this makes me want to ask: are you tracking the difference between the event “50 of current human jobs are basically automated” and the event “50 of humans are such that it basically does not make sense to employ them”. like, the former has probably happened multiple times in history, whereas the latter is unprecedented. what you’re saying makes more sense to me if you have the former in mind, but we’re talking about the latter (“people being permanently unemployable”)
Yes, I am talking about 50% people being permanently unemployable, i.e., not being capable of doing any labor that someone would pay meaningful amounts for.
It seems to me that the crux between us is something like: I find a very jagged capability, “Moravec-ian” world plausible, i.e., AI can do lots/most of economically valuable stuff competently, with the amount of human oversight small enough to make 50% of humanity permanently unemployable, while still not being “human-level” on all axes and this remaining stable for a few years at least (which also touches on your claim 2, i.e., an AI that could do all this doesn’t yet exist).
But maybe I’m wrong, and you actually need to be way closer to “human-complete” to do all the boring economic tasks, and AI that is not near-human-complete would not be massively deployable to do them with minimal oversight.
I am now more uncertain, so I will somewhat revise my top-level comment.
Yes, I am talking about 50% people being permanently unemployable, i.e., not being capable of doing any labor that someone would pay meaningful amounts for.
It seems to me that the crux between us is something like: I find a very jagged capability, “Moravec-ian” world plausible, i.e., AI can do lots/most of economically valuable stuff competently, with the amount of human oversight small enough to make 50% of humanity permanently unemployable, while still not being “human-level” on all axes and this remaining stable for a few years at least (which also touches on your claim 2, i.e., an AI that could do all this doesn’t yet exist).
But maybe I’m wrong, and you actually need to be way closer to “human-complete” to do all the boring economic tasks, and AI that is not near-human-complete would not be massively deployable to do them with minimal oversight.
I am now more uncertain, so I will somewhat revise my top-level comment.