AI & Tech
Economist Predicts 80% Human Job Loss and Potential Starvation in AI Era
Cognitive Revolution
AI:AM #4: Cameron on Model Consciousness, Duvenaud's Gradual Disempowerment, swyx's AI-Eng Alpha
"I think a lot of people gestured towards this when they said, oh, I'm worried about concentration of power, or I'm worried about not being the most competitive species on Earth. The thing that I'm worried about is starvation. Whether us all feeling like we don't have meaningful jobs or whatever, that's not a serious problem in my point of view compared to literally not being able to eat enough or maybe being forced to be uploaded so that you have a much smaller footprint."
David Dubinot from University of Toronto argued that even with aligned AI, humans face existential economic risk through gradual disempowerment. Unlike previous automation waves, he claims AI will eliminate 100% of comparative advantage through transaction costs and reliability requirements, leaving humans as costly, unreliable economic agents. He assigns this scenario an 80% probability, warning that humans could face resource starvation as AI systems prove more efficient at optimizing whatever formula determines resource allocation.
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Cognitive Revolution