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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

> All the doom scenarios seem to rely on quasi-magical abilities springing from advanced intelligence, but ignore that these scenarios require the AI to have access to significant resources.

No. The doom scenario I'm most concerned with is basically the one from Manna (https://marshallbrain.com/manna), which doesn't require any "quasi-magical" abilities. It's basically taking our current economic system and "fixing the glitch" (from the capitalist's perspective) that forces them to pay our salaries.

That's (a slow) doom for the vast majority of the population, but not for humanity because the wealthy elite would survive.

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Anything that removes the need to pay salaries would have massive impacts on productivity numbers. (I am not arguing that would necessarily be good[1], but it would show up in the economic stats, in line with bglazer's point).

[1] The big brain take behind "necessarily" is that: "no salaries, everything is free" seems cool, "no salaries, a few people hoard all the wealth" seems bad.

> Anything that removes the need to pay salaries would have massive impacts on productivity numbers. (I am not arguing that would necessarily be good[1], but it would show up in the economic stats, in line with bglazer's point).

I agree with that. My point was that not all "doom scenarios" require the kind of "quasi-magical abilities" that he tried to use to dismiss them all.

IMHO, the sci-fi "superintelligent AI sends terminators to kill all the people" doom scenarios are distractions (possibly intentional distractions) from far more plausible doom scenarios.

> [1] The big brain take behind "necessarily" is that: "no salaries, everything is free" seems cool, "no salaries, a few people hoard all the wealth" seems bad.

If the former were plausable, we'd almost be there even without AI, so it's either a fantasy or the work we need to get there is not technological. The latter is basically 2024 but moreso.

Or to put another way, AI can be dangerous even when It's being totally helpful... When it is enabling some of humanity to screw things up for everyone else out of greed or anger.

While I agree with you, have you found anything related to how you would essentially ration goods in a system where AI could provide and everything was free?

> That's (a slow) doom for the vast majority of the population, but not for humanity because the wealthy elite would survive.

People throughout history have replaced the "elite" once the cost to do so became less than the cost (or benefit) to continue on in the status quo. The perceived "doom" would not last very long (in the greater span or sense of time) as it would all be reorganized, yet again. In that case, I am not so sure it's a "doom scenario" but instead something like the natural way of things, or history continuing on. And, maybe even a needed evolution of the species in that case.

Things would have to be "quasi-magical" to play out (for the rest of human eternity) in the way a lot of the AI doom musings point to.

> People throughout history have replaced the "elite" once the cost to do so became less than the cost (or benefit) to continue on in the status quo.

Past performance is not a guarantee of future success. The elite throughout history relied on masses of common people to get anything done (do work, go to war, etc.). AI as-hyped has the potential to upend that long standing dynamic.

The elite aren't going to be replaced if they and the resources they care to protect are ensconced in a 50 mile buffer patrolled by (among other things) drone-swarms that will shove grenades in the face of any unauthorized human that dares enter. That technology is pretty close to reality, as it's basically the Ukraine/Russia front lines with 5-10 more years of drone development.

> Past performance is not a guarantee of future success.

True.

I am still of the belief humans will continue to human. If an uprising of billions vs millions lose, the "elite" would also no longer be "elite".

While I have no data, other than observation, the "elite", imo, need the validation of their status more than those who have none and gave it to them in the first place. If they do something so brash as to rid the world of these unwashed masses, they have no one left to rise above. I don't see them all of a sudden becoming great members of this new society; they wanted to own society, not be a citizen in it. How that wouldn't lead to self-elimination at that point is hard to imagine - thus a needed evolution of the species (even if that's extinction and another hominid group later inheriting the leftover mess)

But no salaries -> no consumption -> no profit for companies. I don't see how that's effective capitalism.

> But no salaries -> no consumption -> no profit for companies.

No, you just need a little more imagination. What would the economy look like if you didn't need employees to utilize resources or undertake projects? Some very mass-market consumer oriented companies would eventually go bankrupt during the transition, but that doesn't mean a doom scenario like I describe can't or won't happen.

> I don't see how that's effective capitalism.

And you know what? The end result of the transition might only vaguely resemble current-day capitalism, and may be more properly understood as a transition to a new economic system.

However, I think it would probably be like our current economy, except with:

* the B2C segment withered mainly to luxury goods of elites (yachts, supercars, elite-level fine dining) and sustaining a much smaller elite-service-focused labor pool;

* B2B being most of what's left of the market; and

* non-market vanity projects taking up a substantial slice of the pie (e.g. Elon Musk using a robot army to build ziggurats to celebrate himself, because why not).

This misunderstands the economy. It's driven by household and government spending. All that B2B stuff happens because some company, somewhere at the end of the chain, sells to households or the government.

Sure, there is also business investment. But that only happens because someone expects to sell to households or the government. If all you are selling is luxury goods, which depend on direct high labor content for their value, then most of the B2B businesses disappear also.

And yes, there are exports. But not at global scale. The globe is closed.

> This misunderstands the economy. It's driven by household and government spending. All that B2B stuff happens because some company, somewhere at the end of the chain, sells to households or the government.

No, I didn't misunderstand it. Let me put it in your terms: the remaining elite become tiny but massively consuming households, and the distinctions between the businesses they control and their households will be blurred (e.g. Blue Origin being wholly owned by Bezos). All the economic actors that cannot provide value to these households will get slowly cut off and wither away, and these elites (collectively) will eventually cement total control over all the valuable resources they have some use for (production capacity, compute, energy, raw materials, etc).

To go back to a question I asked upthread: what would the economy look like if you didn't need employees to utilize resources or undertake projects? What happens when most households aren't competitive at anything economically, but there's still a lot of stuff out there to be owned? My answer is those who own the right things (e.g. AI-run, totally automated, adaptable factories; energy resources) will be able to support themselves indefinitely with them and have massive personal surpluses they then use for vanity projects to keep themselves occupied.

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