I think we're going in that direction. The typical reader here I think can't see the forest for the trees. We're all in meat space. They call it real life. Most jobs aren't on the internet and ultimately deal with the physical. It doesn't matter what tech we have when there's boxes to move and shelves to stock. If AI empowers a small business owner to do things that were previously completely outside their budget I can only imagine that will increase opportunity.
The Star Trek society was a myth - even on Star Trek. This was called out by Quark on DS9. There was very much the idea of “credits” and rationing based on limited resources.
During the original Star Trek show, you never really saw what life was like for everyone who was not aboard the flagship starship. They started exposing more of the universe in subsequent decades
Gene Roddenberry imagined a society in which humans evolved beyond their base desires and where petty disagreements and conflict didn't exist - but that made for lousy drama so the writers ignored it.
But you don't even need to go that far. A Star Trek style 'post-scarcity' society is impossible because it depends on infinite free energy, FTL and perfect matter replication, none of which are allowed by modern physics. In the real world you can't just outwit the second law of thermodynamics. No matter what form AGI takes - if it ever exists at all - it won't be magical. There will always be scarcity, and where scarcity exists there will always be hierarchies of power and control because human nature doesn't change.
I think we're going in that direction. The typical reader here I think can't see the forest for the trees. We're all in meat space. They call it real life. Most jobs aren't on the internet and ultimately deal with the physical. It doesn't matter what tech we have when there's boxes to move and shelves to stock. If AI empowers a small business owner to do things that were previously completely outside their budget I can only imagine that will increase opportunity.
The Star Trek society was a myth - even on Star Trek. This was called out by Quark on DS9. There was very much the idea of “credits” and rationing based on limited resources.
During the original Star Trek show, you never really saw what life was like for everyone who was not aboard the flagship starship. They started exposing more of the universe in subsequent decades
Gene Roddenberry imagined a society in which humans evolved beyond their base desires and where petty disagreements and conflict didn't exist - but that made for lousy drama so the writers ignored it.
But you don't even need to go that far. A Star Trek style 'post-scarcity' society is impossible because it depends on infinite free energy, FTL and perfect matter replication, none of which are allowed by modern physics. In the real world you can't just outwit the second law of thermodynamics. No matter what form AGI takes - if it ever exists at all - it won't be magical. There will always be scarcity, and where scarcity exists there will always be hierarchies of power and control because human nature doesn't change.
What makes you think the people who control these post-scarcity machines are going to share their output with you?