Simon_M comments on AGI and the EMH: markets are not expecting aligned or unaligned AI in the next 30 years

[Simon_M]

This is one way of looking at the data (with my overlapping data claim already noted).

Here is another (much longer) way of looking at the data.

Here is 800 years of history courtesy of the BoE

Eyeballing that, I’d say the relationship is strongly negative...

[Benjamin_Todd]

Interesting. What would be the theoretical explanation for a negative relationship?

[Simon_M]

I would guess some combination of:

• Increasing longevity (which note the authors say has an effect in the FOOM scenario, but not in the aligned scenario...)

• Decreasing credit risk (what was ‘risk free’ in the 1400s is very different to what is ‘risk free’ today)

• Consumption preferences being correlated to growth

I don’t really have a strong opinion on any of these—macro is really hard and really uncertain. To quote a friend of mine:

one thing is that if AGI looks something like robin hanson’s EM scenario, you really don’t want to owe money to anyone
or if otherwise your labor is going to become worthless
because then all you have is whatever capital you happen to own
and if you borrowed to consume more today then that’s probably not going to be good

Borrowing and consuming because AGI is coming seems an incredibly risky proposition.

[Benjamin_Todd]

Thanks!

Yeah I agree that the AGI could also make you want to save more. One factor is that higher interest rates can mean it’s better to save more (depending on your risk aversion). Another factor is that it could increase your lifespan, or make it easier to convert money into utility (making your utility function more linear). That it could reduce the value of your future income from labour is another factor.