The key crux here seems to be: will AGI systems become so cheap to run and scalable that they will make it unviable to instead pay a human to do any work?
I think Tabarrok makes key assumptions supporting his view that the answer is “no” without fully defending them. Tabarrok dismisses the idea that running an AGI will be “costless,” but it doesn’t need to be costless, it just needs to be highly scalable and cheaper than than the minimum viable cost of supporting a living human. Then human labor would be essentially worthless.
It’s possible AGI will never become cheap and scalable enough for this to happen, but Tabarrok doesn’t ever really make an argument that this is so.
It’s possible that AGI will drive down the cost of supporting human lives, but it would also drive down the cost of producing more AGI systems even faster, and there seem to be harder limits on how cheap it can be to support a human life.
will AGI systems become so cheap to run and scalable that they will make it unviable to instead pay a human to do any work?
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.
It’s possible AGI will never become cheap and scalable enough for this to happen, but Tabarrok doesn’t ever really make an argument that this is so.
I agree Maxwell does not make that argument. On the other hand, humans eventually running out of jobs is not necessarily bad either. Huge automation would increase wealth per capita a lot, and this has been associated with improvements in human welfare per capita throughout history.
The key crux here seems to be: will AGI systems become so cheap to run and scalable that they will make it unviable to instead pay a human to do any work?
I think Tabarrok makes key assumptions supporting his view that the answer is “no” without fully defending them. Tabarrok dismisses the idea that running an AGI will be “costless,” but it doesn’t need to be costless, it just needs to be highly scalable and cheaper than than the minimum viable cost of supporting a living human. Then human labor would be essentially worthless.
It’s possible AGI will never become cheap and scalable enough for this to happen, but Tabarrok doesn’t ever really make an argument that this is so.
It’s possible that AGI will drive down the cost of supporting human lives, but it would also drive down the cost of producing more AGI systems even faster, and there seem to be harder limits on how cheap it can be to support a human life.
Thanks, Cody.
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.
I agree Maxwell does not make that argument. On the other hand, humans eventually running out of jobs is not necessarily bad either. Huge automation would increase wealth per capita a lot, and this has been associated with improvements in human welfare per capita throughout history.