Tedd Hadley on Second Thoughts

"It took me like two minutes to come up with some obvious holes in this idea:" I'm not sure these are holes at least the way Smith argues it. "Lower quality work": Yes, humans will be do lower quality work, but will also be much cheaper. Sure, if you want AIs that are better, you can pay for them, but the lost opportunity cost makes them prohibitively expensive, as I will expand. "Transactional overhead." Yes, AIs are better here but the cost puts them out of reach. Why are AIs so expensive? The comparative advantage argument finds that all the available AIs are doing R & D work in fusion, quantum-computing, neural linking, curing disease, climate control, etc., and to pull them away from that requires paying their proprietors enormous amounts of money equivalent to the lost opportunity cost that cheaper energy and compute would mean to a future economy-- $trillions? AIs become astronomically expensive exactly because they're so smart. So the likely scenario seems to be that an energy and compute budget is mandated by law for humans at a level just below super-intelligence -- so plenty of energy and compute for everything we need. This doesn't constrain the AIs because they are constantly discovering new energy sources and building faster compute, so what's left to humans shrinks as a percentage of the total year by year. "Adaptation": Yes, this is a challenge, but also Smith grants from the beginning that continuous diversification is a historical given. There will be farmers and horse trainers out of work as an economy changes. But it is not possible for everyone to be out of work because there is always something that humans can do to free up an AI for more important work. But the more important counter to adaption problems is that the AI world is fabulously wealthy with cheap energy and compute and there is no need to work, the basics of life are free and people who don't want to work won't need to. However, like you, I have similar concerns about humans being irrelevant. Very rapidly in the scenario above (only a few decades?), we are no longer in control of AI, and AI is effortlessly in charge. Smith seems to recognize that his scenario only takes us to that point. Once AI calls the shots, its anyone's guess what happens next. "If anyone reading this is connected with Noah Smith, I’d love to get his take." Uh, you saw his response to Zvi. Your post isn't even close to the level of deference and humility required for a Smith response! (smile)