If everyone switches to a physical job then the value of those jobs plummet as well, especially as robotics get better, we get better training via AI, etc.
UBI is proposed as a solution, but our resources are still scarce, so how would you even decide allocation if everyone has the same amount of cash?
If you’re talking a superintelligence, then forget it. The human race will have been surpassed and if we are kept around it will be like pets.
If it’s human level AGI under firm human control, then the value of intellectual work will approach zero, but the value of humans will, direction and discernment will be multiplied many times over. At that point it would be time to head for the stars.
This just sounds like slavery with extra steps
Even if we assume it's purely for entertainment, the ecosystem is driving flow of goods (chess boards, chess pieces, chess lessons for kids etc.). I remember seeing chess set in chess shop on Baker Street in London with 1k price tag (and I think this one was not the most expensive they had)
There's presumably still R&D teams designing the robots. Service teams maintaining them.
I'm not suggesting it won't be significantly disruptive. But it won't wipe out all employment either.
Perhaps we can look at the industries disrupted by technological progress before. What happened to the audio and video arts when digital media hardware and software revolutionized over the previous ~2 decades or so? In my estimation there's many new jobs that never existed before to go with all the jobs that are no longer required. Who maintains the servers used for video production?
Jobs definitely come and go. Some of these came and went, some are the next to go, and some will be difficult to obsolete - stable hands, lamplighters, gas station attendants, car repair person, dog groomer, cell phone repairperson, personal shopper, teacher, nurse, physicist, politician, engineer, physician, tour guide, farmer, valet, groundskeeper, window washer, waiter, chef.
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You're worried about the wrong end of economics, though... it's the physical economy that's about to bite, hard. (I got that phrase from Lyndon LaRouche, he had a lot of interesting ideas, but that one stuck)
The global consumption of fossil fuels is about to hit its downslope, and a great simplification of society is going to be the result. We're extracting resources from the plant at millions of times the rate they are created, and because of the American model of corporate governance, only focusing on the next Quarter, planning to deal with this reality isn't happening.
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It is possible to train an AGI today, with corporate level resources and a generational commitment. you need to put a really good anthropomorphic robot body through all the stages of childhood, being especially careful to emulate all the weaknesses, and the drive for survival, and the need for others to support you, as babies are completely helpless.
Scarce resources is another myth. Resources are created by people’s cooperation, not destroyed by people fighting for them. (Think how scarces resources we 2000 years ago, and yet here we are, using new resources that those people couldn’t even imagine).
And if majority of people will keep believing in such myths - no need to wait for AGI, economy has already changed. To the economy of ignorance.
:confused_dog:
Scarcity is the underpinning of the entire economy. How is that a myth? The pie can grow, but that doesn't mean scarcity doesn't exist.
What does scarcity even mean in this context?
The movement of economies is weighted towards what scarcities are consequential. Resources won't be a consequential scarcity for humans.
Though TBH I am more worried about the global economy breaking before we get actual AGI or even pseudo-AGI. Seems like machine learning is going to create a lot of low quality output controlled by a very small number of people well before it becomes generally intelligent. That will be miserable.
It might not be miserable. It might lead to a widespread desire for higher quality.
By strength of preference. If I desperately want apples and you desperately want oranges, we'll bid different amounts despite our equal capacity, and thereby obtain different goods.
More likely case is that there is a revolution to topple the trillionares who monopolize these systems to take over the economy.
[1] https://worldspiritsockpuppet.com/2023/01/10/we-dont-trade-w...
