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The Education of a Doomer
41–50 of 66 posts
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#42I’ve never had this worry. When I was funemployed last year, I spent my time reading books and writing code and hanging out with friends. If the future is an infinite UBI-funded vacation, I know what I’ll do. “Before the Singularity, read books and throw house parties; after the singularity, etc.” yeah it's obvious the author has a really high IQ who can keep himself busy with intellectual pursuits and a nice social…
For those with low IQ like me, there's video games, movies, piracy, parties, and hiking.
I would say most people do in fact need a life of purpose and fulfillment through some aim larger than themselves that has intrinsic value, can reinforce self worth, etc. I think very few people will find purpose and fulfillment through and endless stream of games, movies and parties. The question is what do those people lacking purpose do with their time as they try to find it, or how do they cope with a life of purposelessness?
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#43All it would actually take to avert a jobs crisis is for the per-token price of LLM generation to increase to the point where humans are competitive in dollar terms for intellectual work.
This could happen all by itself if the major LLM players coordinated (i.e., formed a cartel), or if they were forced to to recoup investments (we all know this is coming to some degree, at least for the western companies). Alternatively it could be forced into place if ~all major nations' governments start taxing AI use (which seems eminently a good idea to me in any case).
There's still the issue of local LLMs, but this could be addressed with taxes on GPU hardware, etc.
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#44Actual AGI might be really bad but thankfully we are not even close to building it and I doubt I’ll see it in my lifetime (imo ofc)
If you're betting the farm on there being a wall on the current trajectory of LLMs, I suggest you hedge that bet.
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#45> if humans are economically useless, the state does not need them. Why pay out UBI to people who have neither economic nor political power? Forgive me if I'm naïve. But wouldn't people just vote for UBI in this case?
I'm not sure why the people in power would actually be making their own decisions; if the other country's leaders depend on superintelligence to make their realpolitik moves, you'd expect yours would need to do the same to match them.
So, the governance of a country comes down to AI alignment. You can't let the other guys get a leadership advantage through AI, or you'll start losing the competition.
When we get ASI, we're at the end of human decision making. Now's the time that we have to make sure ASI decision making is to our liking.
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#46I'm not sure what happens (I think no one does), but with every other technology, I can opt-out if I don't want to use it. Even if I get unemployed, I don't see how I can opt-out when it comes to everyone everywhere using it. Governments historically have considered humans as assets - it's even called "human capital", and they require us for tax revenue and to run the state. What happens when we aren't needed? Even i…
> What happens when we aren't needed?
Depends on the political system. Under socialism authority will simply improve the environment by reducing your carbon footprint with eight grams of lead. Under capitalism you're already not needed to anybody.
> Why would it get any better when AGI can do everything humans can do?
Because that "better" we are building ourselves with our own hands. How it can get worse? Only if authority forbid us from building ourselves like we always did and decide to improve the environment.
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#47> if humans are economically useless, the state does not need them. Why pay out UBI to people who have neither economic nor political power? Forgive me if I'm naïve. But wouldn't people just vote for UBI in this case?
Social safety nets have come about because labor movements were able to use their leverage over capital to extract concessions. When the labor movements have no more leverage, capital won't give it to them out of the goodness of their hearts.
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#48Actual AGI might be really bad but thankfully we are not even close to building it and I doubt I’ll see it in my lifetime (imo ofc)
If you're betting the farm on there being a wall on the current trajectory of LLMs, I suggest you hedge that bet.
LLMs are very limited and have finite usefulness. The idea of AGI is a grift.
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government is made up of human beings too. I doubt most of them are psycho to such a degree as to let 99% of humanity die for no real reason.
I agree and I think uncertainty causes people to miss this. A dystopian world is good for no-one. The shitty things people do to each other are scarcity motivated and call me delusionally optimistic but I think a world of total and complete abundance doesn't incentivize people at the top (who are there because people at the bottom allow it) to mercy kill everyone else with AI drones.
> I think a world of total and complete abundance doesn't incentivize people at the top (who are there because people at the bottom allow it) to mercy kill everyone else with AI drones.
They will have one of the strongest incentive: to remain at the top. Moreover, it will not be that hard. In Soviet Union one honest socialist with four revolvers (major general Vasily Blokhin) could easily kill up to a thousand people per day personally (if he were laboriously working overtime). And back then there wasn't even a global governmental surveillance or AI-drones with explosives.
Re: The Education of a Doomer
#50> if humans are economically useless, the state does not need them. Why pay out UBI to people who have neither economic nor political power? Forgive me if I'm naïve. But wouldn't people just vote for UBI in this case?
> But wouldn't people just vote for UBI in this case?
Why in North Korea people just does not vote for UBI? For UBI government need control over majority of resources generated by the public. But if government has that control, what people vote for no longer matters.