>> In the AGI scenario, the employers that are dependent on consumer sales will wither and die, as consumer buying power shrinks due to unemployment.
> Why? People will find ways to exchange value.
Sure, but they'll have increasingly less to exchange among themselves. They'll have nothing to sell that the AGI-powered economy wants to buy, except truly limited legacy resources like land that can be gobbled up in one-time purchases. Eventually the AGI-powered economy will monopolize the resources that are useful to it, in a way that likely conflicts with the needs of now-obsolete workers (e.g. converting vast amounts of farmland to solar power megaprojects).
That's the end-state of automation, in our current social system.
>>> What's more likely - not that AGI is likely, but still - is that people move into other jobs.
>> Not if the AGI can do all those jobs better and cheaper than most people (or even just good enough and more obediently).
> What does this mean? By AGI do you mean...
I mean intellectual automation that can do at least what a typical person can do as well as they can or better. Eventually it means the automation that can do all the jobs (or even just enough of the jobs). Eventually you won't have a new job to move into once your job is replaced.
AGI will eventually mean there will cease to be a practical necessity to using human to do labor to operate capital. The capital will be able to operate itself on behalf of its owners. Once that happens, under the current system, the owners of that automated capital will eventually accumulate all the wealth of the economy, because they'll be able to sell without paying wages. Eventually they'll pivot to vanity projects and B2B sales among themselves.
> Also there will be a floor of jobs not worth doing with AGI because of the energy and maintenance requirements. AGI is not a magic wand. It's a specific thing.
Probably, but I expect even those will eventually disappear too, at least on the mass scale needed to support billions of people, during the later stages of the economic transition.
> ChatGPT being able to spit out a decent but generic essay doesn't suddenly mean that all the crazy numbers of jobs everyone does will vanish.
I'm not talking about ChatGPT, I'm talking about the utopia the AI folks want to create.
> Why? People will find ways to exchange value.
Sure, but they'll have increasingly less to exchange among themselves. They'll have nothing to sell that the AGI-powered economy wants to buy, except truly limited legacy resources like land that can be gobbled up in one-time purchases. Eventually the AGI-powered economy will monopolize the resources that are useful to it, in a way that likely conflicts with the needs of now-obsolete workers (e.g. converting vast amounts of farmland to solar power megaprojects).
That's the end-state of automation, in our current social system.
>>> What's more likely - not that AGI is likely, but still - is that people move into other jobs.
>> Not if the AGI can do all those jobs better and cheaper than most people (or even just good enough and more obediently).
> What does this mean? By AGI do you mean...
I mean intellectual automation that can do at least what a typical person can do as well as they can or better. Eventually it means the automation that can do all the jobs (or even just enough of the jobs). Eventually you won't have a new job to move into once your job is replaced.
AGI will eventually mean there will cease to be a practical necessity to using human to do labor to operate capital. The capital will be able to operate itself on behalf of its owners. Once that happens, under the current system, the owners of that automated capital will eventually accumulate all the wealth of the economy, because they'll be able to sell without paying wages. Eventually they'll pivot to vanity projects and B2B sales among themselves.
> Also there will be a floor of jobs not worth doing with AGI because of the energy and maintenance requirements. AGI is not a magic wand. It's a specific thing.
Probably, but I expect even those will eventually disappear too, at least on the mass scale needed to support billions of people, during the later stages of the economic transition.
> ChatGPT being able to spit out a decent but generic essay doesn't suddenly mean that all the crazy numbers of jobs everyone does will vanish.
I'm not talking about ChatGPT, I'm talking about the utopia the AI folks want to create.