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Comment by logicchains | Hacker News Reader

> It seems like 99.9% of humans being useless mouths to feed is not a concern for x-risk folks so long as the 0.1% are still around

Humanity's already been through something like this and come out fine: slave states (like in Ancient Greece and later Rome) where the vast majority of the labor was done by slaves and the slave-owning populations lived relatively care-free lives. There's a reason ancient Greece produced so much philosophy: because they had so much free time on their hands due to slaves doing all the work.

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Perhaps my point wasn’t clear. Work is power. It’s not the only kind of power (military is another one) but it’s a kind of power. There’s leverage from being able to withdraw that labor, and collective leverage from a class of people doing that.

The situation I’m describing is a concentrated alignment of military power and economic power. Those who own the machines will also have the backing of the State, which has a legal monopoly on violence.

Almost everyone will be excluded from this ruling class, and will be at the mercy of them.

It’s happened before. Many of the Luddite leaders were publicly executed after destroying factory machines.

I don't think you got GPs point, but the complete opposite.

The slaves on your example were useful, GP (and others) are anticipating a world where most of the non-ruling class is useless. What happens then? Will good samaritanism and humanitarianism kick in? I doubt it.

The slaves were useful, the slave-owners were "useless" (because why pay one to do the work when a slave could do it for free?). How is a society in which 99% of people don't need to work because slaves do all the work for them different from one in which 99% of people don't need to work because robots do the work for them?

There has never been a situation in history where 99% of people live off a much smaller 1% of slaves. That's insane.

I didn't mean 99% living off 1%; I mean 100% of the society living off slave labor and only around 1% doing any real work. The slaves didn't count as people back then, similar to the robots in these discussions.

In ancient Sparta, for instance, it's estimated that there were 5-10 slaves for every Spartan. That means no Spartan had to work.

I'm quite sure the 99.9% from GPs comment refers to the whole population, not just the ruling class. The 0.1% alludes to today's ruling class.

The slave-owners were slave-owners because they had military control over the slaves. (Most of the time, anyway; some slave revolts were successful.)

It is not clear how long humans will retain control over AIs.

The 0.1% scenario kicks in long before you get independent, sentient AI agents. That is, giving humans the reins doesn’t solve the problem.

During the Great Depression the unemployment rate was 25% in the U.S. What happens when it’s not 25% but 99% that are not just unemployed but unemployable?

It will start with birth licenses (the obseletariat population will be managed down) and then maybe simply food will be cut off. And don’t think you’re going to go off the grid and grow your own. There will be no off the grid. It will all be owned.

There is differences in resource distribution: a society where no work is available but everyone has their wishes taken care of, to a certain degree, is way different from a society where no work is available and some few live like royalty while the majority of the population lives in absolute poverty.

Both futures would be possible with AI that makes human labor obsolete.

The difference is the distribution of power. In your second scenario, where 99% of people don’t need to work, very little of that 99% will have any political power because of their ownership of the machines that run the economy.

To make the point clear, I don’t think it would be a very good day for the slaves if those in power found out all labor could be accomplished by machines at a tenth of the cost of the slaves’ room and board.

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