alt Hacker News> Why is this time different?
If it was just programming being automated, then whatever. Lots of professions have been automated and society adapts.
The underlying worry here is that current AI provides a partial automation of intelligence. The endgame for the investors and the corporations using AI is complete automation of intelligence (and manual labor, too). They want a $25,000 robot that works around the clock, and AI models that will do anything a human office worker can do for less money. Now, they don't know how to build either yet. But they'll spend every last dollar on the planet trying.
Strictly speaking, they don't even need us as customers. They can just have the robots build them yachts and mansions directly. And act as security guards.
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Reminds me of the old short story "With Folded Hands" from 1947. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands_...
I won't deny the comfort value of yachts and private jets, but I doubt that this material comfort is the main value proposition of these things. Instead, it's status symbols, status above slightly less rich people. The yachts are in a way an epiphenomenon of intra-elite social competition, and if you don't manage your network well, you can easily lose out in the next generation. Investment into social relations is what really matters. And when you're generationally rich, you typically think about making impressive impacts over society, the kind that impresses your social circle, based 9n their philosophy, which typically happens to be self serving but with just enough other stuff to not seem to crass. Taste is the highest status thing,not intelligence, not skill.
It's hard to extrapolate. What will be the goals and motivations of this super elite? Let's say all of us normal people just die off either starving or just by not reproducing any more, just watching VR, sedated with subsidized happiness drugs. Let's just suppose that. What then? Will the rich keep reproducing? What will limit their reproduction if material abundance is there? Will the elite families keep each other in check not to over-reproduce? Or will these people repopulate the earth, each living on yachts and in comfort, living an elite life? Surely that will bump up against all kinds of limits, similar to what the current earth-populating humans are facing. You can't have a super yacht per person to an unlimited amount of millions of people. At some point they will have to willingly not reproduce despite having all access to robot care, robots watching your every whim etc. I don't see any stable endpoint.
> If it was just programming being automated, then whatever.
There is nothing on horizon which automates a programmer’s work. Typing in code is faster now, and some things “only need pointing out” like an existence of a “bug” which an llm + harness might be able to mitigate. Automated tests might capture regressions and possibly written by llm + harness. If you replicate this in other professions what will you get?
The future you're describing doesn't seem likely to me because in this event the public will force redistribution through political action.
> Strictly speaking, they don't even need us as customers.
I think they'd employ some number of humans for entertainment.
> They want a $25,000 robot that works around the clock
Don't you? For the cost of less than a new car, I can have a live-in butler/maid? I'd sell my car and downgrade to afford one at $25k if it actually worked. I can't afford to and don't want to hire a human to live in my house and do all my chores for me, 24/7, plus the overhead and the headache and liability, but a robot for $25k is pretty tempting. Never have to fold laundry or the dishes again? Or remember that it's Tuesday and I was supposed to take out the trash, right when I'm in bed?
It's an iterated prisoner's dilemma and everyone's vocally defecting.
Has anybody written about this ? in fiction or as report even. It seems obvious the current techbros are only thinking about a radical shift where labour changes meaning and human societies are irrelevant for those who owns datacenter and have pocket deep enough to buy the rest when people can't sustain their own lives.
> Strictly speaking, they don't even need us as customers. They can just have the robots build them yachts and mansions directly. And act as security guards.
That sounds like we'll devolve into wars over resources so houses can build more war-bots and get more resources....