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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?
I'm thinking about this from the female side at the moment, as a mom of two young girls. They are, of course, interconnected, but actually physically implementing public works projects is a young man's task.
As I understand things, people got washing machines, vacuums, off the rack clothing, children started going to school younger and staying longer, cheese came pre-shredded, veggies come frozen and chopped in bags, and so on. On the one hand: great! Hand washing and ironing clothing is horribly tedious. On the other hand, by the 60s there wasn't all that much left, and despondent housewives sitting alone at home, vacuuming for the third time that day became a trope. It's as easy for a man as a woman to type, so there were suddenly lots of secretaries and stenographers and whatnot. Lower class women could work at Macy's instead of making custom dresses at a small shop. This is ambiguously good -- there are a lot of tragic stories about impoverished women slowly losing their eyesight in centuries past, unable to replace their handwork with anything less visually exacting as they aged. But it's difficult to enjoy leisure when one is mostly just stuck at home alone all day operating various cleaning devices.
At the same time, female offices are kind of miserable, and most of the tasks can be automated anyway. I worked in an office a few years ago where I spent hours every week physically filing paperwork. This paperwork was, as far as I could tell, not required by law. Something about their business cycle made it easier to hire a relatively low skilled part time position year-round, rather than hiring a mid-skilled technician once for a couple of months. Probably related to the administrative assistant's desire to have assistants herself, ultimately for status reasons. There was all sorts of bad behavior around this, like setting up her chair to stare directly at her assistant's monitor at all times, and going on and on about how she couldn't go eat lunch until she had dispensed enough tasks to her subordinate. Alas.
Anyway, these sorts of positions can and should be automated already, and probably will be in reality soon. Where does that leave us? With a lot of home health aids, teachers, food service workers, and retail workers, apparently. Of those, most can be pithed of the more meaningful portions of the jobs, with only the tedious parts remaining. Medications can be automated; bedside manner cannot. Academic instruction can be automated; classroom management cannot. POS and much of food preparation can be automated; people feeling special because a somewhat attractive woman delivered their food in a polite way cannot. The parts of retail that can't be automated are mostly things like sweatshop labor, stocking, warehouse work, and deliveries. Amazon can pretend as though they've been automated by remaining surprised that someone might go to the bathroom more than average.
Community organizing, meetups, and church ladies have genuine value, but are not exactly scalable. You want probably 5 of them in a group of 100.
I'm not certain where this leaves us in the upcoming era of automated typing work. Faux homesteading and homeschooling families are still pretty fringe. I'm not completely sure even where I want things to go, though my aesthetic sensibilities head in the direction of more handcrafting and church like communities.
Perhaps even if not every woman goes back into community building, we could focus more on child rearing or keeping up social connections?
I know in my personal life I wish I could spend more time with children teaching them, and I have plenty of friends I would’ve kept in touch with were it not for the demands of time. I see a noble and crucial position for women in repairing and maintaining the social fabric.
Frankly I’m more worried about how men will cope when most of the useful work is taken away.
What do you have against Altman?
This is 100% coherent. He believes that we need to make AI popular and start working on alignment research now, before there is a hard takeoff. His concerns are that if AI stayed closed and only worked on by a small amount of researchers, capabilities would outpace alignment.
I tend to agree with his assessment. Profit motive is one of the only consistent incentives we have, and we can hopefully align it well with... alignment.
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