Imagine this scenario:
- All companies start producing mostly using only AI and firing people, because people have no use anymore
- Joe spend most of his income on digital video games products
- Joe get fired because he got replaced by AI now, since AIs are taking over most jobs
- Joe has no income anymore
- Joe doesn’t have any more money to spend on video games
- Companies have no more profit, because people don’t have income, so people can’t spend on their AI produced products
In this scenario both lose, the company adopting AI and the worker. Am I missing something? Is there any possibility besides Universal Basic Income to keep the system running and not collapsing?
hint: they won’t. a flooded labor pool means the corps can pay as little as possible for the labor they do need humans for. it’s the whole point of capitalism. for a neat story about it, read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair.
Joe doesn’t have any more money to spend on video games
Companies have no more profit, because people don’t have income, so people can’t spend on their AI produced productsFunny thing, a Scottish fellow named Adam Smith figured that an economy where people don’t have money to spend ends up stagnated and/or fucked over. Somewhat ironically, that is the piece that is most often overlooked by today’s liberal economists (the kinds that are in favor or less regulation and taxes)
Most rich assholes like the idea of lording over a bunch of dirty peasants, of feeling superior to the unwashed masses, having them offer themselves into slavery out of “free will”
thats why AI scheme is peddling to all different countries government, under the guise of verification, age, and CAMERA surveillance tech, they see them as the only source of income.
That is a problem for the next quarter’s CEO to deal with
The economy will shift to serve a smaller number of people.
The people who lose their income will fall into poverty, existing on charity, begging, or scrounging, or they will die. (They will nearly all die sooner than they would have if they had maintained their income)
The CEOS and shareholders might understand this, but none of them can solve it alone, and trying to do so puts them at a disadvantage vrs their competitors.
The productive capacity will go toward ever more elaborate and esoteric projects, like Bezos wedding, or sending Musk to Mars, or building the biggest superyact, again.
And the majority will suffer.
bezos barely FUNCTIONing B.O. company for space tourism.
I suspect you left out a step: many will start going after people who DO have money before just dying.
Who, by then, will be surrounded by ai-powered armed drones and robots.
They will, and I suspect some will succeed because the billionaires do not realize the danger of the truly desperate, and even if they do, they will cheap out on security.
K shaped economy. They don’t care if we can afford anything. Its Versailles. The peasants starve while the aristocrats move the “economy”.
I believe the French got there once and they managed to solve the issue
I really wouldn’t want to get to that point and I honestly don’t really understand why the rich class just continues this course because I do believe it’s playing with fire at this point
That’s the thing. These companies are not thinking that far ahead and they don’t care about the consequences even if it hurts them too.
The only thing matters to these people is making number go up. They want more money. They want it right now. They don’t care what consequences it has for them or the world later so long as they get more money now.
There will never be a universal income. Countries will let their people starve before they give them money for nothing.
These companies are not thinking that far ahead and they don’t care about the consequences even if it hurts them too.
Yep. We’ve already see that with climate change so it’s not a stretch to apply it to AI.
The rich who benefit from this don’t care. They have enough wealth that it doesn’t matter. We could all be starving to death, fighting each other scraps of bread in the street, and they’d believe we deserve it.
If anything, that would drive prices down so they could build their next vacation home for pennies on the dollar.
If everyone is dead the people who fix things, grow or raise the food, transport the food, and prepare the food die too, and the stockpiles these people have become finite. We all die first but eventually everything these people have will break, supplies will all run dry, and they will die too.
They most likely know this and don’t care because they want the number to go up right now.
There’s a bunch of people who work as consultants for the rich, and in the past decade they have been talking about how many rich people were getting into disaster prep. Some of them have done interviews with various news organizations. In an article I remember they said a common question was how these rich bastards could ensure their bunker staff wouldn’t revolt and take over.
They went for control of food supply and explosives collars it seem
It’s like the ending of the Dinosaurs sitcom when everyone is going to die and Bob is talking to his boss on the phone. His boss is excited about all the money he’s going to make. Bob points out they’re all going to die and the boss says “well that’s a fourth quarter problem”
Ehh, I fear the companies know that perfectly well but a single company notdoing it will just get bancrupt…so all companies are playing chicken to see which will survive the longest
This is my take.
However, my husband has a very interesting theory. He feels like its going to go in the way of the Alien universe where there will be universal income in a way but provided by government/corporations and a controlled populace.
Both options aren’t great 😂
You didn’t read the Epstein email about him saying he has a plan on how to kill off the poor?
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It’ll just be a corprate circle jerk of companies paying each other for “products and services”. People will work for food an be shelter, provided by the company you work for. I believe the kids are calling it “techno-feudalism”.
On top of that who’s gonna keep creating the real data necessary to keep training the AI models if no one can profit from their work anymore.
It’s an ouroborous situation.
as long as they keep peddling new AI startups, they can keep it going a little longer. if you live near a convention center, you know almost every event is AI (this or that)now
I don’t think the ai and data centres are for us.
The billionaires who want to survive this upcoming apocalypse need ai to be functional in order to survive in their bunkers.
Everyone else till then is basically free labour, training material and collateral.
Now that’s a username!
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other than maybe SOROS, mackenzie scott, and cuban. the other billionaires are the first target.
I look forward to reading about you in the news cycle. Go now while you’re still motivated.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
Companies pushing for AI are playing a short game, not a long game. They have not considered the consequences of this course after a short term return (which may not materialize anyway).
The whole AI debacle is a great example of why it’s bad to have engineering developments without the philosophical conversations. We need the A in STEAM to tell the E’s when they’re opening Pandora’s Box.
Nah. Once Robotics catches up with AI and those who own everything can have whatever necessities and luxury goods they want produced without us, the bulk of humanity becomes redundant and unnecessary. They won’t need us to buy or build or do anything. We’ll just be cluttering up the scenery and competing for resources. It would be in their best interest for the majority of us to die off.
Abolition of money
Why would the owners need to keep the system running if they have all the resources and tools?
One need not worry about the game not being able to continue if one already won.
But they are not one, when all the resources and tools are owned by the big companies that is when they fight each other, and for that they need cheap expendable ground troops, so ask yourself “which company do I want to fight for?” The Gaggles of Google, how about Amazon’s 6/7 mechanized infantry, or the SpaceX Xforx.
Oh it’s gonna all be memes and violence from then on, you will get paid in company money and live in company community’s, eventually the world will be devided into roughly country shaped chunks run exclusively by a single corporation or a consortium of smaller companies.
Gonna be just like the utopian sci-fi, you know Neromancer, Blade Runner, Cyberpunk, and my favorite Downbelow Station.
That’s not what I meant by “one”, but nvm.
Also, if we ever reach that point, I’m not fighting for any of them. And not just for moral reasons - it will be more profitable to steal from them, and since the social contract will be broken anyway…
But I’d rather fo my best now to make sure that doesn’t happen to begin with, and I thankfully live somewhere where my effort might actually might make some impact (the European Union).
In the end, the owners have access to the resources, can get labor or whatever for cheap, and can live in control and luxury even without selling much or anything, while trading amongst themselves.
They don’t have a need or use to produce for the parents anymore. It only makes sense for as long as they have gain.
Owners may incite conflict and war to gain more control. The peasants will join for a lack of better knowledge, access, or alternatives.
We’re back in the middle ages.
People rise up and destroy or regulate the destructive forces, and establish a more sustainable system - maybe.
Ideal : Universal Basic Income where everybody receives a set amount to live on, and if you can find a job on top of that then good for you.
Probable : 2 tier society where the poors are left to fend for themselves in increasingly feral ghettos
Almost certain : WW3. Kill off lots and lots and lots of poors. You see how many people were killed at an industrial scale in WW2. That’ll be nothing.
