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Comment by simianwords | Hacker News Reader

This comment naively believes in zero sum creation of wealth.

Wealth is not taken from our consumers and given to Sam Altman. Sam and his company are creating wealth - increasing the pie.

Of course it benefits everyone while also benefiting them.

Wealth need not be redistributed to improve lives. Just the mere invention of ChatGPT and letting people purchase it and use it is enough to improve people’s lives. Redistribution does not solve any poverty problem other than transfer power.

Sam redistributing money will not sustainably change anything about prosperity or poverty.

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You're talking about normal technological developments that yes generally follow Econ 101 patterns. But AGI isn't like that. If AGI or something like it comes about it won't be a normal technology. The upside case for investors is that frontier models eliminate millions of jobs and remain controlled by a small group of owners. That's why they are investing sums unprecedented in human history. If all white collar work and an increasing amount of blue collar work is supplanted by AI how do those masses of newly unemployed folks make a living without wealth redistribution?

If AI capability plateaus and ends up as a normal technological development then I agree with you that it will mostly work out for the best. But that's not the scenario I'm worried about and plenty of folks in the industry are warning that's not the most likely path at this point.

I might agree with you on this edge case. I don’t believe we will reach that soon.

But interestingly, people who are against AI tend to also believe that they genuinely can’t replace anyone.

> This comment naively believes in zero sum creation of wealth.

As long as we're in a capitalist society, wealth is certainly zero-sum.

Every technological advancement that made jobs easier just allows corporations to increase their margins or increase the workload. If I automate some of my work and now only need to work 20 hours/week, I don't get 20 more hours/week of free time, I'm just given more work to do.

If someone gets completely automated out of their job, they don't get to relax and enjoy free time. They have to find a new job to pay the bills. With more and more people getting automated out of a job, UBI will become a necessity. We will need to increase taxes on corporations to fund it.

So far prices have generally gone up, which indicates the pie available is scarcer.

I am looking forward to the day where more electricity, electronics, food, and housing are produced thanks to AI; but in the mid-term it feels like an AI bubble pop would do more to bring the price back down.

Qualitatively, I now have access to ChatGPT.

How much do you think you would have paid for such a tool in 2010? and we are getting it almost for free.

For how much longer?

its only going to get cheaper.

Not for a while.

The AI companies are hemorrhaging money. The hardware to run these models is not cheap, nor is the costs for electricity and water to run and cool it.

While ChatGPT is a partial substitution for a college education, it doesn't satisfy the other needs I listed. I do think in the long term we'll get there, but the current situation matters.

Great, you have access to a hallucinating chat bot. The rest of us are losing access to basic computing and entertainment thanks to skyrocketing prices so that these companies can create more refined bots for you to chat with.

Claiming that wealth isn't zero sum, and demanding people have faith in the US system of capitalism, is not reassuring.

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