alt Hacker NewsI don't get it.
A trillion here, a trillion there and all the AI companies are also telling us they're planning on wiping out 2/3 of jobs in the next 10 years? Nothing about the economics of the AI boom makes any sense.
I'm not saying it's not possible, but if we wipe out 2/3 of jobs with AI, who is going to be buying *all the stuff*?
Unemployed people aren't much of a demographic, and you can't just say UBI because that doesn't make sense either. You think the billionaires are going to allow themselves to be taxed heavily enough to support UBI just so that there's a market for people to buy stuff from them? That's nonsense.
Not trying to creep anybody out, but I just don't see a stable outcome for a society that doesn't need 2/3 of the population.
Replies
We're already there. Most of us have jobs that are just made up to fill the gaps after steam power and automation. In the future, we'll have jobs that fill up the AI gap. It's UBI, but more arbitrary so we can tell ourselves we're useful while group X is not.
In fairness it's mostly Anthropic that is constantly banging the were taking your jobs drum.
Everyone else has been less explicit, likely because it's just not politically a good idea to keep pronouncing it.
It's part of Anthropics marketing though. Maybe to push the idea you can't beat us so join us?
Companies will save billions on those pesky health insurance premiums and payroll taxes...by paying for OAI tokens instead.
Then when the labor market is nice and hollowed out, the tokens will go up in price several-fold.
I’ve seen no discussion about what the social consequences are going to be if a predicted 2/3rds of people lose their jobs.
I don’t imagine they’re pretty.
> Nothing about the economics of the AI boom makes any sense.
what if… MBAs turned from economics to a religion and no one noticed?
UBI is a more of a convenient trick we use to suppress the part of our conscious that tells us "wiping out 2/3 of American jobs is Bad".
Welcome to late stage capitalism. Where non of the incentives have anything to do with helping people and reducing costs for things people care about - energy, food, healthcare, basic needs.
Tripling productivity is not the same as thirding jobs. Demand will grow. People enjoy products and services.
"It may be difficult to know what role money will play in a post-AGI world."
> You think the billionaires are going to allow themselves to be taxed heavily enough to support UBI
They will have no choice. Proletariat must not be hungry and agitated. Free legal MJ for everyone!
In the ex-USSR internet segment there was a saying on nerd forums - "Don't know matan(1), will convert you to methane". Just saying :) . It's not like billionaire sociopaths had ever any issues with "useless" humans. Peter Thiel even follows a modern neo-religion along those lines.
(1) matan - mathematical analysis, as a reference to a widely known and hard to learn university course.
[dead]
>I'm not saying it's not possible, but if we wipe out 2/3 of jobs with AI, who is going to be buying all the stuff?
Money is just a proxy for access to resources. If a machine that is capable of replacing almost all jobs is really created then money will matter much less than access to said machine. Taken to the extreme to make the point, if you had a genie that could grant your every wish, what would you need money for ?