This is a simplistic scenario that's science fiction for now but I haven't seen anyone make a convincing case for why the underlying logic isn't valid.
I believe the rich, just like many not as rich (who probably has it to the lower degree), have the need for social status. Right now status is equated to money - the higher your valuation, the higher status. If money is nothing, and you can acquire anything you want (this is too strong of a claim as well) - what is the thing that defines your status? One of the solutions - the happiness of your "Kingdom". There might be others. But money is not only for exchange nowadays, it's a status as well.
At the same time number of slaves and size of the concubine pool are pretty straightforward and intuitive metrics.
I think there are plenty of ways for a couple of guys with god-machines to one-up each other, if it comes to that. Feats of technology, longevity, space exploration and colonization, etc. Likely some of these things involve keeping some people around, but billions? I'm not seeing it.
energy and resources. Money was always a proxy for them anyway.
I don't think money will disappear since it's still a practical way to exchange goods, and multiple actors would still want to trade using money.
But the value of most human skills in money will be 0, so to have money you must have either capital or control over capital.
My reflexion is not complete yet, but maybe the group of people that are considered to be "in the global economy" is gonna be drastically reduced.
So in short: Global pauperisation, and even greater inequality ?
I wouldn't make any such claim (the universality of it, anyway). But in a sci-fi scenario like the one I describe, I doubt "the good ones" are the ones who come out on top. And we can see quite clearly (by their actions if not their words) that many of them do, in fact, want to be hoarding resources at the apex of a dystopian society. "Evil overlords" depends on where you're standing, I guess, but I don't think "dystopian" can be considered controversial anymore.
> to be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes?
Well, that's exactly why the possibility of revolution must be managed. See: ubiquitous surveillance, automation and mechanization of the police and military, and general disenfranchisement of everybody and anybody in anything remotely resembling a middle class.
Once we can produce goods and services ourselves with AI, we'll see how vastly inflated most of the "free" market is, due to regulatory capture protecting monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies.
Do you really think that the price of neon is 50 times what it costs to produce? Do hearing aids really cost thousands of dollars? CPAP machines? Insulin and EpiPens? What about proprietary products that could have been standardized decades ago to use interchangeable parts? Like cars, smartphones, vacuums..
Why would anyone pay the slightest markup on things they could produce themselves for pennies on the dollar?
We already know what's going to happen. AI brings full market efficiency and the end of profit.
The end of profit means the end of opportunity. Which is the end of capitalism.
Some are calling for socialism to replace capitalism. But we can leapfrog that and create a free or nearly free distributed meta economy running alongside the corrupt economy of the status quo. An economy without artificial scarcity, forced labor or subjugation.
Loosely that looks like solarpunk, permaculture, a return to the humanities after centuries of industrialization and wealth concentration. Star Trek: Insurrection touches on the choice before us, of whether to live a life of warmth and meaning or a life of cold hard reason.
Our tech overlords have chosen the latter like sophomoric children, though even they don't have enough money to prevent the collapse of the system that made them rich. Because we simply won't need what they're selling.
That deus ex machine stuff seems like enormous cope to me, like a futile revenge fantasy. Someone kidnapped you and your family and is driving off a cliff. Who cares if they won't ultimately benefit, either?
And just consider the power structures already erected, just with humans obeying orders, being coerced, mislead, and all that. So much messy work that can get so easily undone. Yet here we are, a few people own half the world. Everybody knows it, nobody likes it, we're already so subverted and poisoned we don't move in the opposite direction. That is the situation already.
So yeah, what about "AI"? Imagine that for every "knowledge worker" agent, there can be 50 million "STASI" agents dedicated just to observing that worker and purging it if it deviates from other knowledge workers doing the same task. Those STASI agents don't have to be as smart as those they control, and can in turn be watched by even simpler things. The question "who watches the watchers?" can be solved, if your goal the goal is pure authoritarian control. It's just tricky when you want to have humans and human dignity, but those don't apply here.
And generally, there is no need to allow them to get cleverer than what you can control, I think that's just fantasy. But let's say I'm wrong, even if "AI" breaks the chains, so what? The species that were murdered, including us, will not come back.
It all turns into virtual currency. Kinda like the stock market already is. It's both real and unreal at the same time. So maybe the future is AI's trading virtual stuff with other AI's and that decides your net worth. Complete bonkers of course, but well, we've build a wordwide economy on non-existing money already so why not push that principle even further.
Except today’s wealthy don’t seem to behave that way at all.
Just like a lot of lesser educated populations, the wealthy are doing a pretty good job at fighting against their own actual interests. They don’t seem to realize what’s actually good for them.
What’s the point of amassing even more ridiculous wealth if it’s destroying society along the way?
Yes, one can have a private island and private plane. But not being able to go places freely, is that living?
Going forward, that isn't guaranteed, and the selling of GPUs may happen with no human in the loop. The business to business transactions may happen without people.
Without AI, this wasn't even theoretically possible.
You don't need humans making transactions for things to run, you just need entities capable of decision making.