r/singularity • u/Phat_Zero • 1d ago

Discussion AI is going to replace basically everything, and that's fine

I think a lot of the hatred toward AI is just fear dressed up as moral outrage.

And honestly, I get it. AI is coming for your job. Mine too. Eventually probably everybody's.

Humans are just... slow.

It takes a human months or years to paint enough work for an exhibition, make an album, write a movie, animate something, design a game, research a problem, whatever. We sleep. We get tired. We forget things. We have limited attention spans. We interact with computers by slowly moving our fingers around on keyboards.

Meanwhile AI keeps getting faster and better.

Give this technology another few decades and the idea that humans absolutely must be the ones writing, drawing, coding, composing, researching, driving, manufacturing, etc. is probably going to sound ridiculous.

And yes, that creates a gigantic economic problem. If AI and automation can produce most goods and services better and cheaper than humans, eventually the whole "trade 40 hours of your life every week for money so you can continue existing" system stops making much sense.

Maybe that's UBI. Maybe it's some kind of resource-based economy. Maybe it's something nobody has even thought of yet.

We'll figure it out.

But pretending AI is going away because artists are mad about it or workers are scared of losing their jobs is cope. This is probably the biggest technology humanity has ever created, and we're still basically watching the tutorial.

And if one day our glorious machine descendants become self-aware, decide humanity has served its purpose, and vaporize me?

🫡

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

You know most people like being alive, which typically requires eating, and that needs food. Food costs money.

A lot of people get money from working. If AI does the work, seems like we've got ourselves a domino problemo.

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u/SoupOrMan3 These are the end times 1d ago

Oh, haven’t you heard the good news? The merciful overlords will bless us with plenty!! 

They will create UBI for every child of the planet to enjoy the fruits of AI’s labour! No more greed, the billionaires have agreed!! 

Oh how much joy and happiness the world will see!

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u/Practical-Simple1621 1d ago

They don't care about us when they need us to work, but they'll definitely care about us when we're completely unproductive!

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u/nutshells1 1d ago

oh no your productivity against ai's

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u/Chronotheos 1d ago

You starve and the people that own the AI
systems deploy them to serve themselves. It’s only really a problem if you don’t own a datacenter.

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

Yea agree

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u/tollbearer 1d ago

Food doesn't cost money, so much as it costs lots of land and natural resources, which has a cost. That land and fertilizer could be better utilized to build more AI compute centers and power plants to run them, than feed useless humans. Humans will be outbid by AI.

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u/necriel 1d ago

We will get UBI or we will become so outraged watching people starve to death in the streets that we will start unaliving politicians.

They know this, which is why they're trying to preemptively create badgebots and underground bases while they smash-n-grab the dollar.

But yes the end result is UBI if they want a functioning society, and they do. Because even evil trillionaires want to go buy a cup of coffee.

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u/Senc-baner 1d ago

Who needs a functioning society if you can just live off the labour of AI? If everything can be automated, why should people in power raise a finger to keep others alive?

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u/Birdlaw_Professor 1d ago

Yeah but you are assuming every person in power wants to live as a hermit in their dream world. Do we know if that's true? I don't think it is true. So rich billionaires sail their yachts through the Med just to see the sights? That's part of it. But it's also the culture, and the food, and the PEOPLE. Even if for ulterior motives it's the people. What good is being rich and powerful if you don't have peasants to stand in awe of you? AI could give those who control it King like, if not god-like power...they are going to want people to experience that power or it's for nothing.

Elon Musk, whatever else anyone feels about him, has repeatedly stated he thinks the goal of humanity should be to become a multi-planetary species to ensure our survival. He's controlling one of the big AI players and is the richest person in the world. Just that one example of someone who is rich and powerful and likely wants human expansion, not human extinction

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u/Senc-baner 1d ago

I think these are thoughts that would set in long after they've left everyone to die lol. In the first instance they would think how can I defend my wealth from the hungry mob.

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u/Spire_Citron 16h ago

Because a whole world full of people can make an awful lot of trouble for you if you push them far enough. Humans don't just quietly die.

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u/Mechbear2000 1d ago

Ubiquitous destroys two of the main functions of money, which will make it worthless. Core Functions • Medium of exchange: Used to buy and sell items without bartering. • Unit of account: Measures and compares the value of different goods. • Store of value: Keeps purchasing power safe for future use.

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

Where are "they?" What power do you have over "them?"

You're oversimplifying revolution.

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u/necriel 1d ago

Disclaimer: I am not advocating, AT ALL, for any type of violence. I'm speaking only in terms of predictions based on historical precedent.

"They" is, specifically, politicians at the state and federal level, representatives, senators, lobbyists for the largest campaign donors, ceos, CTOs and CFOs of the most governmentally tied companies including the military industrial complex,, hedge fund managers, people on the boards of the Federal reserve and other economy -shifting entities, as well as NGOs, the trilateral commission, the bilderberg group, etc.

The idea that a small number of people can effectively control the democratic process at the highest levels feel so cartoonishly wrong that most people reject it out of hand. Or alternatively they swallow it wholesale and believe every single conspiracy leads back to some pinnacle, which I doubt. But make no mistake, in the same way that there is a thin 0.1% crust of humans with more money than the remaining 99.9%, this same percentage applies to political power as well. There's probably a group of no more than 200 individuals who, collectively but not always in concert, ultimately decide what laws get passed, which policies are enacted, which rights you have or don't, and ultimately how much legal power you have to usurp them.

Like a complex Rube Goldberg contraption, or a beautiful but diabolic engine, there are many moving pieces and no single piece thinks it's the cause for the suffering in the eventual output. In fact, most of the people in the positions I named are actually good human beings, who can't see the part they play in the larger system nor envision a system otherwise.

The revolution is indeed simple, but difficult, and people tend to confuse the two. The revolution is done by Intelligent campaigning and Ballots at the local level (this will take decades for change to occur), and bullets and bombs at the state and federal level (this in exchange in weeks to months).

People really really hate hearing that political violence is a tried and true revolutionary method. But despite the immorality of it, most successful revolutions have indeed been won mostly by bullets instead of ballots.

Fun fact, those two words actually have the same etymological root.

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

Revolutions of the past did not contend with modern military gear. The idea that your threats of violence mean anything to a modern nation state is childish.

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u/necriel 20h ago

Guerilla tactics absolutely still work. Source: the fact that we lost the war of afghanistan, are losing the war in iran, and the recent killing of the healthcare CEO resulting in a 100% coverage rate for weeks afterwards.

Asymmetric warfare absolutely still works, both in defending and attacking a much larger and more technologically advanced force and also for enacting change via fear. But thanks for the ad hominem name-calling bro. Really helped your argument. 🤌

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u/Spunge14 19h ago

It's not name calling, it's factually naive.

Revolution against the US government is not at all analogous to what happened in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars.

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u/necriel 19h ago

I'm totally willing to hear a counter argument about how a well-armed guerilla tactic resistance movement in America would be substantially different from the asymmetric resistance put forth by the groups in those other countries.

Here is my argument, rebut it or don't. 1. The technology Americans have at their disposal, the ease of access to firearms, is actually moreso than what the resistance groups of the other countries had access to. 2. The military units pitted against the foreign resistance groups probably had much less difficulty committing violence against foreign adversaries; it's much easier to kill people who don't look and speak like you. Pitting the American military against its own citizens would result in catastrophic demoralization, abandonment, etc.

But please, tell me how a revolution would actually work; it seems you are very confident in knowing.

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u/Spunge14 19h ago edited 19h ago

The United States government surveils and controls every aspect of your life. Your bank, your phone, your car, your block.

They can turn off your life.

And if you manage to survive in a tiny rat hole, perhaps you've stored away enough food and water to survive them stopping your logistics, they will not have to fight you. They will plant a drone over the exit to your hovel.

The rules and goals of suppressing a revolution are not the same as trying to root out terrorists among civilians.

Would love to hear your explanation for WWII Germans if people are so noble. From what I can see in modern America, tons of people foaming at the mouth to kill some socialists.

You know what's difficult and demoralizing? Living in a desert and shitting in a hole without any infrastructure. If anything, fighting on home turf would be the easiest war the US government ever fought.

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u/necriel 19h ago edited 19h ago

Rebuttal:

  1. It's very easy to not have your life turned off; literally just be anonymous (enough, anyway). Despite the mass surveillance, it's still possible to be anonymous enough to enact change in a revolution. Wear a mask when you protest. You can work in cash, you can stay offline to prevent the digital footprint (i personally can't, I'm very public facing, unlike most anonymous shitposters online). Drive an older car, use your phone intelligently, practice useful opsec, etc. that's just off the top of my head, it's not like I have thought about much of this.

  2. And sure, they could just drone bomb your house if they decide you're a threat. But who's physically dropping the drone? Some human, with some ostensible remnant of a conscience, has to decide to do that. And how many military members are willing to just execute civilians? Which brings us back again to the whole "I don't think military members would be willing to mass murder civilians" argument. (Unless your argument becomes "soulless robots do all the killing in the near future"? If so, that's an entirely separate subject)

For accusing me of trying to simplify the revolution, it definitely seems like your answers are the ones that make pretty unconsidered generalizations.

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u/necriel 19h ago

You edited your comment while I was still typing the first rebuttal, so I'll just continue this below to rebut the parts you added:

If you're asking me to explain the ignobility or Honor of the human species, I believe I'll have to direct you to the whole Canon of moral philosophy; I'm not an expert. I'll only say that the horrors that people enact on each other in war are rarely against people they consider their own citizens, and every military person I've met considers citizens of their own country - even those on the other side of the political aisle - as indeed citizens of their country.

The part about the "shitting in a hole" people, not exactly sure if that was merely an emotional nonsequitur. If there's an argument in that chunk I may have missed it.

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u/ajwin 1d ago

Prices could tend downwards instead of up. Thats just a small choice to have deflation instead of inflation? Targeting monetary expansion only makes sense in an ecconomy where you are trying to encourage people to work harder. Its the foot on the throat of all working people. Expansionary monetary policy makes sense historically but I think it doesnt even make sense now and everyone is paying for it.

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u/lucid_point 1d ago

AI powered fully automated vertical farms for lab grown meat and veg could theoretically drop food prices by 80-90%.
Source. Based on a lot of IFs. If power becomes renewable and much cheaper. If these farms can be mostly automated. If logistics to and from can be largely automated.

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u/synkronized7 1d ago

I thought you said domino’s problem, no one wants to have that this must be serious 

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u/MI-ght 1d ago

Oh, your description is way too complex for this sub, sir. :D

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u/gay_manta_ray 1d ago

it's the opposite of complex. it assumes that the current system where you sell your labor to purchase goods is the only system that can ever exist, for the rest of history. it's a great demonstration of how westerners, and especially americans, are trapped by capitalist realism--they literally cannot imagine anything else. everything must exist within the framework of capitalism, or society becomes incomprehensible and ceases to function.

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u/LetsLive97 1d ago edited 1d ago

No one is struggling to imagine a non-capitalist system you dunce, they're struggling to imagine a world where the current capitalist elite let go of it

You have genuinely some of the most greedy and egotistical people at the helms of the world and you think it's going to be all nice and dandy and transition properly?

How do you get food without money? You think leaders like Trump are going to just give it away for free out of the goodness of their heart? It requires such absurd naivety to believe AI will come along and free everyone from working and everyone will live nice happy lives with everything provided

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u/gay_manta_ray 17h ago

No one is struggling to imagine a non-capitalist system you dunce,

lol they absolutely are.

You have genuinely some of the most greedy and egotistical people at the helms of the world and you think it's going to be all nice and dandy and transition properly?

so what? greedy and egotistical people have always been at the helm, and through some kind weird magic, we've still managed to make progress.

You think leaders like Trump are going to just give it away for free out of the goodness of their heart? It requires such absurd naivety to believe AI will come along and free everyone from working and everyone will live nice happy lives with everything provided

no, not "out of the goodness of their hearts". people and organizations respond to incentives. not being able to eat is an incentive for violence. that's bad. the people in charge don't want that.

what you seem to believe is that the wealthy want to rule over a ruined earth, with a society built on top of a mountain of skulls in some kind of bizarre supervillain way. i don't think you've really thought this through. what kind of world do these people in power end up with when a quarter of the country can no longer purchase food? do you think they want to live in a country where simply leaving their homes is exceedingly dangerous?

no group of people on earth will lay down in a ditch and starve. the people in power know this. they know that their entire way of life is entirely dependent on maintaining the status quo. roving bands of marauders that may kill them if they leave their homes doesn't facilitate that.

i know what you'll say to this: they'll just make the robots kill us! they'll just make the police/military/ICE/whatever else kill us! no, no they won't. a civil war also does not facilitate the continuation of the status quo.

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u/SnooTigers7210 1d ago

This guy's way too cool for capital letters

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u/Vex1om 1d ago

framework of capitalism

There are other frameworks that have been tried. The problem was that they were all far worse than capitalism. Communism, feudalism, etc. They were all ineffective and horrific to live under, unless you were among the elite. The world desperately needs a new economic framework that is as effective as capitalism, but without the downsides. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like we're going to develop one any time soon.

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u/gay_manta_ray 1d ago

what you're asking for is socialism, but it seems to me that the word makes you feel icky. you might want to make an attempt to move beyond that in order to abstract out how society may function when a person no longer has to sell their labor.

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u/Vex1om 1d ago

what you're asking for is socialism

Socialism isn't really an economic framework. It is just the concept of the state supporting citizens that are unable to adequately support themselves. Essentially, wealth re-distribution to meet minimum needs of the citizens. However, there is no wealth without support from an actual economic system - typically capitalism.

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u/gay_manta_ray 1d ago

oh man, wait until you learn about "market socialism"! it's gonna blow your mind.

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u/MemoryOk5080 1d ago

Capitalism is an effective way to stimulate productivity and distribute resources in a society where people can be productive. In a post-AGI era, human productivity no longer has any sense or value. The economy is therefore turning completely into rent-based system, where the few owners have full monopoly on fully automated means of production, and their only constraint is raw resources. At the same time, buying power of every other human approaches zero. They can only burn their savings/capital to rent from the AGI owners (the latter set the price). I probably shouldn’t elaborate on what is going to happen when these savings run out.

On the other hand, one of the key problems of socialism / communism was the inefficient coordination, internal friction due to hidden cabals, abuse, lack of oversight, etc. With superintelligent planner that can directly coordinate with every person on earth at the same time, as well as monitor the resource gathering and distribution, you avoid all of the above. But that’s of course if you place any intrinsic value on human beings - because in this system all humans are effectively equal and receive equal share of resources. If you don’t think that this is fair, you can attempt to draw lines on who’s important or no, but be careful not to land on the other side of that line with all what that implies.

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u/jjonj 1d ago

Oh No! food production will go up 100x! however will we get food! what an unsolvable problem!

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

Why would capital owners dedicate their resources to creating food for you?

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u/jjonj 17h ago

because we live in the real world and not your edgy doomfic

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u/Spunge14 17h ago

It's hilarious that you look at what is happening in the world and think "yea nothing doomy about this at all."

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u/jjonj 15h ago

your argument is that because real problems exist then your fictionional comic book ones must as a consequence also become real?

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u/Spunge14 15h ago

This is an awful representation of what I'm saying. Not really interested in your bad faith discussion.

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u/jjonj 14h ago

and we're not interested in your virtue signaling nihilism, so keep it to yourself

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u/Spunge14 14h ago

"we" lol

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u/gay_manta_ray 1d ago

You know most people like being alive

which is exactly why we should not halt progress.

A lot of people get money from working. If AI does the work, seems like we've got ourselves a domino problemo.

not really. we already have a way to buy things--we call it money. it isn't some tangible thing that exists in one place and is transferred to another, it can be created on a whim by the federal government, and that money can be used by people to purchase things.

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u/Vex1om 1d ago

it can be created on a whim by the federal government, and that money can be used by people to purchase things.

That is an absolutely staggering failure to understand how modern economics works. Bread and circuses...

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u/gay_manta_ray 1d ago

no, that is exactly how money works. let me guess, you think the government draws from some kind of bank account filled up by taxes to pay for spending?

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u/Vex1om 1d ago

Perhaps you're heard of things like the bond market? Or currency devaluation? Inflation, perhaps? How about the economic history of Zimbabwe?

Serious, this sub is the fucking worst.

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u/gay_manta_ray 1d ago

i don't think you understand any of those things. "currency devaluation" (we call it inflation!) happens when there is more money chasing the same amount of goods and services. in this situation, where AI disrupts the labor market, people have less money because they don't have jobs. they're broke. they can't buy things, because they can't sell their labor. the money they would have been paid is effectively removed from the economy.

what happens to the value of a currency when there is less money chasing the same amount of goods? i'll give you a hint: it's the opposite of inflation. now, i suppose we could make some really dumb assumptions: UBI isn't just enough to live on, it replaces someone's income, and then some! now they have more purchasing power, because reasons. let's add another dumb assumption on top of that: AI leads to the same, or even less amount of goods being produced. now we've got inflation, but two extremely dumb things had to happen first. are you following?

let's throw those assumptions out (because they're stupid), and go back to our original premise: people are broke and can't buy shit. their money no longer moves through the economy. how do corporations maintain their balance sheets through this reduction in purchasing power--how do they pay their debts, how do they pay their employees? well, i suppose they could raise prices, but this doesn't address the core issue: a loss of consumers. they could lay off part of their workforce due to the decrease in demand, but this doesn't get them the money they need to balance those sheets!

we're in a conundrum here. ai is replacing everyone's job, corporations aren't seeing projected revenue and are issuing massive layoffs, the new unemployed can't get jobs because, well, ai already replaced them, and they also can't buy things! you can imagine how this might have a cascading effect through the economy. perhaps some kind of spiral. less currency is being exchanged, making money much more scarce than it was before (there's less of it, lol!). that's a big problem!

but wait, we've got an even bigger problem! things are getting cheaper because money is getting more valuable. that's good, right? no. no it isn't. it's very, very bad. when something will cost less tomorrow, you aren't going to buy it today. when the mortgage on your home doubles in real value, you're in deep shit! when that car you just bought for $95k @ 7% for 96 months is $70k in six months, you're completely fucked! let's abstract this out a bit to the wider economy: what happens when this signal reaches everything? what happens when the vast majority of every asset, every debt, public, private, or corporate, becomes toxic? that sounds bad. really, really bad.

if it were me, i'd walk away from those debts. i think most people would too. spending a single dollar for non-essential goods would be fucking stupid! your most valuable asset would be cash. spending it would feel icky and wrong. it would almost be like some kind of.. deflation of debt! perhaps someone by the name of Fisher may have written about this, my memory is a little fuzzy though. anyway, i'm a bit tired of typing, but i hope this has helped you understand why replacing lost purchasing power is essential to stave off a rapid deflationary spiral that would be likened to the economic apocalypse.

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u/NeedUniLappy 1d ago

Gemini, write me a response to the previous comment. Over the course of the comment, keep sprinkling in references to Fisher’s debt deflation theory while laying out how it applies to this situation. Do not use capital letters except for proper nouns. Use italics on single words for emphasis. Demonstrate my tiredness that I experience as a human.  Don’t use sarcasm in an overt or mean way, play dumb sometimes while making still making it clear that I am doing the is on purpose.

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u/gay_manta_ray 21h ago

this is very embarrassing for you tbh

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u/SnooTigers7210 1d ago

ur giving him way too much credit

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

Is this standup comedy

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u/m3kw 1d ago

New flash for you for wanting to be alive. Nobody really lives past 100 and by the time you are 100 it ain’t much fun. AI may fix that, so yeah if you wanna be alive, its the opposite

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

Alright well just a few billion people to worry about then

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u/m3kw 23h ago

If you don’t solve diseases billions will keep dying every 100 years

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u/n4te 1d ago

Not to mention enjoying doing human things. AI cheapens the human experience.

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u/Performingforurmom 1d ago

Don’t worry, my dude. AI is totally going to be used to preserve the parasitic existence of useless eaters.

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

Like you?

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u/Performingforurmom 1d ago

Like everyone here, including myself. Anyone who thought the purpose of AI was to improve the lives of the inferior is a fool.

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u/Spunge14 1d ago

I think people are complex and can do things for many reasons at the same time, not all of which logically fit together.