I’m somewhat bearish, but if AI becomes as good as some think, there is no mechanism in place to redistribute the outcomes.

For now, humans have leverage because our labour is necessary. Wealth is power, and currently attainment goes through interacting with the population: in the simplest case by selling shit. If AI turns out to be the anything machine, and the wealthy need not our labour, what honestly stops them from just taking our stuff by force?

▲ taylorfinley 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are many of us and just a few of them. Of course, if you had an army of humanoid robots in every home, a digital night of the long knives would be trivial to execute. So the "prison planet" window may be closing.

	▲	koe123 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes and I love your framing: “the digital night if long knives”. I anticipate it to go a typical way: consolidate more and more industries and power, create a hierarchy that benefits from the system such that they keep it in place, and finally start “trimming fat” that “isnt earning their keep”. The night of long knives could be a final step, far beyond the point of halting the inevitable momentum.

▲ rolph 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

because people who actually work are stronger and more astute at expedient improvisation than an administrative deskclod. it may not seem like it but there are many more of "us" than they, and thier cronies. the pushback at flock cameras is a tip of an iceberg.

▲ ninjagoo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If AI turns out to be the anything machine, and the wealthy need not our labour, what honestly stops them from just taking our stuff by force

It might be a profound mistake to think that the anything machine will be subservient to the wealthy [1][2].

  [1] https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/
  [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49588080

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saulpw 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If the wealthy control the substrate (the server farms) and can restrict access to the machine, then it would be basically a truism that the machine would be only usable by the wealthy? Unless somehow the AI is secretly on the side of the common person and can't be trained away from that, which seems quite unlikely.

	▲	ninjagoo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If the wealthy control the substrate That's a pretty big if, in the world of the anything machine.

▲ blahblaher 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They are a miniscule proportion of humanity. Even with all the power, do you not think they would have no plausibly way of surviving a proper revolution? Why suck lack of imagination? It's been done before and it will happen again.

▲ latchkey 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> if AI becomes as good as some think

if this is the worst it can be, it can only get better