential risk or all three. Basically I am assuming you believe there are enough things which could go wrong in creating superhuman AGI that a sane species would seek to limit the progress of capability research until we can proceed safely. If we disagree on this please explain why you do not believe AGI poses any risk to humanity. Note, hopeium that things will be okay is not an argument.

Okay, so since we agree that a sane species like us humans would limit AI capability research and proceed cautiously we now need to solve the prisoner dilemma which you correctly identified.

My solution to this would be as follows:

First we need to take this seriously. We need to be frank about the risks we face from AGI and try to educate the public about what may be coming. Currently the general public is so clueless about AI they're either not aware of recent advances, or they believe silly things like it being possible to unplug an AGI, or program it to be good.

Secondly, we need to establish an independent international organisation to oversee state-of-the-art AI research. Any country which does not agree to this will be sanctioned and as a global community we must agree do everything we can to pressure those countries to cooperate. In my opinion this includes war, but that's only because I believe AI is a significantly large existential risk to humanity that this is necessary. Appropriate actions in practise would obviously need to be debated and agreed upon as a global community.

Thirdly, we need a way to increase global trust and transparency of AI research. To do this I would propose the creation of a global AI whistle blowing fund. All countries which are part of the international agreement to oversee state-of-the-art AI research would be required to contribute to this fund annually. This fund would allow citizens from any country in the world to come forward with evidence against corporations, governments or individuals in violation of the agreement. These citizens would then receive a reward for their information and protection from any country (of their choosing) which signed on to the agreement. By incentivising whistle blowing it would be hard (although admittedly not impossible) for any large research project to take place.

Fourthly, fund and research ways to identify and limit unauthorised AI projects via technology and audits of things like GPUs orders. Simply limiting the distribution and capabilities of GPUs at a global level would be one of the easiest ways to ensure AI capability research can't advance too quickly. Of course we would need countries like China to play ball, but so long as we can do this in a transparent way and they understand the risks to humanity should they not corporate they would have no reason not to. This isn't too different from limiting the development of nuclear weapons as a global community which we have been quite successful at doing.

Finally, all AI research projects which are approved should be done at an international level for the benefit of all of humanity and research teams must detail how they are approaching safety and publish all safety research. Additionally, there should be government grants into things like alignment research to better prepare us for superhuman AGI.

What I'm proposing obviously isn't perfect. In the same way we can't guarantee nuclear weapons won't be created in the future, we also can't limit the risk of AGI entirely. Instead a more reasonable goal of slowing capability research while increasing safety research as much as possible should be pursued. There is a possible future where AGI will be great for humanity and our goal should be to maximise the chance of that outcome. The goal is not to "limit progress". Even if we disagree about exact actions to take there is no alternative world in which it is reasonable to allow a handful of billionaires to continue AI capability research unregulated while crossing our fingers that the AIs they create will be aligned with our values and that they pity us enough to give us food and shelter once we are all unemployed and fully dependent on their creations.

> I guess we'll just have to cross our fingers that Sam Altman and friends will pity us enough to give us some pocket money to survive. That's assuming the AGI created is aligned with our values.

My guess is that Altman and co. already have some kind of exit strategy (like fleeing to New Zealand after they've captured a huge chunk of the developed world's wealth).

The big issue is the transition. What happens when we still need around 30% employment to keep things going. Neither enough automation for everyone to take permanent holiday nor enough labour to go around for everyone to make the current way sustainable. I have no good answer for how to address this middle point.

I think you start with a kind of non-profit member-owned "general automation corp." that supplies a level of basic QoL: clean water, food, shelter, clothing, energy, internet, medical, etc. per-member, at a set rate, say US$300 per month. That is, you pay in $300/mo. and that covers your rent, food, utilities, health insurance, etc. Over time the rate you pay falls to zero and remains there for the rest of your life.

The task of the corporation is to supply the above goods and services efficiently, in environmentally regenerative ways, while meeting or exceeding minimum quality standards.

- - - -

It's kind of like a new economic regime developing within the old one, the way a crystal precipitates out of a saturated solution, eh? A sort of phase change?

Why do it through a corporation rather than through government?

You don't have to convince people to vote for it, you can just get started right away with who ever is interested.

So forced adoption? If they wanted it they would vote for it. You don’t see a problem with forcing people to do something they don’t want?

This is scary, some people seem to be so gleeful at the idea of AI taking over everything they’re willing to resort to force to make it happen.

> So forced adoption?

No, of course not. I don't understand what you are imagining.

I'm talking about forming a non-profit mutual-benefit corporation and offering memberships which include services. Not forcing anyone to do or adopt anything.

> You don’t see a problem with forcing people to do something they don’t want?

I do see a problem with that. It's called "coercion" and I am against it in almost all of its forms. (I do recognize a pragmatic need for e.g. laws and police and the legal system, but by and large I'm in favor of freedom and self-determination for everyone.)

> This is scary, some people seem to be so gleeful at the idea of AI taking over everything they’re willing to resort to force to make it happen.

Again, I don't understand what you are imagining. I'm not sure how you got "forced adoption" from what I said, but I appreciate any feedback to improve my communications. Cheers!

Bring this back to the real world then, how can this happen? If it's possible then someone who doesn't care about profit would create this already. Therefore not possible without forced adoption.

I'm still not getting what you're saying. What's "this" in your sentences?

I mean I can play stupid too. This = your statement.

No need to play stupid.

> Bring this back to the real world then, how can this happen? If it's possible then someone who doesn't care about profit would create this already.

I'm doing it. I'm that "someone who doesn't care about profit". I literally went to start a normal corporation, saw this "non-profit mutual-benefit" corporate form, and realized that it aligned better with what I wanted to build, so I incorporated as that.

The idea is to acquire some land, lay in a kind of ecologically harmonious high-tech neighborhood combined with a 3D printing shop and other facilities (electric, ISP, food forest, etc.) and rent-to-own or something to members. It's a kind of economic time travel to a Star Trek-style techno-utopia (to the extent that such a thing is even possible, given human nature, eh? But that's not my problem. I'm just trying to keep from messing up the environment and/or becoming a peasant, you know?)

Check out https://www.riverbed-ranch.com/ for something like what I'm talking about (this is not my thing, but it's got some similarities.) These folks are basically treating Utah like a fresh alien planet and building a nice modern eco-friendly town out there.

I agree! The problem is not with the fact that AI will make a lot of people unemployed, the problem is how we treat people who are unemployed. I love what I do, but I love the fact even more that I don't have to do it to live a good life (or worse: survive). I do it out of pure curiosity or maybe altruism. Maybe even social status, but not for the money.

Sure, that would be great but history has shown this is a beautiful but naive pipe dream. It doesn't take into account the ambition and greed of humans and their capacity to exploit others.

> It doesn't take into account the ambition and greed of humans and their capacity to exploit others.

The talking computers will rapidly become perfect therapists and perfect salesmen. They can talk us "down off the ledge".

Which means they could also push us over the edge. If the weak-minded are currently influenced by today's bots, it's a matter of time until some are testing humans by "pushing limits" if you will

> Which means they could also push us over the edge.

Sure, but that's a separate problem, eh?

We split the atom and built both bombs and power plants, it's a choice we have to make: which to deploy?

We have (or are about to have) the technology to cure psychological and emotional issues at scale. (A good therapist today runs about (I don't know?) $150/hour? Way out of reach for most of us without insurance or subsidy or something, eh? What if that was e.g. $0.0000015/hour?)

So push forward and if it destroys humanity then so what? Is that also a separate problem?

>> The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We should strive to eliminate as many jobs as we possibly can, the less we have to work the better it is.

As humans we have not found a way to allow people not to work. Anyone not working is either living off money from their own prior work or benefitting from the work of someone else. Let's see and validate such a system before we run off eliminating jobs.

Those that envision utopias will soon realize that their work leads to creation of dystopia.

we are headed towards Elysium future with billions of humans competing for scraps.

There’s always the joke about the “Communist Utopia,” but that’s what it was marketed as. The marketing was also so strong people killed their own by the millions to make it happen. It never happened and we remember those eras for atrocities, not Utopian equality.

But they couldn't centrally plan economies very well since they lacked AI. ;)

While true, it seems less likely that we'll somehow solve the myriad political challenges to enable universal income than the possibility that AI tools will cause a further concentration of wealth in a small number of hands.

while there's a case for idealism, without some degree of pragmatism we'll be lost on policy or regulation proposals.

Yes, policy needs to be pragmatic in how it ensures that trends toward greater inequality are reversed. In particular, anti-trust regulation, non-means-tested social safety nets (IE government services that allow humans to survive), and meaningful investment in real public infrastructure (Not public-private partnerships, as currently run the internet and the electric grid of most of the United States, for example) seem like good places to start. There is only so much concentration of power that can occur before bloodshed becomes inevitable, and proposals of this kind are attempts to solve problems for people on the ground without anyone needing to overthrow the extant society or perish. Attempts to frame such common-sense measures as attempts to overthrow society themselves are done out of profoundly myopic short-termism

During lockdowns the rate of depression and all sorts of mental and physical issues went up. Becoming unemployed may not be the exact same thing as a lockdown but less incentive to get up at a reasonable time or to leave the house would still lead to more overweight, lazy and depressed people.

> less incentive to get up at a reasonable time or to leave the house

People have plenty of natural incentives to leave the house ("reasonable time" is a sign of your own biases, but no doubt leaving the house is healthy regardless). The reason people don't do so is because there are strong economic disincentives to do so. This is not just obvious conscious disincentives like "I don't have time because I need to earn money online" & "I will have to pay for X, Y, Z in the city if I go out" but also much deeper more complex systematic disincentives like "I am chronically ill due to years of economically-linked stress and burnout" & "I feel depressed due to economically-linked lifelong trauma"

Healthy people don't need employers to incentivise them to leave the house. And unhealthy people don't need work, they need support.

People were stuck in their homes.

>Becoming unemployed may not be the exact same thing as a lockdown

Becoming unemployed may not be the exact same thing as a lockdown during a pandemic? Don't you think people dying in the hundreds of thousands due to disease has more to do with rise in depression than anything else?

Countless people die every day to all kinds of horrible diseases and most people were not even affected. Guess what there is even a war going on, tuberculosis, cancer and still covid.

I'm not sure there is objectively a point of life, but what people need is a sense of purpose -- just enjoying life doesn't work. For many, their job is a large source of purpose.

According to whom is the point of life is to enjoy it? There are different cultures and societies in the world. According to my faith and traditions, the point of life is to worship God. Of course we still strive to avoid suffering and to make things nice and appealing and safe and and, but we know that at the end of the day, we are all being tested and it can all be taken away from us at any moment, no matter how much we achieve.

> To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income.

As others have pointed out, this is an incredibly naive opinion. Labor is tied to income precisely because it happened organically, not because a group of self-appointed individuals decided to develop a "system". Most attempts to develop alternative (read: non-organic or top-down) systems for organizing human societies have either failed entirely or have been short-lived.

I see this sentiment expressed in almost every venue of discussion, but I never see a concrete plan, or even steps we could take right now to progress towards that future. That's why I'll always remain skeptical about technological utopianism. It simply doesn't work that way in reality.

> The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We should strive to eliminate as many jobs as we possibly can, the less we have to work the better it is.

I would go fucking insane if I didn’t have a purpose. Jobs are necessary part of life.

You could replace your job with pursuits of person interests. I would rather devote my life to a plethora of hobbies than a career.

> would rather devote my life to a plethora of hobbies than a career.

Such as?

Gardening, wood working, painting, flying, traveling, hiking, just to name a few

You haven't found a fulfilling purpose outside of a job then. There was a period in my life where I didn't need to work for a year. I spent it reading books, supporting my friends, exploring my city on bike, learning an instrument, and creating art (which I would show at monthly events). It was way more fulfilling than any job I've had.

Sometimes I get this feeling that most people here are not actually interested in tech, it is just a paycheck. Difference is that I would do my job even if I wasn’t paid anything at all.

I think most people here love tech. They just hate having to use / build tech in a toxic work environment. I'm happy you found a work environment that lets you fully explore your passion.

If not working means government given subsistence living no thank you. If it means I can have the same living standard for 24,32 hours which now takes like 40 hours sure. But there isn't an surplus of non-big tech developers in the world.

I agree with the principle, but I feel there's a bit of post hoc rationalization here.

It would have been more believable if Altman and co had proposed a practical income system first, started its rollout, and only then released the GPTs.

>> To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income.

What is income? What is it used for?

Answers: it's a reward for work. And it is used as an incentive to get others to work.

> What is income? What is it used for?

Money is a proxy for resources. If you boil it down to the essentials, income is the way we allocate the resources available to us to different individuals. It is not intrinsically a reward for work. It isn't even directly linked to work anymore in our capitalist system. The people who work the hardest don't have the highest income. The way the system currently works is that those with the most resources get the most additional resources, simply because they already have a lot of them.

>> The people who work the hardest don't have the highest income.

This is the one thing I find most strange. In some cases we pay more for higher skills that are harder to come by, but that seems far from the only thing causing this.

That's because the actual thing we are paying for is scarcity.

If there are 100 people willing to work hard, but we only need 90 of them, they will get paid little, because any of them can be easily replaced.

If there are 90 people with some rare skill, and we need 100 of them, they will get paid a lot, because any of them can easily find a new job. (In theory. In practice, the employers will take some coordinated action to prevent this.)

Ironically, doubling the productivity of the people with the rare skill could dramatically reduce their income, because now there are still 90 of them, but we only need 50.

If 50 people work twice as fast the scope will increase beyond 2x to accommodate the resourcing. As well as to meet increased expectations

Only to a point. When you have large wants, but low capacity to meet those wants, then that is true. The law of diminishing returns however is that the utility to an individual declines as efficiency rises. It isn't a linear relationship.

The other factor to consider is that the nice-to-have wants from greater productivity in labor may just be required for me to accumulate more scarce resources especially as the population of the world grows. Opportunity cost eventually make me prioritize my investment elsewhere rather than adding scope as you say.

The industries where AI doesn't touch/win, or have real world scarcity constraints even in the face of AI is ironically where the power will be. Hence people saying to get into trades, and physical skilled jobs where we are still winning the arms race against AI for some time yet.

Other income comes from inheritance, investments, gifts. None of those should be assumed to be incentives to get the recepient to work.

This is a nice goal, but sounds unobtainable to me. Transformation of the job market and creation of new jobs based on the fresh demand sounds easier.

Yes, ultimately it will have to be something like that.

If the capitalists (i.e. those who own capital) can live off of ownership rather than labour, maybe someday all of us can. Because the alternative is unthinkable.

> a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income

Wish granted.

You now have a system where income is only vaguely linked to labor, and a handful of people make insanely more money than anybody else despite doing the same amount of labor (or less). Income is now linked to existing wealth and personal connections much more than it is to labor.

A system where income is directly linked to labor would be a step up from what we've got now.

> You now have a system where income is only vaguely linked to labor, and a handful of people make insanely more money than anybody else despite doing the same amount of labor (or less). Income is now linked to existing wealth and personal connections much more than it is to labor.

Didn‘t you just describe exactly what we have now?

> > You now have [snip]

> Didn‘t you just describe exactly what we have now?

Calibas started with the words “You now have” and proceeded with describing what we have now. Your question suggests you tried to read between the lines before reading the lines first.

Do we know what Priha does or does not want and what she enjoys?

> find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income.

that system was called communism, and so far, it has not had any of the success that those envisioning it had wanted.

I cannot see how ownership of the output of automation and AI could be distributed evenly. At best, the people being made obsolete would be given food stamps and the barest of life's necessities so they don't die in the streets (and even that, is getting hard as earth runs out of resources). Until the day humanity discovers how to obtain a post-scarcity society, all income must directly be linked to labour.

> Until the day humanity discovers how to obtain a post-scarcity society, all income must directly be linked to labour.

What are you talking about? Our economic system's very name describes who gets income without they themselves doing labor. The entire point of capitalism is that the capital-owning class gets to profit from the labor of others.

So no, we don't have all income linked to labor. The income of capitalists sure as heck isn't.

> The income of capitalists sure as heck isn't.

but where did the capitalists first got their capital? Why with labour of course! Their own labour, or their family's, or their grand-parent, etc.

I don't think that has any bearing on the response.

the capital that a capitalist spends is just unconsumed labour. It is directly related to the production of output (and thus income), just like labour is, because it _is_ another form of labour - let's call it solidified labour.

a system that doesn't directly link labour with income is basically describing welfare (a basic income for example). The income given to someone receiving this welfare did not produce any output that counterbalances the resources they received - aka, they are a net consumer. Without post-scarcity, there cannot be many net consumers, for what they consume, must be produced somehow by another (who is not a net consumer).

That is a much better argument for why profit is like welfare than how profit is like wages.

But how will she enjoy life if she doesn’t make an income anymore? Fairly naive post.

You want to increase depression, this is how you do it.

People need shit to do, and as much as we lie to ourselves that everyone is a budding artist who if only freed from the bounds of work would create the worlds next masterpiece - that is just not reality. Most people would actually sit around getting high/drunk, playing video games, watching porn and being miserable.

To the reactionaries answering this post: Read your Kropotkin before posting, please and thank you.

i believed people want meaning, and might not need a job until Covid. Many people have no intrinsic drive - and a "get to work to earn it" provides this.

The lockdowns, at least in the U.S., caused people to improve themselves surely - but they then had no idea how to fill their time and binge watched TV, watched Tik Tok, etc.

So forcing people to either get a job or be poor is for their own good, then? Just because you don't agree with how people chose to spend their time in a very nerve-wracking situation? This sounds very condescending.

Work and purpose is good & a necessity. I'm suggesting through large cultural observation, many are poor at finding purpose in anything besides work and become destitute and negatively influence themselves.

A large number of retirees find themselves in this bucket as an example - if it happens there, why would it not happen no matter the life stage?

As a fellow pessimistic person, I'd like to share the idea that obstacles are not the end, they just mean one needs to be look harder.

I hope to switch you a bit from problem-finding to problem-solving mode.

You have identified some risks, great! Now let's qualify and find solutions for theses in order to move forward. For instance: - assumptions check: young people adapt quicker than older people, so the retirees may not be representative of the others life stages - solution proposal alpha1: education could teach people to look for purpose instead of teaching them a job

What are your solutions to the issues you've raised ?

Billions of people throughout history have worked just to live. The biological and evolutionary point of life is to reproduce.

> doesn't directly link labour with income

Who in their right mind would work if they can get free income, even if small, without having a disability or similar disqualifier?

Right now, we are in a worker shortage, and it’s going to get worse as retirements continue. Separating labor from work would cripple living standards and demoralize productive workers.

Lots of people prefer comfort above and beyond the necessity: private cars instead of bus, takeaway instead of home cooked meals, country homes instead of small city apartments.

If this is not decoupled how do you propose people survive when automation makes the vast majority of people permanently unemployable?

Call me retrograde but I would almost be forced to question the automation part here.

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