Yeah, I'm always confused why programmers seem to like this technology given the vast negative consequences it will likely have for us. The upsides on the other hand seem to be the most insignificant things.
> upsides on the other hand seem to be the most insignificant things
An abundance of intelligence on Earth with all its spoils: new medicine, energy, materials, technologies and new understandings and breakthroughs - these seem quite significant to me.
There is absolutely no guarantee that those things will happen just because Claude takes your job. Taking your job doesn't require super-intelligence, it doesn't even require human-level intelligence. It requires just enough intelligence to pump out mediocre code that sort of works and being way cheaper to run than your pay.
Super-intelligence is a completely different can of worms. But I'm not optimistic about super-intelligence either. It seems super naive to me to assume that the spoils of super-intelligence will be shared with the people who no longer can bring anything to the table. You aren't worth anything to the super-rich unless you can do something for them which the super-intelligence can't do.
There is absolutely no guarantee that Claude takes your job either. But if you believe so much in AI, investing in it is accessible to pretty much any pocket, you don't have to be rich to partake.
And when did "the rich" hoard anything for themselves only?! Usually I see them democratizing products and services so they are more accessible to everyone, not less.
Computers in my pocket and on my wrist, TVs as big as a wall and thin like a book, electric cars, flights to anywhere I dream of traveling, investing with a few clicks on my phone - all made possible to me by those evil and greedy rich in their race for riches. Thank you rich people!
You still need to be rich to partake. Most business ventures will still require capital even in the age of super-intelligence. Super-intelligence will make labor worthless (or very cheap) it won't make property worthless.
> And when did "the rich" hoard anything for themselves only?! Usually I see them democratizing products and services so they are more accessible to everyone, not less.
There are plenty of examples of rich people hoarding their wealth. Countries with natural resources often have poor citizens because those citizens are not needed to extract that wealth. There is little reason why super-intelligence will not lead to a resource curse where the resource is human intelligence or even human labor.
> Computers in my pocket and on my wrist, TVs as big as a wall and thin like a book, electric cars, flights to anywhere I dream of traveling, investing with a few clicks on a website - all made possible to me by those evil and greedy rich in their race for riches. Thank you rich people!
Those rich people didn't share with you out of the goodness of their heart but because it was their best strategy to become even richer. But that's no longer the case when you can be replaced by super-intelligence.
Again, you can invest, today, in AI stocks and ETFs, with just $100 and a Robinhood account. No need to be rich.
> Super-intelligence will make labor worthless (or very cheap) it won't make property worthless.
If the labor is worthless, the great majority of people will be poor. Due to the law of supply & demand, property will be worthless since there will be very little demand for it.
> Countries with natural resources often have poor citizens because those citizens are not needed to extract that wealth.
Countries with or without resources often have poor citizens simply because being poor is the natural state of mankind. The only system that, historically, allowed the greatest number of people to exit poverty is capitalism. Here in Eastern Europe we got to witness an astonishing change of fortunes when we switched from communism to capitalism. The country and its resources didn't change, just the system and, correspondingly, the wealth of the population.
> it was their best strategy to become even richer. But that's no longer the case when you can be replaced by super-intelligence.
How can they become richer when most people are dirt broke (because they were replaced by AIs) and thus can't buy their products and services? Look at how even Elon's fortunes shrink when his company misses a sales forecast. He is only as rich as the number of customers he can find for his cars.
> Again, you can invest, today, in AI stocks and ETFs, with just $100 and a Robinhood account. No need to be rich.
And then? I'll compensate the loss of thousands of dollars I don't earn anymore every month with the profits of a $100 investment in some ETF?
> If the labor is worthless, the great majority of people will be poor. Due to the law of supply & demand, property will be worthless since there will be very little demand for it.
Property has inherent value. A house I can live in. A farm can feed me. A golf course I can play golf on. These things have value even if nobody can buy them off me (because they don't have anything I want). Supply and demand determine only the _price_ not the _value_ of goods and services.
> Countries with or without resources often have poor citizens simply because being poor is the natural state of mankind. The only system that, historically, allowed the greatest number of people to exit poverty is capitalism. Here in Eastern Europe we got to witness an astonishing change of fortunes when we switched from communism to capitalism. The country and its resources didn't change, just the system and, correspondingly, the wealth of the population.
None of this has any connection to anything I've written. I'm talking about the concept of a resource curse. Countries rich in natural resources (oil, diamonds, ...) where the population is poor as dirt because the ruling class has no incentive to share any of the profits. The same can happen with AI if we don't do anything about it.
> How can they become richer when most people are dirt broke (because they were replaced by AIs) and thus can't buy their products and services?
Other rich people can buy their products and services. They don't need you to buy their products and services because you don't bring anything to the table because all you have is labor and labor isn't worth anything (or at least not enough to survive off it). Put differently: Why do you think rich people would like to buy your labor if using AI/robots is cheaper? What reason would they have to do that?
> Look at how even Elon's fortunes shrink when his company misses a sales forecast. He is only as rich as the number of customers he can find for his cars.
You're proving my point: Elon still lives in a world where labor is worth something. Because Elon lives in a world where labor is worth something it is in his interest that there are many people capable of providing that labor to him. This means it is in his interest that the general population has access to food and water, is well eduacated, ...
If Elon were to live in a world where labor is done by AI/robots there would be little reason for him to care. Yes, he couldn't sell his cars to the average person anymore, but he wouldn't want to anyway. He could still sell his cars to Altman in exchange for an LLM that strokes his ego or whatever rich people want.
The point is: Because rich and powerful people still have to pay for labor, their incentives are at least somewhat aligned with the incentives of the average person.
> And then? I'll compensate the loss of thousands of dollars I don't earn anymore every month with the profits of a $100 investment in some ETF?
Probably most of it at least, because under your supposition that the AGI will replace labor we'll get incredibly cheap products and services as a result.
> Property has inherent value.
You weren't talking about inherent value when you wrote "Super-intelligence will make labor worthless (or very cheap) it won't make property worthless." which is what I replied to.
> None of this has any connection to anything I've written. I'm talking about the concept of a resource curse.
And my point was that the wealth of a nation does not come from its resources but its entrepreneurs. Resources are a course usually when monopolized and administrated (looted) by corrupt governments, not when exploited by private entities. AIs controlled by governments would scare me indeed.
> Other rich people can buy their products and services.
> He could still sell his cars to Altman
Are you joking?! How many cars do you think Altman can buy?! Do you really think the rich people can be an actual market?! How many rich people do you think there are out there?! Are you talking about middle class by any chance?
> Why do you think rich people would like to buy your labor if using AI/robots is cheaper?
Because labor evolves too, just like it evolved when automation, IT and outsourcing came around. Yes, I can't sell my dirt digging services in the age of digging machines but I can learn to drive one and sell my services as a driver. Maybe I can't sell coding in the age of AI but I can sell my ability to understand, verify and control complex systems with code written by AIs.
And so on, you get the idea. Adaptation, creativity and innovation is the name of the game.
> You're proving my point
> The point is: Because rich and powerful people still have to pay for labor their incentives are at least somewhat aligned with the incentives of the average person
Not at all. My point was that Elon and rich people are interested in you as a customer, not for your labor. That is the old mindset and the one we need to evolve from. See yourself as selling and buying products and services, not your labor, and the world will be full of opportunities. "The rich" won't seem like a separate class from you, but regular people you can interact and profit from (while mutually benefiting).
> Probably most of it at least, because under your supposition that the AGI will replace labor we'll get incredibly cheap products and services as a result.
No, we will get cheap _labor_, not necessarily cheap _products_.
> You weren't talking about inherent value when you wrote "Super-intelligence will make labor worthless (or very cheap) it won't make property worthless." which is what I replied to.
I was talking about value, not price.
> AIs controlled by governments would scare me indeed.
What is the difference?
> Are you joking?! How many cars do you think Altman can buy?!
Why would Elon need to sell more cars? And for what exactly? You have nothing Elon wants.
> Maybe I can't sell coding in the age of AI but I can sell my ability to understand, verify and control complex systems with code written by AIs.
Unless the super-intelligence is better than you here too. Why wouldn't it be?
> Adaptation, creativity and innovation is the name of the game.
It is the name of the game until super-intelligence comes along which will be better at all of this than you. That's exactly the scary thing about super-intelligence.
> My point was that Elon and rich people are interested in you as a customer, not for your labor.
This is the same thing. I can only be a customer if I can bring something to the table that Elon wants from me. That thing is money. I can only bring money to the table if someone that has money needs something I can provide. That thing is human labor. If super-intelligence removes the economic value of human labor, I can no longer earn money and consequently Elon will not be interested in me as a customer.
> See yourself as selling and buying products and services, not your labor, and the world will be full of opportunities.
Where exactly is the difference between me "selling a service" and me selling "labor"?
> "The rich" won't seem like a separate class from you, but regular people you can interact and profit from (while mutually benefiting).
I doesn't matter whether or not you see the rich as a seperate class. What matters is simply the following:
People who own a lot of stuff, don't sell their labor and/or buy a lot of labor will profit if labor becomes cheap. People who don't own a lot of stuff, sell their labor and don't buy a lot of labor face an existential threat if labor becomes cheap.
I feel like you're fighting the fallacy of "the rich" being collectively blamed for every problem, by giving them credit for everything instead.
We know that none of the goods you listed would be available to the masses unless there was profit to be gained from them. That's the point.
I have a hard time believing a large group being motivated and mutually benefiting towards progression of x thing would result in worse outcomes than a few doing so. We just have never had an economic system that could offer that, so you assume the greedy motivations of a few is the only path towards progress.
> We just have never had an economic system that could offer that
Please propose it yourself.
> you assume the greedy motivations of a few is the only path towards progress
No. I assume the greedy motivations of the many is the best path towards progress. Any other attempts to replace this failed miserably. Ignoring human nature in ideologies never works.
That's extremely difficult. I just don't assume something is impossible because it hasn't been done yet. Especially when there is an active battle to undermine and destroy such ideas by almost every powerful entity on earth.
Literally none of what you just said is true. All of those things happened because there was a market opportunity, there was a market opportunity because wealth was not just in the hands of the rich.
If you want to look at what historically has happened when the rich have had a sudden rapid increase in intelligence and labor, we have examples.
After the end of the Punic wars, the influx of slave labor and diminution of economic power of normal Roman citizens lead to: accelerating concentration of wealth, civil war and an empire where the value of human life was so low that people were murdered in public for entertainment.
> All of those things happened because there was a market opportunity, there was a market opportunity because wealth was not just in the hands of the rich.
Yet those things did not happen in communist countries (or happened way less in socialist ones), during the same time period, even though the market was there too. That is why EU's socialist countries consume high tech products and services from the USA and not the other way around.
Ding ding ding. What a surprise that a system designed not for human flourishing but pure profit would actually deliver massive profit with no regard for human flourishing.
Humanity will have to adopt new human-focused modes of living and organizing society, or else. And climate change is coming along to make sure the owning class can't ignore this fact any longer.
> a system designed not for human flourishing but pure profit
But please, don't be coy: tell us about that other system that is designed for "human flourishing" - we're dying to learn about it.
Because I grew up under communism and I lived its miserable failures: the non-profit system didn't even manage to feed, cloth or warm/cool us.
> new human-focused modes of living and organizing society
Oh, these sounds sooo promising. Please do tell us: would you by any chance be willing to use force to "convince" the laggards of the benefits of switching? What if some refuse to believe your gospel? Will you turn to draconic laws and regulations?
It's depressing how in the modern day you can't criticize capitalism without immediately being told that you must be a supporter of soviet-style authoritarian socialism
There are shades of grey here. Capitalism is a system with many inherent problems. Exploring alternatives is not the same thing as being a Stalinist
This exactly. Capitalist propaganda likes to paint anything other than capitalism as Stalinist authoritarian communism, which should be abhorred as well as capitalism, and just for the same reason: both are coercive, hierarchical, and unfree.
Because every time I encounter such capitalism haters they turn out to be marxists in disguise. Usually pushed and promoted by people that never lived outside of their comfortable capitalist wealth bubble, written on capitalist devices, here, on this very venture capitalist's forum! The hypocrisy boggles the mind, really.
It's like the lack the most basic understanding of economics and they never read any history. I mean, communism has failed everywhere it was tried and there were so many A/B test that plainly show each system's results: North vs South Korea, Eastern Europe before vs after 1990, USA vs USSR, Argentina during the last hundred years, Venezuela before and after Chavez, etc.
Or they push socialism under new names ("democratic") as if it's a new thing, not just a watered down form of communism, with authoritarian communism being the logical end game of socialism - because "at some point you run out of other people's money" and you need force to keep fleecing them. Just like it happened in Venezuela...
Lucky for you, I'm not a Marxist. There is a very large current of people who are socialists but not Marxists, and have spent literally over a century analyzing history, economics, and capitalism itself, without insisting on the coercive hierarchy of Marxism or capitalism. And it has a long history of working in practice, even if in the modern day it tends to be crushed by both Marxist and capitalist forces, because who knew an authoritarian structure could allow you to command huge armies and oppress others?
You seem well aware of authoritarian communism, but generally unaware of libertarian socialism. They are distinct, and the latter has a decades long history of despising the former as much as you do, though for being based on the same primary issue as capitalism: coercive hierarchy.
It all starts with assuming the freedom of human beings, and that the only way to organize a system has nothing to do with efficiency or profit, and everything to do with maintaining that human freedom. It must be based on human freedom, and the concept that no one knows how to run your life better than you do. That no one deserves to be able to force you to do things. Whole systems arise from that fact, that have a long basis in history. As I've said elsewhere, you don't end up with men on the moon or dollar stores, but you do get people who are in control of their own lives.
I've seen mainstream "socialists" (Obama, Sanders, countless Europeans) embracing and sustaining authoritarian communist thugs like Chavez, so...
We've seen here in EU socialist policies cripple our economy to the point we're lagging the USA and we can't even defend ourselves from the blood-hungry psychopath in the east.
> libertarian socialism
Is this a real thing? Any examples of being implemented anywhere? Cause it sounds like a oxymoron to me. Socialism means regulations and confiscation from the productive members of society (taxation). Those must be enforced with the threat of force so less liberty there...
> no one deserves to be able to force you to do things
So I shouldn't be forced to pay my taxes? How would then a socialist government implement its expensive social policies?!
I'm not going to spoon-feed you anymore because you're clearly not interested in a conversation, and are quite happy with the status quo. I hope for your sake you don't end up on the wrong side of capitalism.
They didn't say communism was the only other option; this seems like a bad faith reply.
Capitalism increasingly fails to provide well-being to the majority of the global population. It's obvious we need to come up with something else, even if it's not clear yet what shape that will take.
If we can't find an alternative that works, we can also just wind down humanity, and not much of value to the universe will be lost :)
But there's solutions proposed all the time; tax the rich, tax the corporations, and use that money for socialist policies, like the ones being dismantled by the US right now. Regulate the biggest expenses like health care, housing and energy, restrict how much datacenters can use as their consumption drives up the prices, etc.
You don't need to go full communist to make things better.
I appreciate the lack of sarcasm in your reply. And echo the other reply's point about not being able to criticism the system that is literally destroying the planet and in by design totally unsustainable...
> But please, don't be coy: tell us about that other system that is designed for "human flourishing" - we're dying to learn about it.
Libertarian socialism, anarchocommunism, any system where human freedom is the basis, and not coercion or hierarchy. This stuff is not new or radical, it's just not favored by people with lots of money to lose.
> Oh, these sounds sooo promising. Please do tell us: would you by any chance be willing to use force to "convince" the laggards of the benefits of switching? What if some refuse to believe your gospel? Will you turn to draconic laws and regulations?
Lucky for you, no. The complete opposite. Freedom of association is the entire foundation of it. We all get to associate with whomever we want, when and for as long as we want. Someone being a condescending prick in your local comment section? You get to ignore them! No commissars or cops or Party. Someone wants to go play hierarchical capitalism with his friends? As long as he's not messing with other people or contravening their rights, they get to do whatever they want.
Will any of these systems result in 99 cent stores, fast food restaurants, or people on the moon? Almost definitely not. But those are all irrelevant to creating a sustainable environment designed for human beings, and not profit.
The lack of innovation (or even reading of basic history...) in what is possible in terms of organizing human societies is frankly sad, especially among tech workers. Most people are too influenced by capitalism (intentionally so) to believe that how things are now is the only way they can be. There is so little scope for innovation and change, and that starts with the owning class who have no interest in it changing.
> The complete opposite. Freedom of association is the entire foundation of it.
There is a saying: you can be communist under capitalism but you can't be capitalist under communism. And it's true: there are plenty of communes, coops and non-profits being run in the US right now.
Can you describe how that would work the other way around under "libertarian socialism"?
> sustainable environment designed for human beings, and not profit
Profit is also for humans, not space aliens. Without profit, how do you convince people do the necessary jobs nobody wants to do, like sanitation or war?
> people on the moon? Almost definitely not.
Then the country and the system resulting in people on the moon will come and take over your own "designed for human beings" because they will innovate and advance technologically while you will be playing hippy in the park.
With a hundred bucks and a Robinhood account, you too can be part of this greedy, evil and mysterious "owners of AI" class and (maybe) some day enjoy the promised spoils.
Oh the wonders of Capitalism, the economic system offering unequal abundance to everyone caring to take part... Where are the other, much touted systems, masters at spreading misery equally?
In the hands of the owners of the AI, as a direct consequence of the economic system. It was never going to play out any other way.