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munchlertoday at 6:30 PM2 repliesview on HN

> Once AI takes everything it can take, what is left for us?

This is a good question, but is perhaps too abstract to address well. I think a better question for right now is:

Once AI generates all the wealth it can generate, who benefits from that wealth?

If the answer is a small number of humans, that is probably a dystopia worth resisting.

If the answer is some number of AI agents, but no humans at all, that is probably also a dystopia worth resisting.

I think the only good outcome is one in which humanity benefits on the whole. If that means that we have to become a post-capitalist society in order to share in the wealth, so be it.


Replies

Windchasertoday at 7:24 PM

There was a really neat article here a while back comparing AI to previous tech/industry revolutions.

The article compared market conditions to argue that the current revolution is similar to the shipping container revolution of the '60s-'80s -- with a lot of market interest and no real moat or market leader, high competition drove prices down, kept margins low, and most of the benefits went to the consumer.

This seems like the best case scenario here. AI ends up expensive to train but cheap to copy and run, so we end up with lots of competitors or even just running it in-house. It's cheap to use, so there'll be lots of businesses trying similar AI-driven ideas and pushing prices of their products down for the consumer.

willchistoday at 7:20 PM

> If the answer is a small number of humans, that is probably a dystopia worth resisting.

Have you looked around at the current state of wealth inequality?! The internet (without AI) already did that.