nice idea - not exactly new - that we could just get AGI to do all the work and spend our lives playing
BUT
In the two major economic climates - capitalism and communism - this won't end up being the case. Capitalists will moan about supporting freebasers. Communists will moan about the people not being productive - it's not like fun, free time and personal choice are highly valued in a place like China where 996 is normal, and people simply don't have time for anything. No, that won't change - they're already "productive to the max" - I'm quite sure that if China could come up with a "relaxation drug" to mitigate burnout, it would be 997 or higher.
Before any of this utopian vision can be fulfilled, we have to overcome the greatest hurdle of all: people. People are selfish and like their "wealth ranking" when they aren't in the bottom pool. People want to feel special, elevated - and mostly, people achieve that by being "better than" someone else. A "Star Trek world" only exists once the participants can actually sit down and agree to co-operate instead of treating everything as a zero-sum game.
To be clear: it's our competitive nature that has fueled a lot of human progress and is responsible for where we are, but we're at a bit of a tipping point where the world is getting more crowded, competition is increasing, and tribalism is entrenched everywhere. We need a radical human transformation if we're going to ever break out of this cycle without annihilation.
Comments
A related but contentious post/discussion:
The era of jobs is ending
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46186900
Interesting!
nice idea - not exactly new - that we could just get AGI to do all the work and spend our lives playing
BUT
In the two major economic climates - capitalism and communism - this won't end up being the case. Capitalists will moan about supporting freebasers. Communists will moan about the people not being productive - it's not like fun, free time and personal choice are highly valued in a place like China where 996 is normal, and people simply don't have time for anything. No, that won't change - they're already "productive to the max" - I'm quite sure that if China could come up with a "relaxation drug" to mitigate burnout, it would be 997 or higher.
Before any of this utopian vision can be fulfilled, we have to overcome the greatest hurdle of all: people. People are selfish and like their "wealth ranking" when they aren't in the bottom pool. People want to feel special, elevated - and mostly, people achieve that by being "better than" someone else. A "Star Trek world" only exists once the participants can actually sit down and agree to co-operate instead of treating everything as a zero-sum game.
To be clear: it's our competitive nature that has fueled a lot of human progress and is responsible for where we are, but we're at a bit of a tipping point where the world is getting more crowded, competition is increasing, and tribalism is entrenched everywhere. We need a radical human transformation if we're going to ever break out of this cycle without annihilation.