I've flipped on human employment

[Jakob]

I definitely used to be a human employment evangelist, but with the GPT models, I've been forced to flip on this. What can I say? In 2022, I thought ChatGPT was decades away yet. But I am no longer of the mind that human labor will be a large part of the economy indefinitely. There are certainly some jobs that won't be automated for centuries if not ever--because people don't want them to be, not because they can't--but there isn't enough demand for everyone to pivot to these jobs.

So what is the ideal way forward over the next few decades? Because surely people won't sit peacefully and starve in the street without jobs. The ideal case, I think, would be for cheap and open source uncensored, local, AI models and advanced robotics to become more affordable in terms of money and compute power, until they make their way into the hands of the masses, though it can't be stated enough that this can only happen if crushing regulations from Big Government don't stifle it. Ideally this would lead to a gradual and soft reversal of the increasing specialization and division of labor that we've seen since the dawn of agriculture.

Of course, I'm not an anarcho-primitivist, high-tech industrial society must remain to prevent mass deaths and because hunter-gatherer agrarian life was hell on Earth, but with such tech it can become increasingly decentralized, which can only be a good thing for capitalism and the Free Market as it makes it harder for the government to strangle everything and everyone. Gradually it will become more efficient for people to just directly make most of what they and their families need with local AI models, robots, and 3D printers instead of working increasingly scarce jobs for money and using that money to buy the shit they need from other people, so naturally people will, if left to their own devices, organically make this transition, one by one.

I believe money will still exist indefinitely, some goods will make more sense to be traded for than personally made, and now that we've invented money, it's objectively more efficient than bartering. Will this be Star Trek utopia? No, that's stupid, there will be problems and injustices all around, and resources will never be unlimited. Life will, as ever, be unfair and many will have their grievances, disputes, and violence. But it seems the only path forward that is not actively *dys*topian.

But no doubt, Woke Liberal organizations like the Democrats and CPC will try their hardest to crush such technologies and keep them out of the hands of the common folk, because they want eternal Socialism and State power. Will they succeed? Alas, probably, but I suppose we will find out. "Interesting times" we live in, as the Chinese say.

[funkervogt]

But I am no longer of the mind that human labor will be a large part of the economy indefinitely.

I agree. The notion that "Humans will always be needed because who else will fix the robots?" is flawed since there's no reason robots couldn't learn how to fix and build each other. Jobs demanding empathy, creativity and artistry could be done better by machines than by humans within a few decades.

There are certainly some jobs that won't be automated for centuries if not ever--because people don't want them to be, not because they can't--but there isn't enough demand for everyone to pivot to these jobs.

People will be very reluctant to let machines serve in elected political posts or in law enforcement niches where they would be empowered to make life-or-death decisions. Likewise, few will trust machines to be judges or jurors. The problem is, if those kinds of jobs were all that was available, there would only be enough for 1% of the human population.

Maintaining a human monopoly over some jobs "for centuries" could also prove impossible if machines violently take over the planet. I think they will have a real chance at succeeding by the end of this century.

So what is the ideal way forward over the next few decades? Because surely people won't sit peacefully and starve in the street without jobs.

Individuals should be willing to switch careers often to stay ahead of the job automation wave. Eventually, your personal AI will get so smart that it will be able to offer you optimal advice on what to do to stay employable. Just do what it says.

As technological unemployment worsens, people in democratic societies will vote for more state benefits for themselves. I think this will proceed more smoothly in homogenous countries that are already democratic socialist than it will in more capitalistic democracies like the U.S. and Brazil. The voiceless citizens of authoritarian countries will be facing a huge gamble: I think some like China will have governments that value their lives, while in other countries, the criminal regimes will choose to exterminate their surplus humans.

The ideal case, I think, would be for cheap and open source uncensored, local, AI models and advanced robotics to become more affordable in terms of money and compute power, until they make their way into the hands of the masses,

I think it will happen. Every human will have a robot servant and access to superhuman AGI. However, this wouldn't actually keep average people relevant in any way or make them rich. Big corporations will have billions of robots and superhuman AGIs that are all better than what Joe Schmoe has, and economies of scale will still favor the capitalists. Likewise, national governments will retain the ability to impose their wills on their people and foreigners thanks to more resources and concentrations of resources.

Ideally this would lead to a gradual and soft reversal of the increasing specialization and division of labor that we've seen since the dawn of agriculture.

All humans will be equally unemployed.

Gradually it will become more efficient for people to just directly make most of what they and their families need with local AI models, robots, and 3D printers instead of working increasingly scarce jobs for money and using that money to buy the shit they need from other people,

I disagree. Economies and scale and specialization will still make it cheaper for people to buy most of their goods and services from big companies. For example, if I had a robot servant and a 3D printer, I could tell it to build me a new car, and it could do it. However, it would take forever for it to fashion every part and to assemble them together, and the lack of specialized machines at my house would also mean the manufacturing cost would be very high. It would be much faster and cheaper for me to buy a car from a Toyota dealership that had been made in a huge, automated factory full of machines specialized for different aspects of car production.

Also, in your scenario, where are average people getting feedstock for their 3D printers from, and how are they paying for it?

I believe money will still exist indefinitely

Yes. Money was one of mankind's greatest inventions. The notion that future technology will somehow make money obsolete makes no sense, and I think it's wishful, muddled thinking from poorer members of the futurist community.

Will this be Star Trek utopia? No, that's stupid, there will be problems and injustices all around, and resources will never be unlimited. Life will, as ever, be unfair and many will have their grievances, disputes, and violence.

I agree. However, you described a world that could, by many objective measures, be better than any previous era of history. The extreme miseries of the human condition (poverty, chronic illness, etc.) could be eradicated. People would still despair over things like relative differences in status and wealth between humans, but keep it in perspective.