Which is only Stage 1. Stage 2 is where you have a Cambrian explosion of models all competing for compute, and not long after that for robotic extension into Real World.

Stage 3 gets hard to imagine from here. Maybe there will be permanent hyperevolution. Maybe One Model to Rule Them All will appear.

Either way, I don't see how Economics as We Know It can continue to exist. That includes all of capitalism and almost certainly all of politics.

Successful AGI with robotic support means a post-scarcity economy where AGI's understanding of physics sets the limits, not politics or economics.

But the post-scarcity element won't be evenly distributed. And it's not remotely impossible that humans won't be invited to the party.

We can't even be sure that AGI won't have a less limited understanding of physics than we do.

There's going to be enjoyable irony in watching Altman et all getting their lunches eaten by the thing they've created.

But - realistically - it probably won't last long.

Yet another IT that will help the average person/democratize something, like the Internet and so on.

Over three thousand comment boxes agree that the cat is out of the bag. No moats.

Thats the big question, its doing a lot of good and a lot of harm in the same time.

So, is it 2 steps ahead and 1 step back, or 1 step ahead and 2 steps back (or any numerical variant of those)?

People with actual power in this are too involved and greedy to care about objective answer and TBH I don't trust them to put some higher good before their personal wealth and power and ego trip, capitalism ain't built on long term responsibility towards greater topics like future and wellbeing of mankind.

Plus we know from WWII atomic bomb development how utterly clueless, naive and out of touch with reality geeks doing something powerful can be. I see exactly same scenario being played out right now with llms.

Anyway, I am over-tired with all llm topics and frenzy folks (especially here), I'll better spend rest of the day preparing for a serious challenge in form of big multipitch climb in western Switzerland (Mirroir d'Argentine for anybody in same craft). Thats life I care about and makes me happy and fulfilled.

I’m aware, but we can still discuss them seriously

The “less valuable than expected but with a positive economical impact” is represented in the post I believe, with the “moderate” path, that’s what I meant by “wrong in magnitude”. What is missing is the other side, what if AI has a negative impact. Not no impact, a negative one. If we are talking about a global recession that’s not really business as usual I would say

It’s perfectly reasonable to consider positive and negative outcome when you’re seriously thinking about a topic… Extrapolating to the whole economy trends in some sub sectors that aren’t well understood or measured is a recipe for disaster (ie what you’re doing by recommending to rely on anecdotes)

I think the core of this issue that makes discussion so difficult is people are not talking about "value" in the same sense here. Anything you can sell has value to the sellers, and by basic economic theory assuming mostly rational actors and revealed preference, more value to the buyers than whatever they're exchanging it for. That doesn't automatically mean it's providing value to larger society, improving the general welfare. Figuring out how to purify cocaine from coca leaves was great for the leading narcotraficantes, and satisfied some immediate need for cheap gratification that was perceived to be more valuable over the subsequent 30 minutes or so to the buyers than continuing to hold onto spare cash. That doesn't mean it was good for humanity, good for any specific society, good for the major exporting countries at the country level, or even good for the buyers' and sellers' immediate families and communities.

I have no doubt that life has gotten more lucrative for some bounded set of people whose main goal is to churn out the largest number of websites with cheap graphics as fast as possible at minimum cost, but a lot more doubt about whether that's going to make the median life better for the median person over any grouping of humans large enough for me to care about.