If the physical asset owner can replace me with a brain in a jar, it doesn't really help me that I have my own brain in a jar. It can't think food/shelter into existence for me.
If AI gets to the point where human knowledge is obsolete, and if politics don't shift to protect the former workers, I don't think widespread availability of AI is saving those who don't have control over substantial physical assets.
There is a rush to build data centers so it seems that hardware is a bottleneck and maybe that will remain the trend, but another scenario is that it stops abruptly when capacity catches up? I'm wondering why this doesn't this become a race to the bottom?
1) It doesn't solve the problem of obtaining physical capital. So you're basically limited to just software companies.
2) If the barrier to entry to creating a software product that can form the basis of a company is so low that a single person can do it, why would other companies (the ones with money and physical capital) buy your product instead of just telling their GPT-N to create them the same software?
3) Every other newly-unemployed person is going to have the same idea. Having everyone be a solo-founder of a software company really doesn't seem viable, even if we grant that it could be viable for a single person in a world where everyone has a GPT-N that can easily replicate the company's software.
On a side note, one niche where I think a relatively small number of AI-enabled solo founders will do exceptionally well is in video games. How well a video game will do depends a lot on how fun it is to humans and the taste of the designer. I'm suspicious that AIs will have good taste in video game design and even if they do I think it would be tough for them to evaluate how fun mechanics would be for a person.
“Be competitive in the market place.”
Go.
“Don’t collapse the global economy.”
:)
I don't think we will be building these things ourselves, but I think there will still be products you can just buy and then they're yours.
It would be the opposite of the "Internet of things" trend though.
But what are the minimum inputs necessary to build self-sustaining robotic workforce of machines that can (1) produce more power (2) produce more robots (3) produce food. The specifics of what exactly is necessary--which inputs, which production goals--is debatable. But imagine some point where a billionaire like Elon has the minimum covered to keep a mini space-x running, or a mini optimus factory running, a mini solar-city running.
At this point, it's perfectly acceptable to crash the economy, and leave them to their own devices. If they survive, fine. If they don't, also fine. The minimum kernel necessary to let the best of mankind march off and explore the solar system is secure.
Obviously, this is an extreme, and the whole trajectory is differential. But in general, if I were a billionaire, I'd be thinking "8 billion people is a whole lot of mouths to feed, and a whole lot of carbon footprint to worry about. Is 8 billion people (most of whom lack a solid education) a luxury liability?"
I really just don't believe that most people are going to make it to "the singularity" if there even is such a thing. Just more of the same of humanity: barbaric bullshit, one group of humans trying to control another group of humans.
if your job is replaced by ai, you having ai at home doesnt change whether you're making money or not.
the capital owner gets their capital to work more effectively, and you without capital don't get that benefit
Companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on training AI models, why wouldn’t they expect to own the reward from that investment? These models are best run on $100k+ fleets of power hungry, interconnected GPUs, just like factory equipment vs a hand loom.
Open weight models are a political and marketing tool. They’re not being opened up out of kindness, or because “data wants to be free”. AI firms open models to try and destabilize American companies by “dumping”, and AI firms open models as a way to incentivize companies who don’t like closed-source models to buy their hosted services.
This is not like cell service or your home ISP; there are more choices. Not seeing where the lock-in comes from.
