  This is the first technology wave that doesn't just displace humans, but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can. Right now it can't replace humans for a lot of important things. But as its capabilities improve, what do displaced humans transition to?

Assuming AI doesn't get better than humans at everything, humans will be supervising and directing AIs.

▲ Refreeze5224 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

That sounds like a job for a very small number of people. Where will everyone else work?

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aurareturn 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

More companies. See my post here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=44919671&goto=item%3Fi...

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mindwok 5 days ago | parent [-]

This is the optimistic take and definitely possible, but not guaranteed or even likely. Markets tend to consolidate into monopolies (or close to it) over time. Unless we are creating new markets at a rapid rate, there isn’t necessarily room for those other 900 engineers to contribute.

	▲	marstall 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		8 billion people. only, what, 1 billion are in the middle class? Sounds like we need to be creating new markets at a rapid rate to me!

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grokgrok 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wherever the AI tells them to

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LPisGood 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do they have to work?

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dkersten 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Because the people with the money aren’t going to just give it to everyone else. We already see the richest people hoard their money and still be unsatisfied with how much they have. We already see productivity gains not transfer any benefit to the majority of people.

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closewith 5 days ago | parent [-]

There is an old and reliable solution to this problem, the gibbet.

	▲	dkersten 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. However people are unwilling to take this approach unless things get really really bad. Even then, the powerful tend to have such strong control that people are afraid to act out of fear of reprisal. We’ve also been gaslit into believing that it’s not a good approach, that peaceful protests are more civilised (even though they rarely cause anything meaningful to actually change).

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forgetfulness 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Because otherwise you'd have to convince AI-owners and select professionals to let go of their wealth to give a comfortable and fulfilling life of leisure to the unemployed.

More likely it will look like the current welfare schemes of many countries, now add mass boredom leading to unrest.

Sam Altman has expressed a preference for paying people in vouchers for using his chatbots to kill time: https://basicincomecanada.org/openais-sam-altman-has-a-new-i...

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xpe 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Because otherwise you'd have to convince AI-owners and select professionals to let go of their wealth to give a comfortable and fulfilling life of leisure to the unemployed.

Not necessarily. Such forces could be outvoted or out maneuvered.

> More likely it will look like the current welfare schemes of many countries..,

Maybe, maybe not. It might take the form of UBI or some other form that we haven’t seen in practice.

> now add mass boredom leading to unrest.

So many assumptions. There is no need to just assume any particular distribution of boredom across the future population of the world. Making predictions about social unrest is even more complicated.

Deep Utopia (Bostrom) is an excellent read that extensively discusses various options if things go well.

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jplusequalt 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

>So many assumptions.

Then a few words later ...

>Deep Utopia (Bostrom) is an excellent read that extensively discusses various options if things go well

Oh, the irony

	▲	xpe 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Reread the sentence and you’ll notice the word “if”

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forgetfulness 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Not necessarily. Such forces could be outvoted or out maneuvered

Could.

> So many assumptions. There is no need to just assume any particular distribution of boredom across the future population of the world. Making predictions about social unrest is even more complicated

I’m assuming that previous outcomes predict future failures, because the forces driving these changes are of our societies, and not a hypothetical, assumed new society.

In this world, ownership, actual, legal ownership, is a far stronger and fundamental right than any social right to your well-being.

You would have to change that, which is a utopian project whose success has been assumed in the past, that a dialectical contradiction of the forces of social classes would lead to the replacement of this framework.

It is indeed very complicated, but you know what’s even more complicated? Utopian projects.

Sorry but I see it as far more likely that the plebes will be told to kick rocks and ask the bots to generate art for them, when asking for money for art supplies on top of their cup noodle money.

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lyu07282 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> mass boredom leading to unrest

we must keep our peasants busy or they unrest due to boredom!

	▲	forgetfulness 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well in Sam’s ideal world you’ll be using bots to keep yourself distracted. You would like to learn to play the guitar? Sorry, that kind of money didn’t pass in the budget bill, but how about you ask the bot to create music for you? Elites also get something way better than keeping people busy for distraction… they get mass, targeted manipulation and surveillance to make sure you act working the borders of safety. You know what job will surely survive? Cops. There’ll always be the nightstick to keep people in line.

▲ jmathai 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m not sure if that’s meant to be reassuring or not.

It’s hard for me to imagine that AI won’t be as good or better than me at most things I do. It’s quite a sobering feeling.

	▲	xpe 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		More people need to feel this. Too many people deny even the possibility, not based out of logic, but rather out of ignorance or subconscious factors such as fear or irrelevance.