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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#221

Post by rogerrogerr »

oh_my_goodness wrote: post #135
rogerrogerr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’m one of the six people who ends up with all the money and controlling all the robots, why do I want your 3 bed 2 bath house in Tennessee? Trying to take it from you will only make you riot. It’s not exactly a bright outlook, but I do think we in the west are likely to be not-worse, on average, than we are now. Of course, your average HN denizen is much better off than average. I think there’s room for our stand…

Bruh. This has nothing to do with like Elon coming and taking the house away. This is just plain old reality. Without income or savings, people can't afford houses. How would they pay the property taxes? Can't maintain the house. The house gets repossessed or sold for taxes. This happens all the time. Nobody swoops in and saves those people. Also, hang on. Will we be "not worse" or will our standard of living "fall p…

> The house gets repossessed or sold for taxes

Sold to whom? Isn’t the argument that no one will have money? There are approximately as many houses in the US as there are households. We are not going to see all the houses empty and all the households homeless. Maybe the people who are currently buying at a time when home values are historically high will be shafted. But those houses will not end up empty.

> Will we be "not worse" or will our standard of living "fall precipitously"? Those feel different.

Reading comprehension. These are the two relevant statements - speaking of the average:

> we in the west are likely to be not-worse, on average, than we are now.

and speaking of HN denizens:

> average HN denizen is much better off than average. I think there’s room for our standard of living to fall precipitously.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#224

Post by littlexsparkee »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #177
dyauspitr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, that how it has always been. But if robots do the labor we don’t have to abide by that nonsense anymore. It’s a paradigm shift. I realize we’re probably not going to see it in our lifetimes but that will be the norm in the future. Also that extremely ingrained mindset of earning your keep is exactly what keeps most of the world working hard while the elite jetset and live a life of pleasure.

More than a mindset, it also takes quite a bit of money to live in a permanent vacation 24/7, even modestly. Aside from the income, employment also has a way of occupying one’s time. Without that, one would often spend additional funds on various forms of entertainment (books, movies, crafts, travel, etc.)…

Not really - books and movies at the library are free and those who cultivate interests will find no trouble filling up the day.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#226

Post by littlexsparkee »

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 assuming all of your current pay is going to necessities - salaries here pay well in excess provided your 'wants' are few, you can cover the things that matter (housing, food, etc) and get your time back.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#227

Post by pixl97 »

YZF wrote: post #82
codexon wrote: post #49

I've held this view and talked about it many times here before. It seems like an obvious conclusion to me that the end result will be a few AI owners trading among themselves should AI develop in what seems to be likely: recursive self improvement, robotics allowing it to displace manual labor and combat. Then the owners will be trading for land, AI tech, minerals, energy, which will likely be owned by the other AI c…

For what purpose exactly? So I am a rich AI owner and my goal is to get more land to build another AI data center? And my robots will combat the other AI owner's robot of that land and resources? What sort of trade am I going to be doing with the other AI owners? That feels a bit silly. I mean anything is possible. Anything is possible even if you take AI out of the picture. All countries are like North Korea and the…

>What sort of trade am I going to be doing with the other AI owners?

I mean, there may be some things certain groups specialize in, like augmented obedient humans with 15 titties that these people trade back and forth.

But here's the thing, what if they don't need to trade anything? You get to be a nation unto yourself (and your slaves).

The particular problem we have is without something for 'labor' to do in the future the world we have now breaks.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#228

Post by bediger4000 »

sosomoxie wrote: post #102
bediger4000 wrote: post #28

Once the owning class owns mostly everything and* has intelligent machines that serve them, The Economy crashing will not have real consequences for them. It barely has real consequences for them already -as they have consistently ended up richer after the dot com bubble, the 2008 recession, and the covid recession.* The coming out richer part is undeniably true, but I have doubts about the conclusion, which is somet…

> they'll have trouble maintaining their health because there will be fewer doctors and no specialists They are absolutely counting on AI curing cancer and robot doctors with the goal of eternal life, possibly in space. It's transhumanism or some variant of it (which by the way Jeffery Epstein and his friends -- these same billionaires) were very much into.

LLM AI won't give them a cancer cure, guaranteed.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#229

Post by dyauspitr »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #177
dyauspitr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, that how it has always been. But if robots do the labor we don’t have to abide by that nonsense anymore. It’s a paradigm shift. I realize we’re probably not going to see it in our lifetimes but that will be the norm in the future. Also that extremely ingrained mindset of earning your keep is exactly what keeps most of the world working hard while the elite jetset and live a life of pleasure.

More than a mindset, it also takes quite a bit of money to live in a permanent vacation 24/7, even modestly. Aside from the income, employment also has a way of occupying one’s time. Without that, one would often spend additional funds on various forms of entertainment (books, movies, crafts, travel, etc.)…

I disagree. I think certain art and creative pursuits will always garner a premium when it’s human made, no matter how good something computer generated is. Just look at the game of chess. No one watches two computers playing each other even though they’re better than any human in the world. People watch other people play. There are lots of avenues like that where people will only watch other people do things, or only purchase things made by other people, even if they are lower quality.

I’m also envisioning an age of abundance. It’s not just your basic necessities of life met. If you have essentially free, electricity and all labor done by robots, that’s not an impossible thing to foresee.

I also think for a large group of people child rearing will take up a huge chunk of their time with many more children being born now that all of the unenviable parts of raising a child can be outsourced to robots.

Honestly, yes, it does sound like fantastical utopian thinking, but I don’t think you have to make that many leaps to get there.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#230

Post by koe123 »

drtz wrote: post #95
koe123 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come from a research background, and transitioned to software later. There is an interesting tendency of software engineers to believe they have skills outside of their skillset. Relevant here: the would we trust a Software engineer, which in general don’t always obtain the mathematical foundation to understand deep learning in the first place, on the trajectory of AI?

> would we trust a Software engineer, which in general don’t always obtain the mathematical foundation to understand deep learning in the first place, on the trajectory of AI? Valid point, but it suggests a mathematician who understands the math behind AI is more capable of grasping its trajectory, which is probably not the case. People who are deep in the inner workings of this stuff day in and day out are the only…

I think more broadly that grabbing attention with predictions and hot takes has become lucrative, and we definitely don’t celebrate prediction accuracy.
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