[ben_w]

There's plenty of outcomes besides those three.

Over history, lots of underclasses have been stuck that way for multiple generations, even without the assistance of a robot workforce that can replace them economically.

Some future rich class so empowered would be quite capable of treating the poor like most today treat pets. Fed and housed, but mostly neutered and the rest going through multiple generations of selective inbreeding for traits the owners deem interesting.

[skeledrew]

Non-human pets don't have the capacity to rebel though; make humans into pets and there will again be the constant danger of rebellions as with slavery in the past. Without the economic incentive to offset.

[ben_w]

I disagree on both counts.

On the first, non-human pets rebelling is seen every time an abused animal bites their owner.

On the second, the hypothetical required by the scenario is that AI makes all human labour redundant: that includes all security forces, but it also means the AI moving around the security bots and observing through sensors is at least as competent as every human political campaign strategist, every human propagandist, every human general, every human negotiator, and every human surveillance worker.

This is because if some AI isn't all those things and more, humans can still get employed to work those jobs.

[skeledrew]

Not at all. A rebellion is an organized effort, with an implicitly delayed response to grievances. I can't think of any non-humans that organize their efforts as such. It would be a heck of a thing if a group of dogs were to plan how they'd take out their masters.

All those "jobs" you describe - and many more - would cease to be a thing, as their purported basis for existence would be no more. Any role that doesn't concretely contribute to our survival and advancement is just "busy work". People could theoretically continue to maintain some simulation of something that keeps them as a retirement, but it'd be meaningless.

[ben_w]

> Not at all. A rebellion is an organized effort, with an implicitly delayed response to grievances. I can't think of any non-humans that organize their efforts as such. It would be a heck of a thing if a group of dogs were to plan how they'd take out their masters.

Dogs in particular are pack animals, self-organisation amongst them wouldn't be at our level but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

> All those "jobs" you describe - and many more - would cease to be a thing, as their purported basis for existence would be no more. Any role that doesn't concretely contribute to our survival and advancement is just "busy work". People could theoretically continue to maintain some simulation of something that keeps them as a retirement, but it'd be meaningless.

Yes?

I think you've missed the point, though.

When your opponent has all those skills to that level and doesn't sleep and simply applies all the surveillance tech that has already been invented like laser microphones and wall-penetrating radar that can monitor your pulse and breathing, how would you manage to rebel?

How would you find a like mind to organise with, when your opponent knows what you said marginally before the slow biological auditory cortex of the person you're talking to passes the words to their consciousness? Silicon is already that fast at this task.

And that's assuming you even want to. Propaganda and standard cult tactics observably prevent most rebellions from starting. LLMs are already weirdly effective at persuading a lot of people to act against their own interests.

[simonh]

Right, such a society would have no need of human capitalists, government workers, experts, etc.

The question is, to what extent would humans still set goals and priorities, and how.

[ben_w]

> The question is, to what extent would humans still set goals and priorities, and how.

From what I hear about the US and UK governments, even the elected representatives of these governments don't really set goals and priorities, so the answer is surely "humans don't".

[simonh]

I get your point, but I’d say they do set goals, they’re just do bad at achieving them that it’s hard to tell.

Hopefully AI would help us better achieve our goals, but they still need to be our goals. I’m just not sure what that means. I don’t think anybody does.

That’s a major problem here, if we can’t reliably articulate our goals in unambiguous terms, how in earth can we expect AI to help us achieve them? The chances that whatever they end up achieving will match what we will actually like after the fact seems near zero.

[skeledrew]

The ultimate goal - of not only humans but all living things - is to survive the best way possible. Everything flows from that.