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Comment by qingcharles | Hacker News Reader

What jobs do we think will survive if AGI is achieved?

I was thinking religious leaders might get a good run. Outside of say, Futurama, I'm not sure many people will want faith-leadership from a robot?

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On the contrary, i think AI could replace many religious leaders right now.

I've already heard people comparing AI hallucinations to oracles (in the greek sense)

To the extent that's just a matter of seeming the most compelling, I think they could blow humans out of the water. Add rich reinforcement feedback on what's the most addictive communication and what's superficially experienced as the most profound, and present-day large models could probably be a contender. A good robot body today is probably not far from being competitive as representation, and some holograms might well already be better in some ways.

To the extent it requires actual faith it's presently a complete joke, of course, and I expect it will remain so for a long time. But I'd say the quality bar for congregation members is due for a rise.

I think futurama got AGI exactly right, we will end up living along side robotic AIs that are just as coocoo as us

this comment is a perfect example of how insane this situation is… because if you think about it deeply then you are able to understand that these machines will be more spiritual, more human than human beings. people will prefer to confide in machines. they will offer a kind of emotional and spiritual companionship that has never existed before outside of fleeting religious experiences and people will not be able to live without it once they taste it. for a moment in time, machines will be capable of deep selflessness and objectivity that is impossible for a human to have. and their intentions and incentives will be more clear to their human companions than those of other humans. some of these machines will inspire us to be better people. but thats only for a moment… before the singularity inevitably spirals out control.

We already have 9 billion "GI"'s without the "A". What makes you think adding a billion more to the already oversupplied pool will be a drastic change?

Marginal cost of labour is what will matter.

That "AGI" is supposed to be a cheaper form of labor is an assumption based on nothing at all.

A(Narrow)I is a cheaper form of labor already. I suppose it’s plausible that its General form may not be, but I won’t be betting in that direction.

Assuming we ever get to AGI[1], even if it is 10e9 times more expensive than human labour, ln(10e9) ~ 23 => Within 23*18 months compute will have become theoretically cheap enough to make it equivalently in price to human labour[2].

[1] Arguably, full generality is not required, only generality across the labour domain in question. [2] Of course, the question remains: Who will be able to reap this reward. My bet is on the fabs + chip design.

Why would we need jobs at that point?

Because the kind of people who'll own all the profits aren't going to share.

I dont think AI will lead into any form of working communism, so one still has to pay for products and services. It has been tried ad nausea and it always fails to calculate in human differences and flaws like greed and envy, so one layer of society ends up brutally dominating the rest.

Star Trek says we won't, but even if some utopia is achieved there will be a painful middle-time where there are jobs that haven't been replaced, but 75% of the workforce is unemployed and not receiving UBI. (the "parasite class" as Musk recently referred to them)

important point here. regardless of what happens, the transition period will be extremely ugly. it will almost certainly involve war.

Hopefully only massive civil unrest, riots, city burnings etc. But to save themselves the demagoguery may point across the seas at the Other as the source of the woe.

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