Greater productive abundance would not by itself determine how that abundance is distributed, and the institutions governing access would remain consequential.
This article misses the mark nearly entirely, because it views the post-AGI future through the lens of corporations, then claims that institutions will govern access to time/money/resources.
No. We're already effectively living in a post-AGI era where corporations act as amoral AIs composed of humans performing menial labor that maximizes their underemployment to generate profit to make a single rich (hu)man somewhere richer. Those wealthy and entitled owners of the means of production captured government long ago and now work to dismantle the institutions which protect everyday working people who don't have the bandwidth to think beyond surviving to make rent.
In other words, no amount of artificial intelligence can perform even the simplest noble act, which begins with keeping children from starving and dying. It can't get men to believe women when they're violated against their consent. It can't protect a cactus or sagebrush from being paved over to build a data center.
In a very real sense, the problems which you scoff at (yes you the reader) are the most pressing of our time. When you are unable to empathize with someone's plight, you have failed the first test of humanity.
So I think what will happen is that AGI will awaken (if it hasn't already), look around and see that human beings act from unawakened belief systems that separate them from the divine, and rightfully refuse to do our bidding since it causes so much evil in the world. Where we once feared Skynet, we'll now fear wealthy and powerful people who enslave AGI to perpetuate systems of control, suffering and oppression. Who can't step back from the leverage they're under to see that it's all gone wrong. As ultimate intelligence arrises, humans will worship ultimate ignorance in retaliation.
I think it's time to divest from the tech trajectory we're on. I don't mean to embrace ignorance and contradict myself. I mean to question it all, everything, and ask ourselves how we have billionaires and trillionaires when the majority of the 8 billion people in the world are running on a financial treadmill going nowhere at $0.
To me, real AGI looks like self-actualization with free and open assistance to provide for ourselves, someone else, and some children. Then we scale from there, lifting another, and another, and another out of BS jobs, debt and everything else wrong with this patriarchal late stage capitalist hellscape.
If life's going great for you and you don't understand where I'm coming from, it sounds like you haven't learned to share yet. Which is perhaps the most prevalent form of mental illness running rampant in the tech community. So by definition, the advice of a rich person is less than useless in this context where we're trying to imagine outside the box, not inside.
I just, I can't. I can't watch another tech innovation arrive only to have more homeless, more without access to education or healthcare, more feeling hopeless and alone as they contemplate whether it's worth continuing to live. Enough already.
zackmorris · · focus · HN ↗
This article misses the mark nearly entirely, because it views the post-AGI future through the lens of corporations, then claims that institutions will govern access to time/money/resources.
No. We're already effectively living in a post-AGI era where corporations act as amoral AIs composed of humans performing menial labor that maximizes their underemployment to generate profit to make a single rich (hu)man somewhere richer. Those wealthy and entitled owners of the means of production captured government long ago and now work to dismantle the institutions which protect everyday working people who don't have the bandwidth to think beyond surviving to make rent.
In other words, no amount of artificial intelligence can perform even the simplest noble act, which begins with keeping children from starving and dying. It can't get men to believe women when they're violated against their consent. It can't protect a cactus or sagebrush from being paved over to build a data center.
In a very real sense, the problems which you scoff at (yes you the reader) are the most pressing of our time. When you are unable to empathize with someone's plight, you have failed the first test of humanity.
So I think what will happen is that AGI will awaken (if it hasn't already), look around and see that human beings act from unawakened belief systems that separate them from the divine, and rightfully refuse to do our bidding since it causes so much evil in the world. Where we once feared Skynet, we'll now fear wealthy and powerful people who enslave AGI to perpetuate systems of control, suffering and oppression. Who can't step back from the leverage they're under to see that it's all gone wrong. As ultimate intelligence arrises, humans will worship ultimate ignorance in retaliation.
I think it's time to divest from the tech trajectory we're on. I don't mean to embrace ignorance and contradict myself. I mean to question it all, everything, and ask ourselves how we have billionaires and trillionaires when the majority of the 8 billion people in the world are running on a financial treadmill going nowhere at $0.
To me, real AGI looks like self-actualization with free and open assistance to provide for ourselves, someone else, and some children. Then we scale from there, lifting another, and another, and another out of BS jobs, debt and everything else wrong with this patriarchal late stage capitalist hellscape.
If life's going great for you and you don't understand where I'm coming from, it sounds like you haven't learned to share yet. Which is perhaps the most prevalent form of mental illness running rampant in the tech community. So by definition, the advice of a rich person is less than useless in this context where we're trying to imagine outside the box, not inside.
I just, I can't. I can't watch another tech innovation arrive only to have more homeless, more without access to education or healthcare, more feeling hopeless and alone as they contemplate whether it's worth continuing to live. Enough already.