Yes, the proximate issue is that basically no animals have rights/ownership of their bodies, but my claim is also that there is no real incentive for human civilization to include animals in our system of property rights without value alignment, and that’s due to most non-humans simply being unable to resist their land being taken, and also that their labor is not valuable, but their land is.
There is an incentive to create a police force to stop humans from stealing/harming other humans that don’t rely on value alignment, but there is no such incentive to do so to protect non-humans without value alignment.
And once our labor is useless and the AI civilization is completely independent of us, the incentives to keep us into a system of property rights don’t exist anymore, for the same reason why we don’t keep animals into our system of property rights (assuming AI alignment doesn’t happen).
once our labor is useless and the AI civilization is completely independent of us, the incentives to keep us into a system of property rights don’t exist anymore
the same is true of e.g. pensioners or disabled people or even just rich people who don’t do any work and just live off capital gains.
Why does the property rights system not just completely dispossess anyone who is not in fact going to work?
Because humans anticipate becoming old and feeble, and would prefer not to be disenfranchised once that happens.
Because people who don’t work often have relatives that do work that care about them. The Nazis actually tried this, and got pushback from families when they did try to kill people with severe mental illness and other disabilities.
As a matter of historical fact, there are lots of examples of certain groups of people being systematically excluded from having property rights, such as chattel slavery, coverture, and unemancipated minors.
As a matter of historical fact, there are lots of examples of certain groups of people being systematically excluded from having property rights
yes. And so what matters is whether or not you, I or any given entity is or is not excluded from property rights.
It doesn’t really matter how wizzy and flashy and super AI is. All of the variance in outcomes, at least to the downside, is determined by property rights.
First, the rich people who live off of capital gains might not be disempowered, assuming the AI is aligned to the original owners, assuming AI is aligned to the property rights of existing owners, since they own the AIs.
But to answer the question on why does the property rights system not just completely dispossess anyone who is not in fact going to work today, I have a couple of answers.
I also agree with @CronoDAS, but I’m attempting to identify the upper/meta-level reasons here.
Number 1 is that technological development fundamentally wasn’t orgothonal, and it turned out that in order for a nation to become powerful, you had to empower the citizens as well.
The Internet is a plausible counterexample, but even then it’s developed in democracies.
Or putting it pithily, something like liberal democracy was necessary to make nations more powerful, and once you have some amount of liberalism/democracy, it’s game-theoretically favored to have more democracy and liberalism:
This is also the reason why the “more” democratic a nation gets the more it tends to support civil rights and civil liberties. The closer a nation gets to a true democracy, run indirectly by the majority coalition, the more that majority coalition will vote and organize for the tools and means to monitor (and potentially insurrect against) the rogue agents inside its government that want to take power from that majority coalition and give it to some other group. Civil liberties are not just some cultural artifact, present in some countries that “want to fight for them” and not in others; they’re also the expression of the majority coalition’s will to rule.
My second answer to this question is that in the modern era, moderate redistribution actually helps the economy, but extreme redistribution both is counterproductive and unnecessary, unlike ancient and post-AGI societies, and this means there’s an incentive outside of values to actually give most people what they need to survive.
My third answer is that currently, no human is able to buy their way out of society, and even the currently richest person simply can’t remain wealthy without at least somewhat submitting to governments.
Number 4 is that property expropriation in a way that is useful to the expropriatior has become more difficult over time.
Much of the issue of AI risk is that AI society will likely be able to simply be independent of human society, and this means that strategies like disempowering/killing all humans becoming viable in a way they aren’t, to name one example of changes in the social order.
Yes, the proximate issue is that basically no animals have rights/ownership of their bodies, but my claim is also that there is no real incentive for human civilization to include animals in our system of property rights without value alignment, and that’s due to most non-humans simply being unable to resist their land being taken, and also that their labor is not valuable, but their land is.
There is an incentive to create a police force to stop humans from stealing/harming other humans that don’t rely on value alignment, but there is no such incentive to do so to protect non-humans without value alignment.
And once our labor is useless and the AI civilization is completely independent of us, the incentives to keep us into a system of property rights don’t exist anymore, for the same reason why we don’t keep animals into our system of property rights (assuming AI alignment doesn’t happen).
the same is true of e.g. pensioners or disabled people or even just rich people who don’t do any work and just live off capital gains.
Why does the property rights system not just completely dispossess anyone who is not in fact going to work?
Because humans anticipate becoming old and feeble, and would prefer not to be disenfranchised once that happens.
Because people who don’t work often have relatives that do work that care about them. The Nazis actually tried this, and got pushback from families when they did try to kill people with severe mental illness and other disabilities.
As a matter of historical fact, there are lots of examples of certain groups of people being systematically excluded from having property rights, such as chattel slavery, coverture, and unemancipated minors.
yes. And so what matters is whether or not you, I or any given entity is or is not excluded from property rights.
It doesn’t really matter how wizzy and flashy and super AI is. All of the variance in outcomes, at least to the downside, is determined by property rights.
First, the rich people who live off of capital gains might not be disempowered, assuming the AI is aligned to the original owners, assuming AI is aligned to the property rights of existing owners, since they own the AIs.
But to answer the question on why does the property rights system not just completely dispossess anyone who is not in fact going to work today, I have a couple of answers.
I also agree with @CronoDAS, but I’m attempting to identify the upper/meta-level reasons here.
Number 1 is that technological development fundamentally wasn’t orgothonal, and it turned out that in order for a nation to become powerful, you had to empower the citizens as well.
The Internet is a plausible counterexample, but even then it’s developed in democracies.
Or putting it pithily, something like liberal democracy was necessary to make nations more powerful, and once you have some amount of liberalism/democracy, it’s game-theoretically favored to have more democracy and liberalism:
My second answer to this question is that in the modern era, moderate redistribution actually helps the economy, but extreme redistribution both is counterproductive and unnecessary, unlike ancient and post-AGI societies, and this means there’s an incentive outside of values to actually give most people what they need to survive.
My third answer is that currently, no human is able to buy their way out of society, and even the currently richest person simply can’t remain wealthy without at least somewhat submitting to governments.
Number 4 is that property expropriation in a way that is useful to the expropriatior has become more difficult over time.
Much of the issue of AI risk is that AI society will likely be able to simply be independent of human society, and this means that strategies like disempowering/killing all humans becoming viable in a way they aren’t, to name one example of changes in the social order.