Until the machines aren't owned by anyone (or owned by everyone, take your pick on the phrasing), the owners of the machine have no need to keep you alive.
This take is basically "Don't worry, people like Sam Altman are looking out for us"...
These "needs" are sometimes enforced by the systems and government so that people don't stay away from the work and "economy" keeps churning. The housing prices could be a way to keep the people working for loan payments.
Instant foods, nursing homes for elderly, creches, roads, commuter trains - are all ways to have more workers and make them focused on work.
Of course, billionaires have other plans, and are the main obstacle in achieving any sort of social cohesion.
"Work" doesn't exist to keep people busy, it exists to keep them alive.
Even now the machine owners have enough power to change laws to their liking, bending governments and public opinion to their will.
The odd thing is that after the pandemic just showed what societies can enforce, somehow it all is forgotten again when it comes to who holds what power.
What is necessary are pretty basic killer robots with the capability of determining who is a friend and who is a foe. These systems already exist.
Labor is a commodity that has had a diminishing value in our current, capitalist system. That means, people who rely on their labor(most of us) instead of capital(a few), have control over less and less resources(this is already happening).
With the current trend, what generation of your grand children will have nothing at all?
Or perhaps, they stand to benefit?
I have no idea what that means.
> Why does the "world" have that power?
Okay, lets say "the environment". The universe does not care whether you live or die, so why are you so sure that someone will paternalistically care for you?
On what are you basing this viewpoint on?
> Machine owners don't have the power, for example.
That's because the world doesn't care about them either. So why would the world care about you?
If we are just talking about the physical environment then totally fine - a rock doesn't care about me, for example.
Humans tend to care about humans at least in some situations on average, though.
Look, I actually agree: humans do care about humans, on average. The problem is that power tends to concentrate to those who don't care about humans.
When almost all jobs can be replaced by machines, the owners of those machines are unlikely to be much different from Sam Altman and Co. They aren't going to sit down and say "Well, look, we have all the wealth, and means of wealth. Let's give everyone food, shelter, clothing, because our machines can do it".
I don't buy this. Tons of people in the West live on welfare and don't contribute shit to the economy, they are net takers. No one is plotting to kill them, in fact they're (arguably) getting more than they did 50 years ago and definitely more a 100 years ago. We live in democracies, not in a dystopian nightmare and I don't see why A.I is going to change that dynamic. People vote, people control the government, the government controls the armed forces, private citizens are not allowed to gather unregulated weapons... billionaire or no billionaire I don't see how you can beat that. And also, it's not like the billionaire class is some kind of a cohesive group that wants to work together to rule the world - they pretty much compete with and hate each other. I don't think Musk, Altman, Hassabis and Larry and Sergey are all going to agree to work together on "controling the machines" and killing all the other people.
No one said anything about killing.
And people had to fight for it. Through voting, yes, but also through strikes, sometimes riots, and some died for it. People all the world fought and died for the right to strike (basically, the right to refuse to work). For the right to organise as groups. For the right to only work 8 hours a day, for the right to a have a weekly day off. For the right to pay for pensions. For the right to have some sort of health insurance.
All over the world. Some still do. Many still don’t have half those rights.
Now, I don’t know about any billionaires specifically. But welfare didn’t fall from the sky. Or anyone’s good grace. It’s all about leverage.
If in doubt, looking back at the late 1800s and early 1900s work and life conditions across the Western world is enlightening.
I can't wait to be kept in agistment by my overlords, fed on treacle and oats, ridden in circles once a fortnight, and shot when I break a leg.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/United-States-Farm-based...
Luxury horse living during the heyday of working horses and pit ponies, "horse power" wasn't left ideal for a fortnight.
> How many horses do you see now that the world
Personally, a surprising number perhaps, there's a pony club at the top of my street in town, and the area is still littered with horses and other livestock.
This isn't my area, but it's not dissimilar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45623799
Full size image: https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/a26664f6500a7c74...
And what reason do they have for killing everyone else? Where is this abject nonsense even coming from? You can't just assert that the "owners of the machine" are all cartoonishly evil for some unknown reason.
All else being equal, at least Sam Altman et al. aren't constantly making up fantasies about exterminating people.
Who said they would kill everyone else? Since the rest of your strawmanned caricatured argument is a response to an argument never made, there's no point in addressing it.
Who said anything about killing?
But that's neither here nor there, since we're talking about a world with an artificial superintelligence. That's the hypothetical here.