Comment by keithwhor
10 hours ago
My guess is that intelligence gets commodified to the point where LLMs and diffusion models are sold on chips and we seamlessly integrate them into the HW + SW stack. Then they’re just another abstraction; we talk to our computers to get things built. At essentially zero cost, truly too cheap to meter.
In parallel there’s an explosion of creative output; Marvel movies turn around in 1 year instead of 4, solely blocked on availability of actors. Some actors license their likeness to unblock their calendar from reshoots so they can earn more. We don’t replace them wholesale because people idolize celebrity.
And demand for movies? Skyrockets. With new mediums to pursue. Classics like Goodfellas resurrected in high-fidelity 3D on the Vision Pro. A combination of diffusion models and Gaussian splatting means every movie can be upscaled to immersive 3d.
Video games enter a second renaissance, with indie developers having the advantage. For large studios, nostalgia is the moneymaker. The remake of Final Fantasy VII across three games that costs $100Ms and decades? Final Fantasy VIII gets rebuilt from scratch with a team of 30. But the rest of the money and team that would’ve been on that project now expand to other, more ambitious projects.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Mars? Why stop at Mars? Let’s start megaprojects to explore the galaxy. Mine asteroids for resources. What’s stopping us? Humans yearn for the unknown. When we exhaust resources or a modality of existence, we dream bigger, not smaller.
I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically. Maybe SaaS and a lot of businesses that have traditionally employed white collar employees fade. And a bunch of boring “financistas” don’t know how to make a buck betting in the casino anymore because boring old businesses and things nobody really wanted to do anyway aren’t lucrative anymore.
But, personally, the whole reason I got into software was to build cool stuff. Starting with video games! The type and scale of cool stuff I can build is only getting better, at an insanely fast rate. My bet is we thrive.
This is really hopeful and I agree with a lot of the prediction. The problem is that the number of humans needed to produce video games and movies etc. will be 10 or 100 times less.
And since human attention can only spread out over so many different entertainment items, there will not be nearly enough opportunities for all of the humans. Even if many convert to AI and robotics enhanced entrepreneurship.
I actually think that this can work out if we just assume humans have some value and right to live, identify the actual humans, track resources a bit better, and make sure enough robots are employed to maintaining key resources for humans like food
But that only can happen if decision makers actually agree that all humans have value and are willing to figure out how to make that assumption globally and fairly.
I guess you are assuming that all human attention spans are highly correlated, and all want to consume the same Marvel movies, so that only the people who work on Marvel movies are employed.
No, I am just assuming that the number of popular movies is not going to increase by 100 X. So say it increases by a factor of 10 somehow. That still requires far fewer humans to produce them and leaves most people without a job or a viable business. They can make movies, but the size of the audience isn't going to be enough to make a living for most of them.
> an explosion of creative output; Marvel movies turn around in 1 year instead of 4
Man if this is why we have to give 7 trillion to Altman fucking kill me already. Who's looking forward any of what you described?
yea, was just going to comment on this as well; marvel movies are hardly what i would call "creative"...
I get the optimism and excitement about space exploration. But that is a huge leap from the more ordinary and dystopia step you described:
The economy becomes a hedonistic mill of entertainment - where most people will only be passive consumers.
> I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically.
You may be right. OTOH, one could say the last decade had the best conditions ever to create the best movies, and yet for some reason I feel that the newer the movie is, the less soul it has.
The economics of production cost, investment and distribution have created a lopsided industry where only guaranteed hits get funded. Less soul = pandering to more people.
With new tools we can reduce the production costs of great movies considerably. More budget, if it exists, can go to marketing and distribution. I expect this will lead to more experimental films and a lot more "soul." There will be a TON of slop, too, but that's fine! It's all part of experimentation with a new medium.