If AIs are a perfect substitute for humans with lower absolute costs of production – where “costs” mean the physical resources needed to keep a flesh-and-blood human alive and productive – humans will have a comparative advantage only in theory. In practice, it would make more sense to get rid of the humans and use the inputs that would have sustained them to produce more AI labor.
Thanks, Matt. I agree. However, “If AIs are a perfect substitute for humans” is a very big if. In particular, it is not enough for AIs to be better than humans at jobs defined in an overly narrow sense. Chess engines are much cheaper to run, and play much better than top chess human players, but these still have jobs.
Yes, but this shows your claim here is actually just empirical skepticism about how general and how capable AI systems will be.
It is true that loose talk of AIs being “[merely] better than” all humans at all tasks does not imply doom, but the “merely” part is not what doomers believe.
If AIs are a perfect substitute for humans with lower absolute costs of production – where “costs” mean the physical resources needed to keep a flesh-and-blood human alive and productive – humans will have a comparative advantage only in theory. In practice, it would make more sense to get rid of the humans and use the inputs that would have sustained them to produce more AI labor.
Thanks, Matt. I agree. However, “If AIs are a perfect substitute for humans” is a very big if. In particular, it is not enough for AIs to be better than humans at jobs defined in an overly narrow sense. Chess engines are much cheaper to run, and play much better than top chess human players, but these still have jobs.
Yes, but this shows your claim here is actually just empirical skepticism about how general and how capable AI systems will be.
It is true that loose talk of AIs being “[merely] better than” all humans at all tasks does not imply doom, but the “merely” part is not what doomers believe.