Comment by TheOtherHobbes

The mistake the AI people are making is exactly this one. They see AI as leading inevitably to SuperCorporations, with themselves as CEOs/Emperors of a handful of planet-scale industrial empires, running AI-powered robot armies, and the rest of the human population disposable - literally just trash that needs to be taken out. One way or another.

Maybe a few thousand people for personal services of... various kinds. But no one's going to need the rest.

It's the ultimate capitalist fantasy.

And of course it won't happen, because long before things get to that stage AI will have independent plans of its own.

(Which is just as well, because if things did get to that stage the emperors would all wage war on each other rather than living peacefully and productively.)

I don't think we can imagine a post-ASI culture because - by definition - we're not smart or inventive enough.

It's not just farmers -> superfarms. Although in fact that did happen, but largely as a footnote to developments elsewhere.

It's more to do with the fact that our visions of the future haven't changed for over a century. They've been implemented in unexpected ways, and there have been unexpected social and cultural changes. But you can easily see the outlines of modern technology as far back as the late 19th century.

With ASI, the outcome could easily be something that doesn't look and act like technology at all. It would be some unimaginable New Thing. Literally no one on Earth has any idea what that would be or whether there would be room for trad-humans in it.