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Comment by Nathanba | Hacker News Reader

People have political power ultimately because they have military and economic power. That would potentially change if politicians have artificial people under their control that can patrol the streets and enforce any law they want and man the factories.

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I think the idea that this will come from the politicians and government is misguided.

This will come from the capitalist system, businesses will be driving the obsolescence of humans, not governments.

Once the owners of the means of productions don't need humans in their workforce, what value to they bring?

It will be much harder to "revolt" against capitalism/businesses than a central government.

And the biggest danger here, is it means the end of the capitalist system as the best way to increase living standards. If capitalism doesn't work as a means of redistribution anymore, because humans have been devalued, what economic model can replace it and be as successful?

We're re-entering an era where economic systems are all going to favor a few classes, and impoverish the rest.

>This will come from the capitalist system, businesses will be driving the obsolescence of humans,

what's the point of owning the factories if there is no one to buy the crap you produce? they need us more than we need them, at least until they have their own spaceships with AI and robots to fluff their balls for them.

Numbers still go up for whatever human sits at the top, that's the demand. But the general principle of demand and supply exists even among AI internally. AI trading bots are their own economy, it would be the same for intelligent robot factories. They will have demand for things no different from a human that has a demand for food, robots need to be repaired, maintained. They will produce whatever they were told to produce. This is even without any human or human level intelligence involved. Once robots are truly as intelligent as humans they can even have entirely fanciful demands like buying cards or flowers.

> what's the point of owning the factories if there is no one to buy the crap you produce

You produce things you yourself want to consume. Why produce things for others if they have nothing you need?

The only reason there is a need to sell to workers today is so you can pay them a salary to work in your factories, and then take a portion of that for yourself. When you don't need workers you don't need to sell to workers, you just take the entire output for yourself.

Edit: If you can't imagine how someone could consume that much, then think of a golf enthusiast so he tells his AI factories and builders to prepare new golf courses at the same rate he can finish them, so he can play gold all day long and never replay a course.

Basically production will become almost 100% luxury focused instead of median consumer focused like it is today.

Most everything produced today is a luxury. Compare the contents of your home with that of one 300 years ago.

There are 400 million guns in America. The citizen's military power is not going anywhere.

In relation to artificial robotic power it will go down

You think the government is going to create an ai military to kill millions of civilians without being overthrown by the other hundreds of millions of armed civilians in this country?

This is ironically a simple issue of demographics. Whether the biological humans like it or not there will be a larger demographic of artificial entities that do more of the economic and military work and therefore will have more weight in all things political.

I think the question is more, will there be a country somewhere that emerges as an AI/robotic super power.

You shouldn't just be worried of your own government here.

And the other issue is, why would the post-revolt government/businesses abandon AI/robotics?

The truth is, this won't happen over night. People will have less work over time, be paid less and less, the gap between classes will grow bigger, etc.

I guess another way to put it, take a country like India with lots of unemployment and high corruption, I don't think if they had guns they'd all revolt. You have to believe there's a point to revolting, an alternative that's better and worth the risk.

Maybe we’ll need to have a real life Butlerian Jihad.

The citizens will have artificial robots too. Or do you think there's some reason why AI shouldn't be protected by the second amendment? Either AI can be weaponized - in which case it's protected by the second amendment - or it can't, in which case there isn't a threat from it in the first place.

I'm not ideologically opposed to what I think you're saying, but it is actually the case that many weapons are not allowed to be owned regardless of the second amendment. Nuclear weapons, for example. It doesn't matter if you build it entirely yourself using completely novel processes not owned by anyone, and acquired all inputs legally, it is still 100% illegal for a private citizen to own a nuclear weapon.

There is no legal reason why AIs couldn't be governed under the same principle.

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