Comment by jcgrillo
3 hours ago
They're literally hoping to make it up on volume. The AGI thing is a boondoggle that I doubt any serious person actually believes or takes seriously. But let's say for the sake of the hypothetical that tomorrow Microsoft Tay or whatever they call it now wakes up and becomes superintelligent? So what? Would everyone's head simultaneously explode like the aliens in Mars Attacks? No. It wouldn't collapse the global economy, people still need to eat and work--a really smart silicon brain in a box can't raise livestock or pick lettuce. It's not even clear whether the superintelligent Tay would have any economic utility at all? The whole "AGI changes everything" narrative seems like total bullshit. It might be scientifically or philosophically interesting, maybe.. But I share your wonderment at why anyone would invest in this space, it's perplexing af.
EDIT: I spent most of the day today pulling an 8/3 cable through conduit and routing it through a crawlspace to run 240V service to my barn for a workshop. If Tay wakes up tomorrow and becomes AGI, how will that help me finish the wiring job? Now extrapolate to almost every single other thing humans do. Even if Tay can write all the world's computer programs forever, it barely means anything for the vast majority of people, and therefore the global economy.
I think the economic issue as you say isn't on physical labour it's on the fact that most of the jobs in the west are now in some sort of service industry or office work. Here in the UK we basically rely on the service industry to employ a large amount of the workforce. If MechaHitler Grok becomes sentient then that's a lot of middle-class earners out of a job and the economy goes with it.
You're absolutely right that an AGI isn't running a cable or digging a hole any time soon, but you're going to have 100 people trying to get their hands on the shovel to get paid for the digging - depressing the wages in those hands on jobs.