[VikRubenfeld]

Is a future where AI replaces most human labor rendered impossible by the following consideration:

-- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI

-- Therefore the AI generates greatly reduced wealth

-- Therefore there’s greatly reduced wealth to pay for the AI

-- …rendering such a future impossible

[heavyset_go]

The problem with this calculus is that the AI exists to benefit their owners, the economy itself doesn't really matter, it's just the fastest path to getting what owners want for the time being.

[Udo]

Exactly. And as implied by the term techno-feudalism, the owners are okay with a greatly reduced economy, and in some cases a severe reduction in quality of life overall, as long as they end up ruling over what's left.

[petermcneeley]

This a late 20th century myopic view of the economy. In the ages and the places long before, most of human toil was enjoyed by a tiny elite.

Also "rendering such a future impossible". This is a retrocausal way of thinking. As though an a bad event in the future makes that future impossible.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> This a late 20th century myopic view of the economy. In the ages and the places long before, most of human toil was enjoyed by a tiny elite.

And overall wealth levels were much lower. It was the expansion of consumption to the masses that drove the enormous increase in wealth that those of us in "developed" countries now live with and enjoy.

[baobun]

It was also due to colonialism, slavery, and unjust wars, among many other things. Doesn't mean we should continue with the old ways.

Some kinds of growth are beneficial in a phase but not sustainable over time. Like the baby hamster.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Doesn't mean we should continue with the old ways.

The GP was claiming that it is "20th century myopic" to not notice that in the past the products of most human toil went mostly to a small elite. My very point was that that old way of doing things didn't generate much wealth, not that the way things have changed is all good. I'm not advocating for any of the old ways, I'm saying that having an economic system that brings benefits to all is an important component of growing the overall wealth of a society (and of humanity overall).

[petermcneeley]

Yes but it should be clear that an economy composed of elite producing for themselves and other elite is totally possible.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Is it clear?

[palmfacehn]

Your first premise has issues:

>In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI

Productivity increases make products cheaper. To the extent that your hypothetical AI manufacturer can produce widgets with less human labor, it only makes sense to do so where it would reduce overall costs. By reducing cost, the manufacturer can provide more value at a lower cost to the consumer.

Increased productivity means greater leisure time. Alternatively, that time can be applied to solving new problems and producing novel products. New opportunities are unlocked by the availability of labor, which allows for greater specialization, which in-turn unlocks greater productivity and the flywheel of human ingenuity continues to accelerate.

The item of UBI is another thorny issue. This may inflate the overall supply of currency and distribute it via political means. If the inflation of the money supply outpaces the productivity gains, then prices will not fall.

Instead of having the gains of productivity allocated by the market to consumers, those with political connections will be first to benefit as per Cantilion effects. Under the worst case scenario this might include distribution of UBI via social credit scores or other dystopian ratings. However, even under what advocates might call the ideal scenario, capital flows would still be dictated by large government sector or public private partnership projects. We see this today with central bank flows directly influencing Wall St. valuations.

[TheOtherHobbes]

> Increased productivity means greater leisure time.

Productivity has been increasing steadily for decades. Do you see any evidence that leisure time has tracked it?

IMO what will actually happen is feudal stasis after a huge die-off. There will be no market for new products and no ruling class interest in solving new problems.

If this sounds far-fetched, consider that this we can see this happening already. This is exactly the ideal world of the Trump administration and its backers. They have literally slashed funding for public health, R&D, and education.

And what's the response? Thiel, Zuckererg, Bezos, and Altman haven't said a word against the most catastrophic reversal of public science policy since Galileo and the Inquisition. Musk is pissed because he's been sidelined, but he was personally involved, through DOGE, in cutting funding to NASA and NOAA.

So what will AI be used for? Clearly the goal is to replace most of the working population. And then what?

One clue is that Musk cares so much about free speech and public debate he's trying to retrain Grok to be less liberal.

None of them - not one - seem even remotely interested in funding new physics, cancer research, abundant clean energy, or any other genuinely novel boundary-breaking application of AI, or science in general. They have the money, they're not doing it. Why?

The focus is entirely on building a nostalgic 1950s world with rockets, robots, apartheid, corporate sovereignty, and ideological management of information and belief.

And that includes AI as a tool for enforcing business-as-usual, not as a tool for anything dangerous, original, or unruly which threatens their political and economic status.

[Davidzheng]

no the AI doesn't actually need to interact with world economy it just needs to be capable of self-substence by providing energy and material usage. But when AI takes off completely it can vertically integrate with the supply of energy and material.

wealth is not a thing in itself, it's a representation of value and purchasing power. It will create its own economy when it is able to mine material and automate energy generation.

[greenavocado]

You aren't seeing the end goal clearly enough.

The end goal is to ensure the survival of a small group of technocrats that control all production on Earth due to the force multiplier effect of technological advancements. This necessitates the depopulation of Earth.

[zaptrem]

Alternatively:

-- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI

-- Corporate profits drop (or growth slows) and there is demand from the powers that be to increase taxation in order to increase the UBI.

-- People can afford the products and services.

Unfortunately, with no jobs the products and services could become exclusively entertainment-related.

[VikRubenfeld]

Let's say AI gets so good that it is better than people at most jobs. How can that economy work? If people aren't working, they aren't making money. If they don't have money, they can't pay for the goods and services produced by AI workers. So then there's no need for AI workers.

UBI can't fix it because a) it won't be enough to drive our whole economy, and b) it amounts to businesses paying customers to buy their products, which makes no sense.

[kadushka]

So then there's no need for AI workers.

You got this backwards - there won’t be need for humans outside of the elite class. 0.1% or 0.01% of mankind will control all the resources. They will also control robots with guns.

Less than 100 years ago we had a guy who convinced a small group of Germans to seize power and try to exterminate or enslave vast majority of humans on Earth - just because he felt they were inferior. Imagine if he had superhuman AI at his disposal.

In the next 50 years we will have different factions within elites fighting for power, without any regard for wellbeing of lower class, who will probably be contained in fully automated ghettos. It could get really dark really fast.

[VikRubenfeld]

>> So then there's no need for AI workers.

> You got this backwards - there won’t be need for humans outside of the elite class. 0.1% or 0.01% of mankind will control all the resources.

Let me rephrase that from 'So then there's no need for AI workers.' to 'So then there's no money to pay for AI workers.'

The UBI approach creates a closed economic loop: Company A pays taxes → Government gives UBI to consumers → Consumers buy from Company A → Company A pays taxes... This is functionally identical to Company A directly paying people to buy Company A's products, which makes no economic sense.

It's like Ford paying his workers $50/day, but the only customers buying Ford cars are Ford workers spending their $50/day wages. Ford would go bankrupt - there's no external value creation, just money circulating in circles.

Where does the actual wealth come from in this system? Who are the net buyers that make the businesses profitable enough to sustain the UBI taxes?

UBI in an AI-dominated economy can't create a functioning economy - it's just an imaginary self-licking ice cream cone.

[kadushka]

There will still be a functioning economy - serving the elite class. There will be a million people total who control all the resources. These people will form a new society, will have their own government, their own laws, their own values, products, services, etc. Everybody else will be out of luck: at first they will be given "UBI", then they will be cordoned into special zones, basically concentration camps, and eventually exterminated, because the elite has no need for them. Why waste resources on billions of useless humans, widely seen by elites as inferior species? They will probably make a virus to wipe us out and see that as a reboot of human race.

Or the technological singularity happens before that, and either AI will kill us all, or humans will merge with AI.

[hakfoo]

The Ford model shown has been oversimplified to the point of absurdity by using only one industry. The real economy is about flows between multiple sectors. Who's buying bread? Do they have enough disposable income to buy packaged bread or just flour to bake at home? If there's a packaged bread industry, does it become robust enough to justify buying delivery trucks from Ford?

On the other hand, on a much broader scale, the planet itself is a closed economic loop. There's a finite amount of resources and we're all just cycling most of them around back and forth.

Arguably, a significant amount of "growth" has come from taking resources that formerly were not "on the books" and putting them on. The silver in the New World wasn't in (Western) ledgers until the 1500s, the oil under the Middle East was just goo until the late 1800s. The uranium ore in your backyard suddenly got a lot more interesting after 1940.

New value can come from inventing new and useful applications for existing resources or by finding new external inputs (maybe capturing some of that radiation the giant fusion sphere overhead is blasting in our direction).

[heavyset_go]

All economic systems are self-licking ice cream cones, they sustain themselves through coercion and belief.

[Kaibeezy]

This is ringing a bell. I need to re-read The Diamond Age… or maybe re-watch Elysium… or Soylent Green… or…

[idiotsecant]

Why does there have to be a need for AI? Once an AI has the means the collect its own resources the opinions of humans regarding its market utility become somewhat less important.

[heavyset_go]

The most likely scenario is that everyone but those who own AI starves, and the ones who remain around are allowed to exist because powerful psychopaths still desire literal slaves to lord over, someone to have sex with and to someone to hurt/hunt/etc.

I like your optimism, though.

[int_19h]

People who are about to starve tend to revolt.

[mrob]

If you can build an AGI then a few billion autonomous exploding drones is no great difficulty.

[int_19h]

That doesn't really follow.

[mrob]

AGI means you win the economy. Even if it's only John von Neumann level and not ASI (which removes the economy entirely), a version of von Neumann that can clone himself and never sleeps is surely capable of organizing an automated killer drone factory of sufficient size to remove as many humans as you like.

[heavyset_go]

Half of them will vote to starve themselves so they can watch the other half starve, too.

I genuinely wish what you speak of happens should reality play out that way, but I think a lot of people will die with shit eating grins on their faces, even after they run out of shit to eat, because it means someone with blue hair is starving, too.

[sveme]

When people starve and have no means to revolt against their massively overpowered AI/robot overlords, then I'd expect people to go back to sustenance farming (after a massive reduction in population numbers).

A while later, the world is living in a dichotomy of people living off the land and some high tech spots of fully autonomous and self-maintaining robots that do useless work for bored people. Knowing people and especially the rich, I don't believe in Culture-like utopia, unfortunately, sad as it may be.

[heavyset_go]

Where are they going to farm?

This is a problem our ancestors faced with the enclosure of the commons. As dispossessed subsistence farmers, they had no other option to survive other than selling their labor. Their land was privatized and with it their way of life destroyed.

We still live in the world where the commons is enclosed, subsistence farming is effectively illegal.

[morningsam]

That's assuming the AI owners would tolerate the subsistence farmers on their lands (it's obvious that in this scenario, all the land would be bought up by the AI owners eventually).

[sveme]

I wouldn't believe that any sort of economy or governmental system would actually survive any of this. Ford was right in that sense, without people with well-paying jobs, no one will buy the services of robots and AIs. The only thing that would help would be the massive redistribution of wealth through inheritance taxation and taxation on ownership itself. Plus UBI, though I'm fairly sceptical of what that would do to a society without purpose.

[atomicnumber3]

>exclusively entertainment related

We may find that, if our baser needs are so easily come by that we have tremendous free time, much of the world is instead pursuing things like the sciences or arts instead of continuing to try to cosplay 20th century capitalism.

Why are we all doing this? By this, I mean, gestures at everything this? About 80% of us will say, so that we don't starve, and can then amuse ourselves however it pleases us in the meantime. 19% will say because they enjoy being impactful or some similar corporate bullshit that will elicit eyerolls. And 1% do it simply because they enjoy holding power over other people and management in the workplace provides a source of that in a semi-legal way.

So the 80% of people will adapt quite well to a post-scarcity world. 19% will require therapy. And 1% will fight tooth and nail to not have us get there.

[idiotsecant]

You don't think that a post scarcity world would provide opportunities to wield power over others? People will always build heirarchy, we're wired for it.

[likium]

Agreed. In that world, fame and power becomes more important since wealth no longer matters.

[amarait]

Doesnt this already happen with social media, tv personas etc. Its so empty

[foxglacier]

This is something that pisses me off about anti-capitalists. They talk as if money is the most important thing and want us to all be equal with money, but they implicitly want inequality in other even more important areas like social status. Capitalism at least provides an alternative route to social status instead of just politics, making it available to more people, not less.

[hakfoo]

There are plenty of non-political routes to social status.

Ask how many of your neighbours can name three Supreme Court justices (or hell, their senators and representative) versus who can name three Khardashian sisters?

TBH, I'd hope for the end of "broad" social status. I'd love to see a retreat towards smaller circles where status is earned through displays of talent and respectable deeds, not just by dominating/manufacturing/buying a media presence.

[foxglacier]

> displays of talent and respectable deeds,

Without the external metric of how much money you make, these will be unquantifiable and subject to political manipulation. Even the definitions of what's talent and respectable can be altered to favor the politically more powerful people. Groups without a clear measure of status find arbitrary ways to define it. Look at how school kids or prisoners do it, for instance. It's nothing like what you'd love to see.

[heavyset_go]

When you find yourself getting mad at strawmen you created in your own mind, it helps to step back and read what the people you're upset at are actually saying.

When you're fighting strawmen you aren't grappling with the actual content of an argument you're purportedly opposed to, but it does serve the ego, as it's nice to tear down something you don't like but can't explain why.

[foxglacier]

It's from my experience with real people in real life. It's not a strawman. I've known people with high social status locally who wanted equality in money but didn't do anything to reduce their own social status or raise that of others. On the contrary, they sometimes maintained theirs by bullying others.

Where are the equality-wanters who want to isolate popular people from their friends and force them into relationships with people they don't like? I've never heard of that but it's the social equivalent of what communism is for money.

Somehow everyone responding seems to have completely misjudged what I said. I guess you've all been spending too much time on the internet.

[idiotsecant]

If that pisses you off that badly I think you need a few days of internet detox.

[zaptrem]

I hope there's still some sciencing left we can do better than the AI because I start to lose it after playing games/watching tv/doing nothing productive for >1 week.

[tsunamifury]

Wealth will be replaced by direct power. We do not need an economy.

Most don’t seem to comprehend why the economy is being destroyed by the ultra rich

[edg5000]

If I may speculate the opposite: With cost-effective energy and a plateau in AI development, the per-unit cost of an hour of AI compute will be very low, however, the moat remains massive. So a very large amount of people will only be able to function (work) with an AI subscription, concentrating power to those who own AI infra. It will be hard for anybody to break that moat.