In Open Philanthropy’s Report on Whether AI Could Drive Explosive Economic Growth, Tom Davidson writes:
Overall, I place at least 10% probability on advanced AI driving explosive growth [30% GWP growth each year] this century.
While I’m not aware of anyone claiming that if such 30% annual GWP growth were to occur that the economy would continue to grow at that rate for many years, it occurred to me that at that rate of growth the economy would grow by a factor of 10^11 each century.
At that rate of growth the solar system’s economy would reach its maximum size (imposed by the amount of matter in the solar system and how efficiently that matter can be used) very quickly, probably within about a century or two.
This leads me to wonder, what exactly is the maximum size economy the solar system can sustain? Are there existing published estimates on this question?
It is clear that energy consumption cannot continue to grow exponentially for much more than 1000 years. But it might be argued that we can continue to extract ever more economic value from less and less energy, especially with VR. This is discussed in the debate between Robin Hanson and Bryan Caplan, and Toby Ord in the comments.
See the comment here by Max Daniel:
“there are limits in how much value (whether in an economic or moral sense) we can produce per unit of available energy, and (ii) we will eventually only be able to expand the total amount of available energy subexponentially (there can only be so much stuff in a given volume of space, and the amount of available space is proportional to the speed of light cubed—polynomial rather than exponential growth).
...
And:
TL;DR: It seems that Metaculus forecasters believe there is at least a >16-23% chance that our solar system could sustain an economy of at least 10^11 trillion 2020 USD, i.e. one billion times larger than the world economy today.
(This is a lower bound based on what Metaculus thinks there is a 16-23% chance of actually happening by 2200, and assuming that our solar system only accounts for 1⁄10,000th of the economy that Metaculus thinks will exist with that probability.)
On what basis do I make this inference?
19 forecasters on Metaculus currently give a 16% chance of GWP in 2200 being > 10^15 trillion 2020 USD:
12 forecasters on Metaculus (overlapping with the above 19) currently give a 23% chance of GWP in 2200 being >10^15 trillion 2020 USD (on this “big range” version of the question):
This roughly translates to a >16-23% chance that our solar system could sustain an economy
Such an economy might span roughly 10,000 stars if we have a fast takeoff scenario by 2050 and start colonizing our galactic neighborhood at near the the speed of light.
Naively then I’ll say that 1⁄10,000th of such an economy would be contained within our solar system to calculate a lower bound on how large our solar system’s economy can get:
It therefore seems that Metaculus forecasters believe there is at least a >16-23% chance that our solar system could sustain an economy of at least 10^11 trillion 2020 USD, i.e. one billion times larger than the world economy today. (This is a lower bound based on what Metaculus thinks there is a 16-23% chance of actually happening by 2200, and assuming that our solar system only accounts for 1⁄10,000th of the economy that Metaculus thinks will exist with that probability.)
In Holden Karnofsky’s just-published Cold Takes blog post This Can’t Go On, he cites how at 2% annual economic growth the economy would grow by a factor of 3*10^70 in just 8,200 years. Since there are likely fewer than that many atoms in our galaxy, this would mean that “we’d need to be sustaining multiple economies as big as today’s entire world economy per atom.” Holden says:
(Edited 8⁄3 to include the written post quote now that it’s published, rather than my transcription of the audio)
Is… this post published yet? I can’t find it anywhere.
It is published now (here, but wasn’t at the time of my above comment. The audio was published before the written post (by about a day-ish). I sent Holden the feedback to let him know.
This seems relevant: https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/limits-to-growth.html
Also this: https://longtermrisk.org/the-future-of-growth-near-zero-growth-rates/