[ryandrake]

If robotics and AI are doing all the work, what are the former workers going to do for money? Nothing. They won’t have money. It’s not like the rich will have 1e6 x the poor. The poor will have nothing at all.

The future is a tiny elite leisure class with all the wealth and property and access to robotics and automation that does all the work for them and a huge underclass with nothing, nothing to do, and no access to that automation. Plus something that physically isolated the elites from the have-nothings so they aren’t in danger.

[_yb2s]

If only the ultra rich can afford and use these technologies, and they no longer employ or involve the poor- isn’t that the same as the rich simply not existing for most practical purposes? What stops “the poor” from continuing to have a thriving economy on their own, offering their own non-robotic and non-AI goods and services to one another like they already do now?

Essentially if AI and robotics are so expensive that only the ultra wealthy can afford them, then that also means that it is unable to compete with human labor, and therefore economically irrelevant- human labor will be cheaper, and as a result still in high demand.

Since none of that makes sense logically, it cannot play out like that. I agree human labor is about to be replaced with cheaper automation and displace a lot of workers, and I can’t predict what will happen, but don’t think the exact scenario you describe is possible.

[nextaccountic]

> What stops “the poor” from continuing to have a thriving economy on their own, offering their own non-robotic and non-AI goods and services to one another like they already do now?

Control of industrial output, raw materials, energetic resources, land ownership, things like that. The rich are rich precisely because they control the economic output of their country

[Nevermark]

> What stops “the poor” from continuing to have a thriving economy on their own

There can be a large class of poor, but it still be cheaper for a poor person to get their goods & services (as they can) from the corporations with the automation to provide them for a fraction of the cost, and of higher quality, than someone without capital can.

When poor people get money, they want whatever technology and services the middle class or above have. They want to move up.

They don’t want to buy handmade arts & crafts from each other.

The Industrial Revolution took resources. You can’t recreate that while poor.

They are not going to recreate farming either. They won’t have the land, water rights, etc

And hunting & gathering isn’t a fallback.

[int_19h]

> There can be a large class of poor, but it still be cheaper for a poor person to get their goods & services (as they can) from the corporations with the automation to provide them for a fraction of the cost, and of higher quality, than someone without capital can.

But why would the corporations (or rather, their owners) even bother to do that, once robots are producing everything? And what would the poor buy those robot-made goods and services with? For money to work as universal medium, it needs to circulate - but if everything that the rich consume is made by robots that the rich also own, and it's cheaper than a human's living wage, then all trade would happen in that circle, and money used for that would never leave that part of the economy. So people outside of it simply wouldn't have anything useful to buy goods with.

Or, to put it in another way - any wealth transfer from the haves to the have-nots in such an arrangement would be pure welfare. Which, given a socioeconomic system that does not encourage altruism, to put it mildly, would only be done to the extent that is necessary to prevent a torches and pitchforks situation. And even that would only be the case until making killer drone swarms is a cheaper way to prevent any would-be uprisings than bread and circuses - and I think that, thanks to the likes of Anduril, we're already well on the way there.

[Nevermark]

> And what would the poor buy those robot-made goods and services with?

Nothing or very little.

My point is that when labor is handled by automation, the poor won’t be able to create their own economy, even though they have nothing to offer and are excluded from the economy of the rich.

It sounds like we have the same understanding.

Even if a poor person (in this scenario) does get any money somehow, or anything of tradable value, it will go right back to the rich.

[haccount]

Exotic dancers and other human commodity products will still be in demand.

Until the Life-skin™ Sensubot™ lineup arrives

[insane_dreamer]

> What stops “the poor” from continuing to have a thriving economy on their own, offering their own non-robotic and non-AI goods and services to one another like they already do now?

Access to resources. Who will own the land that the poor will labor on to grow food, or raw materials from which to create goods that they will trade?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> What stops "the poor" from continuing to have a thriving economy on their own

The rich.

[visarga]

> a huge underclass with nothing, nothing to do, and no access to that automation

Why do you think the poor won't have AGI in their pockets and robots as well? If we look at how LLMs are evolving, they become easier to run on edge, and there are so many of them being pushed out every day. Costs for robotic hardware are also going down fast. Intelligence is free to have, unlike UBI. And robots can build robots, or make it cheaper to build robots.

For example instead of AI, take web search - if you are rich or poor, you get the same search space and tools. The rich are not searching better. They don't have radically better operating systems, social networks or phones. Same thing with content - we all have the same massive pool of content to watch. The rich don't have their own private movies that are 10x better.

[strbean]

Because AGI is probably going to be incredibly expensive to develop, require mega-scale access to data and compute to train, etc.

And unless the models get leaked or stolen, whoever gets there first likely won't give out the secret sauce.

Then you have a single actor with access to, basically, limitless productivity. Would they share it? Given any use case for it, the owners of the AGI technology could trivially outcompete anyone else. Why would they let anyone else use it at all?

[insane_dreamer]

If you don't have a job that allows you to pay the rent and food, then access to AGI tools -- even free -- won't help you very much.

[fragmede]

I don't know why you'd say that. Makes applying for EBT and food stamps easier. And finding the local soup kitchens, the best places to buy a tent, what the laws against vagrancy and camping "overnight" in your car. Which brands of cat food are least unhealthy for human consumption. (you'll have to jailbreak the model to have it answer that last one.)

Those are probably going to be quite a lot of help!

[insane_dreamer]

"Sorry we created this AI that took away your job and made you homeless, but in exchange you can use our cool app for free that will help you escape starvation and maybe even find the optimal homeless shelter! And think of it -- your sacrifice has made it possible for devs earning 6-figure salaries to be more productive, and doctors to write better emails, and the USA now has a higher GDP than ever! Large corporations profits are up! Society (for the rest of us) is better because of it."

Reminds me of Walmart putting small business owners in a small town out of business and then offering them a minimum wage job at their store.

I recommend watching Nomadland if you haven't already. (Update: Unless you were being sarcastic, in which case, carry on.)

[fragmede]

Poe's law strikes again! The cat food bit wasn't over the top enough?

[Nevermark]

If someone doesn’t have a job that pays, how do they get those things?

I.e. destitute and homeless people do manage to creatively scrounge. But now imagine millions or billions of destitute people with no hope of a paying job. What are they going to scrounge in that context?

Jobs are a critical ingredient to people buying those common things with the rich.

[visarga]

This jump from "AI assistance" to "millions or billions of destitute people" is unjustified. Yes, AI can assist, but it doesn't replace human presence as it is now, in any field. Instead it creates demand for improvements across the board and creates more work for us.

When we went from horses to cars, we increased the volume of shipments and percentually more people work in transportation now than in 1910.

Another example - programming has been automating itself for 60 years. Each new language, framework or library, each project on Github makes future work more efficient. Yet we have seen an increase, not a decrease, in development jobs, and good salaries.

I would say humans are the critical ingredient AI needs to be effective, at least for now. And in the far future where AI can work without assistance, then it just empowers everyone to not need to work. We can use AI directly for our own benefit, automating self reliance for people. Unlike UBI, you can copy an AI and give it to everyone for free.

In both scenarios: weak AI making room for jobs, or strong AI making work not necessary, it turns out ok. But have more faith in our insatiable greed, we won't run out of work before we run out of desires.

[Nevermark]

> When we went from horses to cars, …

In this situation, we are the horses

[strbean]

This is all speculation based on the development of AGI. If we achieve AGI, yes, it would enable humanity to have a Star Trek-style fully automated space communism utopia. However, that hinges entirely on access to AGI and the fruits of it's productivity being distributed across the population, instead of hoarded by a small group.

If AGI is developed and kept closely guarded, whoever has it will have essentially limitless productivity, and quickly concentrate all wealth and power. They wouldn't even need to engage with markets, they could simply build overwhelming autonomous military power.

[visarga]

Here you are making a mistake - AGI by its nature should know all there is to know, and yet need to make progress by searching for new approaches and discoveries. That doesn't happen all at once, it works field by field, and discoveries actually come from experimental validation. There is no "secretly developing AGI" to "quickly concentrate all wealth and power".

Like bitcoin, you are basically saying someone could outcompute humanity and own the ledger. But in reality the combined research power of humanity, which is necessary for AGI to advance further, is much deeper than any one entity could achieve in isolation. Research is a social process.

[Nevermark]

> the combined research power of humanity, which is necessary for AGI to advance further, is much deeper than any one entity

AGI won't need people to advance further. That is pretty much the functional definition.

But the bar is even lower. Just as today's rich keep increasing the economic distance between themselves and the poor, with the middle and creative classes already feeling that gravity, so will the AGI's - even if they stalled out only as smart as we are, but cheaper in inference mode. (A limitation that is highly unlikely.)

No doubt humans will facilitate AGI activity in our economy and real world for practical reasons for a little while. But at some point, they won't need us physically or socially either.

[p1esk]

What will happen to those of us who are not rich but also not poor? Upper middle class with net worth between 1 and 10 million?

[Uehreka]

Net worth of over $1 million is rich. An extremely small number of people have that much money.

Those people will probably be fine, though if you’re in that $1-10million zone you could be at risk of running out of money eventually if you don’t end up being one of the people owning the automation.

[p1esk]

1% of world population have more than $1M. That will be almost 100M people globally. I don’t see how you can own anything substantial (eg datacenter, power plant, factory, etc) if you have less than 100M net worth, hence my original question.

[stoperaticless]

So you can own whole percent of something substantial.

[harimau777]

It seems to me that when people use the term "rich" they generally mean some combination of "wealthy enough that you don't have to work" and "wealthy enough that normal rules don't apply to you"[1].

In modern America, $1 million isn't enough to not have to work outside of small towns and certainly isn't enough that the rules don't apply to you.

[1] I don't even necessarily mean big things like hiring high power attorneys to get away with crimes. I mean things like cutting through bureaucracy, access to influential people/resources, the ability to bend regulations, etc.

[bitmasher9]

Bifurcation of society with fewer and fewer people moving upward in social status. The poor have nothing. The bar of assets required to not become poor continues to raise.

For example, let’s say you have 5M NW, and 75% of it is in an uninsurable residential real estate. Your house is at high risk of being destroyed, and if it does you barely have the assets required to rebuild. If this happens twice you are have nothing poor.

[nradov]

That seems unrealistic. Can you give us an example of a specific residential property that is both uninsurable, and recently sold for ~$4M? Being uninsurable tends to crush value.

[bitmasher9]

Sure, so your primary residence becoming uninsurable is another way to go from have to have not

[someothherguyy]

> Your house is at high risk of being destroyed, and if it does you barely have the assets required to rebuild.

Or it becomes worthless when no one else has anything and demand tanks

[p1esk]

Let’s say I have 10M in stocks. What is the optimal strategy to not end up as “have nothing poor” in an automated economy?

[ben_w]

Make sure the stocks that you own include some of the companies making the robots and/or the AI that do the be automation.

And/or, if possible, buy yourself one small Von Neumann replicator.

[ConspiracyFact]

If you have 10M in stocks you should be able to figure this out on your own, assuming you’re self-made.

[bitmasher9]

Try to advance to 100M. 10M might not be enough in 50 years.