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Greg Dale's avatar

Really enjoy these, Steve!

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Greg kai's avatar

I agree it will likely transform society into something quite unpredictable, but still, there are unlikely outcomes based on current status: "Assuming that we choose to share the wealth, we will be deep into a world of universal abundance. There will always be some limited resources – beachfront property, genuine antiques, social status -- but convincing substitutes will exist for most of them."

Productivity reached this stage already, to a large extent, in western world at least. Still, we are not living in a world of universal abundance, except maybe for food: starvation does not happen.

The spending and earnings are more and more based on status and capital (a form of frozen transmitted status in a way), more than material productivity. IMHO we are deep in the transition, many jobs are already fake. AI will have a transformative impact, but more of the 'Emperor has no clothes" kind than because of productivity increase. Current productivity is such that we are largely in the virtual status game stage for economy, AI will just shrink the exceptions further.

My guess is that AI will increase that bullshit economy so much, with even fewer winners and so many losers; that what tag you as a winner will be challenged.

So many words to describe a simple thing: revolution.

So if this is true, it is not a question of productivity, but more on AI mass control: police robots, electronic cash control, centralized control of power/water/information delivery, constant fine-grained surveillance....that is already crucial to maintain the status-quo. I see sign of that in parallel to AI progress....not so strange :)

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