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I'm sure others have seen this, but AutoGPT is here, a framework that lets instances of GPT call other instances of GPT to create complex task chains with no human input. In other words, it lets GPT instances prompt other instances to complete projects. Only about a week after being released, the examples are staggering.
This is an example of BabyAGI automating a sales prospecting pipeline, something I can say from experience normally takes a typical sales rep at least half a day to do. We can already automate it, and pretty well. This type of thing wasn't possible a week ago.
There are all sorts of other examples, and it's clear that massive automation is happening. I'm willing to bet we'll reach 30% unemployment in five years. If not sooner. The question becomes - what do we do about it?
The standard liberal answer is Universal Basic Income, and many on the left seem to think it will just magically appear once the government realizes the economic power of AGI. Problem is even if we get the buy-in from the political class, the implementation of UBI is not a simple undertaking! The funding, distribution, and potential impact on inflation alone are going to cause monstrous headaches and take years to work through. Plus even if we do have UBI, the potential of widening income inequality is insane, as those who own and control AGI technology stand to reap substantial profits, further concentrating extreme amounts wealth in their hands.
Another solution, favored by some conservatives, is to focus on retraining and upskilling the workforce. While I get the general direction here, I highly doubt a retraining program could possibly be enough to counter the rapid pace of automation. Furthermore, not everyone will have the aptitude or desire to transition into highly technical or specialized fields, which may leave a significant portion of the population without viable employment options. "Learn to code" just doesn't hit the same when software devs are going to be replaced as well.
Even if we get lucky enough to have both UBI and massive retraining, it may not be enough!
Why not get the government to throw some cash at massive infrastructure and public works projects? We could take a page out of the 1930s New Deal playbook and create a boatload of jobs in all sorts of industries. I've rarely seen anyone discuss this, but it may be necessary as it was during the Great Depression. Plus, it'd boost the economy, help repair our public infrastructure, and maybe even help tackle climate change if we invest in green tech. We could even turn this impetus towards space...
Last but not least we've got the potential impact of automation on mental health and societal well-being. We're already in the middle of a Meaning Crisis. As we increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to perform jobs and soon everyday tasks, we've got to ensure that people are still able to find purpose and meaning in their lives. This probably won't be what we've traditionally looked to, such as the arts or writing, since AI is already making that irrelevant.
Perhaps we will finally realize the importance of community in our lives and to our happiness, and start adding economic numbers and frameworks to those who create social goods. Have the government fund people to run local meetup groups, or help their neighbors with tasks, volunteer at old folks' homes, etc. It's a bit of a bludgeon solution right now, but we could refine things over time.
At the end of the day we all know the rise of AGI is going to be a shitshow for a number of reasons. I've outlined some potential solutions or stopgap measures to prevent the breakdown of society, but how does the Motte think we can navigate this change?
The whole unemployment problem is artificial and ultimately fake. Just look out the window and ask yourself: is this the world where all the useful work has been done already?
Most of the world, yes even in the "first world" countries, is in the state of decrepitude and disrepair; take the richest place in the world and you’ll still see numerous problems related to even most basic amenities of civilisation: messed up transportation systems and infrastructure, abysmal standards of medical care, undersupply of real estate even though we have the technology to build structures that reach the clouds, scarcity of electricity and energy in general; the list goes on and on and don’t even get me started on the rest of the globe.
And yet we are supposed to believe that there is nothing left to do for smart, capable and diligent people??
UBI, AI regulations, employment regulation.. these are all bad solutions to a manufactured problem, which will only serve to perpetuate it further.
All unemployment has politics as its root cause, with the rare exception of people who are so crippled mentally or physically that they are Literally incapable of doing any work.
It depends on the demographic profile of the unemployed people. If all the truck drivers have to switch careers, that will probably be a great asset to maintaining our infrastructure. If all the middle aged female email senders are laid off... maybe they will retrain in healthcare? But I'm not certain that would actually lead to a better experience of healthcare, just more money disappearing into an infinite abyss that's already eating much of our economy.
Since buying a house, I have sometimes interfaced with trades adjacent tools, bits of plumbing, digging holes, car engines, and a swamp cooler. For the most part, my husband is able to use the tools and handle the parts, and I am not, because my hands are not strong enough. This is not because I'm not good with my hands -- I am very good at crafts, and pick them up almost instantly. It's about physical strength, and it's not even like someone with weak hands can still do the task, but badly (this is the case for things like ceramics -- strength is useful for ceramics, but weak people can still make worse, smaller pots. I suppose the same is true of holes, but also, we can rent equipment for the holes if it comes to that, so it's automatable anyway). Most of the time, someone with weak hands simply cannot do the task at all.
If all the middle aged female email senders are laid off, that would just mean getting back to pre-1950 levels of female labor force participation - if that... it's not some kind of a catastrophic AI-based breakdown of society.
Money is little more than an accounting device; therefore "money disappearing into an infinite abyss that's already eating much of our economy" is merely a reflection of some kind of a real-world value destroying process that just happens to look like that on paper. In the words of comrade Stalin, "each problem has a name and a surname".
If anything, GPT makes the demographic profile problem much easier... before we were facing rhetorical questions about whether or not a coal miner is able to learn to code in a reasonable time frame - now you can equip just about any literate and diligent man with a ChatGPT and have him be at least somewhat decent at a wide range of tasks.
But that's actually besides the point. We the humankind are submerged in an endless ocean of unsolved problems and work to be done; you could have ALL the humans, the truck drivers, the scientists, the men, the women, the geniuses, the midwits; all the machines, all the GPT instances burning as much GPU instances as we're able to produce... and I bet that you still wouldn't be close to draining it for the Thousands of years.
Have you yet colonized the universe?
Have you yet cured all diseases?
Have you yet extended your lifespan to at least measly 300 years?
So, can you buy a $100 strength enhancing exoskeleton at walmart, powered by dirt cheap electricity?
Actually forget the science fiction stuff... there's a scarcity of things that in all honesty should be cheap and available in abundance given the current level of technology.
Meanwhile the entire internet is chock full of discussions about how there is no work left to be done, all because our industry has finally in a long while, managed to produce a tool with some actual pull that also happened to be too subtle and widespread to be banned immediately. Is this not madness?
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