I don't get it. This technology has almost reached the point where they don't need you anymore, and you're joyful about it for some reason?
On the other hand, unlimited intelligence democratises products and services in a revolutionary way. Everyone will be able to do whatever they like in digital space for basically free. No more purchasing software. Make any app/company/website/blog/movie/show/game/forum you can think of. This will quickly bleed into the physical space, with real-world products and services becoming logarithmically cheaper. A true future of abundance.
The big problem is going to be our social and economic transition. Are we going to wait until unemployment is that 10% before we act? 20%? How bad are we going to allow things to become before we implement universal high income? I say universal high income because white collar workers are not going to accept being relegated to an income of $1000/month forever. To achieve universal high income requires eye-watering taxes on the major benefactors of our new economy. They won't accept that without a fight, and it our current fractured political climate, what would it take for everyone to agree on a unified direction?
It seems like all software will get replaced it by local versions. Suppose I am an individual or a business that was using a SaaS product (such as JIRA).
Let's be generous and imagine that the monthly payout was $20/month for that software (usually for businesses, it is much higher) and one fine morning I login and point a multi modal AI agent to it and clone the whole thing for my local use in let's say 3 months worth of $20/month AI subscription.
Now what? Gradually, that software company would go out of business but that user won't be subscribing forever either to AI inference service and the only constant customer of AI inference would have been the software company which went out of business so... No software company, no AI inference business either?
Some companies will retain a moat. For example, YouTube holds incredible IP, and until AI can replicate that wealth of content at scale for cheap, it will remain profitable. Facebook has the user critical mass. Increasingly, hardware for inference is going to be a moat. So is electricity.
Which loops back to my comment above: this breaks a lot of the market dynamics required for a functioning economy. Accelerationists are convinced that we'll invent new jobs to replace the old jobs, but I don't think that's going to happen. Certainly not at the pace of change we're seeing.
Data as in YouTube is all just data. Building a website and app around it isn't the hard problem. Anyone can launch another YouTube in few months but that would be pointless.
My investment thesis is currently around these strata:
1. Electricity. All analysis shows massive shortages beginning now with no end in sight. Western governments in particular have massively dropped the ball on this one.
2. Chip design and production. Nvidia and TSMC dominate here for a few reasons. Partners required in the supply chain like ASML benefit, but they're not really the bottleneck right now. We're seeing a lot of investment pouring into this space and we'll see competent design competition (especially from Google's TPUs, and potentially from Apple and AMD). Chip fab is very difficult to get right, and takes a long time to ramp up. See the NAND space.
3. AI labs. These guys are doing to get commoditised. They're trying very hard to prevent distillation but I think it's impossible. The open weight models are not far behind, and the Chinese labs are getting very creative about how they work with limited hardware. If anything, they'll decrease inference cost over time, reducing the value of existing data centers (of which OpenAI and Anthropic have purchased an enormous amount). I am very bearish on the future value of OpenAI and Anthropic.
4. Software. So much software. Everyone gets software. The companies which benefit from this will be able to monetise it. Google, for example, might put ads into VERY capable and free AI. People might accept that. Microsoft has been investing heavily into their data centers, and maybe that's their revenue center in the future. Especially securely hosted services. I expect massive growth in this space in the short term. As long as people still have high paying jobs, they'll pay for well made software and tailored services.
Here's the question. Which high paying jobs will remain? People will still be needed, obviously, but salaries would be in a race to the bottom without some form of govt intervention.
Edit: UBI being pushed by asset owners is a step towards Blade Runner rather than Star Trek.
This artificial control works to prevent oversupply and protect salaries. Unfortunately, the businesses calling the shots won't ever allow this to happen.
I would say, be afraid and use the fear (not to ruminate, but to organise and do things), but also be optimistic, and use that, too (not to imagine what people will do then when they're not doing it now, but to believe it's possible helping making it reality, now).
If genuine AGI is developed, its everyday conveniences may continue to be shared with the common masses, but the powers that own the technology and the data centers will have no incentive to give everyone access equal to superintelligence, and that includes giving governments the same access.
Every stage of the industrial age has seen powerful, wealthy people/groups (whether you call them oligarchs or industrialists or whatever) become able to exert disproportionate power over the state, and we're already in a place where this is happening. Humans have shown time and again that once you have some resource (whether it be oil, gold, or data centers), someone will want to own all of it, and that they're always willing fight for that ownership, and this fight rarely benefits ordinary humans like us.
Developed countries have been enjoying an unusually long peace time thanks to the wonders of capitalism and the emergence of stable, progressive capitalist-friendly democracies. The road to utopian basic income and limitless leisure is going to be fraught with riots and violence, and make Marx suddenly utterly relevant once again, because there's too much at stake, and too stark a division between the haves and the have-nots.
The alternative timeline is one where governments get together to regulate AI into some kind of international agreement under the UN. That requires taking power away from the private corporations; historically, that's been a tough sell.
If AGI ever comes to fruition, it won't come as a subscription plan.
This isn't happening yet, SaaS is only growing more in the era of AI. Anecdotally, my own small SaaS has only grown instead of shrunk as well.
https://www.stripeeconomics.com/p/the-saaspocalypse-was-more...
That's not true for many unconstrained real world scenarios, and LLMs currently perform poorly there. Another breakthrough is needed to overcome this.
Now we will finally be free, without having to make hard decisions. It will be decided for us.
I do still love technology and I'm a builder. I'm also neither a tech optimist or pessimist, but an inevitabilist. It's coming.
The way I see it is that history is going to advance whether you like it or not and you might as well ride the wave.
I understand I'm lucky to be insulated from the crisis a bit, though. I do think once SWEs lose their jobs every other office worker is going to follow, so we're in the same boat.
I understand we have the pesky problem of work and time being interchangeable for money. But except for that, it's pretty exciting.