Lets suppose everyone in the world miraculously loses their jobs to AI, who is paying for it? How? What are they selling? What stops the rest of humanity from turning data centers into a pile of ash?
These people are so disconnected from reality.
These people are so disconnected from reality.
The implicit deal is that they can keep extracting the value from us as long as they keep tossing us enough scraps.
They show every intention of claiming a bigger piece of the pie in return for basically nothing, and that kind of shit will lead to an unstable system eventually.
Even with AGI robots smarter than us I think there's a good chance it would go like the Antebellum South with robots replacing the slaves and humans planning their debutantes balls.
It’s not purely that people shift to other jobs, it’s what jobs and where. A union manufacturing job and retail cashier job at dollar tree are not equivalent. And when the whole core of a company moves they aren’t replaced.
The real number is work force participation. It’s down. Alot. Economic share of wages is down. Alot.
1. As you say, new jobs of what sort, with what labor power, and at what pay?
Offshoring manufacturing was as much about breaking US labor unions as anything else. No unions in China, and no bad press about feuding with US workers. Just 'oops, new economic reality, things change, so sorry'.
Making high value add jobs disappear and replacing them with only low value add jobs isn't a net gain.
2. What mechanism do people see realistically distributing hypothetical bountiful gains from AI-boosted productivity?
Let's imagine AI works out perfectly: productivity gains through the roof, entire industries automated, record corporate profits across the board.
What plausible path do people see from that (and the unemployment it spiked) to most people being given a chunk of the profits?
Remember: they're already legally spoken for by the shareholders.
Introducing new corporate tax rates at the federal level? Ha!
And even if UBI manages the get through in some form... how much do you think that will be?
Which is to say, how much of their wealth do you think the richest will be willing to part with to redistribute?
Because history says as little as they can get away with.
The only thing I would say is that shareholders don’t have an exclusive legal right to profit. That is a policy choice and one that has shifted over time (American law has moved to the extreme shareholder maximizing end of the spectrum) and is currently different in other countries (Germany has a corporate governance structure that Requires an employee and union board of directors so it isn’t just shareholders interests that are represented in governance decisions.
None of those technological shifts affected so many of the jobs at once, nor did they simultaneously threaten many of the alternative jobs for those affected.
> Even with AGI robots smarter than us I think there's a good chance it would go like the Antebellum South with robots replacing the slaves and humans planning their debutantes balls.
Ok. So you have a small number of planters with big estates, what happens to all the other people (e.g. the "slaves" and other worksers, after the planters no longer need them)?
Wealth is not distributed evenly enough for such a fantasy. Dario Amodei and Sam Altman will be able to go play planter. Me? Not so much.
It's an apt metaphor, but probably not in the way parent intended it. History says there will certainly be hoarders of wealth... and then everyone else.
> in all the land, two-thirds will be cut off and perish, but one-third will be left alive
e.g. game reviewer ssethtzentach added it to his most recent video, etc.
the messaging is following a similar trend as qanon, you can tell there is a broad effort to get this trickling into popular consciousness, though it's hard to tell if this is to get people to accept it or fight it
The paying/selling part will be transitory. Right now the people paying for it are investors, and they're selling a cost-cutting dream to executive managers.
If someone builds a machine that automated all the jobs, they've have amassed an unprecedented amount of power, even if the economy is in ruins for everyone else. They won't need to sell anything to anyone.
> What stops the rest of humanity from turning data centers into a pile of ash?
AI slaughterbots. Think the Ukraine front line, but completely automated.
I’m not saying Anthropic and OpenAI are going to be the ones to deliver it - but…you really don’t see the ubiquitous need for these?
if there’s less work to be done for everyone to have what they need, that would be considered a benefit by governed society, and universal basic income will likely be rolled out.
Not necessarily. It's not going to be evenly distributed. It's not like today, but everyone works 4 hours a week. Some dudes will work 80, others won't work at all. That situation is what's most adventitious to shareholders.
> and universal basic income will likely be rolled out.
If UBI even happens, it's going to enable a poverty-level existence.
Thing of all the things you enjoy doing, that you wouldn't be able to afford if you were in poverty. That's UBI life.
Why? Remember all the work that's being done now would still be being done by robots. There should be more surpluses not less.
literally the ones related to this very site
That’s the shortest I can make it.
Pandemic workplace closures exposed a lot of that.
If even one of those assumptions is no longer true, nothing works. And when I mean nothing, I mean nothing. Money doesn’t work, rent doesn’t work, debt doesn’t work, labor doesn’t work, production doesn’t work. It would have to be a quick de-industrialization unless we have a plan. No more monkey-patching with social programs, this is an entire paradigm shift.
Blinding need. We don’t have time for each other like we used to.
A mix of other people who will defend them because it’s a way better and more stable economic deal than joining the starving masses and probably autonomous weapons systems that can kill large amounts of people quickly over a large area.
You can do business without workers, investors, shareholders. You can't do business without consumers.
why would businesses need everybody to participate when a specific portion of people are enough?
> why would businesses need everybody to participate when a specific portion of people are enough?
For business nothing is ever enough. It creates products and customers for them out of thin air. The only required thing is money in the consumer pocket. Business itself is going to pressure governments to give more people more money, by whatever means necessary, so it can scoop it up off of them.
What even some millionaires now realize is that it's very hard to take the money away from other millionaires. They don't spend that much. But if you tax them and give the money to consumers, suddenly, as a rich person, you have clear path to taking this money for yourself, just by having a successful customer facing business.
That (among other things) is why some rich advocate for higher taxation of the rich.
If everyone around you is poor it's very hard to get any richer yourself, regardless of how much you already have. And rich people like getting richer most of all.
Spot on. So that's the main point that needs to be addressed. Or rather expanded upon. Because already a ton of people get awarded purchasing power without doing any useful economic activity.
And it's gonna be expanded because without purchasing power we can't play the game called business. And people like business, because it makes some of them richer and richer.