Comment by nicoburns
16 hours ago
> A significant amount of poverty could be alleviated through improved resource distribution and policy, without really needing improved productivity/increased resource production. reply
The concern is that AI will further reduce the leverage we have to improve resource distribution, and that we'll return to something that more closely resembles feudalism (IIRC, wealth inequality is already close to where it was in feudal times, albeit we're all richer overall). And/or that (because people won't accept that) we'll end up in a war situation.
You'd think the people who own the technology would be smart enough to avoid that outcome, but so far they aren't showing any signs of it.
This is a picture of washed up unwanted clothes in Africa: https://static.independent.co.uk/2022/07/27/15/sdfgfdghgh.jp...
When society gets to point where creating things like food, clean water, and medication becomes near-zero and over-abundant, just like the amount of clothing waste in the photo, then the tech bro overlords won't hesitate to dump a bunch of free useful shit to the masses to sedate them. Right now, societies in developed countries throw out 25% of all food. There is no one in the west starving, the poorer you are the more likely you are to be obese. We are being sedated by youtube and tiktok every day, everyone has a phone. Poor in the first world is like being a king 200 years ago, everyone has plumbing which would be considered a miracle in the 1700s, so we continue to up our standards more and more. Once giving someone a house and land becomes genuinely dirt cheap due to interplanetary expansion- people will get houses and LAND as welfare.
Meanwhile there are kids in Africa that would consider their prayers answered if we developed AGI so they could stop sending their 6 year old son out in the dunes to mine cobalt. They couldn't care less about wealth inequality in the first world, they want what the poorest American has. Someone's grandma who has terminal illness does not give one fuck about slowing down AI, they want AI to give them their cure medicine now.