> To claim that all of the benefit isn't going to naturally accrue to a thin layer of people at the top isn't a speculation at this point - it's a bold faced lie.
Indeed.
> When AI finally does cause massive disruption to white collar work, what happens then? Do we really think that most of the American economy is just going to downshift into living off a meager universal basic income allotment (assuming we could ever muster the political will to create a social safety net?) Who gets the nice car and the vacation home?
Completely impossible to forecast, even if not against a backdrop of all the changes due to the very tech that makes people unemployable.
For the latter: One task that is currently done by humans, is making robots. Either that continues to be done in part by humans, or it becomes fully automated. If it's fully automated, essentially nothing stops exactly one lone philanthropist (or anarchist hacker) from telling one to recursively make copies of itself until every human on earth has their own.
Unfortunately, I suspect the realpolitik of such tech will be horrific in the same way that the trenches of WW1 provided an unexpected and horrific use case for all the chemical industry that was in the process of ending famine in Europe, and likewise the manufacturing industry that was in the process of giving everyone modern conveniences such as "electricity", "indoor plumbing", and "affordable home refrigeration".
Indeed.
> When AI finally does cause massive disruption to white collar work, what happens then? Do we really think that most of the American economy is just going to downshift into living off a meager universal basic income allotment (assuming we could ever muster the political will to create a social safety net?) Who gets the nice car and the vacation home?
Completely impossible to forecast, even if not against a backdrop of all the changes due to the very tech that makes people unemployable.
For the latter: One task that is currently done by humans, is making robots. Either that continues to be done in part by humans, or it becomes fully automated. If it's fully automated, essentially nothing stops exactly one lone philanthropist (or anarchist hacker) from telling one to recursively make copies of itself until every human on earth has their own.
Unfortunately, I suspect the realpolitik of such tech will be horrific in the same way that the trenches of WW1 provided an unexpected and horrific use case for all the chemical industry that was in the process of ending famine in Europe, and likewise the manufacturing industry that was in the process of giving everyone modern conveniences such as "electricity", "indoor plumbing", and "affordable home refrigeration".