Comment by phn
2 days ago
If all jobs are taken away for the sake of robot driven productivity, who will consume the products and services being offered that result in profit?!
(EDIT: I am not against AI at all, just trying to understand where this all leads)
Currently, in the US the top 10% of earners are responsible for approximately half of all consumer spending. If AI causes this trend to continue and accelerate, I expect that we'd see similar dollar amounts of consumer spending, but it would be concentrated mainly in the people whose income comes from capital investments rather than from working for wages. Basically you'd see a situation like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snsXD6FwLYc
why would the price for a movie go up if supply goes up? this video lacks basic understanding of economics and I want my minute back
hell, if actors are still making movies for the love of the game and competing with cheaper (SOMEHOW! I guess we forgot about Sora already) then the price on those will actually go down
oh no, more indie movies made out of the labor of love, the horror.
Well the situation being portrayed is that the real movie is a luxury item while the AI movie is an inferior good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good). If the increase in wealth inequality meant that fewer people were able to afford to see the movie made by humans, then the price would go up because that's the only way to recoup the budget with fewer ticket sales. We're already seeing this to a certain extent. Movie ticket sales have been declining in the US for decades (the peak was in 2002, see https://web.archive.org/web/20260228182012/https://www.the-n...), all the box office sales records are due to a mixture of ticket price increases and inflation.
>(SOMEHOW! I guess we forgot about Sora already)
Yes if theres one thing we know about Chips and AI its that the price of equivalent performance literally never decreases...
Right? Unless we've figured out Star Trek Welfare, who is buying anything when 50% of the population is unemployed and wages have crashed for the other 50% because of biblical levels of unemployment.
I hear this argument being repeated a lot but I think it shows a lack of imagination to stay stuck on the idea that modern capitalism has to continue (at least for the super-rich). Capitalism is just a means to an end, that is to generate wealth. The wealthy's goal is abundance for themselves, and screw the rest.
The only reason they tolerate the proletariat is the need for labor to handle tasks that still require human beings. That’s what the modern capitalist machine does: it harvests labor. If they manage to eliminate the need for intellectual labor via AI and automate enough physical work using tech like Boston Dynamics and John Deeres, whoever's still around become trash. The reliance on this system of money flowing back and forth ends, because the only reason to maintain it is having people generate wealth for them. Once they can eliminate that "cost," they’ll do it without blinking.
We’re already seeing jobs being wiped out by the tens of thousands with the arrival of AI, and billionaires hoarding capital far beyond what they could ever consume, driven simply by the pleasure of having more than the next guy. We’ve also seen how some are depraved enough to treat human beings as mere resources for their own gratification. Why would them keep people around they don't need anymore? People are failable, expensive to keep and unreliable. If all can be automated, it will be. Expecting wealth distribution from them is also a fantasy. If they cared they would do it now, but the talk is always "when we reach certain goal the riches will tricke down, just wait."
The argument that "there won't be anyone left to buy products and keep capitalism running" might hold true during a transition phase, but that would just be like ripping off a Band-Aid. None of them super-rich will care about the money flow once this structure becomes obsolete and can be replaced by another system that’s more efficient and easier to control.
> None of them super-rich will care about the money flow
I think they do care. If someone like Mamdani becomes U.S president in 10 years - when significant segments of the population are unemployed and/or radicalized, the U.S can actually become real socialist - like REAL socialist. That means business owners lose parts or all of their business. What if Musk and Zuckerberg won't like it and fight? They're not really gonna have an army of robots, nothing large enough to take over a country. The state controls the monopoly over violence. The state controls the ability to print dollars to build a bigger army. Legislation will make it impossible for a private citizen to accumulate a private army. Guardrails will be put in place. Governments are not that stupid. I think the super rich have an incentive to see the current system keep ticking and not turn into a shit show, they will have no way to control what happens if it turns into a shit show.
I think AI won't make anyone rich by what it can do, but by what it still can't.
I completely agree with you. If you want to read similar stuff in a more blunt answer check this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474061
This take is the correct one. You don’t need to go far to see what will happen. Just visit any former American coal town, or one that used to do manufacturing. They are desolate waste dumps. The people there are completely cut off from the economy. That’s what’s going to happen, only on a much greater scale. Say goodbye to all those office parks, small and medium sized companies. The future will be most of the country looking like a desolate wasteland, with a few very ultra rich areas. The process of consolidation will continue until there are only a few places left that actually participate in the economy.
Correct. The ultra wealthy are effectively building "fully automated luxury communism" for themselves.
Other bots. The sequel to "don't build the torment nexus" is "don't make dead internet theory a reality"
Those wealthy enough to own (shares in?) the robot factories.
"Roughly 58% of American adults own stock"
This includes my teenager, who socks away $30/week in a VOO fund account. But yeah, no one can afford to "own (shares in?) the robot factories."
The median American has a 401k, yes. The median amount of stock owned is, I believe, $40,000 -- so, at the recommended annual withdrawal rate, that puts you at $1,600/year of spending money.
Let's assume that the stock market 10xes in the next decade, then the median American stock owner can get out $16,000/year.
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Some other interesting stats for context:
* About 87% of adults with a household income of $100,000 or more own stock; compared to just 28% of those earning under $50,000.
* Only about 37% of adults hold stocks, bonds, or funds outside of a retirement account.
* Between 55% and 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are one large expense or missed paycheck away from homelessness.
* While some paycheck-to-paycheck workers technically own small amounts of stock, the actual value they hold is minimal.
* The wealthiest 10% of Americans own roughly 90% to 95% of all U.S. stock value.
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what happens to labor markets in places like India if robots are able to accomplish that would have ordinarily required 5 manual labors at a fraction of the cost say (1/100th)?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
This is already a thing? Just replace “robots” with “machines”.
And yet I see videos all the time of Indians running contraptions straight out of the steam age in their shacks to make plastic straws or sandals. Or just doing it by hand. Better machines to do these tasks already exist, but are obviously too expensive for them to afford. Why would these hypothetical robots be any more affordable or disruptive to Indian workers in particular?
If anything I think American blue collars would be the ones to worry about.
The same people that consume all the goods and services after machines took over agriculture?
The whole economy is allowed to exists to “feed” the rich. Money doesn’t matter in this scenario.
So as an owner of 1 million robots, in a world where there are 1000 rich people to serve, I can have 1000 robots per person to serve them and can do everything for them.
Why do I care about the rest of the population? Why I need them to consume my resources? I already have all the power in the world. I have food, health, security, scientist etc. I don’t need the rest of the humans for anything.
Why currently “the rich” need the rest of humans is: you need baristas, servers, builders to help save time and make life enjoyable for most humans. then you need office workers to do the research, manage wealth of a richer category. So all this chain is needed such as top 1000 people have: housing, food, health, security, etc. that’s all they care. They don’t need the money. That’s the real power.
Please, don't ask logical questions.
basically, that is the question of wealth distribution. All the wealth created by these AI companies should be distributed to people so that they will have money to buy products from these companies. This can range from more taxes, UBI, or like Marx said: seize the means of productions (basically nationalize all these AI companies and share the profits to everyone)
These AI companies aren’t capturing that wealth. Frontier models are a commodity.
A world where intelligence is worthless?!
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Before the Glorious and Bloody Revolution, just Dollar Cost Average your way into a tech-investing stock fund.
Ugh, capitalism.
It can be anything from fully automated luxury communism, to fully automated dystopian communism.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communi...
to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
Don't discount that tech billionaires pursuing this are themselves nihilistic. They would enjoy the fruits of our labor and will not care what comes after they die.
"Après nous, le déluge"
-- Madame de Pompadour
We have been automating away jobs pretty frantically since the Industrial Revolution started ~250 years ago.
It has always resulted in no long term effect on unemployment and higher worker wages.
If you don't understand why that counterintuitive thing has consistently happened for centuries, you probably shouldn't speculate on the current automation wave.
If you can't see that AI is not merely "automation" but rather fundamentally aims to usurp human labor, you probably shouldn't be saying who should or shouldn't be speculating.