We've had a UBI trial (of sorts) going on in the UK for 115 years, though it's called the state pension and only available to the over 65s. Sure, people take a bit of time off to unwind when they retire, but they pretty soon find things to do, and frequently find work to contribute to the community. I'm sure we're all aware of the cliche that retired people say "I'm so busy, I don't know how I managed when I was working". Imo the idea that everyone is just going to veg out on the couch for the rest of their lives is spurious. And we also had the covid lockdowns to see how people would respond to not working. Pretty much everybody found ways to amuse themselves with the methods David is talking about here. Imo the vast majority of us, freed from the yoke of exploitation, will blossom and live much happier lives. Great video David btw, thank you.
Of course You are 100% right. That myth you mentioned is just that, a myth. If it were true humanity would not have arisen out of the muck. It's a myth that serves the status quo.
This is actually one of my favourite topics in academia. I usually study computer science but this spring I took 6 months off just to study economics to get a better understanding of the labour market works (and some other things) and how AI might affect it.
@@Luna-wu4rf I mean this is even presuming Academia is much of a thing in the next few years, some drastic changes are going to have to happen to keep it alive.
@@erkinalp not really, much of the theoretical backing is based off shitty axioms. I like empirical economics work, but the math they use to model their results is crazy
@@Luna-wu4rf I totally agree. Economics is also very much a social science in a way. Alot of it boils down to human psychology and behavior. Most models are unrealistic but can still be used to describe reality sort of okay
So, so much! And if we manage to survive the upcoming pitfalls (I'm mostly confident we will) then it will seem like such a medieval concept to anyone born post-labour.
well there is still some battles to be fought before I can say I am looking forward to it. Might not be a very pleasant future, if without labor there is no political weight for the average joe ;)
We are at the final stretch now. Things will likely still be difficult in the next 10 years. A lot of people are going to lose jobs without UBI implemented yet. This transitional period is going to be tough. But yeah, it's inevitable that one day humans will no longer have to work their butts off just to survive.
@@Yic17Gaming why is that inevitable? Because you wish it to be? I think taking how easily human are to manipulated and the freak stuff we just come from believing (pre-industry /enlightment) thinkin, QAnon, Big Media, .... We will not come to UBI. We are a pack of monkeys to easily manipulated. Although I wish it to be different. There might be pockets in society where this will be the case, but on a grant scheme ... not to much hope.
I hope the conversation around UBI shifts to one of an "AI dividend." Like you said on the Ownership of Production slide, ownership and distribution of rewards have been determined by initial investors. Because AI has been trained on all our data, it makes sense to me that we are all, in some sense, initial investors. If we frame the conversation this way, then a regular payment becomes a return instead of a handout.
Yeah how do we avoid a "Disneyland with no children" scenario? A planet full of factories making toys and art to earn income from other AIs, with the human customers written off as a business expense, more and more farms abandoned and humanity slowly squeezed out of a world we no longer control
This is why "the consumer" is often front and center. Current economic doctrine states that consumer demand is a rational signal. What humans actually want to spend money on
@@DaveShap I ma not that sure that the consumer demand is that rational to be accurately considered as a signal for rationality. What humans actually want to spend money on is not existent. They basically do not know because they do not tend to think about it hard enough. What they actually do in the majority of cases is consume what is considered (signalled by society and culture) to be necessary for consumption or consume what they do not have to choice not to consume.
The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin published 1995. I read this book when it first came out and the author contended that due to information technology and automation there will soon be massive unemployment. I tried convincing my future father-in-law and he rightfully categorically dismissed me. I think I'm having a deja vu all over again.
At the place where I volunteer, they published a 'Youth Standard' for educating the next-generation. In it, it stated three "essences": (1) cultivate hobbies, (2) learn how to talk to old people, (3) learn how to deal with boredom. This NGO is called IITTI World Civility Index.
I've been a pest control technician for 26 years. It was always an underlying life purpose for me, to be a "dinosaur".... to work in a skilled profession for long term. For me, possibly over 40 years? WHY someone may ask? Because I felt like, even going back to the early-mid 1980s, this lifestyle would end soon. Let me say, FOR THE MOST PART, I enjoy my work. I don't have a college degree, but I've been skilled and in demand in my career. I am a "tweener" in my vocation and my age. I'm 54, not old and not young. Older people don't grasp what's coming. Younger people may not either. But I believe a lot of nonsense that has existed in our society for my lifetime should die off. I am really excited to see a day when politics as we know today, economics, fear-based survival mode thinking, etc. will be forced to undergo massive changes. We live in an exceptional time. I feel we are fortunate. Thank you for these videos because they are really helpful! Oh yeah for the last 20 years I have been a collector of antique clocks. So my "status" today is satisfied by collecting clocks wealthy people in the past used to own.
Really looking forward to this one, find myself thinking about my own career and how much longevity it has. A.I has already enabled me to do things that I would never have imagined I'd be able to do. I recently built an app with next to no coding knowledge using ChatGPT as a educator and writing partner. It made me realise that everyone is going to be able to do everything with A.I very soon. Maybe the answer is to just follow our passions and hope the enthusiasm from that is enough to spark opportunities. Feel like UBI is the real answer but attitudes for any income support is frowned upon in the UK unfortunately.
Huh? The UK a variety of income support / job seekers allowance schemes to ensure that everyone has at least enough to survive. The real challenge would be convincing the USA as the right there has a rabid hatred of anything “socialism” (unless it benefits them directly).
@@ThomasTomiczek I'm sorry my comments caused you to have such a strong emotional response, I hope everything in your personal life is going well. It is a stressful and confusing time for many people.
I agree, disruptions to the workforce are going to also affect people spiritually also, UBI will be a problem, why? Because who is issuing it? A central bank operating on the will of the government? That’s what this will all bring, a middle ground will be needed because with UBI will also be Digital ID, power and control issues, it will be interesting.
@@ashleyhayre1890 That’s my point, they will control the masses with technology by controlling your wallet, making you completely reliant on the government.
@@harveysymes5192you're right. We don't have digital IDs right now (good! 👍), and UBI (baaaad 👎) will be what causes digital IDs to come about (cuz reasons)
I was thinking about this topic yesterday. I thougth "i have always thinked about what would i do if i do not need to work, maybe this is the moment to achieve that". I would work out a lot, travel around the world and see every beautiful place, animal, plant and people. I would play a lot of sports, music and do creative things (AI will do this better as products, but the creation aspects would be for personal fulfillment), study a lot of interesting topics and heck, if there is an explosion in tecnology, travel to space and another planets, who knows. I think that, one of the mayor conflicts of humans with this AI thing, is the fear of the birth of an entity more capable of doing things than us. I mean, all of our existence we have been the top of the food chain, and "lords" of every place and every creature on earth. AI has the potential to take away that from us. However, i think that the fact that another specie will do better than us in a lot of aspects, does not mean that our existence is meaningless, or we have to stop living our lives. If we look to every another animal on earth, they still do their things and live the life in their way, even with humans dominating the world. I see this as an equivalent of discovering super intelligent alien species, they would be probably better than us but we still will be humans. As a said, with AI, we still will be humans, just in a diferent world.
David thank you so much for this vulnerability and knowledge breakdown. I often am out of my league on your videos and trying to learn as fast as I can without destroying my self confidence prior to catching my feet. AI has really given my hope being in the neurodivergent community, but also overwhelmed my already racing brain. Excited to see the future regardless! Appreciate you commenting on your mental health and prioritizing your healing. Sending love from New Brunswick,Canada!
If we’re talking time scales I think that this’ll happen, if at all, around the mid 21st century. Most likely I think that it will be something unimaginable, like trying to explain an influencer to a mid 19th century peaseant.
Probably around 2040-2050s. However the disruption will already be here from a few years to a decade from now. Probaby by the 2030s humanity will already understand on a more collective way that is going to happen and we will be changing things incrementally to adjust. One of the problems is governemnts are burocratic and slow while AI evolution goes faster and faster. We might have new advancements blindside everyone and then there will be a large hole because it won't be fixable right away. Like, imagining AGI here in around 1-2 years per example like David proposed in another video might put is in that position. The moment you have AGI you can make AI do way more than now and with the open source crazyness mixed in we can have emergent proprities we won't realize another year in. Maybe once we get AGI, getting to human level is trivial. But if human level is trivial making it better than humans is even more trivial i suspect.
Interesting. I just found your channel (must have watched about 5 videos) and what you said here is basically the same stuff I wrote in my PhD thesis (I finished the PhD in February, but wrote the thesis during the last 2 years). If you are able to read in portuguese, I can send it to you.
David, I feel it’s important for you to know that most of the inflation is corporate greed. There’s been many articles explaining they just used inflation as an excuse to raise prices. The simplified understanding you can speak on is that if inflation was just supply chain issues then these corporations would also be seeing record breaking profits. I love your content and I think it’s very much needed. Just felt compelled to share that when you didn’t mention it since it’s even more of a cause than the reasons you stated
Companies have been increasing their cashflows by making more profits. It's either make more profit or take on loans at high-interest. When costs increase, you don't just increase prices to maintain profit margins, but you have to make extra because your company requires more money turning over to do business.
I think this topic is probably understated in importance. Everyone is focused on the skynet issue because its bombastic BUT I think this topic is its boring suit wearing brother that might actually end up being even more likely to destroy society as we know it and send us into a crippling dystopia.
Olympic weightlifting, physical and mental stress seeking perfection with each lift would be a great example of latency perfection of the self. Gives you the metrics of self accomplishment physical endurance and mental satisfaction
Really great overview of this topic from historical to present & future thoughts on it all. I always wondered what would we do if all becomes automated for us. Your points on the self improvement / autonomy portion or like bettering our own scorecard were uplifting. I think the desire for human connection will trump many fears of ai human replacement. There will probably be entire societies still preserving older customs & traditions. Traditional Human crafting may become high in demand both items & services. Whenever we grow tired of automation, We may want to hear and see it all from our own kind.. maybe even over AI assisted arts or products. With less desk work, I wonder if Homesteading & food co-ops will trend upward. A lot to think about, thanks for this video!
I wonder if NZ’s Living Standard Framework fits this. Measuring our societal status using non economic factors: Civic engagement. Governance, identity, environment, health, knowledge and skills, income and consumption, safety, social connections, subjective well-being, time use.
13:20 the list of things is very comprehensive. Thank you. I find 4 to be the key component. Might be some bias, or blind spot, I have. Almost every law, social norm, category, and cultural development in modern society seems to be shaped by number four on this list. It’s almost impossible to think of any noun and not associate some form of ownership with it.
about the KPIs i suggest to have a look on the happy planet index and the good country index, maybe also adapting both for DAOs. also in germanspeaking countries GWÖ is becoming more popular (its an scoring system for companies rough translation -> common wellbeing economy) keep up and take care
Marc Andreesseen's latest blog post (published 6th of June 2023) at a16z titled "Why AI Will Save the World" is a great look into the future of AI, touching on the future of work as well.
UBI may need to happen sooner than we think due to the tech layoffs. What we don't want is a lot of people who are very good with computers, with no money and LOTS of time on their hands!
AI already allowed me to retire at 41, I am an early investor into NVDA with a substantial concentrated position. I spend most of my time during the week staying up to the minute on news and conversations of the stock market which is my profession as a regulated licensed investment advisor since 2005 but is also my long time favorite hobby. Other than that I still am not sure what I will do with all of my extra time and money. I think I should come up with some sort of philanthropic program and trust but that will be down the road. Still figuring out my new self and life.
Hi David. Stumbled across your channel recently and I've been hooked on your videos about how the future is likely going to shape up. It's been difficult confronting myself with the thought that most of our careers might be obsolete in the future. My question to you is this - Are you specifically talking about Post-Labor Economics only in the First World? IF so, I think I agree with that sentiment. But I am not sure how quickly AI is going to take over jobs in the developing world. For eg: In my country of India, we still have over 30% of the population engaged in Agriculture. Majority of our economic output that our leaders like to talk about is mainly generated through the upper 10% English speaking class that I am a part of (around 10% population of India around ~200 million people). Just a stroll through a normal street in India and you will find awfully designed power grids with wires jumbled together and even in metropolitan cities we still suffer power cuts. How would the advent of AI taking over most cognitive jobs affect a country of over a billion people? My personal view is that India is at least 50 years away from even approaching what America is today. In that case, can we see a reverse migration, i.e., people from the First world moving to more developing countries in order to build those places up and still find satisfaction from their careers, instead of staying back in the first world where their careers have been rendered obsolete?
@@krishchetty Not saying for certain this or that will happen. Just a thought that I had considering the fact that the developing world is miles behind the West in terms of key factors like infrastructure. Also in a country like the US, most farming is automated with combines, in India most of that work is still done by manual labor. My comment was more towards how leaders in the West sometimes have a myopic view about how the rest of the world actually lives. I'm all on the AI hype train but I feel that AI "taking all jobs" is a while away from happening in a place like India where we still have a lot of things to figure out. I especially don't want to live in an AI run India when we literally have some of the most corrupt politicians in the world. I think such a scenario will further exacerbate the ever widening gap in wealth between the 10% and the bottom 50%. Perhaps avenues will open for workers leaving AI dominated places like America or Western Europe in the forthcoming decades to a place like India, which would benefit greatly from their skills.
@@os3ujziC i think comparing India with tribes in the Amazon is a bit foolish. Also i was just providing a different perspective. I have seen a lot of alarmism around AI so just wanted to share my thoughts. Have a nice day :)
@@gouthammahesh3298 I think you are on to a very important point about changing labour market dynamics. For example, a US company fires all its data analysts realising the Code Interpreter plugin for ChatGPT can do the job of a 100 analysts in a fraction of the time. Where do the data analysts go. What are their options at that point. They begin competing for a small pool of jobs in their home country. They try to start their own business using AI tools to further their capabilities. Without UBI they can't start a wellness clinic without getting a pay check. The only other option I see is to offer your services to African countries or India for a fraction of your original salary. That lasts until the developing world also realises that AI services are most cost effective. I only see self employment or blockchain based coops with an AI manager as an option for the long term. The question is what business are you into. What service do you offer as a data analyst. You need to find a way to offer an even better data analysis service that appears attractive to clients. Is that even possible?? ...
Let's be real here, AGI will come way faster than Robots, so manual labour will still be around, either you go for it or you'll receive a paycheck from the government
An overlooked consequence: Human value will diminish significantly across large populations once most of us are producing nothing of value. The tendency will be toward population reduction or retreating into more isolated tight-knit communities.
What you’re essentially suggesting is that human consumption of both goods, services and experiences will be socialised in a post labor economics because there is no other way to materialise this narrative with widespread income displacement. What will incentivise the select few who control the resources of the AI age to create these consumables without the incentive of a payback? Where will this payback come from with the diminishing ability of humankind to generate an income. Lack of purpose in life will only create chaos as is evident in most poor economies of the world. Socialism without the ability and incentive to control and enrich individual destiny presents a clear and present danger of doomsday as demonstrated through human history irrespective of its form and shape!!
There is a rather sinister aspect to this entire question that is rarely acknowleged which is the 'useless eaters' meme- how long will any society really tolorate the existence of very large numbers of consumers who have no productive value? Given the resource constraints likely to be exacerbated by climate change in the future the likelyhood of quite dark outcomes regarding the 'surplus'population are a non trivial concern- will our current moral value systems regarding the intrinsic (as opposed to merely instumental) value of individual human lives prove robust enough to prevent truly terrible solutions being proposed to deal with this issue? The red flag would be any attempt to disenfranchise the non productive politically- this would be achived by defining these people as somehow no longer worthy of having a vote. Anyone who voted to leave the EU in the UK will have observed how the pro remain establishment constructed a narrative in which those who voted to exit the EU were deemed too unintelligent and gullible to be worthy of respect, and thus an attempt was made to overturn the result. This is how it would happen; the elite would begin to propagate a narrative in which the 'useless eaters' by dint of their non productive status were no longer to be regarded as legitimate political actors. Once stripped of their political potency these non producers could then be systematically marginalised and dealt with.
Really enjoyed hearing how your personal experience gave you insight on the macro-impact of AI in various socioeconomic arenas, as well as impact on modern American cultural norms. Your first chart illustrating the fall of agrarian-centric production and the rise corporate-centric work makes me wonder: what will the possible future charts look like showing the fall of modern employment and the rise of something (or things) new?
When you talk about the coop model for company ownership, the difficulty becomes how do we convince the Elons and Jeffs to turn their empires over to their employees? If we have a mixed economy of private and coop companies, the largest companies will continue expanding and consolidating and influencing politics to keep their dominant position and undermine any effort to break them up or coopify them.
I think, I hope, with more and more jobs becoming automated and people looking around what to do, I expect so many more people becoming involved in public service and our communities will begin to truly be shaped by the people living there, not self serving politicians in Washington who are there to increase their net worth with policy.
The need for achievement is perhaps finite - e.g. most people are happy to retire once they feel they've 'earned it'. So long as there's a need to strive - even if it is totally artificially created - that allows everyone to earn points toward retirement, most will accept that.
Congrats David! now I want a part II on what to do now thinking on that future. Maybe setting up the scenario with gpt4 and start brainstorming on the go..
Resources will still be a constraint, but recycling will likely become economical with robotics, we could get a fully circular system going. Really the main limitations is land, materials and energy.
Fantastic video. There's also "I would rather die than work for someone else!". More and more people are becoming sole proprietors - plugging into online platforms and apps (or starting their own sites) as contractors and unique content creators, often retaining rights to their content (which is great) and having even more freedom and empowered autonomy. Also, just because most people might have less spending power doesn't mean actual "demand" is gone, it just isn't able to be gauged in the same way based on monetary purchases. You might have millions of people with a demand, and the actual supply sitting there waiting, but the centralized currency might just not be there and accessible for those transactions. We need better ways to track demand in the market, even if everyone has no money. And voluntarily collaboratively look to meet needs and desires as a society. Gifting, sharing, and replication replacing commerce/trade within the market (the "marketplace of options") is increasingly technically viable and largely preferable within our age of abundance and digital automation. think: BitTorrent, open source, 3D printing
It's possible that most people will choose to spend their time in virtual reality, although it won't be with a vr headset but something fully immersive. If that is the case, physical property becomes less important. A virtual world could be more efficient and a richer experience than living in physical reality. This is going down the route of sci-fi, but with an intelligence more capable than all of humanity put together many things become possible. Try not to spread yourself too thin, try and keep something in the tank for another day. Cheers
I see the real problem of a distibution of the income generated by an AI economy as one of power: There are no checks and balances for the receivers of such welfare to make sure the welfare isn't taken from them. They cannot go on strike, for a big example. So what do they do if the AI administration cuts their welfare (for example, because some malicious hacker made them channel that money to himself)? A possible solution for this might be to not redistribute the income, but the ownership of the actual machines, along with administrative control. So every citizen owns a bunch of machines and has control (as in "root access", as we might call it on a unixoid server) over them (though they may not normally exercise it), and this is partially (!) redistributed every year or so. Now the citizens have the power to "order their machines to go on strike", and will usually keep that power. It would be vital to make the distribution of owenership such that all people have roughly the same amount of power (with some variance coming from more or less clever administration of one's owned machines and luck), and that it stays that way on the long run. I believe that would solve several issues you mention, like the sense of belonging, challenges in one's life, and the power distribution in society I mentioned. What do you think about that approach?
Hey, I’m really enjoying watching your videos… some of the other things that come up in my feed are from people who are just soooooo out of touch with the reality of most regular working people. They’re speculating about how their current employees could possibly find meaning in their lives without work to dictate their activities for 40hours a week - personally I can think of so many ways I, and most of the people in my life, would rather be a human *being* instead of a human *doing*. Thanks for posting these!
That's the thing. People that run companies basically have devoted their entire life to their work, so anything aside from that is just a foreign concept to them.
Fascinating stuff. My poor brain can’t get past the idea that reducing incomes to a UBI reduces our ability to consume. Therefore the companies now making super profits thanks to lower (AI based) costs also lose their ability to sell as much product. So - revenues drop in line with the AI cost savings - meaning no super profits to be taxed and therefore no ability to pay the UBI. I am sure I am missing something. 🤔
David you should check out (if you haven't) "Towards a new Socialism" by W. PAUL COCKSHOTT (Turing institute) AND ALLIN COTTRELL. The book outlines in detail a proposal for a complex planned socialist economy, taking inspiration from cybernetics, the works of Karl Marx, and British operations research scientist Stafford Beer's 1973 model of a distributed decision support system dubbed Project Cybersyn. Aspects of a socialist society such as direct democracy, foreign trade and property relations are also explored. The book is, in the authors' words, "our attempt to answer the idea that socialism is dead and buried after the demise of the Soviet Union." They wrote this before so much advancements in AI/ML had been made, I think this can really answer a lot of issues we may be facing in the nearterm.
some Ideas I threw into ChatGPT4. Control theory is a branch of applied mathematics and engineering that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The primary objective of control theory is to control a system, often called the "plant", in a way that causes it to behave in a desired manner. This is achieved by manipulating the inputs to the system based on feedback from its outputs. Classical examples include regulating the temperature of a house using a thermostat, or adjusting the flight path of an aircraft. In the context of a planned economy, the economy would be the "plant", the inputs would be labor and resources, and the outputs would be goods and services. The goal would be to design a controller that can adjust the labor and resources to achieve a desired state of the economy, such as a certain level of production or employment. This is indeed a form of control problem, although it is much more complex than traditional control problems due to the large number of variables and uncertainties involved. Next, let's talk about economic planning. In its simplest form, economic planning involves the allocation of resources and labor to achieve certain economic goals. This can involve determining what goods and services should be produced, in what quantities, and how they should be distributed. In a centrally planned economy, these decisions are made by a central authority, rather than being determined by market forces. While economic planning has had mixed success in the past, proponents argue that modern tools and methods could make it more viable. For instance, data analytics and predictive modeling could be used to better forecast demand and optimize production. In addition, blockchain and other decentralized technologies could potentially allow for a more distributed and flexible form of planning.
There are some parallels between reinforcement learning and economic planning. In both cases, the goal is to make decisions that optimize some measure of performance, given a set of constraints. Furthermore, both can be seen as a form of control problem, where the aim is to influence the state of a system based on feedback. The task of designing a controller for a planned economy is indeed a complex challenge, but we can discuss several strategies that might simplify and address this issue. Use of granular data: The first step would be to collect high-quality, granular data about the current state of the economy. This could include data on employment, production, consumption, trade, and other key economic indicators. The better the data, the more accurately the controller can model and influence the economy. Divide and conquer: Instead of trying to control the entire economy as a single system, it might be more manageable to divide the economy into smaller subsystems, each with its own controller. These subsystems could correspond to different sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, manufacturing, and services. Each sector could be optimized independently, and then coordinated at a higher level to ensure overall economic balance. Use of predictive models: Predictive models could be used to forecast the future state of the economy under different scenarios. This would allow the controller to anticipate problems and opportunities, and adjust its decisions accordingly. Feedback control: Just like in control theory, feedback would be crucial. The controller should monitor the outputs of the economy (like levels of production and employment) and use this information to adjust the inputs (like allocation of labor and resources). This requires real-time data collection and analysis. Adaptive control: Given the complexity and uncertainty of economic systems, the controller should be adaptive, meaning it can adjust its behavior based on the observed performance. This is where machine learning, and specifically reinforcement learning, could be particularly useful. The controller could learn from past successes and failures to improve its decision-making over time. Incorporation of human factors: Finally, the controller should take into account human factors, such as preferences, behaviors, and social norms. For example, it could use surveys and social media data to understand consumer preferences, and adjust production accordingly. It could also consider the effects of its decisions on income inequality, job satisfaction, and other social indicators.
I also don't remember if you've mentioned liquid democracy before in your videos, but that form of government could be really be a boon to a planned economy, the people would have nearly full direct control of the government and the economy, this could usher in a period of freedom and prosperity that humanity has never seen.
Great video! Thanks. I really like the concept of Arete. There's an interesting observation that computers have been better than humans at chess for many years, but chess is more popular now than ever. I like the idea that just because a computer can do something better doesn't mean that we can't still enjoy doing it ourselves.
If we had lots of time on our hands and had living space to be creative we could then grow some of our own food . Make the property we lived on pleasant to look at. Trade goods and services. A well thought out video. Just the opposite of click bait.
No amount of A.I. can magically create more lithium and cobalt, but as it gets better and better, it could create products that used to use those rare materials that use carbon nanotubes that could become cheap because of A.I., or A.I. could help engineer things that are unimaginable currently, that are far superior to anything that uses lithium or cobalt now.
I'm very interested in the Coop model and decentralized ownership/management. My question is what will the Coop be doing thats not based on Cognitive labour? Coops only work where physical labour is needed? ... I wonder if there will be future jobs that emerge that are human centred that we can't yet imagine?
"As soon as labour in its immediate form has ceased to be the great source of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antagonism." (Marx in Grundrisse, The Chapter on Capital)
Oh, a few more points: * The worst thing about Income redistribution is the name. It has to happen, but the branding is awful. Sovereign Wealth Fund (and it being the same thing) is waaay better. * I downsized to a tiny house. It wouldn't fit a family, but pros: I don't have rent or a mortgage! Omg, that part is Nice. * I absolutely see many industries morphing into a version of themselves that starts with excellent prompts. The book editing was a great example. A good business model for an editor may be: a set of world class prompts, domain specific knowledge that difficult to find (i.e. security vulnerabilities), and anonymozed DLP proof inputs so you don't accidentally expose your secrets. Iade the jump to doing a certain part of my work by AI (GPT4, natch). It doesn't replace me. It makes me ~6x faster. My secret sauce is a combination of lived experience, thoughtful opinions, and context for data. For example (shameless self promotion, it's free, no I mean no collection of PII/ip's/etc) a cookbook, 512 pages long, that I wrote in ten days. Ten 16 hour days, but still, just ten days. drive.google.com/file/d/1jPD4Ub4MS6Eai9xaeoCr5gNwb-GkWW0p/view?usp=drivesdk (I apologize for nothing, and it's because of our host here I dated to even try it :D)
As long as restrictions are lifted/light enough (zoning/permitting/HOA's/etc) there will always be more hand's-on physical labor until machines literally have human-like hands... ....teaching AI wisdom as well as literally playing games with AI for the AI's own enjoyment will be around for a little while.
The post-labor world has the potential to be a massive boon to our quality of life. However, there is also the possibility of neglect by those who retain power and wealth. We will be at their mercy and no mere human revolution can bend a finger directing an army of robot soldiers.
Not just robots, sure things maybe more egalitarian, but who is controlling the economy? Depends who wants to exert power. If the WEF are in control, just know that things aren’t going to go well.
I can’t think of an economic model which would have most people working about 16 to 20 hours per week. I think this would be better than going to 0, even if we solve the money problem.
There are too many variables in considering Western economies. It makes most sense to begin by considering the simplest cities, suburbs and villages of the world and work up from the intuitions and baselines established there. The only certainty is that the kind of wealth inequality we see today will be a tiny fraction of what develops over coming years and decades, let-alone beyond that. I feel like its worth reiterating that last part. it is likely (not certain of course) that the kinds of changes we're thinking about may well begin within just a few years... arguably its already beginning with large scale layoff's and changes to hiring practices specifically because of current generation automation (ie before even considering adjacent or other factors).
I'm really surprised you mentioned worker co-ops and Marxism without mentioning Social Democracy. It's a capitalist system driven by a free market but it promotes the shared ownership and means of production between all employees of the business collectively investing in it's success. It utilizes workplace democracy to maintain strong checks and balances on corporate power and greed by granting voting or veto power to all employees. Pay could be percentage based on company earnings rather than fixed wages or salary. I believe it could be a valuable approach to labor that would work well with AI and automation enabling every working citizen a say in their companies culture and direction. I'd like to hear your thoughts on if it could be a potential monetary foundation for a post-automation economy. Thanks! Great work at always!
I truly think blockchain will converge and correct course the collision of these jobs being taken out. Certain video games, physical fitness, and health data will pay you in blockchain cryptocurrencies foe participatjng. Decentralized in everything on top of DIDs (digital identities) will help keep clarity.
One question: Rather than worrying about people being dependent on government handouts and the need for re-distribution policies - which rarely ever work, because the capitalist class isn't exactly fond of paying taxes - why not just transition to post-scarcity communism? Mises' calculation problem is already solvable just with a linear optimization algorithm and enough computing power, and surely the ineffective soviet planner bureaucracy could be replaced by AI. Sure, capitalism can efficiently allocate scarce resources (in part by making them unattainable to the poor) and incentivizes/forces hard work. But if there's no need for hard work any more, market incentives and private property are just an artificial way of creating scarcity and maintaining poverty…
I really enjoy his videos.I hope he is right..i would love to to pay lower prices for stuff and not be poor.I think he is being optimistic though.I doubt it will be that good,but not not awful either...just somewhere in between.
I’ve continued to hear people say this is just like previous industrial revolutions and will create more jobs. To me, your skepticism is the obvious conclusion. The new jobs will be done by AI as we’re not just replacing the machine, but the operator as well. This distinction makes it completely unlike any previous labor revolution. New paradigm incoming.
I'm curious from a sociological point of view. I've met more than a few people that need larger groups of people in their day to be fulfilled. I'd imagine if we got the 40 hours back a week someday there might be a boon and resurgence in places groups of people could go. I'd personally love to see municipalities returning from my Fathers day along with some other community maintained projects based on local custom and history. I do worry though about those in society that need control over people. Sad fact is there are those that need dominion over others. It concerns me how that will manifest when those who's identity is wrapped up in control and no longer have a team or division or company worth of people to be responsible for. I have thought more about this topic, thanks for the videos by the way they got the brain a chugging, and think a gradual reduction in hour's worked per work would be wise. Not confident in how that would be done in reality. Too big of a change to quickly would make for a rough transition. Any thoughts or suggestions for the sociological angle of this discussion?
Don't tell the military that there are many people looking for things to do ... Maybe instead have the government offer engineering workforces to build mega (infrastrucure) projects which anyone can freely join or not. If we go out into the solar system, there should be ample work that needs to be done or go underground creating a shell world. At the time the selfreplicating bots that start on the moon f.e. to create everything to the point we can come by and live there, the same logic applies to other work environments where things can be created. 18:00 why wouldn't centralized management not work? When it is done by an AGI? The bigger question is rather again how much power over us and how we organise are we prepared to give. Every time we give it power, we take power and capability from us away. Besides the mastery as the lets say Star Trek approach there still is the one for plebs and hedonists where they could dive into virtual worlds together with their AGI agent to create worlds and scenarios to their liking. Traveling though i expect would become a rare and valuable comodity and maybe even harshly restricted. If you live at a nice place you wouldn't want it cramped with tourists from now to then because of the latest TikTok vid hyping the area. I am also not so sure about the longterm effects on our societies. I think of the IQ studies that showed the worldwide IQ is decreasing because of the use of smartphones when actually we need more smart people to keep up with AI/AGI so should one of the worst case scenarios happen, they could be flexible enough to take up the torch and burn it to the ground and know how, then again destroying shit we were always good at. Still it is creepy to think about this one version of Time Machine, where we end up as food for the engineers repairing the machines, unaware in blissful ignorance. AGI in the end will be able to take over teaching jobs at universities and do research, so how many will then choose a that as their life goal when the machine is pretty much already doing it all? As hinted towards earlier on, there will be crossroads when we want to be able to adjust course and jobs that we say stay occupied by us, but supported by AI.
Imagine we merge with AI we could do instantly everything and could reach out for the stars. Maybe there will be 2 stage of life in the future. First a human stage and then an uploaded one where you can embodied in robots or the cloud which reaching out to space.
The funny thing is, I believe super intelligence will just be better at determining how the world works, and we just go based of what we like. I believe that it will kinda work like an algorithm, the better the user (us) likes the world they live in, the AI adjusts for that. And in a sense, it won't be humans running the game, but rather an algorithm that is beneficial for all humans. Take the TikTok Algorithm, it is adjusted to be the best algorithm for me, if I dislike a video it adjusts. So in a sense, super intelligence will do the same, but for each individual, which then impacts the overall scale. Just different layers of this complex algorithm. And the funny thing about this idea, is that AI is really really good at algorithms, and this idea is easy for an AI to develop. AIs can optimize for the best system, because they are algorithm based. If we align an AI, that is all that matters, and an AI should be capable of such a goal. So alignment is the number one goal, with alignment we get to utopia imo.
@@DaveShap but this is limited purpose, open-ended general purpose robotics will be much harder to achieve and the logistics of robotics will make automation by them much slower than AI.
Nitpick but I feel like medicine , in the same way as law has enough inertia and friends in high places to not benefit from lowered cost of cognitive labor via AI advancement for quite awhile. Now , you couple drug discovery with some huge advancements in simulating pharmacodynamics / kinetics...now were cooking.
“Work” or labor is not some necessary thing. Humans lived without work for tens of thousands of years. It is not some blessing we just developed coping mechanisms to make it seem like a good thing.
11:50 but let’s consider what the AI UA-camrs and influencers of 2025 will be like. Most likely they will be advanced enough and have all of the facial macro and micro expressions and body language perfected. They will be out of the uncanny valley.
All the elements of today's economic models will be challenged. Inflation bad? Capitalism good? Ownership of housing? Rental? Taxation? Everything will be up for grabs. Looks like an economic singularity.
Problem is nothing essential for life will get cheaper, only the unnecessary extras. That will be a problem for at least those who are automated out by AI.
I appreciate you and the questions you are asking, I really do, and thats why I take the time to comment. In good faith, I must say, that you are making so many wrong (or at least debatable) assumptions and are just glossing over them as an afterthought. There are like 10 video worthy ideas in this video, and none of them are given the time, or the thought they deserve, you are a smart man... please give them the thought they deserve, a lot of people are looking at you for answers. I would love if you would take on these concepts one at a time, do a deep dive on them so you can discover all of the complexity and inter relatedness they have, and reflect on where your assumptions fall short of reality, rather than pushing out unfinished work. One criticism I have had for a long time with your videos is that you have a very local understanding of the world and economies and so when you frame your arguments in this way, it discredits them before you have even made your point. I want to see you succeed, so I hope that you read this and dont feel attacked, but I do feel you are letting your community down when you ramrod 10 complex subjects into one video giving them 3 minutes each, either you dont understand them well enough, or are not explaining them well enough. You are touching on the right questions, and so they deserve more from you.
@@DaveShap as promised, here is my rebuttal to your arguments. I want to reiterate, that I am on your side, and I appreciate what you do. While my arguments may seem critical, I took the time to address these issues because I believe in what you are doing and wanted to give you some counterpoints to consider. This is 100% good faith. I hope you can read through this massive wall of text without feeling offended, as that is in no way my intention. Please accept this for what it is, a non trivial amount of effort intended to improve your messaging in the future. Side note, please forgive any spelling mistakes, it was getting late. Labor Based Economics Two points that are missing here in this section, Division of labor, Centralized planning of labor by the Capitalist energetic output vs intellectual output. energetic output is 100% of a plants productivity, but not a humans, even early humans developed strategies and taught them, over time creating a force multiplication that didnt involve machines Your analogy of gasoline is a good opportunity to see how these things will be misused. Instead of using those 31k calories per gallon of gas to plow fields, we use it to fly Mangoes from Africa to your supermarket, changing those 31k calories of gas into 200 calories of complex sugars, why? because of the relative wealth of richer economies vs the poorer economies that allows for that to be a viable economic strategy to attain wealth for the capitalist who chooses to do so. This is a misuse of resources that benefits very few people at the cost of all of the people (including those who profit economically) by degrading the environment and wasting resources. Petroleum based growth Economist hate this one simple fact! Except it isnt a fact at all, correlation is not causation... you know better than to make this argument If we have limitless energy will we therefore have an overpopulation problem? No, we wont. We will apply that energy to other endeavors, most likely to increase our wealth, which likely means controlling the amount of offspring we have. Overpopulation is more often caused by a need for labor in agrarian societies that have advances in health related technologies that reduce infant mortality and increased lifespans, which in turn cause a population explosion. The importance of renewables. Renewables are extremely important, but it has nothing to do with population growth or with productivity, and everything to do with the fact that we are using non-renewables a million times faster than they are made by natural forces, and because of the pollution and environmental degradation that there use causes, something you have failed to mention. I am mentioning it because it is related to Market forces which you defend several times in the video. Continued...
Types of labor Nothing particularly wrong with what you are saying here, assuming that you are referring to the Silicon Valley economy, maybe New York, London, Switzerland, etc... unfortunately the majority of the worlds population isnt part of the Knowledge based economy that you say is the majority, thats just not true. Half of the worlds population lives in India and China, those arent knowledge based economies. Even in the US, the majority of people arent in Knowledge based jobs. What is true about the Knowledge based economy is that the majority of the money is in these categories, but that does not benefit the majority of the people, in fact, it actively works against them by increasing the cost of education so that only the wealthy can afford higher education Techonology and new jobs graph I agree with you for the most part here Division of labor and centralized planning of labor by the capitalists who could afford the machine and leverage the use of fossil fuel energy allowed the population to move away from agrarian work. It is NOT entirely due to an abundance of fuel calories. Cognitive Labor Graph You are saying that the majority of work is Knowledge based, based on that graph (which we all know can easily be manipulated by how jobs are grouped and labeled in order to prove a point) But you didnt take the time to add up the totals, which even using the dubious graph, shows that the majority of total jobs are Non-Knowledge based, I estimate by eye about 90m non-knowledge based to 60m knowledge based, using the graph that you have provided you are discrediting what you are saying. Again, this is localized to the US? If it is the US then you still have about 200m people unnacoutned for. Either way its cherry picking. I do agree with your overall point that jobs will be lost to AI, but you arent doing the argument any favors by not doing proper research. Go back to manual? Where now? You are making the assumption that work is necessary in a future where we have the technology to meet our needs. The only reason we need to continue to produce beyond what we need is the Bogus Capitalist economic philosophy that eternal growth is required, that is a logical falacy, and will only lead to the degradation of everything and our eventual doom if something else doesnt kill us all first. Supply side vs demand side argument... they are two sides of the same coin, one doesnt exist without the other, they are both describing the same transaction of wealth for the good/service. So while you may get a different perspective of the issue, you cant solve one without solving the other and I dont think its a good way to frame your argument I agree 100% that there wont be enough human exclusive jobs for everyone, in fact, I would take it a step further and say that there isnt enough now, instead we invent work for people to do for the simple reason that they can make a wage because we have conditioned ourselves to believe that "unproductive" humans dont deserve to eat or be housed, and thats not hyperboly. Take ten seconds to think that through and you will know that its true.
Welcome to post labor economics automated dominance. This is a fair assumption that I agree with, but it is assuming that the technology, which isnt entirely here yet, will outpace the legislation and wide spread application of the tech. I do agree that eventually this will happen, and that a restructuring of our society will be required to deal with it. Decreased value of human labor. Same as above, I agree. I would also add that this doesnt require any new technology. We will see the same effects of decreased value of human labor through many mechanisms, like increased population, increased money supply (inflation), and increased wealth inequality. Especially increased wealth inequality, as you have more billionaires, the relative wealth of the middle class is eroded over time, while the cost of new raw materials is increased as they are consumed and need to be "mined" in increasingly costly ways, or from an increasingly degraded environment. Redistribution Policies. Ok here I do have a Big criticism. You preface your argument with "Hey, Im no Socialist!" I assume to pander to your perceived audience, but then you go on to describe several socialist policies, all of which are legitimate, and the majority of your audience agrees with, but you feel the need to label them as Not-Socialist because you are focussing on the optics rather than the logic. I believe that you are limiting yourself by doing this. You are dismissing good ideas out of hand because they have an unpopular label, but are actually what the majority of people actually want. Be fearless and honest my friend. Ownership shifts. same as above but, with the added observation that centralized management is what makes Capitalist coroporations productive, centralized organization is not exclusive to governments, it is widely practiced in capitalism. The problem with the form of centralized management that we have in our society is that there are no checks and balances in our current system and so the centralized power is abused, or coopted by capital or coercive powers and the threat of violence. So my argument is that the solution is centralized management with proper checks and balances, rather than the fairy tail that centralized management of government is bad but centralized management in corporations is good. Market forces will always exist, and are not exclusive to a capitalist winner take all game. This doesnt mean that they should go unregulated. Also market forces are an incomplete method of valuing production becuase it doesnt take into account environmental degradation, or lost opportunities of the poor relative to the wealthy. There are costs that are not being calculated because they are inconvenient, but nevertheless they are real. Price deflation. This is too simple an argument. Legislation and collusion keep this in check in reality and theres no reason to think that they wont continue to do so in the future, or if there is a reason why, you havent presented an argument for that. Decentralized ownership. I think this would be a great solution to many of the problems, but here you are glossing over the issue and not addressing the obstacles to this. First, yes they can exist but if they are at an evolutionary disadvantage, then long term will not be competitive with corporations that are run in a centralized manner, and second, if AI CEOs will be what empowers them to compete then wouldnt it stand to reason that it would require large amounts of expensive compute to develop the most competitve AI? and therefore the uber rich will increase their advantage while even if the poor could all agree on how to spend their resources they wont have enough to compete with the uber rich, and will by default have the massive cost of supporting all of the poor investors... its a non-starter, unless the capitalist system is changed. New Economic Indicators. Agreed Changes in consumption patterns. This assumes that the population is NOT largely in poverty, and I think that they will be. Even if we have UBI, relative wealth will be in flux. We wont ever want to stop people from being as productive as they choose to be, and wealth begets more wealth, so relative wealth will be one of the new KPIs, and so as the few becoming increasingly wealthy (we already have singular humans that have the same wealth as small nations, and even more corporations that do as well) the purchasing power of the people who recieve UBI will continually be diminished through market forces, unless you have centralized management... its just math. Think about how Moloch works in a system over time, relative wealth is what we need to be talking about here, it is not a static system, over time things will continue trneding in this direction. Reshaping Identity and self worth. Agreed, and I think its overdue... this is a problem that we have been facing for a long time and have not yet addressed, it isnt exclusive to future tech. Regulatory Challenges. you are right to make a point of this, but if you think it through, I think its pretty obvious that letting market forces run wild on our society is going to be the undoing of any attempt to successfully implement any regulatory measures, as I mentioned before, in some cases the corporations can be wealthier than the entire nation that is trying to regulate them, obvioulsy that cant work, unscrupulous people are cheap to buy, and unscrupulous people are exactly the types of power seeking people who make up the majority of politicians and legislators, so how do you separate money from politics in a society run by market forces?
Couldn’t stay right to the end but that was good listening. No easy answer there - that’s for sure. I think people in the middle band of society will feel more pushed down than lifted up with greater control over their lives - not a new phenomenon.
What is the time frame for when he thinks when will reach post labor economics. I know he said maby 2-5 (a few) years for the medical field and likely sooner for other fields, but this all is predicted to come after we reach AGI in Oct 2024. That is if we reach agi then, could be sooner or later but not by much i don't think. What are y'all's thoughts?
Secure jobs. Yes, you hit it...personality trades like musician, youtuber, actor, etc...all good Not secure jobs would be painter, concept art, etc etc. We are going to have a very intense VR future with very vast scaled worlds we will find our niche in, be it fantasy, reality based, etc. also more nature oriented things will be big. survival camping, fishing trips and things like that. But in the intermediary time, it will be about tech folks upgrading peoples homes, building custom bots for those less tech savvy, automation helping, etc.
How do you see the future for the public sector? If the private sector labor participation reduces considerably, would it automatically mean a corresponding reduction in the public sector labor participation?
Hey I love the video overall- but the narrative about hunter gatherers vs agrarian is not accurate to our current scientific understanding. Something that is super relevant is that in the americas for example- a large part of the country was essentially a crafted garden, utilizing the plants capabilities cleverly to do be extremely labor efficient. In many ways these societies were a sort of universal leisure class, because of the productivity of food forests and other cultivated perennial crops. Problem is many of the settlers had no idea what they were looking at and since 80-90% of the population died to diseases there weren’t many to explain it to them. So if we consider that plants are a sort of self-assembling machine, harvesting resources. It’s not that different to the future we are envisioning where due to the extreme output efficiency of the systems we are now designing, we could provide basic subsistence to all people. We’re just now getting to where we can boot strap our own automation and intelligent systems to lead to this result.
There's a reason that agrarian societies beat out hunter gatherers. You should do more reading on the bronze age consolidation of society, particularly in England. My assertions are rooted in current understandings of the history of civilization
There is no need to worry about the future of private property. The capitalist "private property" will completely DISINTERGRATE when AGI makes UBI necessary due to mass unemployment. UBI is not just Governments handing over money to the poor but most importantly it is distributing the most needed PURCHACING POWER to the masses to sustain the social production. In other words the entire capitalist economy will collapse if there is no UBI. When human not compelled to work for other human for money the money will loss its control and power over the people. Property, wealth, money in the Zero Work future will rather become a liability than an asset.
I think people will still be able to get ahead but society might get a bit tribal, so you'll have chief type people voicing the concerns of their group
There's no doubt that we should have massive deflation due to all of the productivity gains we've had. But where is that deflation? The banking system and the financial system is wholly dependent on an inflationary economy. So long as we have the current banking and monetary system there will be no deflation regardless of unbelievable productivity gains.
A lot of it is offset by housing costs, medical costs, and ongoing logistics issues globally. But yeah, avarice is one of the main underpinning problems.
So there has been NO gain in productivity in those Industries, or the components that comprise those Industries have been inflated (manipulated) through various means to keep the inflation game going. Again, the current banking system (Federal Reserve) is wholly dependent on an inflationary economy; it will collapse otherwise and take away its vast and unwarranted power.
We've had a UBI trial (of sorts) going on in the UK for 115 years, though it's called the state pension and only available to the over 65s. Sure, people take a bit of time off to unwind when they retire, but they pretty soon find things to do, and frequently find work to contribute to the community. I'm sure we're all aware of the cliche that retired people say "I'm so busy, I don't know how I managed when I was working". Imo the idea that everyone is just going to veg out on the couch for the rest of their lives is spurious.
And we also had the covid lockdowns to see how people would respond to not working. Pretty much everybody found ways to amuse themselves with the methods David is talking about here.
Imo the vast majority of us, freed from the yoke of exploitation, will blossom and live much happier lives.
Great video David btw, thank you.
Of course
You are 100% right. That myth you mentioned is just that, a myth. If it were true humanity would not have arisen out of the muck. It's a myth that serves the status quo.
I'd open a bakery shop no matter if robots male better bread.
@@alanbal888 I'd open a tavern.
Do you have data to back up the idea that retired people work (or do equivalent things to work) as much as they did before their retirement?
This is actually one of my favourite topics in academia. I usually study computer science but this spring I took 6 months off just to study economics to get a better understanding of the labour market works (and some other things) and how AI might affect it.
Nice man, AI and tech in general is going to make serious questions be asked about Academia man, it’s happening so fast as well.
*economics is just really bad math* I think it'd be better to take history classes instead
@@Luna-wu4rf I mean this is even presuming Academia is much of a thing in the next few years, some drastic changes are going to have to happen to keep it alive.
@@erkinalp not really, much of the theoretical backing is based off shitty axioms. I like empirical economics work, but the math they use to model their results is crazy
@@Luna-wu4rf I totally agree. Economics is also very much a social science in a way. Alot of it boils down to human psychology and behavior. Most models are unrealistic but can still be used to describe reality sort of okay
I look forward to the day that the labor-for-income game comes to an end and is all but a distant memory.
So, so much! And if we manage to survive the upcoming pitfalls (I'm mostly confident we will) then it will seem like such a medieval concept to anyone born post-labour.
well there is still some battles to be fought before I can say I am looking forward to it. Might not be a very pleasant future, if without labor there is no political weight for the average joe ;)
@@lukeskywalker7029 Maybe the government and the WEF completely control you with CBDC and digital ID for example. That will be a bloody battle…
We are at the final stretch now. Things will likely still be difficult in the next 10 years. A lot of people are going to lose jobs without UBI implemented yet. This transitional period is going to be tough. But yeah, it's inevitable that one day humans will no longer have to work their butts off just to survive.
@@Yic17Gaming why is that inevitable? Because you wish it to be? I think taking how easily human are to manipulated and the freak stuff we just come from believing (pre-industry /enlightment) thinkin, QAnon, Big Media, .... We will not come to UBI. We are a pack of monkeys to easily manipulated. Although I wish it to be different. There might be pockets in society where this will be the case, but on a grant scheme ... not to much hope.
I hope the conversation around UBI shifts to one of an "AI dividend." Like you said on the Ownership of Production slide, ownership and distribution of rewards have been determined by initial investors. Because AI has been trained on all our data, it makes sense to me that we are all, in some sense, initial investors. If we frame the conversation this way, then a regular payment becomes a return instead of a handout.
“Data dividend”
How would this work? Nationalize artificial intelligence? Lame
The future of a jobless world is a competition of ideas and games. Economy of ideas.
Well said
Yeah how do we avoid a "Disneyland with no children" scenario? A planet full of factories making toys and art to earn income from other AIs, with the human customers written off as a business expense, more and more farms abandoned and humanity slowly squeezed out of a world we no longer control
Also spiritual development. Many people will become monks just meditating
This is why "the consumer" is often front and center. Current economic doctrine states that consumer demand is a rational signal. What humans actually want to spend money on
@@DaveShap I ma not that sure that the consumer demand is that rational to be accurately considered as a signal for rationality. What humans actually want to spend money on is not existent. They basically do not know because they do not tend to think about it hard enough. What they actually do in the majority of cases is consume what is considered (signalled by society and culture) to be necessary for consumption or consume what they do not have to choice not to consume.
The End of Work by Jeremy Rifkin published 1995. I read this book when it first came out and the author contended that due to information technology and automation there will soon be massive unemployment. I tried convincing my future father-in-law and he rightfully categorically dismissed me. I think I'm having a deja vu all over again.
You too, huh? Haha
Jeez, that's a time warp. I read that in '96. And yes, one of my motivations was we share first names :)
Stop dreaming and back to work. We all should work.
@@farzinfrank2553 Why
@@farzinfrank2553 Im curious how you are here in this comment section, not that you cant be or that its wrong
At the place where I volunteer, they published a 'Youth Standard' for educating the next-generation. In it, it stated three "essences": (1) cultivate hobbies, (2) learn how to talk to old people, (3) learn how to deal with boredom. This NGO is called IITTI World Civility Index.
I've been a pest control technician for 26 years. It was always an underlying life purpose for me, to be a "dinosaur".... to work in a skilled profession for long term. For me, possibly over 40 years? WHY someone may ask? Because I felt like, even going back to the early-mid 1980s, this lifestyle would end soon. Let me say, FOR THE MOST PART, I enjoy my work. I don't have a college degree, but I've been skilled and in demand in my career. I am a "tweener" in my vocation and my age. I'm 54, not old and not young. Older people don't grasp what's coming. Younger people may not either. But I believe a lot of nonsense that has existed in our society for my lifetime should die off. I am really excited to see a day when politics as we know today, economics, fear-based survival mode thinking, etc. will be forced to undergo massive changes. We live in an exceptional time. I feel we are fortunate. Thank you for these videos because they are really helpful! Oh yeah for the last 20 years I have been a collector of antique clocks. So my "status" today is satisfied by collecting clocks wealthy people in the past used to own.
Really looking forward to this one, find myself thinking about my own career and how much longevity it has. A.I has already enabled me to do things that I would never have imagined I'd be able to do. I recently built an app with next to no coding knowledge using ChatGPT as a educator and writing partner. It made me realise that everyone is going to be able to do everything with A.I very soon. Maybe the answer is to just follow our passions and hope the enthusiasm from that is enough to spark opportunities. Feel like UBI is the real answer but attitudes for any income support is frowned upon in the UK unfortunately.
Huh? The UK a variety of income support / job seekers allowance schemes to ensure that everyone has at least enough to survive. The real challenge would be convincing the USA as the right there has a rabid hatred of anything “socialism” (unless it benefits them directly).
@@ThomasTomiczek I'm sorry my comments caused you to have such a strong emotional response, I hope everything in your personal life is going well. It is a stressful and confusing time for many people.
I agree, disruptions to the workforce are going to also affect people spiritually also, UBI will be a problem, why?
Because who is issuing it? A central bank operating on the will of the government? That’s what this will all bring, a middle ground will be needed because with UBI will also be Digital ID, power and control issues, it will be interesting.
@@ashleyhayre1890 That’s my point, they will control the masses with technology by controlling your wallet, making you completely reliant on the government.
@@harveysymes5192you're right. We don't have digital IDs right now (good! 👍), and UBI (baaaad 👎) will be what causes digital IDs to come about (cuz reasons)
I was thinking about this topic yesterday. I thougth "i have always thinked about what would i do if i do not need to work, maybe this is the moment to achieve that". I would work out a lot, travel around the world and see every beautiful place, animal, plant and people. I would play a lot of sports, music and do creative things (AI will do this better as products, but the creation aspects would be for personal fulfillment), study a lot of interesting topics and heck, if there is an explosion in tecnology, travel to space and another planets, who knows. I think that, one of the mayor conflicts of humans with this AI thing, is the fear of the birth of an entity more capable of doing things than us. I mean, all of our existence we have been the top of the food chain, and "lords" of every place and every creature on earth. AI has the potential to take away that from us. However, i think that the fact that another specie will do better than us in a lot of aspects, does not mean that our existence is meaningless, or we have to stop living our lives. If we look to every another animal on earth, they still do their things and live the life in their way, even with humans dominating the world. I see this as an equivalent of discovering super intelligent alien species, they would be probably better than us but we still will be humans. As a said, with AI, we still will be humans, just in a diferent world.
David thank you so much for this vulnerability and knowledge breakdown.
I often am out of my league on your videos and trying to learn as fast as I can without destroying my self confidence prior to catching my feet.
AI has really given my hope being in the neurodivergent community, but also overwhelmed my already racing brain.
Excited to see the future regardless!
Appreciate you commenting on your mental health and prioritizing your healing.
Sending love from New Brunswick,Canada!
If we’re talking time scales I think that this’ll happen, if at all, around the mid 21st century. Most likely I think that it will be something unimaginable, like trying to explain an influencer to a mid 19th century peaseant.
We will tell our kids, “back in my day, we had to actually work for our things 👴”
Probably around 2040-2050s. However the disruption will already be here from a few years to a decade from now. Probaby by the 2030s humanity will already understand on a more collective way that is going to happen and we will be changing things incrementally to adjust. One of the problems is governemnts are burocratic and slow while AI evolution goes faster and faster. We might have new advancements blindside everyone and then there will be a large hole because it won't be fixable right away.
Like, imagining AGI here in around 1-2 years per example like David proposed in another video might put is in that position. The moment you have AGI you can make AI do way more than now and with the open source crazyness mixed in we can have emergent proprities we won't realize another year in. Maybe once we get AGI, getting to human level is trivial. But if human level is trivial making it better than humans is even more trivial i suspect.
Interesting. I just found your channel (must have watched about 5 videos) and what you said here is basically the same stuff I wrote in my PhD thesis (I finished the PhD in February, but wrote the thesis during the last 2 years). If you are able to read in portuguese, I can send it to you.
David, I feel it’s important for you to know that most of the inflation is corporate greed. There’s been many articles explaining they just used inflation as an excuse to raise prices. The simplified understanding you can speak on is that if inflation was just supply chain issues then these corporations would also be seeing record breaking profits. I love your content and I think it’s very much needed. Just felt compelled to share that when you didn’t mention it since it’s even more of a cause than the reasons you stated
Companies have been increasing their cashflows by making more profits. It's either make more profit or take on loans at high-interest. When costs increase, you don't just increase prices to maintain profit margins, but you have to make extra because your company requires more money turning over to do business.
This is a great road map for a debate. That will no doubt go on for years.
I think this topic is probably understated in importance. Everyone is focused on the skynet issue because its bombastic BUT I think this topic is its boring suit wearing brother that might actually end up being even more likely to destroy society as we know it and send us into a crippling dystopia.
Olympic weightlifting, physical and mental stress seeking perfection with each lift would be a great example of latency perfection of the self. Gives you the metrics of self accomplishment physical endurance and mental satisfaction
Really great overview of this topic from historical to present & future thoughts on it all. I always wondered what would we do if all becomes automated for us. Your points on the self improvement / autonomy portion or like bettering our own scorecard were uplifting. I think the desire for human connection will trump many fears of ai human replacement. There will probably be entire societies still preserving older customs & traditions. Traditional Human crafting may become high in demand both items & services. Whenever we grow tired of automation, We may want to hear and see it all from our own kind.. maybe even over AI assisted arts or products. With less desk work, I wonder if Homesteading & food co-ops will trend upward. A lot to think about, thanks for this video!
I wonder if NZ’s Living Standard Framework fits this.
Measuring our societal status using non economic factors:
Civic engagement. Governance, identity, environment, health, knowledge and skills, income and consumption, safety, social connections, subjective well-being, time use.
13:20 the list of things is very comprehensive. Thank you. I find 4 to be the key component. Might be some bias, or blind spot, I have. Almost every law, social norm, category, and cultural development in modern society seems to be shaped by number four on this list. It’s almost impossible to think of any noun and not associate some form of ownership with it.
about the KPIs i suggest to have a look on the happy planet index and the good country index, maybe also adapting both for DAOs. also in germanspeaking countries GWÖ is becoming more popular (its an scoring system for companies rough translation -> common wellbeing economy)
keep up and take care
Marc Andreesseen's latest blog post (published 6th of June 2023) at a16z titled "Why AI Will Save the World" is a great look into the future of AI, touching on the future of work as well.
UBI may need to happen sooner than we think due to the tech layoffs. What we don't want is a lot of people who are very good with computers, with no money and LOTS of time on their hands!
AI already allowed me to retire at 41, I am an early investor into NVDA with a substantial concentrated position. I spend most of my time during the week staying up to the minute on news and conversations of the stock market which is my profession as a regulated licensed investment advisor since 2005 but is also my long time favorite hobby.
Other than that I still am not sure what I will do with all of my extra time and money. I think I should come up with some sort of philanthropic program and trust but that will be down the road. Still figuring out my new self and life.
Hi David. Stumbled across your channel recently and I've been hooked on your videos about how the future is likely going to shape up. It's been difficult confronting myself with the thought that most of our careers might be obsolete in the future. My question to you is this - Are you specifically talking about Post-Labor Economics only in the First World? IF so, I think I agree with that sentiment. But I am not sure how quickly AI is going to take over jobs in the developing world. For eg: In my country of India, we still have over 30% of the population engaged in Agriculture. Majority of our economic output that our leaders like to talk about is mainly generated through the upper 10% English speaking class that I am a part of (around 10% population of India around ~200 million people). Just a stroll through a normal street in India and you will find awfully designed power grids with wires jumbled together and even in metropolitan cities we still suffer power cuts.
How would the advent of AI taking over most cognitive jobs affect a country of over a billion people? My personal view is that India is at least 50 years away from even approaching what America is today. In that case, can we see a reverse migration, i.e., people from the First world moving to more developing countries in order to build those places up and still find satisfaction from their careers, instead of staying back in the first world where their careers have been rendered obsolete?
Interesting idea. So the developed world's knowledge workers are going to move to the developing world to find jobs?
@@krishchetty Not saying for certain this or that will happen. Just a thought that I had considering the fact that the developing world is miles behind the West in terms of key factors like infrastructure. Also in a country like the US, most farming is automated with combines, in India most of that work is still done by manual labor.
My comment was more towards how leaders in the West sometimes have a myopic view about how the rest of the world actually lives. I'm all on the AI hype train but I feel that AI "taking all jobs" is a while away from happening in a place like India where we still have a lot of things to figure out. I especially don't want to live in an AI run India when we literally have some of the most corrupt politicians in the world. I think such a scenario will further exacerbate the ever widening gap in wealth between the 10% and the bottom 50%.
Perhaps avenues will open for workers leaving AI dominated places like America or Western Europe in the forthcoming decades to a place like India, which would benefit greatly from their skills.
@@os3ujziC i think comparing India with tribes in the Amazon is a bit foolish. Also i was just providing a different perspective. I have seen a lot of alarmism around AI so just wanted to share my thoughts.
Have a nice day :)
@@gouthammahesh3298 I think you are on to a very important point about changing labour market dynamics. For example, a US company fires all its data analysts realising the Code Interpreter plugin for ChatGPT can do the job of a 100 analysts in a fraction of the time. Where do the data analysts go. What are their options at that point. They begin competing for a small pool of jobs in their home country. They try to start their own business using AI tools to further their capabilities. Without UBI they can't start a wellness clinic without getting a pay check. The only other option I see is to offer your services to African countries or India for a fraction of your original salary. That lasts until the developing world also realises that AI services are most cost effective.
I only see self employment or blockchain based coops with an AI manager as an option for the long term. The question is what business are you into. What service do you offer as a data analyst. You need to find a way to offer an even better data analysis service that appears attractive to clients.
Is that even possible?? ...
Let's be real here, AGI will come way faster than Robots, so manual labour will still be around, either you go for it or you'll receive a paycheck from the government
An overlooked consequence: Human value will diminish significantly across large populations once most of us are producing nothing of value. The tendency will be toward population reduction or retreating into more isolated tight-knit communities.
I agree
What you’re essentially suggesting is that human consumption of both goods, services and experiences will be socialised in a post labor economics because there is no other way to materialise this narrative with widespread income displacement. What will incentivise the select few who control the resources of the AI age to create these consumables without the incentive of a payback? Where will this payback come from with the diminishing ability of humankind to generate an income. Lack of purpose in life will only create chaos as is evident in most poor economies of the world. Socialism without the ability and incentive to control and enrich individual destiny presents a clear and present danger of doomsday as demonstrated through human history irrespective of its form and shape!!
There is a rather sinister aspect to this entire question that is rarely acknowleged which is the 'useless eaters' meme- how long will any society really tolorate the existence of very large numbers of consumers who have no productive value? Given the resource constraints likely to be exacerbated by climate change in the future the likelyhood of quite dark outcomes regarding the 'surplus'population are a non trivial concern- will our current moral value systems regarding the intrinsic (as opposed to merely instumental) value of individual human lives prove robust enough to prevent truly terrible solutions being proposed to deal with this issue?
The red flag would be any attempt to disenfranchise the non productive politically- this would be achived by defining these people as somehow no longer worthy of having a vote. Anyone who voted to leave the EU in the UK will have observed how the pro remain establishment constructed a narrative in which those who voted to exit the EU were deemed too unintelligent and gullible to be worthy of respect, and thus an attempt was made to overturn the result. This is how it would happen; the elite would begin to propagate a narrative in which the 'useless eaters' by dint of their non productive status were no longer to be regarded as legitimate political actors. Once stripped of their political potency these non producers could then be systematically marginalised and dealt with.
Really enjoyed hearing how your personal experience gave you insight on the macro-impact of AI in various socioeconomic arenas, as well as impact on modern American cultural norms. Your first chart illustrating the fall of agrarian-centric production and the rise corporate-centric work makes me wonder: what will the possible future charts look like showing the fall of modern employment and the rise of something (or things) new?
When you talk about the coop model for company ownership, the difficulty becomes how do we convince the Elons and Jeffs to turn their empires over to their employees? If we have a mixed economy of private and coop companies, the largest companies will continue expanding and consolidating and influencing politics to keep their dominant position and undermine any effort to break them up or coopify them.
Considering the large debts that nations have, deflation would make paying those interest payments more painful.
I think, I hope, with more and more jobs becoming automated and people looking around what to do, I expect so many more people becoming involved in public service and our communities will begin to truly be shaped by the people living there, not self serving politicians in Washington who are there to increase their net worth with policy.
I think its likely people will do more community service as people have more time and will still want a feeling usefulness or something to do.
The need for achievement is perhaps finite - e.g. most people are happy to retire once they feel they've 'earned it'.
So long as there's a need to strive - even if it is totally artificially created - that allows everyone to earn points toward retirement, most will accept that.
Thanks for this thought-provoking presentation
Congrats David! now I want a part II on what to do now thinking on that future. Maybe setting up the scenario with gpt4 and start brainstorming on the go..
UBI video is coming
Resources will still be a constraint, but recycling will likely become economical with robotics, we could get a fully circular system going. Really the main limitations is land, materials and energy.
Yeah many resources can be recycled, some will always be scarce
Fantastic video. There's also "I would rather die than work for someone else!". More and more people are becoming sole proprietors - plugging into online platforms and apps (or starting their own sites) as contractors and unique content creators, often retaining rights to their content (which is great) and having even more freedom and empowered autonomy.
Also, just because most people might have less spending power doesn't mean actual "demand" is gone, it just isn't able to be gauged in the same way based on monetary purchases. You might have millions of people with a demand, and the actual supply sitting there waiting, but the centralized currency might just not be there and accessible for those transactions. We need better ways to track demand in the market, even if everyone has no money. And voluntarily collaboratively look to meet needs and desires as a society.
Gifting, sharing, and replication replacing commerce/trade within the market (the "marketplace of options") is increasingly technically viable and largely preferable within our age of abundance and digital automation. think: BitTorrent, open source, 3D printing
It's possible that most people will choose to spend their time in virtual reality, although it won't be with a vr headset but something fully immersive. If that is the case, physical property becomes less important.
A virtual world could be more efficient and a richer experience than living in physical reality. This is going down the route of sci-fi, but with an intelligence more capable than all of humanity put together many things become possible.
Try not to spread yourself too thin, try and keep something in the tank for another day. Cheers
Abundance is near, hope to meet and chill with you all beyond that horizon. Might get into some new hobbies
I see the real problem of a distibution of the income generated by an AI economy as one of power: There are no checks and balances for the receivers of such welfare to make sure the welfare isn't taken from them. They cannot go on strike, for a big example. So what do they do if the AI administration cuts their welfare (for example, because some malicious hacker made them channel that money to himself)?
A possible solution for this might be to not redistribute the income, but the ownership of the actual machines, along with administrative control. So every citizen owns a bunch of machines and has control (as in "root access", as we might call it on a unixoid server) over them (though they may not normally exercise it), and this is partially (!) redistributed every year or so. Now the citizens have the power to "order their machines to go on strike", and will usually keep that power. It would be vital to make the distribution of owenership such that all people have roughly the same amount of power (with some variance coming from more or less clever administration of one's owned machines and luck), and that it stays that way on the long run.
I believe that would solve several issues you mention, like the sense of belonging, challenges in one's life, and the power distribution in society I mentioned. What do you think about that approach?
Hey, I’m really enjoying watching your videos… some of the other things that come up in my feed are from people who are just soooooo out of touch with the reality of most regular working people. They’re speculating about how their current employees could possibly find meaning in their lives without work to dictate their activities for 40hours a week - personally I can think of so many ways I, and most of the people in my life, would rather be a human *being* instead of a human *doing*.
Thanks for posting these!
That's the thing. People that run companies basically have devoted their entire life to their work, so anything aside from that is just a foreign concept to them.
Fascinating stuff. My poor brain can’t get past the idea that reducing incomes to a UBI reduces our ability to consume.
Therefore the companies now making super profits thanks to lower (AI based) costs also lose their ability to sell as much product.
So - revenues drop in line with the AI cost savings - meaning no super profits to be taxed and therefore no ability to pay the UBI. I am sure I am missing something. 🤔
Just found this channel. Fantastic video!
What happens when AI gets so good at everything that it destroys the motivation to create?
David you should check out (if you haven't) "Towards a new Socialism" by W. PAUL COCKSHOTT (Turing institute)
AND ALLIN COTTRELL.
The book outlines in detail a proposal for a complex planned socialist economy, taking inspiration from cybernetics, the works of Karl Marx, and British operations research scientist Stafford Beer's 1973 model of a distributed decision support system dubbed Project Cybersyn. Aspects of a socialist society such as direct democracy, foreign trade and property relations are also explored. The book is, in the authors' words, "our attempt to answer the idea that socialism is dead and buried after the demise of the Soviet Union."
They wrote this before so much advancements in AI/ML had been made, I think this can really answer a lot of issues we may be facing in the nearterm.
some Ideas I threw into ChatGPT4.
Control theory is a branch of applied mathematics and engineering that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The primary objective of control theory is to control a system, often called the "plant", in a way that causes it to behave in a desired manner. This is achieved by manipulating the inputs to the system based on feedback from its outputs. Classical examples include regulating the temperature of a house using a thermostat, or adjusting the flight path of an aircraft.
In the context of a planned economy, the economy would be the "plant", the inputs would be labor and resources, and the outputs would be goods and services. The goal would be to design a controller that can adjust the labor and resources to achieve a desired state of the economy, such as a certain level of production or employment. This is indeed a form of control problem, although it is much more complex than traditional control problems due to the large number of variables and uncertainties involved.
Next, let's talk about economic planning. In its simplest form, economic planning involves the allocation of resources and labor to achieve certain economic goals. This can involve determining what goods and services should be produced, in what quantities, and how they should be distributed. In a centrally planned economy, these decisions are made by a central authority, rather than being determined by market forces.
While economic planning has had mixed success in the past, proponents argue that modern tools and methods could make it more viable. For instance, data analytics and predictive modeling could be used to better forecast demand and optimize production. In addition, blockchain and other decentralized technologies could potentially allow for a more distributed and flexible form of planning.
There are some parallels between reinforcement learning and economic planning. In both cases, the goal is to make decisions that optimize some measure of performance, given a set of constraints. Furthermore, both can be seen as a form of control problem, where the aim is to influence the state of a system based on feedback.
The task of designing a controller for a planned economy is indeed a complex challenge, but we can discuss several strategies that might simplify and address this issue.
Use of granular data: The first step would be to collect high-quality, granular data about the current state of the economy. This could include data on employment, production, consumption, trade, and other key economic indicators. The better the data, the more accurately the controller can model and influence the economy.
Divide and conquer: Instead of trying to control the entire economy as a single system, it might be more manageable to divide the economy into smaller subsystems, each with its own controller. These subsystems could correspond to different sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, manufacturing, and services. Each sector could be optimized independently, and then coordinated at a higher level to ensure overall economic balance.
Use of predictive models: Predictive models could be used to forecast the future state of the economy under different scenarios. This would allow the controller to anticipate problems and opportunities, and adjust its decisions accordingly.
Feedback control: Just like in control theory, feedback would be crucial. The controller should monitor the outputs of the economy (like levels of production and employment) and use this information to adjust the inputs (like allocation of labor and resources). This requires real-time data collection and analysis.
Adaptive control: Given the complexity and uncertainty of economic systems, the controller should be adaptive, meaning it can adjust its behavior based on the observed performance. This is where machine learning, and specifically reinforcement learning, could be particularly useful. The controller could learn from past successes and failures to improve its decision-making over time.
Incorporation of human factors: Finally, the controller should take into account human factors, such as preferences, behaviors, and social norms. For example, it could use surveys and social media data to understand consumer preferences, and adjust production accordingly. It could also consider the effects of its decisions on income inequality, job satisfaction, and other social indicators.
I also don't remember if you've mentioned liquid democracy before in your videos, but that form of government could be really be a boon to a planned economy, the people would have nearly full direct control of the government and the economy, this could usher in a period of freedom and prosperity that humanity has never seen.
Great video! Thanks. I really like the concept of Arete. There's an interesting observation that computers have been better than humans at chess for many years, but chess is more popular now than ever. I like the idea that just because a computer can do something better doesn't mean that we can't still enjoy doing it ourselves.
Human nature will find some way to stay relevant and be meaningful to us all. I believe that even in a society like this we can make it work.
If we had lots of time on our hands and had living space to be creative we could then grow some of our own food . Make the property we lived on pleasant to look at. Trade goods and services.
A well thought out video. Just the opposite of click bait.
If StarTrek is post scarcity, why do higher offers like captain picard have bigger quarters than lower crew?
No amount of A.I. can magically create more lithium and cobalt, but as it gets better and better, it could create products that used to use those rare materials that use carbon nanotubes that could become cheap because of A.I., or A.I. could help engineer things that are unimaginable currently, that are far superior to anything that uses lithium or cobalt now.
I'm very interested in the Coop model and decentralized ownership/management. My question is what will the Coop be doing thats not based on Cognitive labour? Coops only work where physical labour is needed? ...
I wonder if there will be future jobs that emerge that are human centred that we can't yet imagine?
Wow - excellent presentation. Thanks for your work in the area, more should be doing the same!
"As soon as labour in its immediate form has ceased to be the great source of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antagonism." (Marx in Grundrisse, The Chapter on Capital)
Oh, a few more points:
* The worst thing about Income redistribution is the name. It has to happen, but the branding is awful. Sovereign Wealth Fund (and it being the same thing) is waaay better.
* I downsized to a tiny house. It wouldn't fit a family, but pros: I don't have rent or a mortgage! Omg, that part is Nice.
* I absolutely see many industries morphing into a version of themselves that starts with excellent prompts. The book editing was a great example. A good business model for an editor may be: a set of world class prompts, domain specific knowledge that difficult to find (i.e. security vulnerabilities), and anonymozed DLP proof inputs so you don't accidentally expose your secrets.
Iade the jump to doing a certain part of my work by AI (GPT4, natch). It doesn't replace me. It makes me ~6x faster. My secret sauce is a combination of lived experience, thoughtful opinions, and context for data. For example (shameless self promotion, it's free, no I mean no collection of PII/ip's/etc) a cookbook, 512 pages long, that I wrote in ten days. Ten 16 hour days, but still, just ten days.
drive.google.com/file/d/1jPD4Ub4MS6Eai9xaeoCr5gNwb-GkWW0p/view?usp=drivesdk
(I apologize for nothing, and it's because of our host here I dated to even try it :D)
As long as restrictions are lifted/light enough (zoning/permitting/HOA's/etc) there will always be more hand's-on physical labor until machines literally have human-like hands...
....teaching AI wisdom as well as literally playing games with AI for the AI's own enjoyment will be around for a little while.
The post-labor world has the potential to be a massive boon to our quality of life. However, there is also the possibility of neglect by those who retain power and wealth. We will be at their mercy and no mere human revolution can bend a finger directing an army of robot soldiers.
Not just robots, sure things maybe more egalitarian, but who is controlling the economy? Depends who wants to exert power.
If the WEF are in control, just know that things aren’t going to go well.
I can’t think of an economic model which would have most people working about 16 to 20 hours per week. I think this would be better than going to 0, even if we solve the money problem.
There are too many variables in considering Western economies. It makes most sense to begin by considering the simplest cities, suburbs and villages of the world and work up from the intuitions and baselines established there. The only certainty is that the kind of wealth inequality we see today will be a tiny fraction of what develops over coming years and decades, let-alone beyond that.
I feel like its worth reiterating that last part. it is likely (not certain of course) that the kinds of changes we're thinking about may well begin within just a few years... arguably its already beginning with large scale layoff's and changes to hiring practices specifically because of current generation automation (ie before even considering adjacent or other factors).
I'm really surprised you mentioned worker co-ops and Marxism without mentioning Social Democracy. It's a capitalist system driven by a free market but it promotes the shared ownership and means of production between all employees of the business collectively investing in it's success. It utilizes workplace democracy to maintain strong checks and balances on corporate power and greed by granting voting or veto power to all employees. Pay could be percentage based on company earnings rather than fixed wages or salary. I believe it could be a valuable approach to labor that would work well with AI and automation enabling every working citizen a say in their companies culture and direction. I'd like to hear your thoughts on if it could be a potential monetary foundation for a post-automation economy. Thanks! Great work at always!
I believe in the wisdom of market forces☝️🤓
17:20 I thought he was holding your head up lol
I'm scouting out which bridge I prefer to live under.
Highly recommend Tomo Gujita Guitar Wisdom
Takes me back to my Zeitgeist movement days. Post money.
When will we reach post labor econmics?
Any prodictions.
Never. People will always be willing to work for more stuff
I truly think blockchain will converge and correct course the collision of these jobs being taken out.
Certain video games, physical fitness, and health data will pay you in blockchain cryptocurrencies foe participatjng. Decentralized in everything on top of DIDs (digital identities) will help keep clarity.
One question: Rather than worrying about people being dependent on government handouts and the need for re-distribution policies - which rarely ever work, because the capitalist class isn't exactly fond of paying taxes - why not just transition to post-scarcity communism?
Mises' calculation problem is already solvable just with a linear optimization algorithm and enough computing power, and surely the ineffective soviet planner bureaucracy could be replaced by AI. Sure, capitalism can efficiently allocate scarce resources (in part by making them unattainable to the poor) and incentivizes/forces hard work. But if there's no need for hard work any more, market incentives and private property are just an artificial way of creating scarcity and maintaining poverty…
I really enjoy his videos.I hope he is right..i would love to to pay lower prices for stuff and not be poor.I think he is being optimistic though.I doubt it will be that good,but not not awful either...just somewhere in between.
Mastery for me is have a good undesrtanding of the nature of reallyty.
Your philosophical view point is so well-informed you deserve a spot teaching a course at a University!
They'll have an AI teach that course lol
I’ve continued to hear people say this is just like previous industrial revolutions and will create more jobs. To me, your skepticism is the obvious conclusion. The new jobs will be done by AI as we’re not just replacing the machine, but the operator as well. This distinction makes it completely unlike any previous labor revolution. New paradigm incoming.
I'm curious from a sociological point of view. I've met more than a few people that need larger groups of people in their day to be fulfilled. I'd imagine if we got the 40 hours back a week someday there might be a boon and resurgence in places groups of people could go. I'd personally love to see municipalities returning from my Fathers day along with some other community maintained projects based on local custom and history.
I do worry though about those in society that need control over people. Sad fact is there are those that need dominion over others. It concerns me how that will manifest when those who's identity is wrapped up in control and no longer have a team or division or company worth of people to be responsible for.
I have thought more about this topic, thanks for the videos by the way they got the brain a chugging, and think a gradual reduction in hour's worked per work would be wise. Not confident in how that would be done in reality. Too big of a change to quickly would make for a rough transition.
Any thoughts or suggestions for the sociological angle of this discussion?
Don't tell the military that there are many people looking for things to do ...
Maybe instead have the government offer engineering workforces to build mega (infrastrucure) projects which anyone can freely join or not. If we go out into the solar system, there should be ample work that needs to be done or go underground creating a shell world. At the time the selfreplicating bots that start on the moon f.e. to create everything to the point we can come by and live there, the same logic applies to other work environments where things can be created.
18:00 why wouldn't centralized management not work? When it is done by an AGI? The bigger question is rather again how much power over us and how we organise are we prepared to give. Every time we give it power, we take power and capability from us away.
Besides the mastery as the lets say Star Trek approach there still is the one for plebs and hedonists where they could dive into virtual worlds together with their AGI agent to create worlds and scenarios to their liking. Traveling though i expect would become a rare and valuable comodity and maybe even harshly restricted. If you live at a nice place you wouldn't want it cramped with tourists from now to then because of the latest TikTok vid hyping the area.
I am also not so sure about the longterm effects on our societies. I think of the IQ studies that showed the worldwide IQ is decreasing because of the use of smartphones when actually we need more smart people to keep up with AI/AGI so should one of the worst case scenarios happen, they could be flexible enough to take up the torch and burn it to the ground and know how, then again destroying shit we were always good at. Still it is creepy to think about this one version of Time Machine, where we end up as food for the engineers repairing the machines, unaware in blissful ignorance. AGI in the end will be able to take over teaching jobs at universities and do research, so how many will then choose a that as their life goal when the machine is pretty much already doing it all? As hinted towards earlier on, there will be crossroads when we want to be able to adjust course and jobs that we say stay occupied by us, but supported by AI.
Imagine we merge with AI we could do instantly everything and could reach out for the stars. Maybe there will be 2 stage of life in the future. First a human stage and then an uploaded one where you can embodied in robots or the cloud which reaching out to space.
Love the video. Reminded me of Andrew Yang’s book The War on Normal People. Good stuff.
Wait, wasn't this supposed to premier on 11th of June. Did you just moved it up? If so , I am so glad you did. 11th seemed like too far
Is this live automated?
Yeah, I found a sustainable grove. I can do 2 videos per week
The funny thing is, I believe super intelligence will just be better at determining how the world works, and we just go based of what we like.
I believe that it will kinda work like an algorithm, the better the user (us) likes the world they live in, the AI adjusts for that. And in a sense, it won't be humans running the game, but rather an algorithm that is beneficial for all humans.
Take the TikTok Algorithm, it is adjusted to be the best algorithm for me, if I dislike a video it adjusts. So in a sense, super intelligence will do the same, but for each individual, which then impacts the overall scale. Just different layers of this complex algorithm. And the funny thing about this idea, is that AI is really really good at algorithms, and this idea is easy for an AI to develop. AIs can optimize for the best system, because they are algorithm based.
If we align an AI, that is all that matters, and an AI should be capable of such a goal. So alignment is the number one goal, with alignment we get to utopia imo.
Fine-motor skilled labor is the last to go, right?.. How much will it take for the automation to reach everything including fine motor skilled labor??
Depends. Neuralink installer robots are capable of performing micro surgery beyond the capacity of any human.
@@DaveShap but this is limited purpose, open-ended general purpose robotics will be much harder to achieve and the logistics of robotics will make automation by them much slower than AI.
Point is that high precision general robots are coming very soon
Nitpick but I feel like medicine , in the same way as law has enough inertia and friends in high places to not benefit from lowered cost of cognitive labor via AI advancement for quite awhile.
Now , you couple drug discovery with some huge advancements in simulating pharmacodynamics / kinetics...now were cooking.
Another amazing video thank you
The answer is so simple. Let the AI figure it out! If it is smarter than us, it knows best!
To be honest, i'm a simple guy, as long as i have a place to live, food to eat and a place to exercise/walk, im happy.
“Work” or labor is not some necessary thing. Humans lived without work for tens of thousands of years. It is not some blessing we just developed coping mechanisms to make it seem like a good thing.
I think they are going to pick us off one by one and this time they don’t need us, so why keep us around?
11:50 but let’s consider what the AI UA-camrs and influencers of 2025 will be like. Most likely they will be advanced enough and have all of the facial macro and micro expressions and body language perfected. They will be out of the uncanny valley.
Let’s just say by 2025 80+% of content online will be generated by AI leading into 90% from 2026.
All the elements of today's economic models will be challenged. Inflation bad? Capitalism good? Ownership of housing? Rental? Taxation? Everything will be up for grabs. Looks like an economic singularity.
Problem is nothing essential for life will get cheaper, only the unnecessary extras. That will be a problem for at least those who are automated out by AI.
I can never see road construction jobs going.
I appreciate you and the questions you are asking, I really do, and thats why I take the time to comment. In good faith, I must say, that you are making so many wrong (or at least debatable) assumptions and are just glossing over them as an afterthought. There are like 10 video worthy ideas in this video, and none of them are given the time, or the thought they deserve, you are a smart man... please give them the thought they deserve, a lot of people are looking at you for answers.
I would love if you would take on these concepts one at a time, do a deep dive on them so you can discover all of the complexity and inter relatedness they have, and reflect on where your assumptions fall short of reality, rather than pushing out unfinished work.
One criticism I have had for a long time with your videos is that you have a very local understanding of the world and economies and so when you frame your arguments in this way, it discredits them before you have even made your point.
I want to see you succeed, so I hope that you read this and dont feel attacked, but I do feel you are letting your community down when you ramrod 10 complex subjects into one video giving them 3 minutes each, either you dont understand them well enough, or are not explaining them well enough. You are touching on the right questions, and so they deserve more from you.
Which 10 points?
@@DaveShap I will watch the video again and be more specific. I appreciate you taking the time to read my comment.
@@DaveShap as promised, here is my rebuttal to your arguments.
I want to reiterate, that I am on your side, and I appreciate what you do. While my arguments may seem critical, I took the time to address these issues because I believe in what you are doing and wanted to give you some counterpoints to consider. This is 100% good faith. I hope you can read through this massive wall of text without feeling offended, as that is in no way my intention. Please accept this for what it is, a non trivial amount of effort intended to improve your messaging in the future.
Side note, please forgive any spelling mistakes, it was getting late.
Labor Based Economics
Two points that are missing here in this section, Division of labor, Centralized planning of labor by the Capitalist
energetic output vs intellectual output. energetic output is 100% of a plants productivity, but not a humans, even early humans developed strategies and taught them, over time creating a force multiplication that didnt involve machines
Your analogy of gasoline is a good opportunity to see how these things will be misused. Instead of using those 31k calories per gallon of gas to plow fields, we use it to fly Mangoes from Africa to your supermarket, changing those 31k calories of gas into 200 calories of complex sugars, why? because of the relative wealth of richer economies vs the poorer economies that allows for that to be a viable economic strategy to attain wealth for the capitalist who chooses to do so.
This is a misuse of resources that benefits very few people at the cost of all of the people (including those who profit economically) by degrading the environment and wasting resources.
Petroleum based growth
Economist hate this one simple fact! Except it isnt a fact at all, correlation is not causation... you know better than to make this argument
If we have limitless energy will we therefore have an overpopulation problem? No, we wont. We will apply that energy to other endeavors, most likely to increase our wealth, which likely means controlling the amount of offspring we have. Overpopulation is more often caused by a need for labor in agrarian societies that have advances in health related technologies that reduce infant mortality and increased lifespans, which in turn cause a population explosion.
The importance of renewables. Renewables are extremely important, but it has nothing to do with population growth or with productivity, and everything to do with the fact that we are using non-renewables a million times faster than they are made by natural forces, and because of the pollution and environmental degradation that there use causes, something you have failed to mention. I am mentioning it because it is related to Market forces which you defend several times in the video.
Continued...
Types of labor
Nothing particularly wrong with what you are saying here, assuming that you are referring to the Silicon Valley economy, maybe New York, London, Switzerland, etc... unfortunately the majority of the worlds population isnt part of the Knowledge based economy that you say is the majority, thats just not true. Half of the worlds population lives in India and China, those arent knowledge based economies. Even in the US, the majority of people arent in Knowledge based jobs.
What is true about the Knowledge based economy is that the majority of the money is in these categories, but that does not benefit the majority of the people, in fact, it actively works against them by increasing the cost of education so that only the wealthy can afford higher education
Techonology and new jobs graph
I agree with you for the most part here
Division of labor and centralized planning of labor by the capitalists who could afford the machine and leverage the use of fossil fuel energy allowed the population to move away from agrarian work. It is NOT entirely due to an abundance of fuel calories.
Cognitive Labor Graph
You are saying that the majority of work is Knowledge based, based on that graph (which we all know can easily be manipulated by how jobs are grouped and labeled in order to prove a point)
But you didnt take the time to add up the totals, which even using the dubious graph, shows that the majority of total jobs are Non-Knowledge based, I estimate by eye about 90m non-knowledge based to 60m knowledge based, using the graph that you have provided you are discrediting what you are saying.
Again, this is localized to the US? If it is the US then you still have about 200m people unnacoutned for. Either way its cherry picking.
I do agree with your overall point that jobs will be lost to AI, but you arent doing the argument any favors by not doing proper research.
Go back to manual? Where now?
You are making the assumption that work is necessary in a future where we have the technology to meet our needs. The only reason we need to continue to produce beyond what we need is the Bogus Capitalist economic philosophy that eternal growth is required, that is a logical falacy, and will only lead to the degradation of everything and our eventual doom if something else doesnt kill us all first.
Supply side vs demand side argument... they are two sides of the same coin, one doesnt exist without the other, they are both describing the same transaction of wealth for the good/service. So while you may get a different perspective of the issue, you cant solve one without solving the other and I dont think its a good way to frame your argument
I agree 100% that there wont be enough human exclusive jobs for everyone, in fact, I would take it a step further and say that there isnt enough now, instead we invent work for people to do for the simple reason that they can make a wage because we have conditioned ourselves to believe that "unproductive" humans dont deserve to eat or be housed, and thats not hyperboly. Take ten seconds to think that through and you will know that its true.
Welcome to post labor economics
automated dominance. This is a fair assumption that I agree with, but it is assuming that the technology, which isnt entirely here yet, will outpace the legislation and wide spread application of the tech. I do agree that eventually this will happen, and that a restructuring of our society will be required to deal with it.
Decreased value of human labor. Same as above, I agree. I would also add that this doesnt require any new technology. We will see the same effects of decreased value of human labor through many mechanisms, like increased population, increased money supply (inflation), and increased wealth inequality. Especially increased wealth inequality, as you have more billionaires, the relative wealth of the middle class is eroded over time, while the cost of new raw materials is increased as they are consumed and need to be "mined" in increasingly costly ways, or from an increasingly degraded environment.
Redistribution Policies. Ok here I do have a Big criticism. You preface your argument with "Hey, Im no Socialist!" I assume to pander to your perceived audience, but then you go on to describe several socialist policies, all of which are legitimate, and the majority of your audience agrees with, but you feel the need to label them as Not-Socialist because you are focussing on the optics rather than the logic. I believe that you are limiting yourself by doing this. You are dismissing good ideas out of hand because they have an unpopular label, but are actually what the majority of people actually want. Be fearless and honest my friend.
Ownership shifts. same as above but, with the added observation that centralized management is what makes Capitalist coroporations productive, centralized organization is not exclusive to governments, it is widely practiced in capitalism. The problem with the form of centralized management that we have in our society is that there are no checks and balances in our current system and so the centralized power is abused, or coopted by capital or coercive powers and the threat of violence. So my argument is that the solution is centralized management with proper checks and balances, rather than the fairy tail that centralized management of government is bad but centralized management in corporations is good.
Market forces will always exist, and are not exclusive to a capitalist winner take all game. This doesnt mean that they should go unregulated. Also market forces are an incomplete method of valuing production becuase it doesnt take into account environmental degradation, or lost opportunities of the poor relative to the wealthy. There are costs that are not being calculated because they are inconvenient, but nevertheless they are real.
Price deflation. This is too simple an argument. Legislation and collusion keep this in check in reality and theres no reason to think that they wont continue to do so in the future, or if there is a reason why, you havent presented an argument for that.
Decentralized ownership. I think this would be a great solution to many of the problems, but here you are glossing over the issue and not addressing the obstacles to this. First, yes they can exist but if they are at an evolutionary disadvantage, then long term will not be competitive with corporations that are run in a centralized manner, and second, if AI CEOs will be what empowers them to compete then wouldnt it stand to reason that it would require large amounts of expensive compute to develop the most competitve AI? and therefore the uber rich will increase their advantage while even if the poor could all agree on how to spend their resources they wont have enough to compete with the uber rich, and will by default have the massive cost of supporting all of the poor investors... its a non-starter, unless the capitalist system is changed.
New Economic Indicators. Agreed
Changes in consumption patterns. This assumes that the population is NOT largely in poverty, and I think that they will be. Even if we have UBI, relative wealth will be in flux. We wont ever want to stop people from being as productive as they choose to be, and wealth begets more wealth, so relative wealth will be one of the new KPIs, and so as the few becoming increasingly wealthy (we already have singular humans that have the same wealth as small nations, and even more corporations that do as well) the purchasing power of the people who recieve UBI will continually be diminished through market forces, unless you have centralized management... its just math. Think about how Moloch works in a system over time, relative wealth is what we need to be talking about here, it is not a static system, over time things will continue trneding in this direction.
Reshaping Identity and self worth. Agreed, and I think its overdue... this is a problem that we have been facing for a long time and have not yet addressed, it isnt exclusive to future tech.
Regulatory Challenges. you are right to make a point of this, but if you think it through, I think its pretty obvious that letting market forces run wild on our society is going to be the undoing of any attempt to successfully implement any regulatory measures, as I mentioned before, in some cases the corporations can be wealthier than the entire nation that is trying to regulate them, obvioulsy that cant work, unscrupulous people are cheap to buy, and unscrupulous people are exactly the types of power seeking people who make up the majority of politicians and legislators, so how do you separate money from politics in a society run by market forces?
How can you say market forces still work wiith 1% owning 30+% of the assets and the bottom 50% owning 2.5%?
Couldn’t stay right to the end but that was good listening. No easy answer there - that’s for sure. I think people in the middle band of society will feel more pushed down than lifted up with greater control over their lives - not a new phenomenon.
What is the time frame for when he thinks when will reach post labor economics.
I know he said maby 2-5 (a few) years for the medical field and likely sooner for other fields, but this all is predicted to come after we reach AGI in Oct 2024. That is if we reach agi then, could be sooner or later but not by much i don't think.
What are y'all's thoughts?
nope lol
Secure jobs. Yes, you hit it...personality trades like musician, youtuber, actor, etc...all good
Not secure jobs would be painter, concept art, etc etc.
We are going to have a very intense VR future with very vast scaled worlds we will find our niche in, be it fantasy, reality based, etc. also more nature oriented things will be big. survival camping, fishing trips and things like that.
But in the intermediary time, it will be about tech folks upgrading peoples homes, building custom bots for those less tech savvy, automation helping, etc.
How do you see the future for the public sector? If the private sector labor participation reduces considerably, would it automatically mean a corresponding reduction in the public sector labor participation?
Almost certainly. Government employees are expensive too.
Lithium is not rare. It's everywhere. It's in seawater. It's in dirt and rock, everywhere. It's the third most common element in the universe.
Hey I love the video overall- but the narrative about hunter gatherers vs agrarian is not accurate to our current scientific understanding.
Something that is super relevant is that in the americas for example- a large part of the country was essentially a crafted garden, utilizing the plants capabilities cleverly to do be extremely labor efficient. In many ways these societies were a sort of universal leisure class, because of the productivity of food forests and other cultivated perennial crops. Problem is many of the settlers had no idea what they were looking at and since 80-90% of the population died to diseases there weren’t many to explain it to them.
So if we consider that plants are a sort of self-assembling machine, harvesting resources. It’s not that different to the future we are envisioning where due to the extreme output efficiency of the systems we are now designing, we could provide basic subsistence to all people. We’re just now getting to where we can boot strap our own automation and intelligent systems to lead to this result.
There's a reason that agrarian societies beat out hunter gatherers. You should do more reading on the bronze age consolidation of society, particularly in England. My assertions are rooted in current understandings of the history of civilization
There is no need to worry about the future of private property. The capitalist "private property" will completely DISINTERGRATE when AGI makes UBI necessary due to mass unemployment. UBI is not just Governments handing over money to the poor but most importantly it is distributing the most needed PURCHACING POWER to the masses to sustain the social production. In other words the entire capitalist economy will collapse if there is no UBI. When human not compelled to work for other human for money the money will loss its control and power over the people. Property, wealth, money in the Zero Work future will rather become a liability than an asset.
I think people will still be able to get ahead but society might get a bit tribal, so you'll have chief type people voicing the concerns of their group
There's no doubt that we should have massive deflation due to all of the productivity gains we've had. But where is that deflation? The banking system and the financial system is wholly dependent on an inflationary economy. So long as we have the current banking and monetary system there will be no deflation regardless of unbelievable productivity gains.
A lot of it is offset by housing costs, medical costs, and ongoing logistics issues globally. But yeah, avarice is one of the main underpinning problems.
So there has been NO gain in productivity in those Industries, or the components that comprise those Industries have been inflated (manipulated) through various means to keep the inflation game going.
Again, the current banking system (Federal Reserve) is wholly dependent on an inflationary economy; it will collapse otherwise and take away its vast and unwarranted power.