If robots do everything a person can do for zero marginal cost, then the we are in a post-scarcity utopia, why is that bad?
Because you won't have the money to buy anything, perhaps?
Just because things can be produced at zero marginal costs in no way means those things will be free. The people who own the AIs doing the stuff will want to gain wealth for doing so.
If robots can do everything, that includes duplicating the robots. And it only takes one country willing to tolerate robot "intellectual property theft" for free duplicates of the do-everything-robots to proliferate.
There's currently some incentive for governments in poorer countries to put up with IP-friendly laws favored by richer countries. It might be the only way to get their exports into the European market, or get development loans, for example. But if robots can do literally everything then there is no reason that these carrots matter any more. Instead of taking development loans and trying to become the next low-cost-manufacturing location after China, just copy the robots and ignore everyone who says it's theft. If you're a Sri Lankan, Bolivian, or South African politician looking to improve your country and become wildly popular at the same time, "copy the robots" is the fastest way to develop. It's also the fastest way to modernize and expand a poor country's military, if they're afraid of gunboat diplomacy from the richer countries.
That only means that the robots will also be in a similar situation: in the end the only thing that will be of any worth is resources (land, mines, oil fields) and market shares, while labour and IP will become worthless as we reach a plateau of science and development, and patents and copyrights run out.
Given the societal impact that the "curse of resources" has, future societies might look more like some african country or the russian oligarchy where a small percentage lives in utter luxury while the masses live in extreme poverty.
I agree that the ownership of natural resources would still matter. I don't think that concentrated oligarchy is the probable outcome, though. If robots do everything, trying to prevent copies is like trying to prevent copyright infringement. It's the clanking, macroscopic equivalent of having a replicator. It's as easy to make weapons as to make appliances. I can see things spiraling out of control to the point where e.g. routine civilian air travel shuts down, following the wide availability of MANPADS, and nuclear proliferation runs amok, but I don't see a stable equilibrium that ends with secure oligarchies. There are too many rival oligarchies in the world for them to coordinate on the problem of keeping do-everything robots locked down in the interests of their own safety. There will be defectors.
with a self replicating robot you can build an army of robots that can build rockets that can take self replicating robots to asteroids that can be turned into goods and habitats by the robots.
I searched "obsolete", "Obsolete Short Story", "Obsolete Alien", "Obsolete Alien Short Story", and "Obsolete Alien Sandstone" and couldn't find anything. Do you have a link?
Comments
Because you won't have the money to buy anything, perhaps?
Just because things can be produced at zero marginal costs in no way means those things will be free. The people who own the AIs doing the stuff will want to gain wealth for doing so.
If robots can do everything, that includes duplicating the robots. And it only takes one country willing to tolerate robot "intellectual property theft" for free duplicates of the do-everything-robots to proliferate.
There's currently some incentive for governments in poorer countries to put up with IP-friendly laws favored by richer countries. It might be the only way to get their exports into the European market, or get development loans, for example. But if robots can do literally everything then there is no reason that these carrots matter any more. Instead of taking development loans and trying to become the next low-cost-manufacturing location after China, just copy the robots and ignore everyone who says it's theft. If you're a Sri Lankan, Bolivian, or South African politician looking to improve your country and become wildly popular at the same time, "copy the robots" is the fastest way to develop. It's also the fastest way to modernize and expand a poor country's military, if they're afraid of gunboat diplomacy from the richer countries.
That only means that the robots will also be in a similar situation: in the end the only thing that will be of any worth is resources (land, mines, oil fields) and market shares, while labour and IP will become worthless as we reach a plateau of science and development, and patents and copyrights run out.
Given the societal impact that the "curse of resources" has, future societies might look more like some african country or the russian oligarchy where a small percentage lives in utter luxury while the masses live in extreme poverty.
I agree that the ownership of natural resources would still matter. I don't think that concentrated oligarchy is the probable outcome, though. If robots do everything, trying to prevent copies is like trying to prevent copyright infringement. It's the clanking, macroscopic equivalent of having a replicator. It's as easy to make weapons as to make appliances. I can see things spiraling out of control to the point where e.g. routine civilian air travel shuts down, following the wide availability of MANPADS, and nuclear proliferation runs amok, but I don't see a stable equilibrium that ends with secure oligarchies. There are too many rival oligarchies in the world for them to coordinate on the problem of keeping do-everything robots locked down in the interests of their own safety. There will be defectors.
with a self replicating robot you can build an army of robots that can build rockets that can take self replicating robots to asteroids that can be turned into goods and habitats by the robots.
That's all well and good, but none of it would help me to pay rent, buy food, etc.
Obsolete, a series on YouTube, is about this very thing; Aliens trade a self-repairing mech to anyone for 1 metric ton of sandstone.
I searched "obsolete", "Obsolete Short Story", "Obsolete Alien", "Obsolete Alien Short Story", and "Obsolete Alien Sandstone" and couldn't find anything. Do you have a link?
It looks like this series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKPsuBIKuejNJW_M6ArHp...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11398800/