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Comment by Ancalagon | Hacker News Reader

Yes - if AGI is made, nearly immediately every knowledge worker’s labor value goes to zero over night.

This may or may not include AI researchers.

That seems like a wrong economic theory to me. The economy is based on differential of value. I can make furniture, so it's worth less to me than it is to you. Therefore we can trade. That's what supply/demand is. If AGI somehow exists, then the value of intelligence drops to zero for both of us, there's nothing to trade.

AGI would not make knowledge work valueless, it would move all the knowledge work value to the AGI companies.

> AGI would not make knowledge work valueless, it would move all the knowledge work value to the AGI companies.

Yep! That's the point :)

There still plenty to trade - you just don’t have any of it.

Those $300 billion dollar circular deals will become much more common.

Can you guys just say the quiet part out loud?

That you want slaves. You want slaves. This is what you are asking for.

Unless you're paying the AGI? Then why not just... pay a human that is already present? Much more efficient.

Not sure if you’re insinuating that I’m one of the capitalists? I’m not, that’s why I’m saying it out loud. I believe capitalism’s relationship with labor will need to fundamentally change if AGI and robotics takeover. I don’t know what that looks like but obviously the current capitalist overlords want everything to stay the same - just for them to have more power/money.

You are assuming that the AGI service is very cheap..

Based on current trends why wouldn’t it be cheap?

Why would an artificial intelligence want to do what you tell it to?

I don’t think AI in its current form and current track wants much of anything.

Why would it have any desire at all?

And probably not much longer after that, the bloodshed

Unless the benefits of AI get communalized (UBI, or some other form of sharing), ya.

How would that work? Taxes are already full of perverse incentives. Certainly anything resembling UBI will be just as bad.

You’re not wrong - I was just giving that as an example but not saying it’s the right thing to do.

I don't think there is any compelling reason to believe this will actually happen

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