Do you think, in this hypothesized environment, that “democratic policy” will be the organic will of the people? It assumes much more agency on the part of people than will actually exist, and possibly more than even exists now.
The concept of voting, in a nation of hundreds of millions of people, is just dumb. Nobody knows anything about any of the candidates; everything people think they know was told to them by the corporate-controlled media and they only hear about candidates which were covered by the media; basically only candidates chosen by the establishment. It's a joke. People get the privilege of voting for which party will oppress them.
Current democracy is akin to the media making up a story like 'The Wizard of OZ' and then they offer you to vote for either the Lion, the Robot or the Scarecrow. You have no idea who any of these candidates are, you can't even be sure if they actually exist. Everything you know about them could literally have been made up by whoever told the story; and yet, when asked to vote, people are sure they understand what they're doing. They're so sure it's all legit, they'll viciously argue their candidate's position as if they were a family member they knew personally.
At least elections have a veneer of consent since people are asked which of the available options they prefer. Can you imagine anyone going to war because people chosen by a lottery wheel asked for it?
This is a problem of scale. The Greeks back then lived in small city-states where random selection meant that every able bodied male had a good shot at holding an important office at least once in their lifetime. You didn't need to hatch devious schemes to come to power. You couldn't abuse your fellow men because they would be in charge tomorrow. That's the true power of random selection and it's completely inapplicable to today's society at large.
The greeks ( socrates/plato ) figured out that democracy was a terrible form of government. Then again, the greeks did vote for socrates to drink hemlock.
> everything people think they know was told to them by the corporate-controlled media
Is there anything sweeter than fox news, a "news" company owned by an australian, railing against foreign influence in american politics?
> They're so sure it's all legit, they'll viciously argue their candidate's position as if they were a family member they knew personally.
At this point, I'd prefer we ban campaigning and silly staged debates altogether. Just have each candidate post who their masters are and then let the people vote off that. It's far more value to the voter if they knew who the politicians owe their allegiance to than empty campaign promises.
Long ago I had the same thought as you and a question occurred: the life anyone is born into is a lottery, so hereditary rulers == democracy?
But each mechanism has different tradeoffs. How much you get involved, how much expertise you need, and how well your interests are represented. A good political system uses all 3 to public's advantage, to reinforce each other.
I haven't got the first clue about governing a country, so I'd rely on people telling me what to do. If they can convince me (which will be easy, trillion dollar companies and powerful billionaire oligarchs convince people to act against their own self interest all the time) they end up running the country, but the blame can be taken by me.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. What do you think the newest pet project of Musk is about? I'm talking of his America's Party initiative - an obvious attempt to direct any popular uprising, be it nonviolent or otherwise, into he same old river bed.
When you say "popular" you have to take into account who decides what's popular these days and why billionaires are tripping all over themselves to get equipped with "social" media of their own.
Fox News already did this in the US, and it didn't take AGI.
Because they have different concerns, and time and attention are scarce. With all possible social changes like the article suggests this focus could change too. Ultimately, when things will get too bad, uprisings happen and sometimes things change. And I hope the more we (collectively) get through, the higher are the chances we start noticing the patterns and stopping early.
Not only that, but they actively stop applying critical thinking when the same problem is framed in a political way. And yes it's both sides, and yes the "more educated" the people are, the worse their results are (i.e. almost a complete reversal from framing the same problem as skin care products vs. gun control). Recent paper on this, also covered and somewhat replicated by popular youtubers.
that most people are viscerally reacting to feeling insulted by being called out about how most of what we think most of the time is simply chorus-like repetition of the general vibe we lead ourselves into believing is the vibe of "our" kind of people. our tribe of like minded individuals; the hacker crowd.
but at least I can admit this. it's only at certain sparse points in anybody's life that we are forced to really think critically; but this experience is terribly difficult and if/when real enough it comes with the existential dread of impossible choices weighted by real world consequences. I remind myself of this so to feel better about how I am indeed a mindless bot preaching to the choir, repeating what I was told to repeat, and pretending that I am fully present and fully free at all times (nobody is... that would be exhausting)
Including you. This is a 3000 year old critique you just uncritically parroted. It is the the original thought terminating cliche. People have always been calling each other ideologically brainwashed NPCs and themselves independent maverick free thinkers.
Except my thoughts are original and critical, everyone else is just a sheep. /s
Democratic societies always involve years of media and other manipulation to plow and seed the minds of the general public with presumptions, associations, spin, appeals to emotion, and so on. The will is a product of belief, and if beliefs are saturated with such stuff, the so-called “will of the people” - a terrifying and tyrannical concept even at face value - is a product of what people have been led to believe by tyrannical and powerful interests. Add to that that most people are utterly unqualified to participate politically, both because they lack the knowledge and reasoning skill, and because of their lack of virtue, acting out of undisciplined fear or appetite. And sadly, much of these disqualifying flaws also characterize our political leadership!
Our political progression follows the decadence described in Plato’s Republic - the decline into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and finally tyranny - to the letter.
In so-called democratic societies, the association of monarchy and aristocracy with tyranny is unthinking and reflexive, but it is not rational. This is a conditioned prejudice that is ignorant of history. And partly it comes from a hyperliberalism that substitutes a live-and-let-live attitude, situated within a context of objective morality and norms and laws drawn from it, with a pathological, relativizing revolution that seethes at the very idea of moral limits, views them as “tyrannical”, and thus seeks to overthrow them. This necessarily leads to tyranny, as morality is the only protection against tyranny; when the authority of objective truth and good are destroyed, power fills the vacuum. We become psychologically and spiritually conquered. The paradox of such “anarchy” is that it is exactly the condition under which “might makes right” can flourish.
The society built on empathy would have been able to work out any issue brought by technology as long as empathic goals take priority. Unfortunately our society is far from being based on empathy, to say the least. And technology and the people wielding it would always work around and past the formal laws, rules and policies in such a society. (that isn't to say that all those laws, rules, etc. aren't needed. They are like levies, dams, etc - necessary local, in time and space, fixes which willn't help in the case of the global ocean rise which AGI and robots (even less-than-AGI ones) will be like)
May be it is one of the technological Filters - we didn't become empathic enough (and i mean not only at the individual level, we are even less at the level of the societal systems) before AGI and as a result woudln't be able to instill enough of empathy into the AGI.
-- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI
-- Therefore the AI generates greatly reduced wealth
-- Therefore there’s greatly reduced wealth to pay for the AI
-- …rendering such a future impossible
Also "rendering such a future impossible". This is a retrocausal way of thinking. As though an a bad event in the future makes that future impossible.
And overall wealth levels were much lower. It was the expansion of consumption to the masses that drove the enormous increase in wealth that those of us in "developed" countries now live with and enjoy.
>In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI
Productivity increases make products cheaper. To the extent that your hypothetical AI manufacturer can produce widgets with less human labor, it only makes sense to do so where it would reduce overall costs. By reducing cost, the manufacturer can provide more value at a lower cost to the consumer.
Increased productivity means greater leisure time. Alternatively, that time can be applied to solving new problems and producing novel products. New opportunities are unlocked by the availability of labor, which allows for greater specialization, which in-turn unlocks greater productivity and the flywheel of human ingenuity continues to accelerate.
The item of UBI is another thorny issue. This may inflate the overall supply of currency and distribute it via political means. If the inflation of the money supply outpaces the productivity gains, then prices will not fall.
Instead of having the gains of productivity allocated by the market to consumers, those with political connections will be first to benefit as per Cantilion effects. Under the worst case scenario this might include distribution of UBI via social credit scores or other dystopian ratings. However, even under what advocates might call the ideal scenario, capital flows would still be dictated by large government sector or public private partnership projects. We see this today with central bank flows directly influencing Wall St. valuations.
Productivity has been increasing steadily for decades. Do you see any evidence that leisure time has tracked it?
IMO what will actually happen is feudal stasis after a huge die-off. There will be no market for new products and no ruling class interest in solving new problems.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider that this we can see this happening already. This is exactly the ideal world of the Trump administration and its backers. They have literally slashed funding for public health, R&D, and education.
And what's the response? Thiel, Zuckererg, Bezos, and Altman haven't said a word against the most catastrophic reversal of public science policy since Galileo and the Inquisition. Musk is pissed because he's been sidelined, but he was personally involved, through DOGE, in cutting funding to NASA and NOAA.
So what will AI be used for? Clearly the goal is to replace most of the working population. And then what?
One clue is that Musk cares so much about free speech and public debate he's trying to retrain Grok to be less liberal.
None of them - not one - seem even remotely interested in funding new physics, cancer research, abundant clean energy, or any other genuinely novel boundary-breaking application of AI, or science in general. They have the money, they're not doing it. Why?
The focus is entirely on building a nostalgic 1950s world with rockets, robots, apartheid, corporate sovereignty, and ideological management of information and belief.
And that includes AI as a tool for enforcing business-as-usual, not as a tool for anything dangerous, original, or unruly which threatens their political and economic status.
wealth is not a thing in itself, it's a representation of value and purchasing power. It will create its own economy when it is able to mine material and automate energy generation.
The end goal is to ensure the survival of a small group of technocrats that control all production on Earth due to the force multiplier effect of technological advancements. This necessitates the depopulation of Earth.
-- In such a future, people will have minimal income (possibly some UBI) and therefore there will be few who can afford the products and services generated by AI
-- Corporate profits drop (or growth slows) and there is demand from the powers that be to increase taxation in order to increase the UBI.
-- People can afford the products and services.
Unfortunately, with no jobs the products and services could become exclusively entertainment-related.
UBI can't fix it because a) it won't be enough to drive our whole economy, and b) it amounts to businesses paying customers to buy their products, which makes no sense.
I like your optimism, though.
We may find that, if our baser needs are so easily come by that we have tremendous free time, much of the world is instead pursuing things like the sciences or arts instead of continuing to try to cosplay 20th century capitalism.
Why are we all doing this? By this, I mean, gestures at everything this? About 80% of us will say, so that we don't starve, and can then amuse ourselves however it pleases us in the meantime. 19% will say because they enjoy being impactful or some similar corporate bullshit that will elicit eyerolls. And 1% do it simply because they enjoy holding power over other people and management in the workplace provides a source of that in a semi-legal way.
So the 80% of people will adapt quite well to a post-scarcity world. 19% will require therapy. And 1% will fight tooth and nail to not have us get there.
Most don’t seem to comprehend why the economy is being destroyed by the ultra rich
That's because someone, somewhere, invested money in training the models. You are given cooked fish, not fishing rods.
20 years ago we all thought that the Internet would democratize information and promote human rights. It did democratize information, and that has had both positive and negative consequences. Political extremism and social distrust have increased. Some of the institutions that kept society from falling apart, like local news, have been dramatically weakened. Addiction and social disconnection are real problems.
This is one of the deepest ironies of our era.
The rise of steam engines did. And the printing press and electrical engines did the opposite.
It's not hard to understand the difference, it's about the minimum size of an economically useful application. If it's large, it creates elites, if it's small, it democratizes the society.
LLMs by their nature have enormous minimal sizes, and the promise to increase by orders of magnitude.
The scary thing about AI is that people might end up with the right to do problematic things that were previously infeasible.
Conversely a lot of very bad things led to good things. Worker rights advanced greatly after the plague. A lot of people died but that also mean there was a shortage of labour.
Similarly WWII, advanced women's rights because they were needed to provide vital infrastructure.
Good and bad things have good and bad outcomes, much of what defines if it is good or bad is the balance of outcomes, but it would be foolhardy to classify anything as universally good or bad. Accept the good outcomes of the bad. address the bad outcomes of the good.
So far, I see no grand leftist resurgence to save us this time around.
Except for the Founding Fathers, who deliberately created a limited government with a Bill of Rights, and George Washington who, incredibly, turned down an offer of dictatorship.
Tecumseh, Malcolm X, Angela Merkel, Cincinnatus, Eisenhower, and Gandhi all come to mind.
George Washington was surely an exceptional leader but he isn't the only one.
Though that said, the other problem is capitalism. Investors won't be so face to face with the consequences, but they'll demand their ROI. If the CEO plays it too conservatively, the investors will replace them with someone less cautious.
However, I recently got a 100 EUR/m LLM subscription. That is the most I've spend on IT excluding a CAD software license. So've made a huge 180 and now am firmly back on the lap of US companies. I must say I've enjoyed my autonomy while it lasted.
One day AI will be democratized/cheap allowing people to self host what are now leading edge models, but it will take a while.
Human skill was already democratized in that anyone can obtain skills, and businesses have to be good at managing those people if they want to profit from those skills - ultimately the power is in the hands of the skilled individuals. But in the hypothetical AI future, where AI has superhuman skill, and human skills are devalued, it seems like there will be a more cynical, direct conversion between the money you can spend and the quality of your output, and local/self-hosted AI will never be able to compete with the resources of big business.
And the rest of us are looking at a bunch of startups playing in the dirt and going "uh huh".
Sincerely curious if there are working historical analogues of these approaches.
From what we're seeing the whole society has to be rebalanced accordingly, it can entail a kind of UBI, second and third classes of citizen depending on where you stand in the chain, etc.
Or as Norway does, fully go the other direction and limit the impact by artificially limiting the fallout.
You have to ask, if we have AGI that's smarter than humans helping us plan the economy, why do we need an upper class? Aren't they completely superfluous?
Historically the elites aren't just those who have lots of money or property. They're also those who get to decide and enforce the rules for society.
So it would depend on which class the AGI decided to side with. And if you think you can pre-program that, I think you underestimate what it means to be a general intelligence...
https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
The idea of taxing computer sales to fund job re-training for displaced workers was brought up during the Carter administration.
Althogh it was written somewhat as a warning, I feel Western countries (especially the US) are heading very much towards the terrafoam future. Mass immigration is making it hard to maintain order in some places, and if AI causes large unemployment it will only get worse.
I rather regret not being able to justify buying:
since it was set up as a public benefit corporation.
Similarly, there are co-operatives for electric still --- how are they handling solar? Do they afford an option to use one's share of the profits to purchase solar panels and batteries?
What would be an equivalent structure for an AI company which would actually be meaningful (and since circling back to politics is inevitable, enforceable)?
> Mass immigration is
There is always crime to report. But notice the narratives are never about white collar crime. That might come to close.
Where is this happening? I'm in the US, and I haven't seen or heard of this.
At some point, there will be an AGI with a head start that is also sufficiently close to optimal that no one else can realistically overtake its ability to simultaneously grow and suppress competitors. Many organisms in the biological world adopt the same strategy.
There isn’t a single organism at the top of the biological pyramid.
I also forsee the splitting off of nation internet networks eventually impacting what software you can and cannot use. It's already true, it'll get worse in order to self-protect their economies and internal advantages.
Looking for beta readers: username @ gmail.com
* Review of wealth sources with respect to food
* Socioeconomic ramifications of a free food distribution system
* Implications of artificial wombs, longevity pills, and nefarious people
* Benefits of personal, real-time DNA analysis devices
* Organic, bioluminescing street lamp replacements with 500+ year lifetimes (a bathtub curve extension analog)
* Robotaxi services using machine learning to optimize owner income
* How optimal prisoner's dilemma strategies resolve Hume's guillotine
* Strategies for evading capture in a surveillance state
* What plans an AGI would give itself (that don't involve conquering humanity)
* Ways an AGI could completely disable our emergency call centers
* Rationale behind a Galactic race towards harnessing black hole energy
and more.
1) Inequality will be exacerbated regardless of AGI. inequality is a policy decision, AGI is just a tool subject to policy. 2) Democratic agency is only held by elected representatives and civil servants, and their agency is not eroded by the tool of AGI. 3) techno-feudalism isn't a real thing, it's just a scary word for "capitalism with computers".
> The classical Social Contract-rooted in human labor as the foundation of economic participation-must be renegotiated to prevent mass disenfranchisement.
Maybe go back and bring that up around the invention of the cotton gin, the stocking frame, the engine, or any other technological invention which "disenfranchised" people who had their labor supplanted.
> This paper calls for a redefined economic framework that ensures AGI-driven prosperity is equitably distributed through mechanisms such as universal AI dividends, progressive taxation, and decentralized governance. The time for intervention is now-before intelligence itself becomes the most exclusive form of capital.
1) nobody's going to equitably distribute jack shit if it makes money. They will hoard it the way the powerful have always hoarded money. No government, commune, sewing circle, etc has ever changed that and it won't in the future. 2) The idea that you're going to set tax policy based on something like achieving a social good means you're completely divorced from American politics. 3) We already have decentralized governance, it's called a State. I don't recommend trying to change it.
Tech companies are the same old story. They are monopolies like the rail companies of old. Ditto for whatever passes as AGI. They're just trying to become monopolists.
Wish I had time to study these formula.
We already have seen the precursors of this sort of shift with ever rising productivity with stalled wages. As companies (systems) get more sophisticated and efficient they also seem to decrease the leverage individual human inputs can have.
Currently my thinking leans towards believing the only way to avoid the worse dystopian scenarios will be for humans to be able to grow their own food and build their own devices and technology. Then it matters less if some ultra wealthy own everything.
However that also seems pretty close to a form of feudalism.
In a feudalist system, the rich gave you the ability to subsist in exchange for supporting them militarily. In a new feudalist system, what type of support would the rich demand from the poor?
A serf's week was scheduled around the days they worked the land whose proceeds went to the lord and the commons that subsisted themselves. Transfers of grain and livestock from serf to lord along with small dues in eggs, wool, or coin primarily constituted one side of the economic relation between serf and lord. These transfers kept the lord's demesne barns full so he could sustain his household, supply retainers, etc, not to mention fulfill the. tithe that sustained the parish.
While peasants occasionally marched, they contributed primary in financing war more than they fought it. Their grain, rents, and fees were funneled into supporting horses, mail, crossbows rather than being called to fight themselves.
That doesn't work now because we don't have AGIs to do the chores but when we do that changes.
They would either do it voluntarily (and be outcompeted by those who don't?) or be coerced (by who? Someone who doesn't have AI but is more powerful than they are?).
Rather than fearing the loss of traditional employment, we should embrace the explosion of new roles that AGI will make possible.
An LLM is essentially autocomplete with some very clever tricks that allow it to do some tasks quite well. But it is not even conceptually close to actual intelligence.
I am a big fan of Yanis’ book: "Technofeudalism: what killed capitalism", which lacks quantitative evidence to support his theory. I would like to see this kind of research or empirical studies.