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Comment by astrange

3 years ago

They didn't get into EVs because 1. Japan didn't like them (and still doesn't) because they have very expensive electricity 2. they were already getting into selling giant pickup trucks, not luxury sedans 3. China wasn't ready to compete yet.

They are limited by participating in the economy, but actually that's the strange thing about this superintelligence scenario - it never seems to include the economy. In other words, if you invented an AGI, it would have to get a job to pay for its AWS credits.

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astrange

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NumberWangMan  3 years ago

One interesting scenario I've heard is that of the "ascended economy", where more and more economic activity is simply to provide inputs into things that other businesses need, rather than what humans need.

Like, a mining company produces steel, that is used to produce mining trucks, that is used by the mining company. Factories produce silicon, that are used to make solar panels and chips, for power and computing for the AI-run mining trucks. And at the root, AIs run everything, just trading money back and forth to buy the things they need and keep working.

It's just a human economy, with the humans gone. Pointless economic activity.

The question is, what's the path from here to there? Well, it probably looks like a multipolar trap, where every company has an incentive to automate more. Humans try to stop or slow it down, but companies with more AI can hire more lobbyists and get things done. AIs are smart enough to think of all the things that could slow their business down, and get rid of obstacles in the same way humans do. There are probably still lots of small, inefficient human owned businesses, but fewer and fewer over time. (We've seen this trend for a while already!)

I'm hoping a massive backlash would stop this -- but if it's coupled with short-term increases in living standards for people, I think it would have a lot of support, until things start to go really bad, but by then it might be too late, if AIs have control over news media and telecommunications and can stop dissenting humans from coordinating any sort of rebellion.

  • astrange  3 years ago

    > One interesting scenario I've heard is that of the "ascended economy", where more and more economic activity is simply to provide inputs into things that other businesses need, rather than what humans need.

    That's silly. That's a typical "what if everything was different but somehow everything was also exactly the same" bad SF scenario.

    The only reason the economy exists is that people want things. (An AGI that wanted to stay alive would be "people" in this case. An AGI that made no effort to keep itself turned on wouldn't be ending the world.)

  • pas  3 years ago

    this is not a good way to look at it. it's still 100% driven by humans, through prices. the orthodoxy is not wrong on this one. humans want more stuff.

    (we also work a lot to be able to afford many many many things. we could live like the Romans did on a few hours of work per week, but we also want the Internet and sometimes watch movies, and go to concerts, and sometimes go hiking, and thus we sometimes need a car, and roads, and thus we need pavement, bridges, structural steel, fuel, GPS, maps, and sometimes we need an airlift when someone breaks a leg in the mountains, and so on.)

    > if AIs have control over news media and telecommunications and can stop dissenting humans from coordinating any sort of rebellion.

    meh. control over the media (and people's attention, and their information sources) is already serving a very narrow group's interests. adding AI to this mix doesn't seem to change much in the short term.