The 401(k) point seems very confusing to me. I think you mention somewhere that “many people own some Microsoft and Google” [sic], but this seems pretty unpersuasive. The Rich and Powerful People who own way more Microsoft and Google than everyone else are the ones who will disproportionately benefit. If people who own 0.0000000000000000001% of Microsoft are going to be able to influence the post-TAI future, I don’t think it’s going to be because of their investment portfolio (but maybe it’ll happen if the people who are in control of TAI do something like deliberative democracy).
Firstly, I’m not sure where you’re getting ‘0.0000000000000000001%’. MSFT has a total sharecount of around 7.5bn, so if you own a single share ( $248.59 at time of writing) that’s over 100,000,000,000x more than you suggest. Even if you own a single share of an S&P500 ETF, and hence only a fractional share of MSFT, you’re still off by many orders of magnitude.
Secondly, it’s unclear which of two points in the post you’re referring to, partly because instead of actually quoting a section of the post you instead made up a fake quote.
One argument, about egalitarianism, mentions GOOGL and MSFT:
A typical public company has a very broad investor base; almost everyone who has invested in an index fund owns a bit of GOOGL and MSFT, for example. Even private firms will typically have venture capital investors, which in turn might have pension funds, insurance funds, etc. among their investors. The clause effectively expropriates a fraction of the profits which would otherwise accrue to this broad group, and transfers it to the CEO.
This argument is a relative argument. With over half of all Americans having some exposure to the stock market, even though the distribution is far from equal, it is far less concentrated than a world where the CEO directly controls the windfall.
I don’t think this is a super important argument though, as I mention, because I am a lot more concerned about AI race dynamics than egalitarianism.
The second argument, about CEO incentives and race dynamics, mentions 401(k)s:
from the point of view of the CEOs, the spoils available to winning are now even larger than before, because you will get a massive slush fund for political pet projects, and the losers will not even get the consolation prize of their 401(k) doing so well.
I expect AGI firm CEOs, which are the people whose incentives we primarily care about, to be reasonably wealthy, either from previous entrepreneurship or just compensation from the job, so they would likely have significant wealth invested in the stock market. The “Rich and Powerful People who own way more Microsoft and Google than everyone else [and] are the ones who will disproportionately benefit” include the competitor CEOs (and VCs, management teams, etc.) whose incentives determine how bad AI races will be.
This argument is not about egalitarianism or fairness or inclusion; it is simply about race dynamics. For this purpose, inequality is actually advantageous, as increases the rewards for the most influential actors for not racing.
But I don’t actually regard either of these points as the key part of the overall argument.
I think Ben West correctly captured my primary argument, so I’ll just address a minor subpoint.
Firstly, I’m not sure where you’re getting ‘0.0000000000000000001%’. MSFT has a total sharecount of around 7.5bn, so if you own a single share ( $248.59 at time of writing) that’s over 100,000,000,000x more than you suggest. Even if you own a single share of an S&P500 ETF, and hence only a fractional share of MSFT, you’re still off by many orders of magnitude.
Secondly, it’s unclear which of two points in the post you’re referring to, partly because instead of actually quoting a section of the post you instead made up a fake quote.
One argument, about egalitarianism, mentions GOOGL and MSFT:
This argument is a relative argument. With over half of all Americans having some exposure to the stock market, even though the distribution is far from equal, it is far less concentrated than a world where the CEO directly controls the windfall.
I don’t think this is a super important argument though, as I mention, because I am a lot more concerned about AI race dynamics than egalitarianism.
The second argument, about CEO incentives and race dynamics, mentions 401(k)s:
I expect AGI firm CEOs, which are the people whose incentives we primarily care about, to be reasonably wealthy, either from previous entrepreneurship or just compensation from the job, so they would likely have significant wealth invested in the stock market. The “Rich and Powerful People who own way more Microsoft and Google than everyone else [and] are the ones who will disproportionately benefit” include the competitor CEOs (and VCs, management teams, etc.) whose incentives determine how bad AI races will be.
This argument is not about egalitarianism or fairness or inclusion; it is simply about race dynamics. For this purpose, inequality is actually advantageous, as increases the rewards for the most influential actors for not racing.
But I don’t actually regard either of these points as the key part of the overall argument.