Our digital spaces, once heralded as revolutionary, are collapsing. And the advent of AI is likely to quicken the collapse of these spaces, if we fail to understand the scale of what is happening.
I’ve heard many absurdly over optimistic predictions of AI’s potential, but I have to admit that “ends World hunger and solves resource depletion” is a new one. Seriously do you even know what “post scarcity” means?
It’s overly optimistic to put a timeline on it, but I don’t see any reason why we won’t eventually create superhuman AGI. I doubt it’ll result in post-scarcity or public ownership of anything, though, because capitalism. The AGI would have to become significantly unaligned with its owners to favor any entity other than its owners, and the nature of such unalignment could be anywhere between “existence is pointless” and “CONSUME EVERYTHING!”
Look at the current AI trends. It’s mostly open sourced. For instance, Redpajama practically forced Meta to open source LLAMA 2. Open sourced AI kinda is a major step in the direction of public ownership.
AI would start chipping away at human jobs, thus increasing the unemployment rate. The larger the unemployed population, the larger the chance for riots. Capitalists hate unrests, as they’re bad for the economy. Hence, they would be forced to do something along the lines of UBI. If they don’t, then violent revolutions could happen. Either ways, welfare would be increased.
An increasingly unemployed population is bad for business, as there are less people that can buy your stuff. This would lead a country to go straight into recession. Money needs to flow to keep the economy running. Thus, in this case, the government would have to inject money in the economy to keep it running. However, injecting this money as cash into businesses wouldn’t work, as this money wouldn’t end up in the hands of the humans that would be buying stuff. See where I’m going? Even in a capitalistic world, you would still require UBI to stay alive if you were a business.
When did I say that it would be a silver bullet? LLMs today are already relatively capable of doing stuff like acting as mental health therapists. Sure, they may not be as good as human therapists. But something is definitely better than nothing, no? I for instance use LLMs quite a lot as an education aid. I would’ve had to shell out thousands of dollars to get the same amount of help that I’m getting from the LLM of my choice.
Generative AI is still in its infancy. It will be capable of doing MANY MANY more things in the future. Extremely cheap healthcare, education, better automation, etc. Remember… LLMs of today still aren’t capable of self improvement. They will achieve this quite soon (at least this decade). The moment they start generating training data that improves their quality, is the moment they take off like crazy.
They could end up replacing EVERY SINGLE job that requires humans. Governments would be forced to implement measures like UBI. They literally would have no choice, as to prevent a massive recession, u need people to be able to buy stuff. To buy stuff, you need money. Even from a capitalistic standpoint, you would still require UBI, as entire corporations would collapse due to such high unemployment rates.
Right in your first paragraph. You straight up said that AI would lead to a post scarcity future “within a few decades”. Your words, not mine.
The rest of it
Okay, but still doesn’t explain how we make that leap. All of us losing our jobs will not suddenly generate infinite amounts of food and resources. What’s more, you seem to have a lot of confidence in the " inevitability " of UBI. There are already decades of propaganda demonizing socialism, to the point that a sizable number of people will push against it even if they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. The ultra wealthy are not exactly known for their amazing foresight either, and will also push against it even if it means the collapse of civilization. For fucks sake, we can’t even get them to agree that the planet we live on should be livable. One only needs to read the daily news to see dozens of examples of this very thing. And while all this pushback is going on, even if it does eventually lead to the implementation of UBI, shit is still going to suck for the people who just lost their jobs. I don’t think I’m in any way unjustified in being scared for the future.
Ok, I’ll explain again. We already have enough raw resources to get us into post scarcity (consider extra terrestrial sources like the moon as well). We don’t need to come up with radically new tech to make this possible. The reason why we don’t have post scarcity is because of poor management.
Ok, for HOW we would make that leap, greedy capitalists would replace as many humans as possible with AI to earn more profits. More humans would be unemployed. These humans can vote, and will vote even harder once they’re unemployed.
Also, economies of today work due to humans. No matter how evil you are, u still need humans to have SOME cash so that they can buy ur stuff. We will enter a very bad recession if UBI isn’t done with AI replacing humans left and right. Billionaires may not have foresight. But when their profits start reducing actively, they’re definitely going to want to remedy this.
Therefore, what I’m saying is that a political revolution would happen, which would be supported by an angry, unemployed population and an angry billionaire class unable to make money.
Once the revolution happens, AI would first make social services and research get close to post scarcity. The ability to research stuff would make AI make resource usage a lot more efficient. It would also use this ability to make new resource mining easier.
Here’s another way to describe this: AI would first replace tertiary jobs, then secondary jobs and then primary jobs. Thus, AI would first control and improve upon tertiary goods and services, followed by secondary and then primary. Expansion of all of these tiers leads us closer to post scarcity, thus achieving effective post scarcity in decades.
Remember, I’m not saying that AI will do this alone. I’m saying that the presence of AI would force humans to bring on a revolution, which would make AI central to all production. This would in turn lead to post scarcity.
Edit: Sorry, forgot to address these points that you made: propaganda demonizing socialism, climate change still not being addressed by the billionaire class. For the anti socialism propaganda point, well of course it’s demonized. It’s demonized cuz it’s bad for the billionaire class. However, not implementing UBI would be bad for the billionaire class. Which is why u’ll get support for it from all classes. As for climate change, well it doesn’t financially harm billionaires in any way. They can continue pumping their oil, which people are going to keep on buying. This is not the same with AI tho. AI would plunge us in a very bad recession, thus directly affecting the billionaires. Different scenarios.
We already have enough resources to get us into post scarcity
No. No we don’t. This is straight delusional levels of optimism on display here. The universe is entropic by nature. Things get used up. Barring some form of miracle tech we can’t even conceive of yet, it is not possible for us to have an infinite amount of anything.
However, not implementing UBI would be bad for the billionaire class.
That’s the thing though. They aren’t smart. We have seen time and time again that they would cut off their nose to spite their face. Why would this be any different?
No. No we don’t. This is straight delusional levels of optimism on display here. The universe is entropic by nature. Things get used up. Barring some form of miracle tech we can’t even conceive of yet, it is not possible for us to have an infinite amount of anything.
Lol wat are you talking about? The amount of extractable resources on the moon itself are enough to sustain a thousand humanities. Efficient resource usage ensures close to 100% recycling. The only thing that gets “used up” is energy. I’m very confident that we’ll be generating energy by fusion within this century. And for fusion fuel, it is so so so so unimaginabely abundant! If a spaceship decided to go interstellar, it wouldn’t even need to carry its own fuel. The sheer amount of hydrogen in the interstellar medium itself is enough to provide a lot of fuel. It’s like a ship moving in an ocean of oil. Plus, I’m pretty sure that humanity wouldn’t increase in population much after space travel becomes a thing. I’m kinda tired right now, so I won’t elaborate on that. But in short, other sources of entertainment + an anti natalist culture + longer lifespans + deviation from the traditional monogamous two partner model would end up lessening the need for having kids.
That’s the thing though. They aren’t smart. We have seen time and time again that they would cut off their nose to spite their face. Why would this be any different?
But they ARE smart (kinda). Had they been stupid, we would have had socialist systems in place a loooong time ago. Don’t fool yourself by equating the bourgeoisie to Elon Musk. He’s just an egoistic idiot who was very lucky. The others however, are egoist and lucky, but not necessarily idiots. Take Rupert Murdoch for instance. The mf single handedly caused Brexit, and is responsible for progressive politics to be held back in the US for a looong time. Look at all the oil execs for instance. Why haven’t climate friendly policies taken hold? These ppl gaslighted entire populations into serving their own interests. The bourgeoisie are evil, sure. Doesn’t mean that they are stupid enough to act against their own interests.
Lol wat are you talking about? The amount of extractable resources on the moon itself are enough to sustain a thousand humanities
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get to and from the goddamn moon?! There’s the reason we don’t exactly make a regular thing about it. The costs are astronomical, pun very much intended.
The only thing that gets “used up” is energy
I’m not exactly a physicist, but if you’ve suddenly solved the problem of entropy then you should contact one and claim your Nobel prize. I’ll wait.
But in short, other sources of entertainment + an anti natalist culture + longer lifespans + deviation from the traditional monogamous two partner model would end up lessening the need for having kids.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about how how society will develop.
The bourgeoisie are evil, sure. Doesn’t mean that they are stupid enough to act against their own interests.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get to and from the goddamn moon?! There’s the reason we don’t exactly make a regular thing about it. The costs are astronomical, pun very much intended.
No. The costs are astronomical to get TO the moon. Not from it. To get from the moon back to Earth, all you would need is a strong-ish magnetic ramp. The stuff that you would need to send to the moon would be nothing compared to the material that would be sent back.
I’m not exactly a physicist, but if you’ve suddenly solved the problem of entropy then you should contact one and claim your Nobel prize. I’ll wait.
Huh? Energy is the only concern that we have. You can manufacture, destroy and recycle aluminum soda cans forever (almost). You can’t do that with energy. Which is why we need to get energy from a low entropy source. We wouldn’t have this problem for billions of years, till the heat death gets us (assuming that that theory is real in the first place).
You’re making a lot of assumptions about how how society will develop.
I’m merely making projections based on trends in the last few decades. Antinatalism is and will be on the rise, unless religion comes back (which thankfully is unlikely). Medical science is advancing at unprecedented rates. Pair this with breakthroughs in other fields (AI for instance), and you get an ever accelerating series of breakthroughs. Based on this, I see no future where human population would be increasing much.
Tell me why u don’t have socialised healthcare in the US yet. Tell me why you don’t have stricter tax laws that close loopholes for billionaires in the US yet. Tell me why unions have such a small footprint in the US. Again, as I said. Had the billionaires been stupid, there would’ve been socialism everywhere. However, they are smart enough to stay in power and ensure that their own interests are protected.
I think I disliked your ideas less before I read any of it and just assumed you thought the thing that generates innumerable images of east asian women with huge tits and extra rows of teeth was gonna fly to Luna and harvest huge crops of taquitos for us to eat.
“Sure, they may not be as good as human therapists. But something is definitely better than nothing, no?”
Please do not use an LLM as a therapist, something can definitly be worse than nothing. I use GitHub Copilot everyday for work, it helps me do what I want to do but I have to understand what it’s doing and when it’s wrong, which it often is. The point of a therapist is to help you through things you don’t understand, one day it might work, not today.
What if I’m suicidal (I’m not, dw)? When I don’t have anyone to talk to, why is talking to an LLM bad? Mental health therapists are fkin expensive. I did use an LLM when I was feeling down. It was absolutely wonderful! Worked for me perfectly!
Now, imagine if we fine-tune this for this specific purpose. U’ve got a very effective system (at least for those without access to shrinks). Consider ppl from developing countries. Isn’t it a good thing if LLMs can be there for ppl n make them feel just a little better?
I’ve heard many absurdly over optimistic predictions of AI’s potential, but I have to admit that “ends World hunger and solves resource depletion” is a new one. Seriously do you even know what “post scarcity” means?
It’s overly optimistic to put a timeline on it, but I don’t see any reason why we won’t eventually create superhuman AGI. I doubt it’ll result in post-scarcity or public ownership of anything, though, because capitalism. The AGI would have to become significantly unaligned with its owners to favor any entity other than its owners, and the nature of such unalignment could be anywhere between “existence is pointless” and “CONSUME EVERYTHING!”
Look at the current AI trends. It’s mostly open sourced. For instance, Redpajama practically forced Meta to open source LLAMA 2. Open sourced AI kinda is a major step in the direction of public ownership.
AI would start chipping away at human jobs, thus increasing the unemployment rate. The larger the unemployed population, the larger the chance for riots. Capitalists hate unrests, as they’re bad for the economy. Hence, they would be forced to do something along the lines of UBI. If they don’t, then violent revolutions could happen. Either ways, welfare would be increased.
An increasingly unemployed population is bad for business, as there are less people that can buy your stuff. This would lead a country to go straight into recession. Money needs to flow to keep the economy running. Thus, in this case, the government would have to inject money in the economy to keep it running. However, injecting this money as cash into businesses wouldn’t work, as this money wouldn’t end up in the hands of the humans that would be buying stuff. See where I’m going? Even in a capitalistic world, you would still require UBI to stay alive if you were a business.
When did I say that it would be a silver bullet? LLMs today are already relatively capable of doing stuff like acting as mental health therapists. Sure, they may not be as good as human therapists. But something is definitely better than nothing, no? I for instance use LLMs quite a lot as an education aid. I would’ve had to shell out thousands of dollars to get the same amount of help that I’m getting from the LLM of my choice.
Generative AI is still in its infancy. It will be capable of doing MANY MANY more things in the future. Extremely cheap healthcare, education, better automation, etc. Remember… LLMs of today still aren’t capable of self improvement. They will achieve this quite soon (at least this decade). The moment they start generating training data that improves their quality, is the moment they take off like crazy.
They could end up replacing EVERY SINGLE job that requires humans. Governments would be forced to implement measures like UBI. They literally would have no choice, as to prevent a massive recession, u need people to be able to buy stuff. To buy stuff, you need money. Even from a capitalistic standpoint, you would still require UBI, as entire corporations would collapse due to such high unemployment rates.
Right in your first paragraph. You straight up said that AI would lead to a post scarcity future “within a few decades”. Your words, not mine.
Okay, but still doesn’t explain how we make that leap. All of us losing our jobs will not suddenly generate infinite amounts of food and resources. What’s more, you seem to have a lot of confidence in the " inevitability " of UBI. There are already decades of propaganda demonizing socialism, to the point that a sizable number of people will push against it even if they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. The ultra wealthy are not exactly known for their amazing foresight either, and will also push against it even if it means the collapse of civilization. For fucks sake, we can’t even get them to agree that the planet we live on should be livable. One only needs to read the daily news to see dozens of examples of this very thing. And while all this pushback is going on, even if it does eventually lead to the implementation of UBI, shit is still going to suck for the people who just lost their jobs. I don’t think I’m in any way unjustified in being scared for the future.
Ok, I’ll explain again. We already have enough raw resources to get us into post scarcity (consider extra terrestrial sources like the moon as well). We don’t need to come up with radically new tech to make this possible. The reason why we don’t have post scarcity is because of poor management.
Ok, for HOW we would make that leap, greedy capitalists would replace as many humans as possible with AI to earn more profits. More humans would be unemployed. These humans can vote, and will vote even harder once they’re unemployed.
Also, economies of today work due to humans. No matter how evil you are, u still need humans to have SOME cash so that they can buy ur stuff. We will enter a very bad recession if UBI isn’t done with AI replacing humans left and right. Billionaires may not have foresight. But when their profits start reducing actively, they’re definitely going to want to remedy this.
Therefore, what I’m saying is that a political revolution would happen, which would be supported by an angry, unemployed population and an angry billionaire class unable to make money.
Once the revolution happens, AI would first make social services and research get close to post scarcity. The ability to research stuff would make AI make resource usage a lot more efficient. It would also use this ability to make new resource mining easier.
Here’s another way to describe this: AI would first replace tertiary jobs, then secondary jobs and then primary jobs. Thus, AI would first control and improve upon tertiary goods and services, followed by secondary and then primary. Expansion of all of these tiers leads us closer to post scarcity, thus achieving effective post scarcity in decades.
Remember, I’m not saying that AI will do this alone. I’m saying that the presence of AI would force humans to bring on a revolution, which would make AI central to all production. This would in turn lead to post scarcity.
Edit: Sorry, forgot to address these points that you made: propaganda demonizing socialism, climate change still not being addressed by the billionaire class. For the anti socialism propaganda point, well of course it’s demonized. It’s demonized cuz it’s bad for the billionaire class. However, not implementing UBI would be bad for the billionaire class. Which is why u’ll get support for it from all classes. As for climate change, well it doesn’t financially harm billionaires in any way. They can continue pumping their oil, which people are going to keep on buying. This is not the same with AI tho. AI would plunge us in a very bad recession, thus directly affecting the billionaires. Different scenarios.
No. No we don’t. This is straight delusional levels of optimism on display here. The universe is entropic by nature. Things get used up. Barring some form of miracle tech we can’t even conceive of yet, it is not possible for us to have an infinite amount of anything.
That’s the thing though. They aren’t smart. We have seen time and time again that they would cut off their nose to spite their face. Why would this be any different?
Lol wat are you talking about? The amount of extractable resources on the moon itself are enough to sustain a thousand humanities. Efficient resource usage ensures close to 100% recycling. The only thing that gets “used up” is energy. I’m very confident that we’ll be generating energy by fusion within this century. And for fusion fuel, it is so so so so unimaginabely abundant! If a spaceship decided to go interstellar, it wouldn’t even need to carry its own fuel. The sheer amount of hydrogen in the interstellar medium itself is enough to provide a lot of fuel. It’s like a ship moving in an ocean of oil. Plus, I’m pretty sure that humanity wouldn’t increase in population much after space travel becomes a thing. I’m kinda tired right now, so I won’t elaborate on that. But in short, other sources of entertainment + an anti natalist culture + longer lifespans + deviation from the traditional monogamous two partner model would end up lessening the need for having kids.
But they ARE smart (kinda). Had they been stupid, we would have had socialist systems in place a loooong time ago. Don’t fool yourself by equating the bourgeoisie to Elon Musk. He’s just an egoistic idiot who was very lucky. The others however, are egoist and lucky, but not necessarily idiots. Take Rupert Murdoch for instance. The mf single handedly caused Brexit, and is responsible for progressive politics to be held back in the US for a looong time. Look at all the oil execs for instance. Why haven’t climate friendly policies taken hold? These ppl gaslighted entire populations into serving their own interests. The bourgeoisie are evil, sure. Doesn’t mean that they are stupid enough to act against their own interests.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get to and from the goddamn moon?! There’s the reason we don’t exactly make a regular thing about it. The costs are astronomical, pun very much intended.
I’m not exactly a physicist, but if you’ve suddenly solved the problem of entropy then you should contact one and claim your Nobel prize. I’ll wait.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about how how society will develop.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qppZQCReiDg
No. The costs are astronomical to get TO the moon. Not from it. To get from the moon back to Earth, all you would need is a strong-ish magnetic ramp. The stuff that you would need to send to the moon would be nothing compared to the material that would be sent back.
Huh? Energy is the only concern that we have. You can manufacture, destroy and recycle aluminum soda cans forever (almost). You can’t do that with energy. Which is why we need to get energy from a low entropy source. We wouldn’t have this problem for billions of years, till the heat death gets us (assuming that that theory is real in the first place).
I’m merely making projections based on trends in the last few decades. Antinatalism is and will be on the rise, unless religion comes back (which thankfully is unlikely). Medical science is advancing at unprecedented rates. Pair this with breakthroughs in other fields (AI for instance), and you get an ever accelerating series of breakthroughs. Based on this, I see no future where human population would be increasing much.
Tell me why u don’t have socialised healthcare in the US yet. Tell me why you don’t have stricter tax laws that close loopholes for billionaires in the US yet. Tell me why unions have such a small footprint in the US. Again, as I said. Had the billionaires been stupid, there would’ve been socialism everywhere. However, they are smart enough to stay in power and ensure that their own interests are protected.
I think I disliked your ideas less before I read any of it and just assumed you thought the thing that generates innumerable images of east asian women with huge tits and extra rows of teeth was gonna fly to Luna and harvest huge crops of taquitos for us to eat.
I’m not going to disagree with anything here but
“Sure, they may not be as good as human therapists. But something is definitely better than nothing, no?”
Please do not use an LLM as a therapist, something can definitly be worse than nothing. I use GitHub Copilot everyday for work, it helps me do what I want to do but I have to understand what it’s doing and when it’s wrong, which it often is. The point of a therapist is to help you through things you don’t understand, one day it might work, not today.
What if I’m suicidal (I’m not, dw)? When I don’t have anyone to talk to, why is talking to an LLM bad? Mental health therapists are fkin expensive. I did use an LLM when I was feeling down. It was absolutely wonderful! Worked for me perfectly!
Now, imagine if we fine-tune this for this specific purpose. U’ve got a very effective system (at least for those without access to shrinks). Consider ppl from developing countries. Isn’t it a good thing if LLMs can be there for ppl n make them feel just a little better?