Thank you so much for writing this. It’s truly chilling and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I heard your interview with Ross Douthat. One thing I don’t understand is your analysis of the impacts on jobs, the economy, and taxes. How does so much wealth get generated if many people lose their jobs? Who’s able to buy anything? And where does tax revenue come from (and to pay UBI) if notoriously tax-avoidant tech companies are the only ones left standing?
Insofar as people still have money, they will continue to consume and therefore buy things. Even when they don’t have jobs, they’ll be buying things. Gradually ordinary people will lose purchasing power and maybe die or more likely subsist on handouts (if anything like a market economy is still maintained, that is, which is uncertain). Businesses—and especially subsidiaries of AI conglomerates—will get more of the purchasing power and end up buying and selling from each other a lot.
I wish to emphasize though that the above paragraph probably radically understates the magnitude of the changes ahead. If you want to get a sense of how crazy some of the changes will be, you really have to just read some science fiction. (NOT claiming that science fiction is all or even mostly going to come true—instead that the future is likely going to be crazy enough that the only currently available detailed depictions of aspects of it that are anywhere close to correct, and in particular anywhere close to crazy enough, exist in science fiction. I recommend Permutation City and Friendship is Optimal for this.)
Thank you for sharing your sobering thoughts on this. Hard to focus on anything related to regular life when it all seems so trivial compared to the machines rapidly working toward super intelligence and making us all obsolete.
Thank you so much for writing this. It’s truly chilling and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I heard your interview with Ross Douthat. One thing I don’t understand is your analysis of the impacts on jobs, the economy, and taxes. How does so much wealth get generated if many people lose their jobs? Who’s able to buy anything? And where does tax revenue come from (and to pay UBI) if notoriously tax-avoidant tech companies are the only ones left standing?
Insofar as people still have money, they will continue to consume and therefore buy things. Even when they don’t have jobs, they’ll be buying things. Gradually ordinary people will lose purchasing power and maybe die or more likely subsist on handouts (if anything like a market economy is still maintained, that is, which is uncertain). Businesses—and especially subsidiaries of AI conglomerates—will get more of the purchasing power and end up buying and selling from each other a lot.
I wish to emphasize though that the above paragraph probably radically understates the magnitude of the changes ahead. If you want to get a sense of how crazy some of the changes will be, you really have to just read some science fiction. (NOT claiming that science fiction is all or even mostly going to come true—instead that the future is likely going to be crazy enough that the only currently available detailed depictions of aspects of it that are anywhere close to correct, and in particular anywhere close to crazy enough, exist in science fiction. I recommend Permutation City and Friendship is Optimal for this.)
Thank you for sharing your sobering thoughts on this. Hard to focus on anything related to regular life when it all seems so trivial compared to the machines rapidly working toward super intelligence and making us all obsolete.