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Comment by kbos87 | Hacker News Reader

So many AI predictions rely on a complete suspension of everything we know about how markets behave.

Could AI usher in a new era of wealth where nobody has to work? Sure, if you ignore the fact that the most likely scenario is that the value is captured by the current owning class, which is already well underway.

On the flip side of possible scenarios, could AI start improving itself and lead to an upward spiral of improvement? I can entertain that idea, but I think we'll find that most types of AI innovation won't engineer themselves outside the box that is market need and product-market fit. History has proven over and over again that innovation for innovations' sake gets a few moments in the sun before being quickly forgotten if it doesn't have actual utility.

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> Could AI usher in a new era of wealth where nobody has to work? Sure, if you ignore the fact that the most likely scenario is that the value is captured by the current owning class, which is already well underway.

What "fact"? The average working hours per worker have been declining (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...). I assume you have compelling evidence that this trend will reverse?

The fact is that worker productivity has tremendously increased, but worker income/wealth is stagnant. Only the owning class is reaping the benefits of increasing worker productivity.

Working hours will continue to fall as you say, but inequality will only get worse. Working 30 hours instead of 40 hours won’t change how poor everyone is.

Fortunately, the new wave of unionization and pro-labor sentiment is likely to start changing that. The young people growing up today have seen firsthand the devastation 40+ years of increasing concentration of wealth have wrought, and they are much less willing to accept it than the intervening generations have been.

In particular, I found one of Cory Doctorow's recent pieces[0] both informative and very hopeful.

[0] https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norm...

I recommend thinking through a bit more how AI will lower transactional costs as discussed in Ronald Coase's "Nature of the Firm." [1]

Cheaper and unconstrained scale of labor for certain types of tasks is going to mean a lot more to smaller and leaner firms than behemoths.

Within the decade I suspect that companies currently or soon cutting talent that have extensive familiarity with domain knowledge in that space will turn out to have made a very poor move for long term viability.

In general, I have a hard time seeing a number of sectors continuing to be dominated by large corporations as they are currently over the next decade as this technology improves.

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1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm

be a bit more patient, those with the right kind of lofty ideas are still masticating.

there’s more than money and the elimination of money.

Yes, I do chew my food very thoroughly.

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