“guarantee” is certainly excessive, but the argument is that the US federal government is controlled by the US general public (“us”) and thus will not allow severe degradation of the lives of that public.
To put this more concretely, the idea is a sovereign wealth fund. The comparison is made to Norway. Is Norway’s wealth fund accomplishing this goal? Well, returns are used to help fund the annual budgets, and the budgets mostly benefit the people, so at least to some extent yes. Not prima facie unreasonable then?
As much as we may be skeptical of the US federal government’s wisdom, or indeed the idea that anyone other than AI itself may capture the lion’s share of value in the end, I think it is preferable that ownership of AGI not be heavily concentrated nor fully private.[1][2]
Even if private charity from AGI/ASI owners pulls through and the erstwhile permanent underclass all get their own moons, I still think at least some shared ownership is worthwhile, both to avoid concentration of power and also to maintain human dignity. Obviously the US-centric nature of Senator Sanders’ proposal doesn’t solve this for most of humanity, but I think it’s still, as they say, directionally correct.
the argument is that the US federal government is controlled by the US general public (“us”)
I find this breathtakingly naive, especially given the regime most recently voted in by the US general public. I certainly wouldn’t expect better of any government than the current leaders of the major AI companies, and in fact, considerably worse.
Politics warning:
The Trumpists will bleed the goose to line their own pockets, while the Dems (if they ever get back in) will wring its neck for having the effrontery to be laying golden eggs without their permission.
I agree there’s a substantial chance that any government would perform worse than the current leaders of major AI companies in the short term, esp. navigating the transition into widespread AGI or ASI. But once we reach a stable state, I’d rather have some kind of ownership/legitimized feedback mechanism available to humanity at large, and that may be more likely if there isn’t narrow private ownership of AGI/ASI beforehand. (Democratic republics are, as the saying goes, the worst solution for maintaining the common good, except for all the other ones we’ve tried. Obviously actually good solutions rely on AGI/ASI just coming up with something better, but it would be kind of nice if we could then accept that idea democratically...)
“guarantee” is certainly excessive, but the argument is that the US federal government is controlled by the US general public (“us”) and thus will not allow severe degradation of the lives of that public.
To put this more concretely, the idea is a sovereign wealth fund. The comparison is made to Norway. Is Norway’s wealth fund accomplishing this goal? Well, returns are used to help fund the annual budgets, and the budgets mostly benefit the people, so at least to some extent yes. Not prima facie unreasonable then?
As much as we may be skeptical of the US federal government’s wisdom, or indeed the idea that anyone other than AI itself may capture the lion’s share of value in the end, I think it is preferable that ownership of AGI not be heavily concentrated nor fully private.[1][2]
Technically, an aligned ASI not “owned” by anyone is probably better, but we could posit that this is mostly for the post-AGI, pre-ASI phase.
Even if private charity from AGI/ASI owners pulls through and the erstwhile permanent underclass all get their own moons, I still think at least some shared ownership is worthwhile, both to avoid concentration of power and also to maintain human dignity. Obviously the US-centric nature of Senator Sanders’ proposal doesn’t solve this for most of humanity, but I think it’s still, as they say, directionally correct.
I find this breathtakingly naive, especially given the regime most recently voted in by the US general public. I certainly wouldn’t expect better of any government than the current leaders of the major AI companies, and in fact, considerably worse.
Politics warning:
The Trumpists will bleed the goose to line their own pockets, while the Dems (if they ever get back in) will wring its neck for having the effrontery to be laying golden eggs without their permission.
I agree there’s a substantial chance that any government would perform worse than the current leaders of major AI companies in the short term, esp. navigating the transition into widespread AGI or ASI. But once we reach a stable state, I’d rather have some kind of ownership/legitimized feedback mechanism available to humanity at large, and that may be more likely if there isn’t narrow private ownership of AGI/ASI beforehand. (Democratic republics are, as the saying goes, the worst solution for maintaining the common good, except for all the other ones we’ve tried. Obviously actually good solutions rely on AGI/ASI just coming up with something better, but it would be kind of nice if we could then accept that idea democratically...)