Comment by netdevphoenix
15 hours ago
The economy is a macrosystem. For a company to make profit, someone needs to buy. For someone to buy a service or a product, they need to have the money needed to buy. If AI replaces humans and UBI doesn't happen, costs might drop to near zero but so will revenue as virtually no one will be able to buy anything. So the economy will certainly collapse.
It depends on how many jobs AI replaces and which. It is unlikely that LLMs will replaces plumbers any time soon for example. Many technological inventions have replaced humans in lots of jobs, the economy has only grown since then.
>Many technological inventions have replaced humans in lots of jobs, the economy has only grown since then.
Indeed it has, but many of those it replaced did not necessarily get moved to better positions if they were moved at all. The industrial revolution was great if you were young and had little to no responsibilities. Your average middle aged farmer with a large family to feed faced poverty or near poverty and those who were able to move to the cities faced worse labour conditions. People on here love talking about the winners while conveniently ignoring the loser side.
And that's not even mentioning the skilling up issue to which older workers are more vulnerable. Who will fund the nation wide skill up costs for them?
Industrial revolution was all right as long as you owned the farm, as most farmers did. The losers were those farm workers who weren't needed in as great numbers anymore, and they weren't paid well in the first place. I agree on labour conditions though, there industrialisation was a clear downgrade for many.
What worries me about AI is how it's not obvious which new jobs it may create. Younger farm workers and children of farmers could just move and work in factories, where the employers mostly took care of their training. I can't see such opportunities here. I believe whole world needs either UBI, or governments paying for jobs that previously weren't seen worth paying for. Otherwise the economy will collapse due to mass unemployment and resulting lack of demand.