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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#141

Post by pirate787 »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #36
andrewmutz wrote: post #11

If you want to understand the likely capabilities of AI technology in the future, listen to software engineers like this guy. If you want to understand the impact of AI technology on the economy, don't listen to software engineers, listen to economists.

Just remember that the US purged left-leaning economists during the cold war and the field re-grew under intense think-tank incentives towards the economic right, so if you think labor/capital dynamics might be important to the AI revolution you really ought to balance your "random" sampling of US economists with some Piketty (Atkinson, Stiglitz, Zucman -- but in an era where reading even one book is considered a her…

Piketty is just a marxist flailing around, backfilling data to fit his belief that communism is the solution for every problem. He's been spectacularly wrong in his predictions so far, for example he said Milei would be "devastating" for Argentina and the opposite is the case.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#142

Post by baron816 »

It’s an economic fallacy that a group of people would get “locked out” of the economy.

If you and I are able to work, but can’t get jobs because robots do all the jobs, then we’re not just going to sit on our hands and starve. You and I can still trade with each other, no robots need be involved. But that’s not how things will turn out.

The reason we have an economy and money and trade is that we need to incentivize people to produce all the stuff that people consume, and manage those finite resources constrained by people’s finite time. But you can do away with all that messiness of all that exchange and just have AI micromanage the economy. AI should be able to figure out how much to produce, how to limit waste, who should get what, etc. in a very fair and efficient manner.

If there’s no limit on production, and no need for human labor, then we don’t need to incentivize people to work, or try to bound the amount people consume by the value of what they’ve produced.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#143

Post by jameslk »

jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #127
jameslk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around. Everyone wants more > But if you imagine a sci-fi world where machines can build and do everything humans can do, the concept of a human-centric economy would be pointless. There’s a number of obstacles I can think of to get there, in a human governed world, where humans make…

> Everyone wants more Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat and would be much, much happier for it. Unfortunately that option isn't available to me, nor to most people.

> Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat

Most people wouldn’t be content to live in one room huts with thatched roofs and no hospitals or antibiotics. There might be some that do, but most prefer having more things and “better” lives. If we kept progressing, we’d look back at the era we live today and consider it just as primitive

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#144

Post by nextaccountic »

chongli wrote: post #133
jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone wants more Not true at all. If I could work two days a week for 40% of my current income I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat and would be much, much happier for it. Unfortunately that option isn't available to me, nor to most people.

That's still wanting more: more free time. You're not going to take a 60% paycut if it means 60% less food, 60% less shelter, etc.

> That's still wanting more: more free time.

But this is working less to have more free time.

> You're not going to take a 60% paycut if it means 60% less food, 60% less shelter, etc.

Why not? That's exactly what the person said they want.

The incorrect point that was made is that everyone want to work because they want more stuff, not because they want more free time. People that get more free time typically achieve this by working less, or not working

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#146

Post by marcus_holmes »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #79

The idea of a consumer based economy has always appeared dumb to me. The reason why the masses should consume is to motivate them to work. And the reason why having a large amount of people working is that human work has been producing a surplus basically since the dawn of civilization. This surplus is partially shared but tend also to "trickle up", contrary to some weird beliefs, as can clearly be seen almost everyw…

> But if you imagine a sci-fi world where machines can build and do everything humans can do, the concept of a human-centric economy would be pointless.

In Iain Banks' The Culture novels, the machines provide the How, humans provide the Why.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#147

Post by cousin_it »

baron816 wrote: post #126
whatever1 wrote: post #60

Why do we believe that AI (if indeed we achieve human level AI) will have different outcome than the means of production or capital? It’s a winner takes all situation. Very few will accumulate all of the wealth of world. This time it will be more efficient than the Industrial Revolution, because not only you can produce the weapons for the meatbags to protect your wealth, you can even get rid of the meatbags and just…

Why is it a winner takes all situation? There’s really intense competition up and down the supply chain for AI. That competition is going to bring down costs for everything. It’s becoming cheaper and easier every day to start a company that will disrupt the established players and bring down prices. Everything will become commoditized. The winners in the end will be consumers, and the losers will be the big AI compan…

I think you and the parent comment are both wrong. The right analogy is something like a new species, which consumes resources and makes more of itself. The species is "AI", or "AI-empowered organization with a handful of humans on top", whichever way you like to think of it. It doesn't have to be winner-take-all, there can be many such things running around. But the point is humans can't compete with such things and will lose resources to them. Something like Factorio, with the "players" building automated production chains everywhere, and the planet's native critters (us) not very important as workers or consumers, simply pushed out whenever we interfere.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#148

Post by johnsmith1840 »

sdevonoes wrote: post #19

Isn’t it clear that the “enemy” of 99% of the people in the world (and in HN) are the ultra rich? Therefore we shouldn’t use Claude/Gemini/OpenAI? It’s not about stopping progress, rather stopping the ultra rich getting richer and more powerful over our lives. Whether we can use claude to automate a fucking script or service is meaningless compared to that. The dream of elon musk et al is to keep accumulating power a…

I don't think ultra weathy are a bad thing if their results move society foward. As of right now it's very obvious they are mostly aligned mostly because how technology functions.

Easily agree regulation or different actions can be done to improve aspects but the raw progress is undeniable. I think our current regulation space is doing a decent job without killing ecobomic progress.

I see no other economic system driving as effeciently as heavily rewarding greed. You can't create the future by commitee.

California is a great model here. Maga hate it because of liberal policies, liberals hate it because the insane economic wealth generation. But if california attacks their wealthy and the engine that drives that watch it completely collapse the system.

If you hate the california model and the no regulation/tax republican model of US then I hard disagree. China roughly operates in the no regulation model and pulled 850M people out of poverty with a stupid weath divide and hyper elite but they are overall FAR better off now because of that greed alignment.

EU is another alternative and they are slowly moving to the edge of collapse. Mass tax/regulation AND no wealth generation.

Choose your poison but there's really no other magical alternative here.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#149

Post by Animats »

david_shi wrote: post #12
andrewmutz wrote: post #11

If you want to understand the likely capabilities of AI technology in the future, listen to software engineers like this guy. If you want to understand the impact of AI technology on the economy, don't listen to software engineers, listen to economists.

"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."

I expected saturation to happen, having been working on the Internet since the early 1980s. I did not see the dot-com boom coming, with it becoming a necessity for all companies, down to the dry cleaner level, to have a web presence. That was pushed over the top by hype and overfunding before it was cost effective. Like Uber and Space-X.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#150

Post by supertroop »

mc32 wrote: post #76
dyauspitr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever, let it happen. Humans working on anything other than exactly what they want to do is stupid. The few will eventually have to give the masses the necessities at some point though that can happen in one of two ways, from the very beginning or wrested forcefully after a painful era. Both are better than the current paradigm of what is essentially slavery with extra steps. A world where a human can work exactly…

I think everyone who is able should earn their keep. From ants to lions, to survive and live, even if in meager spurts they must put in some work.

In all likelihood you will end up more like a Syrian refugee than mr outdoor survivor manly man.
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