| ▲ | whatever1 3 hours ago |
| Why do we believe that AI (if indeed we achieve human level AI) will have different outcome than the means of production or capital? It’s a winner takes all situation. Very few will accumulate all of the wealth of world. This time it will be more efficient than the Industrial Revolution, because not only you can produce the weapons for the meatbags to protect your wealth, you can even get rid of the meatbags and just mass produce robots to protect you. |
|
| ▲ | baron816 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Why is it a winner takes all situation? There’s really intense competition up and down the supply chain for AI. That competition is going to bring down costs for everything. It’s becoming cheaper and easier every day to start a company that will disrupt the established players and bring down prices. Everything will become commoditized. The winners in the end will be consumers, and the losers will be the big AI companies. |
| |
| ▲ | cousin_it an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think you and the parent comment are both wrong. The right analogy is something like a new species, which consumes resources and makes more of itself. The species is "AI", or "AI-empowered organization with a handful of humans on top", whichever way you like to think of it. It doesn't have to be winner-take-all, there can be many such things running around. But the point is humans can't compete with such things and will lose resources to them. Something like Factorio, with the "players" building automated production chains everywhere, and the planet's native critters (us) not very important as workers or consumers, simply pushed out whenever we interfere. | |
| ▲ | aabhay 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Machines are historically more obedient than people — so employing millions of AI agents to maintain your empire isn’t as fragile as enslaving millions of people. Historically its been the revolts of people, not the commoditization of resources that brought down empires | | |
| ▲ | paul7986 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Without humans and our content, AI is irrelevant! For it to stay relevant I think it needs to pay every human for the daily content we all create (daily conversations, photos, videos) and choose to publish to web daily. Cloudflare only lets bots into our websites upon AI bots from all industries pay to enter our sites. Overall if we want to keep this society economy we are use to with AI in the picture ... we need to thrive off of AI .. not just AI thriving off our backs and destroying the society we know. Wrote about my idea how to get us all paid from the content we create daily last week on my substack https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/ai-to-pay-for-all-americans... Though we could all just go back to living off the land... |
|
|
|
| ▲ | BobbyTables2 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ironically, if 1 person had 99.99% of all the wealth in the world, I’m not entirely sure it would have as much meaning as one might assume. The one with the wealth would be effectively be unable to obtain greater wealth, power, or influence. Other this individual being able to command arbitrary amounts of goods and services, the rest would compete for the remaining scraps as we do today. Ironically, if they want technological innovation and all the fancy toys that result, then it would be in their interest to give the rest something to aim for. Serfdom isn’t going to cut it! Holding on to all the wealth so that nobody else can get it would be highly detrimental to a capitalistic society. |
| |
| ▲ | foogazi 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > then it would be in their interest to give the rest something to aim for. Serfdom isn’t going to cut it They can give them drones to aim at - enjoy your serfdom, let the AI tell you how to live your best life, don’t worry and don’t step out of the walled garden | |
| ▲ | ShinyLeftPad 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | For some people it's a zero sum game. If you have 99% of it, you won. |
|
|
| ▲ | AngryData 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think it is a supreme delusion that robots and turrets can defend you against any large mass of angry or hungry humans. Until you can field an robot army that supremely outnumbers humans, im betting on the larger group of clever little shit humans. And if shit gets bad enough small grenade or bomb type EMPs do work, provided you aren't relying on electronics yourself and aren't worried about pissing off everyone in 100+ miles with EM noise. And that is assuming their isn't any larger organized resistance organizations. |
|
| ▲ | jameslk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Very few will accumulate all of the wealth of world. Where do these few acquire all their wealth? What happens when these remaining few need to compete? |
| |
| ▲ | whatever1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In the only way that matters. They will corner finite resources and land. Now if we are lucky and the owners are humans with a good heart (and not AI), maybe there is some room for some people (aka provide authentic experiences) | | |
| ▲ | jameslk an hour ago | parent [-] | | > They will corner finite resources and land. They need a lot of money to do that. Where do they get it all from? Not the jobless masses I presume? Investors don’t usually like to invest in companies that aren’t going to eventually earn any revenue either | | |
| ▲ | strken 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Money is a mirage. You can't use dollars to hold land; you need force projection. Once upon a time that meant guns and soldiers, but today it increasingly means drones. Drones mean mines, factories, supply chains, chemical plants, and farms. Money can buy these things, but it's not the only way to get them. You can chase the money around all day, but money is only one small part of wealth, and wealth can increase with no injection of money at all. | |
| ▲ | lumost 23 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The abstraction of capital and money get a bit funny when wealth is sufficiently concentrated. If there is a monopsomy (one buyer), then they can largely dictate the price of anything. If they also control violent coercion via a captured state or other means, then they can compel production at that price point. The idea of capitalism only really makes sense when wealth is reasonably distributed such that there is still reasonable competition in both the marketplace and control of the state. |
|
| |
| ▲ | lazide 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In any given game, why are there always a few (say 3) top players? Same reason. |
|
|
| ▲ | dyauspitr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Whatever, let it happen. Humans working on anything other than exactly what they want to do is stupid. The few will eventually have to give the masses the necessities at some point though that can happen in one of two ways, from the very beginning or wrested forcefully after a painful era. Both are better than the current paradigm of what is essentially slavery with extra steps. A world where a human can work exactly on whatever they’re passionate about or not work at all if they don’t want to is the ideal. |
| |
| ▲ | oh_my_goodness 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Without jobs, and after our savings run out, we will be homeless people. Then, after that, we can try to bargain for ... whatever homeless people get in this society. It doesn't look like much to me. Call it 'basic income' if that helps. | | |
| ▲ | rogerrogerr 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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 standard of living to fall precipitously. | | |
| ▲ | whatever1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You will need electricity, water you will be producing waste etc. in your Tennessee house. Why would someone who owns all of the power and resources share with you? Really I don’t see any playable alternative other than near complete annihilation of human race. It’s very similar to a nuclear apocalypse. Very few get to survive. | | |
| ▲ | qsera an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | >Why would someone who owns all of the power and resources share with you? Ideally governments will see to it. This also assumes that governments have a much larger army of robots than any private individual. Just like how governments makes it illegal to own firearms, it will be illegal to own certain class of robots with combat capability.. Thus governments (the people really/ideally) will see to it that everyone will be comfortable with minimum amount of work utilizing the robots. One can dream! | |
| ▲ | pastel8739 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Realistically though, if there are some humans left, they are going to want to live in a society. Humans are fundamentally social and I think the people in charge would eventually realize this. But then again rich people are not normal, so maybe not |
| |
| ▲ | oh_my_goodness 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 precipitously"? Those feel different. |
|
| |
| ▲ | aidenn0 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How will the people working on exactly what they want to eat? | | | |
| ▲ | mc32 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think everyone who is able should earn their keep. From ants to lions, to survive and live, even if in meager spurts they must put in some work. | | |
| ▲ | supertroop an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | In all likelihood you will end up more like a Syrian refugee than mr outdoor survivor manly man. | |
| ▲ | dyauspitr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | BobbyTables2 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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.)… | | |
| ▲ | mc32 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Without direction or a pull in life people tend to self-destruct. Even the wealthy are susceptible to this. Hollywood nepotites are a nice example: they live off their parents wealth or easily acquired money and self-destroy themselves. They are not engaging in higher pursuits but rather basic degeneration. Not all of course; some do good, productive things. | | |
| ▲ | JackMorgan 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's easy to point to high profile nepotites but I've known plenty of folks from all classes who have self-destructed. It's hardly limited to those with lives of leisure. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | sosomoxie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Only if wealth will be evenly distributed, otherwise you're just enriching someone else. | | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Would you accept "fairly" distributed instead of "evenly"? I think it's fair to say that some jobs do actually deserve to be compensated more highly? Jobs that require special skills and training, or require taking on more responsibility? I don't think the problem is that some work earns different amounts of money. To me it seems that the problem is how much wealth is concentrating in such few hands, because the people doing the work are not being compensated fairly | | |
| ▲ | maest 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "fair" involves a value judgement and requires a moral system.
"even" is pure mathematics. > I think it's fair to say that some jobs do actually deserve to be compensated more highly? Agreeing with that is easy. Agreeing with which jobs should be compensated more highly is hard. Because everyone has different morality systems. > To me it seems that the problem is how much wealth is concentrating in such few hands I know people who strongly believe Bezos and other billionaires are being <fairly> compensated for the value they've brought to their customers via their businesses. | | |
| ▲ | mc32 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Fairness can also be mathematical. Fair chances. No special treatment. |
| |
| ▲ | sosomoxie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I would prefer "evenly" but "fairly" would be better than what we have now. If AI and robots are going to make infinite progress and replace all labor, then I definitely would want "evenly". |
|
|
|
|
