this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (12 children)

It's a weird conclusion to take that the people working towards or excited about a world where AI robots have automated all labour and resources and services are free and near unlimited for everyone would want to limit that to only white people, or people who are rich now - since being 'rich' in a world with unlimited resources isn't really a concept.

I can only talk with certainty about myself, but I would hazard a guess that the majority of people excited about a post scarcity world are not part of the bourgeoisie, and see it as a way to solve the social injustice issues we see now but are powerless to do anything significant about, not to further exacerbate wealth inequality - there would be no motive to hoard resources in a world without scarcity, when you can have most of what you ever dreamed of and so can everyone else, including the people living in what were formerly third world countries.

It's a dream of a paradise, not a dystopia, and it's a dream people are actually working towards, to try and make the world better. What is the comic writer doing to make the world better? Donating a fraction of the money that current charities need? Tearing down other people's attempts at solutions? Complaining online about how other people aren't doing anything about the starving children in Africa?

Not to say there aren't legitimate fears of AI, such as a misaligned ASI being created that turns into a paperclip maximiser and destroys everything we care about. But that's a very different argument than what the comic writer is making.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Increasing wealth has only ever been observed to fuel greater inequality.

I don't see any evidence that the value that increasing automation is bringing will be distributed more evenly.

We produce enough food for everyone and still let people starve - equal access to AI is even harder to justify than equal access to food.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You would just have to let an superintelligent (aligned) AI robot loose and prompt it to produce enough food for everyone. It wouldn't even be any maintaining effort, once the robot had been created. If it doesn't have any negative consequences to the creators to have positive consequences for everyone else, and there are any empathetic people on the board of creators, I don't see why it wouldn't be programmed to benefit everyone.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

As long as it doesn’t generate any negative externalities, sure. That’s a huge alignment problem though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago

True, and I have my doubts on the alignment problem being solved. But that's a technical problem, a separate conversation from whether even attempting it is worthwhile in the first place.

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