I’ve been thinking about how AI is going to shape up society and one particular scenario seems like a high-probability outcome to me. Here’s how it could play out:
• AI automates more and more of human-work
• Returns from this automation flow back to capital holders, making them wealthier
• As incomes of masses drop, government ignores/abolishes income tax but rather taxes corporate income / wealth for its needs
• Rich isolate themselves (as they do) and use AI-enabled drones/robots to protect themselves
• This takes all powers away from the masses -> govts pay less attention to masses as their contribution to taxes dwindle and they can’t even rebel as they’re up against AI security forces
• A minimal form of UBI is provided to masses in the name of morality
• All future social mobility stops, and current power structures get frozen forever
In short, the powerful and the rich create a parallel society and social mobility stops because the capital owners / power brokers control the AI who does economic work (preventing anyone else to climb up).
One can argue this has been gradually happening, but today the masses still have power due to their labor contribution and their ability to physically rebel against the elite.
But AI has the potential to change that power-balance and it seems to be that’s where we’re unfortunately headed. /syndicated
This scenario is also known as “gradual disempowerment” or the “intelligence curse”
An online book by @LRudL_ and @luke_drago_ really brings this into sharp view and I strongly recommend reading it: https://intelligence-curse.ai/
Do note that this scenario is probably the default, but not frozen in stone.
I think humanity still has a chance to not give up power to the elite and/or AI. A way out is to diffuse AI enough in the open source that access to it is democratic (but scaling laws suggest larger models may always overpower smaller ones!). Another, of course, is stopping AI development (but I don’t think that’s going to happen; humans are too curious to stop).
What do you think about this scenario? Plausible? How do we ensure this doesn’t happen?
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