Comment by palmotea
6 hours ago
> just AI that can fully automate everything we've currently got and not be limited to the subset of desk jobs that LLMs can do OK — it would allow the economy to double in size in whatever wall-clock time period it takes for the AI to gather enough training data by simply observing human workers doing the things the AI has not yet learned to do.
That would nuke the economy, as it currently exists. What's any modern American business following McKinsey "best practices" going to do to the people whose jobs it can automate? It'll fire them all, ASAP (except maybe one or two left to do supervision and monitoring, if it's not totally brain dead). Then the entire mass-consumer-driven economy would collapse and wither, due to mass unemployment.
But the stock would go up this quarter, so it's a win that must be pursued.
That would happen even with UBI, because it's not like they'd replace your salary with free money. You'd have to shrink your lifestyle to live like the bottom quintile. You'd get just enough so you'd not be desperate enough to topple the system that no longer values you, and not a penny more.
And I think none of that's going to stop anyone. If AI gets to the point you described, our current economy will be destroyed, most people will be left behind, and the economy will reorient into a weird thing chiefly concerned with satisfying the whims of the riches billionaires.
> That would nuke the economy, as it currently exists. What's any modern American business following McKinsey "best practices" going to do to the people whose jobs it can automate? It'll fire them all, ASAP (except maybe one or two left to do supervision and monitoring, if it's not totally brain dead). Then the entire mass-consumer-driven economy would collapse and wither, due to mass unemployment.
I also said "not even a fast learner".
If everything is just automated, all immediately at once and the AI is forever able to just do all possible labour, rather than as I suggested a case where it takes the AI as long to gather sufficient training data from watching humans as self-driving cars are taking to do that, that nukes the (human relevance to the) economy.
But that's not the scenario I gave there.
This scenario I gave is one in which humans do still have a comparative advantage: we learn faster, so we can get working on new jobs and make a decent amount in each of them before any given AI has time to master the skills needed for that job's tasks by watching us.
(That said, and I didn't think of this with the previous comment, there's also a whole bunch of questions that start with "yes, but how much does it cost?" and then dive into a huge level of detail).
> You'd have to shrink your lifestyle to live like the bottom quintile.
Way ahead of you :P
Actually, while bottom quintile would be an increase for me (though an unnecessary one as I'm fine because I don't care about the materialist lifestyle), keeping even that would rely on my tenant still being able to pay me rent, so in any realistic scenario I'd still have problems.
> and the economy will reorient into a weird thing chiefly concerned with satisfying the whims of the riches billionaires.
It will definitely be weird, but I suspect most or all the current big winners are likely to be very unsatisfied. Outside Context Problem.
> This scenario I gave is one in which humans do still have a comparative advantage: we learn faster, so we can get working on new jobs and make a decent amount in each of them before any given AI has time to master the skills needed for that job's tasks by watching us.
That's pretty terrible outcome too. So what if you learn faster, if your "career" will only last 5-10 years and you have to start over. It would be a profoundly unstable and anti-human lifestyle.
> It will definitely be weird, but I suspect most or all the current big winners are likely to be very unsatisfied. Outside Context Problem.
That's probably true (say, the Waltons will be a lot poorer), but I think the end state remains the same. Maybe it's just Bezos, Musk, Altman, and two dudes TBD harnessing all the word's resources to build ziggurats to memorialize their own power. They key point is all the wealth will be focused in a very few individuals, with no economic need to spread the wealth around. It doesn't really matter if those individuals are an old or new set.