I’ve long described the following as the most obviously helpful policy response to the possibility of advanced AI. But even though I’ve long known many folks who say they are very worried about AI, I have yet to motivate any of them to actually pursue this response. Let me now try again.
The thing I find fascinating about the AI-induced unemployment is that it flips the usual class analysis totally on its head. It's the middle-class white-collar workers (perhaps even the extremely privileged few who work in creative industries who long believed their work was more "human" than anyone else's) whose jobs are under most immediate threat. I've heard multiple times that the job safest from automation is being a plumber.
This is really likely to change politics in the near future. It is true that UBI is already somewhat popular in liberal elite circles, but currently that feels more like a luxury belief than a deeply held conviction - the sort of thing people say in order to sound sophisticated. Well, soon it's going to be deadly serious, as these people unexpectedly find everything they've worked for washed away as the skilled manual labourers inherit the earth.
Isn't this analysis based on a fallacy of sorts? If AI results in everybody losing their jobs, what does that mean? It sounds to me like it means the costs of production have declined to near zero and thus the cost of goods will have declined to near zero - maybe too cheap to measure. Since goods are zero cost, the cost of charity is zero cost. Sounds like utopia come true - with all the good and bad that implies.
It will likely take a few years to a decade to develop. Our favorite AI optimist Tim Worstall firmly believes against all commonsense that the brain machines will release humans to go and do other more productive things. Wherever the "released" humans go they will find a robot doing the job cheaper, faster and better. Faced by mass unemployment with angry workers marching and waving baguettes, the state must either outlaw AI (in selected occupations) or institute income replacement. In the latter case, who will pay for the income replacement? The owners of the bots. This presents a further dilemma. A bot-owning entrepreneur has risked megabucks in the hope of making a profit. The entrepreneur might lose it all, as many new ventures do. If the entrepreneur makes a profit, the taxes to pay the income benefit kick in. I see this as a disincentive.
Tim Worstall imagines humanity lying in the lap of idle luxury while the bots do all the work for us. Never mind that for many of us, what we do is who we are. Utilitarianism is the default human mindset. Most of us get more pleasure from mental activities than physical. One of these activities is hunting and gathering and returning each day with some tasty roots or a delicious antelope. Without work, humans will decline mentally and morally very quickly.
A century from now, humans will no longer be the dominant species. A few unusually attractive specimens may be kept as pets for the robots.
I'd assume that the reason people aren't interested in buying such insurance is because a world where the value of human labour goes to zero is a world where we get millions of machine slaves to produce stuff for us. It would be weird if we suddenly had all this abundance but people were worse off.
I asked chat GPT: Which financial assets are likely to retain value in the event automation suddenly takes most jobs (labor force participation rate falls below 10%)?
It replied: Real Estate, Precious Metals, Cryptocurrencies, Blue-Chip Stocks and Infrastructure Assets
But I am a bit skeptical. Advanced AI should be able to produce abundant housing, create tech to extract gold for sea water, create better crypto and make current industries and infrastructure absolute.
You'd need A to be large enough to create UBI-like flows in perpetuity, since D will only come once if it does, and labor will be obsolete forever if E (assume away the issue of fertility over 2.1).
How many workers can afford to purchase UBI-in-perpetuity today, even mitigated by the probability of E? I estimate A to be of some 10M per person, so a premium of (present value) 100k to 1M (assume chance of E of 1% to 10%).
If, on account of the above, A is provided to all at a subsidy, how is that different from a Sovereign Fund funding an UBI + VAT complex? Nothing wrong with that ofc.
Why aren't such insurance products and financial assets already available? Obvious answers include a) there isn't sufficient real demand to offset production costs in such a way as to produce supernormal or even comparatively normal profits, or b) the policy regime precludes it. In the absence of decisive evidence either way, I would presume a good chance of both causes playing an important role.
"as this risk is easily measured and widely shared" - is it, though? Even if we somehow agree on what is the proper measure and even if by some miracle it won't get Goodharted to all seven hells, calculating it sounds like something beyond most people's capabilities.
The thing I find fascinating about the AI-induced unemployment is that it flips the usual class analysis totally on its head. It's the middle-class white-collar workers (perhaps even the extremely privileged few who work in creative industries who long believed their work was more "human" than anyone else's) whose jobs are under most immediate threat. I've heard multiple times that the job safest from automation is being a plumber.
This is really likely to change politics in the near future. It is true that UBI is already somewhat popular in liberal elite circles, but currently that feels more like a luxury belief than a deeply held conviction - the sort of thing people say in order to sound sophisticated. Well, soon it's going to be deadly serious, as these people unexpectedly find everything they've worked for washed away as the skilled manual labourers inherit the earth.
Isn't this analysis based on a fallacy of sorts? If AI results in everybody losing their jobs, what does that mean? It sounds to me like it means the costs of production have declined to near zero and thus the cost of goods will have declined to near zero - maybe too cheap to measure. Since goods are zero cost, the cost of charity is zero cost. Sounds like utopia come true - with all the good and bad that implies.
It will likely take a few years to a decade to develop. Our favorite AI optimist Tim Worstall firmly believes against all commonsense that the brain machines will release humans to go and do other more productive things. Wherever the "released" humans go they will find a robot doing the job cheaper, faster and better. Faced by mass unemployment with angry workers marching and waving baguettes, the state must either outlaw AI (in selected occupations) or institute income replacement. In the latter case, who will pay for the income replacement? The owners of the bots. This presents a further dilemma. A bot-owning entrepreneur has risked megabucks in the hope of making a profit. The entrepreneur might lose it all, as many new ventures do. If the entrepreneur makes a profit, the taxes to pay the income benefit kick in. I see this as a disincentive.
Tim Worstall imagines humanity lying in the lap of idle luxury while the bots do all the work for us. Never mind that for many of us, what we do is who we are. Utilitarianism is the default human mindset. Most of us get more pleasure from mental activities than physical. One of these activities is hunting and gathering and returning each day with some tasty roots or a delicious antelope. Without work, humans will decline mentally and morally very quickly.
A century from now, humans will no longer be the dominant species. A few unusually attractive specimens may be kept as pets for the robots.
I'd assume that the reason people aren't interested in buying such insurance is because a world where the value of human labour goes to zero is a world where we get millions of machine slaves to produce stuff for us. It would be weird if we suddenly had all this abundance but people were worse off.
I asked chat GPT: Which financial assets are likely to retain value in the event automation suddenly takes most jobs (labor force participation rate falls below 10%)?
It replied: Real Estate, Precious Metals, Cryptocurrencies, Blue-Chip Stocks and Infrastructure Assets
But I am a bit skeptical. Advanced AI should be able to produce abundant housing, create tech to extract gold for sea water, create better crypto and make current industries and infrastructure absolute.
You'd need A to be large enough to create UBI-like flows in perpetuity, since D will only come once if it does, and labor will be obsolete forever if E (assume away the issue of fertility over 2.1).
How many workers can afford to purchase UBI-in-perpetuity today, even mitigated by the probability of E? I estimate A to be of some 10M per person, so a premium of (present value) 100k to 1M (assume chance of E of 1% to 10%).
If, on account of the above, A is provided to all at a subsidy, how is that different from a Sovereign Fund funding an UBI + VAT complex? Nothing wrong with that ofc.
Can I also have "AI killed me and everyone I care about"-insurance?
Why aren't such insurance products and financial assets already available? Obvious answers include a) there isn't sufficient real demand to offset production costs in such a way as to produce supernormal or even comparatively normal profits, or b) the policy regime precludes it. In the absence of decisive evidence either way, I would presume a good chance of both causes playing an important role.
"as this risk is easily measured and widely shared" - is it, though? Even if we somehow agree on what is the proper measure and even if by some miracle it won't get Goodharted to all seven hells, calculating it sounds like something beyond most people's capabilities.
Are you sure the SEC or whichever regulatory body oversees insurance won’t want to get involved?
When you say collect these assets, is this presumably done by the government? How exactly would they handle this investing infrastructure?
In the UK this is perfectly possible using a mutual club with membership classes for investors and workers.