I think this too is a kind of denial. As in, while some are in denial about the usefulness of AI, others are in denial about whose living standards are actually going to be uplifted.
And it's sad, really, because I think these two groups would make a great pairing if they could stop arguing against one another for a moment. They'll both be impacted about as much and probably have the same ultimate goals (to lead dignified lives).
But it seems these days everyone is more interested in Kayfabe and feeling like they're in the right than working together, so maybe I should just keep quiet rather than attract the ire of both groups...
> others are in denial about whose living standards are actually going to be uplifted.
I don't know if it is fair to say they're in denial. For my part, I don't expect life to get much better for regular people (especially short term), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to try to make it happen.
Asking questions about policy and values and pushing to have those resolved in positive ways is about as far away from denial as you can get. It’s possibly the only useful thing an ordinary person can do.
What a lot of people want to do, and I’m not saying that you’re one of them, is to assume that a positive outcome is impossible and either do nothing or loudly yell that the world is ending. Neither is particularly useful.
Or, as I said above, others just deny that there’s anything to see here and try to get people to move along.
The AI companies themselves, who are highly motivated to sell AI as overall positive for society, notwithstanding some security/etc risks, and who have economists on the payroll to think about things like this, do not seem to have found any possible positive outcome to present.
Shane Legg (DeepMind co-founder), one of the more intelligent and thoughtful people you'll find in the industry, could only offer "it's a tough problem - we need to think about it" when recently interviewed by Hannah Fry.
On the surface the most likely outcome for AI allowed to replace jobs is extraordinarily negative, especially since it is a general capability technology, not a specific one where displaced workers can just move to another field. Once AI becomes more capable it will be able to do the vast majority of white collar jobs, including any new ones that may appear as a result of AI. As Shane Legg put it, "if your job can be done remotely, sitting in front of a computer, then it can probably be replaced by AI".
Not only does AI threaten to replace ALL the white collar jobs, but it is rapidly going after blue collar (factory jobs, driving jobs) and pink collar ones (Japanese robotics for elder-care) as well.
If a positive outcome (which doesn't include putting displaced workers on welfare - UBI) is possible, then it sure would be nice to hear it, and the silence from the AI companies, and government for that matter, is deafening.
UBI probably is the positive outcome, though it may not seem like it to begin with. Initially it will likely be stigmatised and under-resourced, but as a larger proportion of people move out of work and onto UBI that stigma will drop and the resources should grow.
Eventually UBI will be the norm, and if the living standards of a person on UBI is as good as yours or mine today, that will be an enormous win for everyone. It’s like pensions, once these were only for the elderly poor, now they’re a right for everyone in most developed countries.
It’s also interesting that for most of human history leisure time was the point of life, and only in recent modernity has work come to be the meaning of someone’s existence.
UBI has to be commensurate with production being automated. That’s a big logistical problem, if you think building datacenters is a challenge try bringing about radical abundance, but even so it’s not insurmountable. It just needs to be taken on as project and not seen as an impossibility.
So much of this is not about what is possible so much as what people believe is possible. We can do anything if we try.
We don't see a progress towards UBI even inside individual countries and with AI we will need it on international. What people in Europe or Africa will do when all jobs there will be replaced by American or Chinese AI companies, where they will get money for UBI?
No, I think people will demand to not live in poverty. Capitalism allows people to escape poverty by personal effort. An AI future won’t allow it by any means other than collective effort, so that’s what we’ll do.
That will entail an immense amount of violence to be undertaken by the working class against those in power, unless you think they'll gladly give up all of their ill gotten gains out of the goodness of their black little hearts.
In fact I don't think that rich people are cartoon villains who enjoy watching the poors starve. If AI leads to greatly increased productivity, then at existing tax rates there will be more than enough to provide good living conditions for people who can't find jobs.
In some countries, especially less developed ones, poverty levels are declining, but in the US the trend seems to be the opposite. The middle class is being gutted and descending into survival mode if not poverty, while the top few percent become obscenely rich at their expense.
In any case historical trends are really irrelevant to the discussion, which is about the impact of AI, which threatens to take away almost ALL the jobs (this is what Dario's essay is assuming), which has no historical precedent. Some people like to bring up previous waves of job automation such as the industrial revolution, but the difference there is that automation took some jobs but created others. In the case of AI, AI will also be taking the new jobs that it creates.
If AI takes all the jobs - which is what the people like Dario who are creating it assume will happen - then it seems "UBI" is indeed the logical conclusion (other than those able to make a living working for themself, or via self-sufficiency), but this is not going to be utopia where we are all idle rich practicing our hobbies. What it really means is a welfare state, where formerly proud people capable of supporting themself become dependent on government handouts. What comes to mind is the movie "Soylent Green", not utopia.
I'm not sure how anyone imagines this would actually work. Is there any private enterprise left at all, or are all the means of production (AI datacenters and robotic factories) all controlled by the state. Instead of distributing Soylent Green, the state distributes UBI-scrip, essentially food-stamps, that can be exchanged at state stores for provisions?
Seriously, how could this actually work ?
An alternate future, no more optimistic, at least in the short term, but perhaps more realistic, is that in the fairly near future when unemployment and public pain becomes high enough, we reach a tipping point, and the pitchforks come out. Eventually the government concedes that AI is no more conducive to the public good than nuclear weapons, and heavily regulates it, banning the use of AI to replace jobs. This may sound extreme, but surely not a fraction as extreme at the UBI-based welfare state that Dario Amodei is fantasizing about as the best possible outcome (that is compatible with himself becoming enormously wealthy).
> No, I think people will demand to not live in poverty
What about other countries in the world where people... live in poverty?
> Capitalism allows people to escape poverty by personal effort
Isn't it possible that there is a future where AI makes the average value of human labor (or, "personal effort") plummet? Perhaps capitalism will lose some of its edge against a technology like this.
This seems more a fantasy than a considered likely outcome. He basically admits that humans will eventually mostly all be out of a job, replaced by AI, but then says (Gemini's summary) that there will be:
"Massive Economic Abundance: Because AI will exponentially grow the total economic pie, overall resource scarcity will diminish. The fundamental challenge shifts from producing wealth to distributing wealth."
So how do we go from everyone out of work, no income to spend on food, or the goods and services that the AI is producing, to "massive economic abundance"?!
"Massive Economic Abundance" implies massive increase in produced goods. This implies massive deflation, ceteris paribus. So step 3 could be simply printing money to pay for UBI. Deflation from AI productivity increase and inflation from UBI money printing will cancel out.
For money to work it has to represent some real value, something that has some scarcity to it such as potatoes or hours of human labor. Ultimately it is just a decoupler in a barter system, a universally recognized IOU.
Why would someone give me a car in exchange for UBI-scrip when that UBI-scrip has no inherent scarcity or value and can be produced in infinite supply by the government ?
> Why would someone give me a car in exchange for UBI-scrip when that UBI-scrip has no inherent scarcity or value and can be produced in infinite supply by the government ?
UBI script will have some value, I am proposing printing enough money just to combat AI productivity-induced deflation, not infinite UBI money.
You know, I think Dario should have kept the Richard Brautigan theme in his essay titles. I think that I was trying to describe you to someone is an absolutely perfect match for introducing an AGI that has been achieved. It’s basically the same idea in blank verse, about a spread of a different technology, and made personal along the way.
Asking politely is not how we got a 40-hour work week or workers' comp or most other labor standards we take for granted, just historically speaking. I think a positive outcome is very likely, and I think it will be a lot more work than loudly yelling, but I don't think anything will happen if we try to build everything up from first principles instead of taking a moment to consult history as many are wont to do in this AI era.
And it's sad, really, because I think these two groups would make a great pairing if they could stop arguing against one another for a moment. They'll both be impacted about as much and probably have the same ultimate goals (to lead dignified lives).
But it seems these days everyone is more interested in Kayfabe and feeling like they're in the right than working together, so maybe I should just keep quiet rather than attract the ire of both groups...