Remix.run Logo
zwnow 2 hours ago

How are businesses going to get money if there are no humans that are able to pay for goods?

Lots of us are not cut out for blue collar work.

lurk2 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> How are businesses going to get money if there are no humans that are able to pay for goods?

By transacting with other businesses. In theory comparative advantage will always ensure that some degree of trade takes place between completely automated enterprises and comparatively inefficient human labor; in practice the utility an AI could derive from these transactions might not be worth it for either party—the AI because the utility is so minimal, and the humans because the transactions cannot sustain their needs. This gets even more fraught if we assume an AGI takes control before cheaply available space flight, because at a certain point having insufficiently productive humans living on any area of sea or land becomes less efficient than replacing the humans with automatons (particularly when you account for the risk of their behaving in unexpected ways).

vbezhenar an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some humans will be rich and they'll buy things. For example those humans who own AI or fabs. And those humans, who serve to them (assuming that there will be services not replaced by AI, for example prostitution), will also buy things.

If 99.99% of other humans will become poor and eventually die, it certainly will change economy a lot.

ares623 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That’s assuming a large chunk of humanity will just lay down and die off.

lawlessone 2 minutes ago | parent [-]

Probably why Elon etc want to replace militaries with drones.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2024/11/25/elon-musk...

coliveira an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The 99% of humans will band together and destroy the ones who "own" things.

Joker_vD an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is an amount of people who own, well, in the past we could say "means of production" but let's not. So, they own the physical capital and AI worker-robots, and this combination produces various goods for human use. So they (the people who own that stuff) trade those goods between each other since nobody owns the full range of production chains.

The people who used to be hired workers? Eh, they still own their ability to work (which is now completely useless in the market economy) and nothing much more so... well, they can go and sleep under the bridge or go extinct or do whatever else peacefully, as long as they don't try to trespass on the private property, sanctity and inviolability of which is obviously crucial for the societal harmony.

So yeah, the global population would probably shrink down to something in the hundreds millions or so in the end, and ironically, the economy may very well end up being self-sustainable and environmentally green and all that nice stuff since it won't have to support the life standards of ~10 billions, although the process of getting there could be quite tumultous.

coliveira an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Thanos at least planed to destroy only 1/2 of the population. This is already beyond dystopian.

zwnow an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is disgusting to read, not going to lie. Hopefully the workers just lynch the people who enriched themselves on other peoples work.

bigstrat2003 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

I didn't read the parent comment as endorsing that outcome, simply predicting that if people chase profits without regard for the well being of their fellow man, that's where we might end up heading. I think the question we have to answer is "how can we prevent that?", because history has shown us that humans are very happy to run roughshod over others to enrich themselves.

zwnow 2 minutes ago | parent [-]

It for sure is endorsed by the tech billionaires... Humans greed is just so tiring to me. I am so fucking tired of seeing good people suffer while some tech bros wipe their asses with pure gold.

macintux 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As long as someone else is still paying their employees, it’s all good.