If and only if something like high-paying UBI comes along, and people are freed to pursue their passions and as a consequence, benefit the world much more intensely.
One idea I had is everyone is paid a thriving wage, and in exchange, if they in the future develop their passion into something that can make a profit, they pay back 20% of their profits they make up to some capped amount.
This allows for extreme generality. It truly frees people to pursue whatever they fancy every day until they catch lightning in a bottle.
There would be 0 obligation as to what to do, and when to pay back the money. But of course would have to be only open to honest people, so that neither side is exploiting the other.
Both sides need a sense of gratitude, and wanting to give back. A philanthropic 'flair' "If it doesn't work out, it's okay", and a gratitude and wanting to give back someday on the side of the receiver, as they continue working on probably the most resilient thing they could ever work on (the safest investment), their lifelong passion.
AI enthusiasm really is reaching a religious level of ridiculous beliefs and this point.
AGI, at best, would provide ideas for how to do those things. And the current AI, which is not AGI, can only remix ideas humans have already given it--ideas which haven't fed, clothed, or housed us all yet.
(Mmmhmm, I'm sure the benefits received by the people on top have nothing to do with it.)
Lots of people certainly think they want that.
Lots of new taxes and UBI!
"Oh no the sinners might play video games all day"
I do expect the next comment would be something like "work is a path to godliness"
And you think these kinds of maxims formed out of vacuums? They are the kinds of sayings that are formed through experience re-enforced over generations. We can't just completely reject all historical knowledge encoded in our cultural maxims and expect everything to work out just fine. Yes, it is true that most people not having productive work will fill the time with frivolous or destructive ends. Modernity does not mean we've somehow transcended our historical past.
Sure, but the whole point is that the conditions that led to those sayings would no longer be there.
Put a different way: those sayings and attitudes were necessary in the first place because society needed people to work in order to sustain itself. In a system where individual human work is no longer necessary, of what use is that cultural attitude?
Beyond the issues of young males, there's many other ways for degenerate behavior to cause problems. Drinking, gambling, drugs, being a general nuisance, all these things will skyrocket if people have endless time to fill. Just during the pandemic, we saw the growth of roving gangs riding ATVs in some cities causing a serious disturbance. Some cities now have a culture of teenagers hijacking cars. What happens to these people who are on the brink when they no longer see the need to go to school because their basic needs are met? Nothing good, that's for sure.
All the "degenerate activities" you mentioned are a problem in the first place because in a scarcity-based society they slow down/prevent people from working, therefore society is worse off. That logic makes no sense in a world where people don't need to put a single drop of effort for society to function well.
This is a weird take. Families are worse off if a parent has an addiction because it potentially makes their lives a living hell. Everyone is worse off if people feel unsafe because of a degenerate sub-culture that glorifies things like hijacking cars. People who don't behave in predictable ways create low-trust environments which impacts everyone.
If I could pick between the world we are in now and one where all the problems societies face that are related, directly or indirectly, to the distribution of resources are eliminated, I would pick the latter in a heartbeat. The "price to pay" in the form of a possible uptick in "degeneracy" during the first few months/years is worth it, not to mention that I doubt that problem would arise at all.
You're just saying it's desirable that some people be at the bottom even in a scenario where the opposite could be feasibly achieved. All on some theory that the human mind (or at least some instances of it in the population) simply... won't be able to take it without going insane?
We should need a much, much higher standard of proof for what could result in unnecessary pain and suffering for years. Especially when this:
> some people just aren't psychologically suited to the modern world, whether that involves delaying gratification or rejecting low effort, high dopamine stimulation.
...is not a proven fact, and is, with respect to social media, highly contested and inconclusive.
What's wrong with having people at the relative bottom? Trying to force equality onto society does not have a good track record. We can raise the absolute bottom past the point of poverty while also not upending social structures that have served us well for centuries.
>All on some theory that the human mind... simply... won't be able to take it without going insane?
I'm saying transformative change across the whole of society shouldn't be undertaken lightly. I don't need to prove that a world where human labor is obsolete would be damaging to the human psyche. Those who want to rush ahead just assume things will be just fine. They have the burden of proof. We've seen how bad things can get when the social engineers get it wrong. We're at a local peak in human flourishing for a large part of humanity. Why should we pull the lever on the unknown in hopes that we will come out ahead?
Do you think they've always existed in all human cultures throughout time?
The pro-work ethic is fairly new in human civilization. Previous cultures considered it to be a burden or punishment, not the source of moral virtue.
> Yes, it is true that most people not having productive work will fill the time with frivolous or destructive ends.
And that's fine! A lot of people fill their time at work with frivolous or destructive ends, whether on their own or at the behest of their employer.
Not all work is productive. Not all work is good. It isn't inherently virtuous and its lack is not inherently vicious.
No, they formed in societies where it WAS necessary for most people to work in order to support the community. We needed a lot of labor to survive, so it was important to incentivize people to work hard, so our cultures developed values around work ethics.
As we move more and more towards a world where we actually don’t need everyone to work, those moral values become more and more outdated.
This is just like old religious rules around eating certain foods; in the past, we were at risk from a lot of diseases and avoiding certain foods was important for our health. Now, we don’t face those same risks so many people have moved on from those rules.
Do you think there was ever a time in human societies where the vast majority of people didn't have to "work" in some capacity, at least since the rise of psychologically modern humans? If not, why think humanity as a whole can thrive in such an environment?
We now have western societies with a growing population of homeless people, that despite having access to tons of resources at their disposal, still can't get their shit together. A great majority are doing drugs and smoking/abusing alcohol.
And it's enough to have 20 crackheads to destroy a neighborhood of 10000 hard-working, peaceful people.
The brain does saturate eventually and gets bored. Then the crisis of meaning. Then something meaningful emerges.
We’re all gonna die. Let’s just enjoy life to the fullest.
The people that truly enjoy their work and obtain meaning from it are vastly over represented here on HN.
Very few would be scared of AI if they had a financial stake in its implementation.
However, I believe this had already happened quite a few times in history - industries becoming obsolete with technological advances isn’t anything new. This creates some unrest as society needs to transition, but those people are always learning a different profession. Or retire if they can. Or try to survive some other way (which is bad, of course).
It would be nice, of course, if everyone won’t have to work unless they feel the need and desire to do so. But in our reality, where the resources are scarce and their distribution in a way that everyone will be happy is a super hard unsolved problem (and AGI won’t help here - it’s not some Deus ex Machina coming to solve world problems, it’s just a thinking computer), I don’t see a realistic and fair way to achieve this.
Put simply, all the reasons we cannot implement UBI now will still remain in place - AGI simply won’t help with this.
Its just a modern religion really because anyone can understand this it is so basic and obvious.
You don't have to point out some bullshit captured study that says otherwise.
* Inflation, things get more expensive. People attempt to consume more, especially people with low income. * People can't consume more than is produced, so prices go up. * People who are above the break-even line (when you factor in the taxes) consume a bit less, or stay the same and just save less or reduce investments. * Producers, seeing higher prices, are incentivized to produce more. Increases in production tend to be concentrated toward the things that people who were previously very income-limited want to buy. I'd expect a good bit of that to be basic essentials, but of course it would include lots of different things. * The system reaches a new equilibrium, with the allocation of produced goods being a bit more aimed toward the things regular people want, and a bit less toward luxury goods for the wealthy. * Some people quit work to take care of their kids full-time. The change in wages of those who stay working depends heavily on how competitive their skills are -- some earn less, but with the UBI still win out. Some may actually get paid more even without counting the UBI, if a lot of workers in their industry have quit due to the UBI, and there's increased demand for the products. * Prices have risen, but not enough to cancel out one's additional UBI income entirely. It's very hard to say how much would be eaten up by inflation, but I'd expect it's not 10% or 90%, probably somewhere in between. Getting an accurate figure for that would take a lot of research and modeling.
Basically, I think it's complicated, with all the second and third-order effects, but I can't imagine a situation where so much of the UBI is captured by inflation that it makes it pointless. I do think that as a society, we should be morally responsible for people who can't earn a living for whatever reason, and I think UBI is a better system than a patchwork of various services with onerous requirements that people have to put a lot of effort into navigating, and where finding gainful employment will cause you to lose benefits.
We've made an ideology out of denying this and its consequences. The fallout will be ugly and the adjustment will be painful. At best.
What would make me change my mind? If ChatGPT could take the lead on designing a robot through all the steps: design, contract the parts and assembly, market it, and sell it that would really be something.
I assume for something like this to happen it would need all source code and design docs from Boston Dynamics in the training set. It seems unlikely it could independently make the same discoveries on its own.
No, to do this it would need to be able to independently reason, if it could do that, then the training data stops mattering. Training data is a crutch that makes these algos appear more intelligent than they are. If they were truly intelligent they would be able to learn independently and find information on their own.
It's the real Great Filter in the universe IMO.
Anything innovated must come from outside or have a very close permutation to be found.
Generative AI isn't scary at all now. It is merely rolling dice on a mix of other tech and rumors from the internet.
The data can be wrong or old...and people keep important secrets.
I would assume that internal code at Google is of higher quality than random code you find on Github. Commit messages, issue descriptions and code review is probably more useful too.
This isn't a criticism of you, but this is a very stupid idea that we have. The economy is mean to serve us. If it can't, we need to completely re-organize it because the old model has become invalid. We shouldn't exist to serve the economy. That's an absolutely absurd idea that needs to be killed in every single one of us.
that's called social revolution, and those who benefit from the old model (currently that would be the holders of capital, and more so as AI grows in its capabilities and increasingly supplants human labor) will do everything in their power to prevent that re-organization
The economy, and the worldwide technological system that it fuels, behaves like its own organism with its own ultimate goal unbeknownst to us.
By looking around you, is it not perfectly clear to you too that it does not have anything to do with the well-being of people?
I concede that this time it could be different, but I'd be very surprised while I starved to death.
And anyone who poo poos ChatGPT needs to remember we went from “this isn’t going to happen in the next 20 years” to “this is happening tomorrow” overnight. It’s pretty obvious I’m going to be installing Microsoft Employee Service Pack 2 in my lifetime.
This is both a metaphor for AGI and not a metaphor at all.
We'll be very very poor, and it will be really hard work, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.
Human labour will never be obsolete because you can always work for yourself.
Post scarcity will never happen unless some benevolent AI god chooses to give it to us like in a Banks novel.
At the end of the day it's a tool currently, with surface-level information it's incredibly helpful in my opinion - Getting an overview of a subject or even coding smaller functions.
What's interesting in my opinion is "agents" though... not in the current "let's slap an LLM into some workflow", but as a concept that is at least an order of magnitude away from what is possible today.
AI agents are really interesting. Fundamentally they may represent a step toward the autonomization of capital, potentially disrupting "traditional legal definitions of personhood, agency, and property" [0] and leading to the need to recognize "capital self-ownership" [1].
I get very useful answers from ChatGPT several times a day. You need to verify anything important, of course. But that's also true when asking people.
To them, chatgpt IS the verification.
I am not optimistic about the future. But also perhaps some amazing people will deal with the error for the rest of us, like how most people don't go and worry about floating point error, and I'm just not smart enough to see how it looks like.
[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apple-maps-bad_n_3990340
Imagine for a moment that you work as a developer, encounter a weird bug, and post your problem into your company’s Slack. Other devs then send a bunch of StackOverflow links that have nothing to do with your problem or don’t address your central issue. Is this a problem with StackOverflow or with coworkers posting links uncritically?
These LLM programs are very different than naive one-shot questions asked of ChatGPT, resembling o1/3 thinking that integrates human domain knowledge to produce great answers that would have been cost-prohibitive for humans to do manually.
Naive use of LLMs by non-technical users is annoying, but is also a straw-man argument against the technology. Smart usage of LLMs in o1/3 style of emulated reasoning unlocks entirely new realms of functionality.
LLMs are analogous to a new programming platform, such as iPhones and VR. New platforms unlock new functionality along with various tradeoffs. We need time to explore what makes sense to build on top of this platform, and what things don’t make sense.
What we shouldn’t do is give blanket approval or disapproval. Like any other technology, we should use the right tool for the job and utilize said tool correctly and effectively.
I agree in principle, but disagree in practice. With LLMs available to everyone, the uses we're seeing currently will only proliferate. Is that strictly a technology problem? No, but it's cold comfort given how LLM usage is actually playing out day-to-day. Social media is a useful metaphor here: it could potentially be a strictly useful technology, but in practice it's used to quite deleterious effect.
As with cell phones, eventually society will adapt.