alt Hacker NewsI think this analogy breaks down when considering that the agricultural revolution gave regular people more time to demand new things, but also more time to produce new things, and thus maintained or even increased their economic leverage
> My inability to produce food is economically almost irrelevant. What matters is that I can consume it, enjoy it, develop tastes for it, and devote my energies to other things.
What the author misses is that what mattered more was that people could now produce more things. People were free from manual labour to perform intellectual labour. But what do people do to produce things when intellectual labour is automated? And with emboddied AI, skilled manual labour too?
You need to produce things to be able to reap the fruits of economic progress. Thats what most working people did after the agricultural revolution. What will we produce in a post AI world? And if only the people who own AI will be able to produce things, then why would they give us any power or leverage in the economy?
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I suspect the author would respond with some form of "displaced people without capital will take on roles in the relational economy, or as human liability for the robots." I agree the material leverage of such jobs seems radically diminished.
> And if only the people who own AI will be able to produce things, then why would they give us any power or leverage in the economy?
Nailed it! It’s a too powerful resource to be privately held.
I think you did not read the post, or else missed its point entirely. VGR speaks directly to the induced demand of greater access to intelligence, namely, that people may redouble their efforts given that now so many more things are within reach with the aid of AI.
Surely it will also free people up to apply their intelligence (or stupidity) towards other things.
It's concerning because there is already way too much 'intelligence' in this society and most of it is used to propagate falsehoods, irrationality and to manipulate others in counter-productive ways. I hope AI educates people and doesn't merely steer them down deeper into their echo-chambers. That said, I also really hope that AI doesn't just bring everyone into alignment and agreement about ideas which aren't true. There are significant threats with both extremes.
Well, regarding manual labour. Putting aisde the "is working with AI drying out your brain" discussion... Quite frankly, even fast touch-typists like me will never outpace an LLM write a few obvious functions... Isn't that also more or less the same thing as being freed of manual labour. How much of the thinking/design process your outsource to your LLM is a totally different discussion. See vibe-coding vs "pair" programming. But all that aside, I very much feel like LLMs are pretty much saving me a lot of manual typing.
>But what do people do to produce things when intellectual labour is automated?
They do what AI can't do, entrepreneurialism, because AI doesn't have property rights. Like back to the 1800s when most Americans were self-employed, not working for large corporations, because corporate cog-in-the-machine work can be done better by AI. With AI it's far easier to run your own business than at any time in history.
150IQ comment
While somewhat controversial, a different perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
Modern concepts of "work" and how we relate to work are quite new and it's just an assumption that we're "on the right path."