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Comment by a2ff6eeb0 | Hacker News Reader

That's for you to find out. When we automated muscles in the industrial revolution, people used to value strength. Today they value thought. They may value something else in the future.

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Seems like the only thing left to value will be social capital. If all forms of labor are free, the only thing that matters is how many people you know, what they think of you, whether they listen to you.

Nightmare fuel. This sounds like totally worthless to me.

I agree.

The ultimate goal of project capitalism is to make ownership the only thing in the world that’s valued or valuable. The only thing that matters is how much and who you own.

The actual goal of capitalism is the direct the impulses of the capitalist to align with the interests of the public.

marketing dept says hello...

Sounds like society at the moment even without the free labour thing. The world generally loves celebrities and influencers and other famous people, and I hear in some fields (like publishing) they're actively selecting for online fame/popularity so they don't have to spend as much on marketing.

We didn't automate muscles generally, only specifically. The leverage those specific situations have is so high it's worth it. Same with thinking, it's very far from automated generally. Maybe one day we'll have humanoid robots as generally physically capable, and AI as generally mentally capable, but that's a long way off. Until then there's still emmense value for humans in between the high-leverage areas, and even more value in adding some leverage throughout (like the first attempts at exoskeletons, or using Claude to help manage your daily tasks, etc.)

When you say a long way off, how far are you thinking, especially with self improvement on the horizon?

My bet is 3 or 4 years before the rocket really takes off, and then we start seeing capabilities improve incredibly quickly.

There's zero reason to believe that self improvement is on the horizon. What we have now is far too stupid and unreliable to be plausibly capable of improving itself.

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