I already answered it in the first comment though. These big clumps of money+power+AI will have convergent instrumental goals in Omohundro’s sense. They’ll want expansion, control, arms races. That’s quite enough motivation for growth.
About the idea of the underclass receiving UBI and having a right to choose their masters—I think this was also covered in the first comment. There will be no UBI and no rights, because the underclass will have no threat potential. Most likely the underclass will be just discarded. Or if some masters want dominance, they’ll get it by force; it’s been like that for most of history.
I think it’s likely that people will be enough of a threat to prevent the kind of outcome you’re proposing, which is why I think this model is interesting. You seem to disagree. Would you agree that that’s the crux of why we disagree?
(I don’t disagree that what you say is possible. I just think it’s not very likely to happen and hence not the “happy” path of my model.)
I don’t know how much time you spend thinking about the distribution of power, roughly speaking between the masses and the money+power clumps. For me in the past few years it’s been a lot. You could call it becoming “woke” in the original sense of the word; this awareness seems to be more a thing on the left. And the more I look, the more I see the balance is tilting away from the masses. AI weapons would be the final nail, but maybe they aren’t even necessary; maybe divide-and-conquer manipulation slightly stronger than today will be already enough to neutralize the threat of the masses completely.
I already answered it in the first comment though. These big clumps of money+power+AI will have convergent instrumental goals in Omohundro’s sense. They’ll want expansion, control, arms races. That’s quite enough motivation for growth.
About the idea of the underclass receiving UBI and having a right to choose their masters—I think this was also covered in the first comment. There will be no UBI and no rights, because the underclass will have no threat potential. Most likely the underclass will be just discarded. Or if some masters want dominance, they’ll get it by force; it’s been like that for most of history.
I think it’s likely that people will be enough of a threat to prevent the kind of outcome you’re proposing, which is why I think this model is interesting. You seem to disagree. Would you agree that that’s the crux of why we disagree?
(I don’t disagree that what you say is possible. I just think it’s not very likely to happen and hence not the “happy” path of my model.)
It’s the crux, yeah.
I don’t know how much time you spend thinking about the distribution of power, roughly speaking between the masses and the money+power clumps. For me in the past few years it’s been a lot. You could call it becoming “woke” in the original sense of the word; this awareness seems to be more a thing on the left. And the more I look, the more I see the balance is tilting away from the masses. AI weapons would be the final nail, but maybe they aren’t even necessary; maybe divide-and-conquer manipulation slightly stronger than today will be already enough to neutralize the threat of the masses completely.