Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

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The value will tend towards infinity [1] because we can keep building more data centers. This will allow us to apply tokens to solving every problem we can conceive.

The cost will tend towards zero because competition is intense and there appear to be zero moats and ample improvements from every direction.

If these systems have low costs, that means they will be usable by the broad population and that their utility will be widely accessible.

Industrialization led to iPhone, PlayStation, Spotify, and Waymo.

AI will lead to personal chefs, contractors, assistants, drivers, tutors, climbing partners, ...

AI will lead to people making their own PlayStation games, their own music and streaming services (I already have), their own custom smartphones (a future personal project - vibe hardware). And your robot will drive you cross country on vacation while you sleep in the car.

[1] Not actually infinity because earth [2] has finite resources, but the S-curve will look like it for awhile.

[2] Until the robots leave earth, anyway

> but the S-curve will look like it for awhile.

Yeah, S-curve should be classified as fallacy, because it rarely covers what people argue it does.

Economic and technological growth is a stack of S-curves, where one very specific facet may hit limits and taper off, only for equivalent, complementary or alternative facet to take off in its place. Added up, there's no sign of the exponent stopping any time soon, not until hitting real limits, or (probably more likely) some general catastrophy that shuts down human civilization.

>AI will lead to personal chefs, contractors, assistants, drivers, tutors, climbing partners, ...

You need to show how having X more data centers is somehow going to translate into affordable, highly advanced robots in the immediate future.

There are hard problems about robotics we don't yet know how to solve. Not to mention, who the fuck is going to buy them if AI takes their jobs?

You think people are going to stop watching celebrities and influencers just because there are AIs and robots?

Do you think people will stop dating, trying to impress mates, buying luxury, etc.? Neither candlelight dinner to a robot no a Dior manufactured by robots have the same allure. There's a huge industry around this.

Sports aren't going to go away. Huge industry.

People aren't going to stop making art. I know a ton of artists who have embraced AI that are doing even bolder work using the tools. (I was a filmmaker pre-AI, and I know a lot of people in this field.)

People aren't going to stop traveling. And consuming. And eating human food and consuming human experiences.

There are going to be all new kinds of businesses and opportunities that spring up. OpenAI and Anthropic are not going to be the only two employees. They won't be staffed by only agents.

The economy cannot just transition over night, or even within a few years, to quickly absorb a labor shock the size you're describing.

Also, you have not addressed how we're going suddenly to develop the robots required for your future.

>and consuming human experiences.

Consumption requires money. If AI is going to massively impact employment, that reduces the amount of people in the economy capable of consuming these "human experiences".

[2] this is why we need georgism, i.e. shifting taxes to finite resources like land, minerals, etc.

> the value will tend towards infinity

It may be the case that the potential output of a worker engaging in the productive process goes arbitrarily high. But the that won't matter, if they're not permitted to. Given a choice between involving a human worker who will demand compensation, and a fully general robot, which will the owner class choose?

The vast majority of human intelligence is already squandered: millions of potential geniuses in impoverished places, suppressed by lack of opportunity to flourish. It's not about the quality or quantity of intelligence. It's about who controls it.

The fruits of the industrial revolution didn't end up in the hands of the worker by divine grace, or by some natural law. They were won by the hard struggles of the labour movements, by leveraging their indispensibility to the process of production.

If we want the utopia you imagine to be accessible to ordinary people, workers must cease being so eager to build their replacements, and be prepared to collectively struggle for their share. But if we are lulled to complacency by the notion that this will be a passive process, that struggle will not be necessary, then prospects are grim.

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