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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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And let's say that there's a person who is dying of starvation, because he has no job, because AI does everything better and cheaper than he can. Therefore, no one wants to come to him to do these tasks, because they'd rather go to the owner of the AI. How does this person get the money he needs to get the food he needs?

So, for this kind of situation to arise it needs to be the case that the marginal cost for providing this person the necessities of life is below the marginal value their labor can generate for others.

Notice there is nothing AI specific about this scenario. It can (and does) obtain in our society even without large scale AI deployment. We have various solutions to this problem that depend on a variety of factors. Sometimes people can do useful work and just need a supplement to bring it up to the level of survival (various forms of welfare). Sometimes people can't do useful work but society would still like them to continue living for one reason or another (the elderly, disabled, etc). The same kinds of solutions we already deploy to solve these problems (you mention some in your comment) would seem to be viable here.

It's also unclear to me how exactly AI will change the balance for a persons marginal value vs marginal cost. On the one hand the efficiency gains from AI mean that the marginal cost of provisioning the means of survival should fall. Whether directly due to the influence of AI or do to a reallocation of human labor towards other things. On the other hand it will raise the bar (in certain domains) for the marginal value one has to produce to be employed.

Partially this is why I think it will be a long term benefit but more mixed in the short term. There are frictions in labor markets and effects of specialization that can mean it is difficult to reallocate labor and effort efficiently in the short and medium term. But the resulting equilibrium will almost certainly be one with happier and wealthier people.