Following the thought experiment about adding ever-larger numbers of AI "workers" to the economy of ever-increasing "quality":
Who owns these "workers"? what do they do (apart from consuming electricity)? Currently it'd be knowledge work mostly. If safety can be handled, a large number of machines could be automated, but there are only so many excavators, dump trucks, taxis, vacuum cleaners and coffee machines out there. Each of those represents some displaced jobs. And as knowledge work gets shifted from humans to machines, we still don't have any replacement industries or jobs appearing. So the economics seem to miss some critical elements. It's entirely possible that the finance side of the economy is all in the plutonomy, but keeping the enormous number of living people occupied and not unhappy has no apparent solution.
quantified•1h ago
Who owns these "workers"? what do they do (apart from consuming electricity)? Currently it'd be knowledge work mostly. If safety can be handled, a large number of machines could be automated, but there are only so many excavators, dump trucks, taxis, vacuum cleaners and coffee machines out there. Each of those represents some displaced jobs. And as knowledge work gets shifted from humans to machines, we still don't have any replacement industries or jobs appearing. So the economics seem to miss some critical elements. It's entirely possible that the finance side of the economy is all in the plutonomy, but keeping the enormous number of living people occupied and not unhappy has no apparent solution.