What would you say to the idea that other kinds of capital retain value post-AGI? Like land, or mineral rights, or electricity generating capacity? I think those are also unlikely, but I do come across them once in a while.
This seems very difficult to predict to me. Whether assets recorded on paper or digitally retain any meaning post-TAI depends on how well information can be shared, whether the courts continue to function as they did before TAI’s development, and whether power centralises enough for widespread theft to be sustained.
My intuition is that the value of such assets will spike as AI capabilities increase pre-AGI. The labour impacts will push more people afraid of being made unemployed to invest in capital driving up asset prices. Accelerated R&D from AI will presumably result in the discovery of more economically efficient uses of existing resources, driving up the prices of land, minerals, electricity etc. up even more.
Whether capital retains value post-AGI seems to come down to whether you can track your ownership effectively. I’ve written arguing that reality-collapse leads to an effective end to property rights here—https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nFrNEMFi2EwodEXXz/keeping-capital-is-the-challenge. In summary, if digital artefacts become trivial to forge, you may not be able to trace the theft of your assets or seek retribution meaningfully. Capital retains value, but you do not retain your capital.
What would you say to the idea that other kinds of capital retain value post-AGI? Like land, or mineral rights, or electricity generating capacity? I think those are also unlikely, but I do come across them once in a while.
This seems very difficult to predict to me. Whether assets recorded on paper or digitally retain any meaning post-TAI depends on how well information can be shared, whether the courts continue to function as they did before TAI’s development, and whether power centralises enough for widespread theft to be sustained.
My intuition is that the value of such assets will spike as AI capabilities increase pre-AGI. The labour impacts will push more people afraid of being made unemployed to invest in capital driving up asset prices. Accelerated R&D from AI will presumably result in the discovery of more economically efficient uses of existing resources, driving up the prices of land, minerals, electricity etc. up even more.
Whether capital retains value post-AGI seems to come down to whether you can track your ownership effectively. I’ve written arguing that reality-collapse leads to an effective end to property rights here—https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nFrNEMFi2EwodEXXz/keeping-capital-is-the-challenge. In summary, if digital artefacts become trivial to forge, you may not be able to trace the theft of your assets or seek retribution meaningfully. Capital retains value, but you do not retain your capital.