[rurp]

A frustrating aspect of the AI debates has been the number of people who believe people like Sam Altman who say that the immense wealth created by AGI would be distributed to the masses to improve their lives. The notion that the mega wealthy Elon/Sams/Bezos elites are going to willingly give up unprecedented wealth because millions of people have become unemployed and impoverished is so wildly out of step with how those people have behaved their entire lives. Someone who says they have enough billions and want to improve millions of lives don't make it to those positions.

The only way that wealth gets shared will be unprecedented government coercion or worse.

[cootsnuck]

Yea, it's puzzling to me that this isn't asked of folks like Altman and Amodei in every interview. Maybe it's because Altman would just start shilling his eye scanning orb and start repeating "WORLD COIN" ad nauseum. Either way, they should be getting pressed on this by all media.

[mrguyorama]

It's not puzzling. Journalism was murdered because it asked Nixon too many questions. So now unless you softball interviews, you just don't get to interview anyone, so the only news orgs with content to monetize are the ones just printing Press Releases and being a backboard for "interviews".

It sure is fun how the party who screams about "personal responsibility" seems to get very upset if you ask a responsible person to explain themselves and their actions.

[simianwords]

This comment naively believes in zero sum creation of wealth.

Wealth is not taken from our consumers and given to Sam Altman. Sam and his company are creating wealth - increasing the pie.

Of course it benefits everyone while also benefiting them.

Wealth need not be redistributed to improve lives. Just the mere invention of ChatGPT and letting people purchase it and use it is enough to improve people’s lives. Redistribution does not solve any poverty problem other than transfer power.

Sam redistributing money will not sustainably change anything about prosperity or poverty.

[rurp]

You're talking about normal technological developments that yes generally follow Econ 101 patterns. But AGI isn't like that. If AGI or something like it comes about it won't be a normal technology. The upside case for investors is that frontier models eliminate millions of jobs and remain controlled by a small group of owners. That's why they are investing sums unprecedented in human history. If all white collar work and an increasing amount of blue collar work is supplanted by AI how do those masses of newly unemployed folks make a living without wealth redistribution?

If AI capability plateaus and ends up as a normal technological development then I agree with you that it will mostly work out for the best. But that's not the scenario I'm worried about and plenty of folks in the industry are warning that's not the most likely path at this point.

[simianwords]

I might agree with you on this edge case. I don’t believe we will reach that soon.

But interestingly, people who are against AI tend to also believe that they genuinely can’t replace anyone.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> This comment naively believes in zero sum creation of wealth.

As long as we're in a capitalist society, wealth is certainly zero-sum.

Every technological advancement that made jobs easier just allows corporations to increase their margins or increase the workload. If I automate some of my work and now only need to work 20 hours/week, I don't get 20 more hours/week of free time, I'm just given more work to do.

If someone gets completely automated out of their job, they don't get to relax and enjoy free time. They have to find a new job to pay the bills. With more and more people getting automated out of a job, UBI will become a necessity. We will need to increase taxes on corporations to fund it.

[axus]

So far prices have generally gone up, which indicates the pie available is scarcer.

I am looking forward to the day where more electricity, electronics, food, and housing are produced thanks to AI; but in the mid-term it feels like an AI bubble pop would do more to bring the price back down.

[simianwords]

Qualitatively, I now have access to ChatGPT.

How much do you think you would have paid for such a tool in 2010? and we are getting it almost for free.

[fzeroracer]

Great, you have access to a hallucinating chat bot. The rest of us are losing access to basic computing and entertainment thanks to skyrocketing prices so that these companies can create more refined bots for you to chat with.

[axus]

While ChatGPT is a partial substitution for a college education, it doesn't satisfy the other needs I listed. I do think in the long term we'll get there, but the current situation matters.

[hn_acc1]

For how much longer?

[simianwords]

its only going to get cheaper.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Not for a while.

The AI companies are hemorrhaging money. The hardware to run these models is not cheap, nor is the costs for electricity and water to run and cool it.

[unethical_ban]

Claiming that wealth isn't zero sum, and demanding people have faith in the US system of capitalism, is not reassuring.

[jacquesm]

It's beyond naive. But there are also still people believing Elon Musk is going to put humanity on Mars for keeps and out of altruism.

[rurp]

For sure, I've been rolling my eyes at the Mars colony stuff for probably a decade or more now. I get that it's a fun futuristic thought experiment for nerds but the idea that Elon's going to send up some modern day Mayflower in the near future that builds a thriving settlement is obvious nonsense.

[jcgrillo]

Hope somebody smuggles a decent screw jack onboard otherwise they're fucked.

[mrguyorama]

Well, the average person is so utterly illiterate in physics, science, and math that no, it's not obvious nonsense to them.

They don't really think through anything at all, because the human brain is hyperoptimized to not think, as thinking is energetically expensive, and even with that optimization to drastically reduce energy usage by just not using it, the brain still consumes a significant fraction of a human's energy budget.

We all have this problem. Even if you train for years to think "like a scientist" and critically analyze your beliefs and poke holes in the things you take for granted, you will always be vulnerable to ignoring something you shouldn't and missing something important.

I do get upset that people are so adverse to just doing some rough calculations about things. However, I've recently come to the conclusion that I just enjoy recreational math more than the average person. But I'm frustrated about all the people who sat next to me in math class saying "When will I ever use this?" and now going through their lives with zero literacy in math.

You had a chance to learn! To improve yourself! How could you squander that?! What else were you doing with that time? You were required to go to school for about 16 years, why didn't you just suck it up and make the most of that time?!

It hurts me how willfully ignorant people can be.