The problem is the "productive activity" is rather hard to define if there's so much "AI" (be it classical ML, LLM, ANI, AGI, ASI, whatever) around that nearly everything can be produced by nearly no one.

The destruction of the labour theory of value has been a goal of "tech" for a while, but if they achieve it, what's the plan then?

Assuming humans stay in control of the AIs because otherwise all bets are off, in a case where a few fabulously wealthy (or at least "onwing/controlling", since the idea of wealth starts to become fuzzy) industrialists control the productive capacity for everything from farming to rocketry and there's no space for normal people to participate in production any more, how do you even denominate the value being "produced"? Who is it even for? What do they need to give in return? What can they give in return?

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lotsoweiners 4 days ago | parent [-]

> Assuming humans stay in control of the AIs because otherwise all bets are off, in a case where a few fabulously wealthy (or at least "onwing/controlling", since the idea of wealth starts to become fuzzy) industrialists control the productive capacity for everything from farming to rocketry and there's no space for normal people to participate in production any more

Why do the rest of humanity even have to participate in this? Just continue on the way things were before without any super AI. Start new businesses that don’t use AI and hire humans to work there.

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grues-dinner 4 days ago | parent [-]

Because with presumably tiny marginal costs of production, the AI owners can flood and/or buy out your human-powered economy.

You'd need a very united front and powerful incentives to prevent, say, anyone buying AI-farmed wheat when it's half the cost of human-farmed (say). If you don't prevent that, Team AI can trade wheat (and everything else) for human economy money and then dominate there.

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throwaway0123_5 3 days ago | parent [-]

But if AI can do anything that human labor can do, what would even be the incentive for AI owners to farm wheat and sell it to people? They can just have their AIs directly produce the things they want.

It seems like the only things they would need are energy and access to materials for luxury goods. Presumably they could mostly lock the "human economy" out of access to these things through control over AI weapons, but there would likely be a lot of arable land that isn't valuable to them.

Outside of malice, there doesn't seem to be much reason to block the non-technological humans from using the land they don't need. Maybe some ecological argument, the few AI-enabled elites don't want billions of humans that they no longer need polluting "their" Earth?

	▲	grues-dinner 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		When was the last the techno-industrialist elite class said "what we have is enough"? In this scenario, the marginal cost of taking everything else over is almost zero. Just tell the AI you want it taken over and it handles it. You'd take it over just for risk mitigation, even if you don't "need" it. Better to control it since it's free to do so. Allowing a competing human economy is resources left on the table. And control of resources is the only lever of power left when labour is basically free. > Maybe some ecological argument There's a political angle too. 7 (or however many it will be) billion humans free to do their own thing is a risky free variable.