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The moment a manufactured brain can do more mental labor than a human for less cost, it’s all over for humanity as we know it. Once that point is reached there’s no long-term sustainable arrangement where humans continue to exist, no matter how much effort we put into studying or enforcing AI alignment.


If you include computation under "mental labor", then it's all over already.

If you include "automated trading", the AI allocates real-world resources where it sees fit (if the programming is not explicit).


Writing documents and emails and talking over a phone goes under "mental labor", it isn't very hard to imagine how most office jobs fits there etc.


One of the first things you do in this game to make money is "Menial jobs".

http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/


Singularity enthusiasts have been saying that for 20 years. Even said we'd be there by know where we're obsolete.

Will technology put some, even many, folks out of a job? Sure of course, that's been happening for hundreds of years. Think of the blacksmiths of the 19th century who drank themselves to death.

And even at the end of it all, people still love the novelty of a human doing something. People still prefer "hand scooped" ice cream enough that it's on billboards.


> People still prefer "hand scooped" ice cream enough that it's on billboards.

This is a circular argument though, you say people prefer people and therefore we will have a lot of people around.

Today leaders and rich people requires humans to wage war and to produce goods, those are the main thing creating stability today. When those are removed we are likely to see a sharp decline in number of humans around. Companies cutting out humans and just using machines as leaders and decision makers outcompete humans in peace time, and robot lead armies outcompete humans in war times, and soon human companies or countries no longer exists.


> Singularity enthusiasts have been saying that for 20 years.

20 years? Is that's meant to be an impressive timescale when we are talking about global economy?

People had talked about building a machine that could play chess at least since they had and had a mechanical turk hoax in 1770. Just because it took a while, does not mean the idea is wrong.




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