I have this line of thought as well but then I wonder, if we are all out of jobs and out of substantial capital to spend, how do these owners make money ultimately? It's a genuine question and I'm probably missing something obvious. I can see a benevolant/post-scarcity spin to this but the non-benevolant one seems self defeating.
"Making money" is only a relevant goal when you need money to persuade humans to do things for you.
Once you have an army of robot slaves ... you've rendered the whole concept of money irrelevant. Your skynet just barters rare earth metals with other skynets and your robot slaves furnish your desired lifestyle as best they can given the amount of rare earth metals your skynet can get its hands on. Or maybe a better skynet / slave army kills your skynet / slave army, but tough tits, sucks to be you and rules to be whoever's skynet killed yours.
That's part of the "rare earth metals" synecdoche - hydroelectric dams, thorium mines, great lakes heat sinks - they're all things for skynets to kill or barter for as expedient
I don’t think you’re missing anything, I think the plan really is to burn it all down and rule over the ashes. The old saw “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” works in reverse too. This is a foolish, shortsighted thing to do, and they’re doing it anyway. Not really thinking about where value actually comes from or what their grandchildren’s lives would be like in such a world.
Capitalism is an unthinking, unfeeling force. The writing is on the wall that AI is coming, and being altruistic about it doesn’t do jack to keep others from the land grab. Their thinking is, might as well join the rush and hope they’re one of the winners. Every one of us sitting on the sidelines will be impacted in some way or the other. So who’re the smart ones, the ones who grab shovels and start digging, or the ones who watch as the others dig their graves and do nothing?
Sure, maybe in 50 years. At the moment, it's a productivity tool. Strangely, by the look of the down votes, the HN community doesn't quite understand this.
Job market is formed by the presence of needs and the presence of the ability to satisfy them. AI - does not reduce the ability to satisfy needs, so only possible situation where you won't be able to compete - is either the socialists will seize power and ban competition, or all the needs will be met in some other ways. In any other situation - there will be job market and the people will compete in it
> there will be job market and the people will compete in it
maybe there will be. I'm sure there also is a market for Walkman somewhere, its just exceedingly small.
The proclaimed goal is to displace workers on a grand scale. This is basically the vision of any AI company and literally the only way you could even remotely justify their valuations given the heavy losses they incur right now.
> Job market is formed by the presence of needs and the presence of the ability to satisfy them
The needs of a job market are largely shaped by the overall economy. Many industrial nations are largely service based economies with a lot of white collar jobs in particular. These white collar jobs are generally easier to replace with AI than blue collar jobs because you don't have to deal with pesky things like the real, physical world. The problem is: if white collar workers are kicked out of their jobs en masse, it also negatively affects the "value" of the remaining people with employment (exhibit A: tech job marker right now).
> is either the socialists will seize power and ban competition,
I am really having a hard time understanding where this obsession with mythical socialism comes from. The reality we live in is largely capitalistic and a striving towards a monopoly - i.e. a lack of competition - is basically the entire purpose of a corporation, which is only kept in check by government regulations.
>The proclaimed goal is to displace workers on a grand scale.
It doesn't matter. What you need to understand - is that in the source of the job market is needs, ability to meet those needs and ability to exchanges those ability on one another. And nothing of those are hindered by AI.
>Many industrial nations are largely service based economies with a lot of white collar jobs in particular.
Again: in the end of the day it doesn't change anything. In the end of the day you need a cooked dinner, a built house and everything else. So someone must build a house and exchange it for a cooked dinners. That's what happening (white collar workers and international trade balance included) and that's what job market is. AI doesn't changes the nature of those relationship. Maybe it replace white collar workers, maybe even almost all of them - that's only mean that they will go to satisfy another unsatisfied needs of other people in exchange for satisfying their own, job marker won't go anywhere, if anything - amount of satisfied needs will go up, not down.
>if white collar workers are kicked out of their jobs en masse, it also negatively affects the "value" of the remaining people with employment
No, it doesn't. I mean it does if they would be simply kicked out, but that's not the case - they would be replaced by AI. So the society get all the benefits that they were creating plus additional labor force to satisfy earlier unsatisfied needs.
>exhibit A: tech job marker right now
I don't have the stats at hand, but aren't blue collar workers doing better now than ever before?
>I am really having a hard time understanding where this obsession with mythical socialism comes from
From the history of the 20th century? I mean not obsession, but we we are discussing scenarios of the disappearance (or significant decrease) of the job market, and the socialists are the most (if not only) realistic reason for that at the moment.
>The reality we live in is largely capitalistic and a striving towards a monopoly
Yeas, and this monopoly, the monopoly, are called "socialism".
>corporation, which is only kept in check by government regulations.
Generally corporation kept in check by economic freedom of other economic agents, and this government regulations that protects monopolies from free market. I mean why would government regulate in other direction? Small amount of big corporations are way easier for government to control and get personal benefits from them.
> In the end of the day you need a cooked dinner, a built house and everything else. So someone must build a house and exchange it for a cooked dinners.
You should read some history.This veiw is so naive and overconfident.
My views on this issue are shaped by history. Starting with crop production and plowing and ending with book printing, conveyor belts and microelectronics - creating tools that increase productivity has always led to increased availability of goods, and the only reason that has lead to decreased availability - is things that has hindered ability to create and exchange goods.
I started a borderline smug response here pointing out how bullshit white collar and service jobs* where in deep shit but folks who actually work for a living would be fine. I scrapped it halfway through when it occurred to me that if everyone's broke then by definition nobody's spending money on stuff like contractors, mechanics, and other hardcore blue collar trades. Toss in AI's force multiplication of power demands in the face of all of the current issues around global warming and it starts to feel like pursuing this tech is fractally stupid and the best evidence to date I've seen that a neo-luddite movement might actually be a thing the world could benefit from. That last part is a pretty wild thought coming from a retired developer who spent the bulk of his adult life in IT, but here we are.
Neo-Luddism is less stupid when you remember that the Luddites weren't angry that looms existed. Smashing looms was their tactic, not their goal.
Parliament had made a law phasing in the introduction of automated looms; specifically so that existing weavers were first on the list to get one. Britain's oligarchy completely ignored this and bought or built looms anyway; and because Parliament is part of that oligarchy, the law effectively turned into "weavers get looms last". That's why they were smashing looms - to bring the oligarchy back to the negotiating table.
The oligarchy responded the way all violent thugs do: killing their detractors and lying about their motives.
>if everyone's broke
>nobody's spending money on stuff like contractors, mechanics, and other hardcore blue collar trades.
Why would this happen? Money is simply a medium of exchange of values that this contractors, mechanics and other hardcore blue collar trades are creating. How can they be broke, if Ai doesn't disturb their ability to create values and exchange it?
Customers that have funds available to purchase the services you offer and who are willing to actually spend that money are a hard requirement to maintain any business. If white collar and service industries are significantly disrupted by AI this necessarily reduces the number of potential customers. Thing is you don't have to lay off that many people to bankrupt half of the contractors in the country, a decent 3-5 year recession is all it takes. Folks stop spending on renovations and maintenance work when they're worried about their next paycheck.
Money mean nothing. It is simply medium of exchange. The question is, is there anything to exchange? And the answer is yeas, and position of white collar workers doesn't affect availability of things for exchange. There's no reason for recession, there is nothing that can hinder ability of blue collar workers to create goods and services, all that things that when combined is called "wealth".
Don't think in the meaningless category of "what set of digits will be printed in the piece of paper called paycheck?". Think in the terms, that are implied: "What goods and services blue collar workers can't afford to themselves?". And it will become clear that the set of unaffordable goods and services to blue collar workers will decrease because of the replacement white collar workers with AI, because it is not hinder their ability to create those goods and services.
You think so? Give me the contents of your checking, savings, and retirement accounts and then get back to me on that.
> position of white collar workers doesn't affect availability of things for exchange.
You appear to be confused about the concept of consumers, let me help. Consumers are the people who buy things. When there are fewer consumers in a market, demand for products and services declines. This means less sales. So no, you don't get to unemploy big chunks of the population and expect business to continue thriving.
>When there are fewer consumers in a market, demand for products and services declines.
No, demand is unlimited and defined by the amount of production.
>You don't get to unemploy big chunks of the population and expect business to continue thriving.
I mean, generally replaced worker with the instruments - is the main way to business (and society) to thrive. In other words, what goods and services will became less affordable to the blue collar workers?
When ~white collar [researchers, programmers, managers, salespeople, translators, illustrators, ...] lose their income/jobs to AI's -> lose their ability to buy products/services and at the same time try to shift in mass to doing some kind of manual work, do you think that would not affect incomes of those who are the current blue collar class?
I mean yeas, values of consumed goods will decrease, so blue color workers will be able to consume more. That's exactly what is called increase of income.
My gut is telling me you're being intentionally obtuse but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. To reiterate in detail:
AI is poised to disrupt large swaths of the workforce. If large swaths of the workforce are disrupted this necessarily means a bunch of people will see their income negatively impacted (job got replaced by AI). Broke people by definition don't have money to spend on things, and will prioritize tier one of Maslow's Hierarchy out of necessity. Since shit like pergolas and oil changes are not directly on tier 1 they will be deprioritized. This in turn cuts business to blue collar service providers. Net result: everyone who isn't running an AI company or controlling some currently undefined minimum amount of capital is fucked.
If you're trying to suggest that any notional increases in productivity created by AI will in any way benefit working class individuals either individually or as a group you are off the edge of the map economically speaking. Historical precedents and observed executive tier depravity both suggest any increase in productivity will be used as an excuse to cut labor costs.
>This in turn cuts business to blue collar service providers.
No, it doesn't. Where's that is come from?
I mean, look at the situation from the perspective of blue collar service providers: what is exactly those goods and services, that they was be able to afford for themselves, but AI will make it unaffordable for them? Pretty obviously, that there's about none of those goods and services. So, in big picture, all that process that you described, doesn't lead to any disadvantage of blue collar workers.
I literally described the mechanism to you twice and you're still acting confused. I'm not sure if we have a language barrier here or what but go check out a Khan Academy course on economics or maybe try running a lemonade stand for an afternoon if you still don't get it.
I think the obvious thing you are missing is just b2b. It doesn’t actually matter if people have any money.
Similar to how advertising and legal services are required for everything but have ambiguous ROI at best, AI is set to become a major “cost of doing business“ tax everywhere. Large corporations welcome this even if it’s useless, because it drags down smaller competitors and digs a deeper moat.
Executives large and small mostly have one thing in common though.. they have nothing but contempt for both their customers and their employees, and would much rather play the mergers and acquisitions type of games than do any real work in their industry (which is how we end up in a world where the doors are flying off airplanes mid flight). Either they consolidate power by getting bigger or they get a cushy exit, so.. who cares about any other kind of collateral damage?
Money is a proxy for control. Eventually humans will become mostly redundant and slated for elimination except for the chosenites of the managerial classes and a small number of technicians. Either through biological agents, famines, carefully engineered (civil?) wars and conflicts designed to only exterminate the non-managerial classes, or engineered Calhounian behavioral sinks to tank fertility rates below replacement.
Why should we care if they make money? Owning things isn't a contribution to society.
Building things IS a contribution to society, but the people who build things typically aren't the ultimate owners. And even in cases where the builders and owners are the same, entitling the builders and all of their future heirs to rent seek for the rest of eternity is an inordinate reward.
You don't. It's like Minecraft. You can do almost everything in Minecraft alone and everything exists in infinite quantity, so why trade in the first place?
This goes both ways. Let's say there is something you want but you're having trouble obtaining it. You'd need to give something in exchange.
But the seller of what you want doesn't need the things you can easily acquire, because they can get those things just as easily themselves.
The economy collapses back into self sufficiency. That's why most Minecraft economy servers start stagnating and die.
What people say is not the same as what people do.. in other words, what is spoken in public repeatedly is not representational of actual decision flows
Money is only a bookkeeping tool for complex societies. The aim of the owner class in a worker-less world would be accumulation of important resources to improve their lives and to trade with other owners (money would likely still be used for bookkeeping here). A wealthy resource-owner might strive to maintain a large zone of land, defended by AI weaponry, that contains various industrial/agricultural facilities producing goods and services via AI.
They would use some of the goods/services produced themselves, and also trade with other owners to live happy lives with everything they need, no workers involved.
Non-owners may let the jobless working class inhabit unwanted land, until they change their minds.
With what and against what? There will be spy satellites and drones and automated turrets that will turn you to pulp if you come within, say, 50KM of their compound borders.
The non-benevolent future is not self-defeating; we have historical examples of depressingly stable economies with highly concentrated ownership. The entirety of the European dark ages was the end result of (western[0]) Rome's elites tearing the planks out of the hull of the ship they were sailing. The consequence of such a system is economic stagnation, but that's not a consequence that the elites have to deal with. After all, they're going to be living in the lap of luxury, who cares if the economy stagnates?
This economic relationship can be collectively[1] described as "feudalism". This is a system in which:
- The vast majority of people are obligated to perform menial labor, i.e. peasant farmers.
- Class mobility is forbidden by law and ownership predominantly stays within families.
- The vast majority of wealth in the economy is in the form of rents paid to owners.
We often use the word "capitalist" to describe all businesses, but that's a modern simplification. Businesses can absolutely engage in feudalist economies just as well, or better, than they can engage in capitalist ones. The key difference is that, under capitalism, businesses have to provide goods or services that people are willing to pay for. Feudalism makes no such demand; your business is just renting out a thing you own.
Assuming AI does what it says on the tin (which isn't at all obvious), the endgame of AI automation is an economy of roughly fifty elite oligarchs who own the software to make the robots that do all work. They will be in a constant state of cold war, having to pay their competitors for access to the work they need done, with periodic wars (kinetic, cyber, legal, whatever) being fought whenever a company intrudes upon another's labor-enclave.
The question of "well, who pays for the robots" misunderstands what money is ultimately for. Money is a token that tracks tax payments for coercive states. It is minted specifically to fund wars of conquest; you pay your soldiers in tax tokens so the people they conquer will have to barter for money to pay the tax collector with[2]. But this logic assumes your soldiers are engaging in a voluntary exchange. If your 'soldiers' are killer robots that won't say no and only demand payment in energy and ammunition, then you don't need money. You just need to seize critical energy and mineral reserves that can be harvested to make more robots.
So far, AI companies have been talking of first-order effects like mass unemployment and hand-waving about UBI to fix it. On a surface level, UBI sounds a lot like the law necessary to make all this AI nonsense palatable. Sam Altman even paid to have a study done on UBI, and the results were... not great. Everyone who got money saw real declines in their net worth. Capital-c Conservative types will get a big stiffy from the finding that UBI did lead people to work less, but that's only part of the story. UBI as promoted by AI companies is bribing the peasants. In the world where the AI companies win, what is the economic or political restraining bolt stopping the AI companies from just dialing the UBI back and keeping more of the resources for themselves once traditional employment is scaled back? Like, at that point, they already own all the resources and the means of production. What makes them share?
[0] Depending on your definition of institutional continuity - i.e. whether or not Istanbul is still Constantinople - you could argue the Roman Empire survived until WWI.
[1] Insamuch as the complicated and ideosyncratic economic relationships of medieval Europe could even be summed up in one word.
[2] Ransomware vendors accidentally did this, establishing Bitcoin (and a few other cryptos) as money by demanding it as payment for a data ransom.
