Post-AI Abundance

[BlackHatCoiner]

Elon Musk stated that in the next decade, AI will have matured to a level that work becomes unnecessary.

And there was a time every new machine invented had an agenda to liberate you.

The loom, the motor, the computer.

Economic output always went up.

However, you ended up having a smaller apartment with just a faster phone.

Now comes AI. And with it come some intriguing concepts.

Universal basic income.

Abundance.

"A world in which money is obselete."

Elon is describing your future.

He is not describing his.

Observe he never says he will stop working. He says YOU will.

Because there is a difference between a man who owns the machine and a man who is replaced by it.

Abundance is not a technology problem.

It was never a technology problem.

We already produce more food than every human being on this planet can eat. Millions still go hungry.

There are more empty homes than homeless people in almost every rich country on earth. People still sleep outside.

Production was solved a century ago.

Distribution was not, because distribution was never broken. It is working exactly as intended.

Scarcity is not a leftover from a poorer past.

Scarcity is a management tool.

A man with three months of savings can quit. But, a man with three days of savings can be told to do anything.

A tired man does not organize. A tired man does not read. A tired man does not think.

He asks what's for dinner and goes to sleep so he can do it again.

He is just living passively.

Poverty keeps you busy. Busy keeps you quiet. Quiet keeps them comfortable.

And when the machine finally arrives and makes your labor worthless, you will not be handed abundance.

You will be handed an allowance.

They will call it a dividend, universal, generous.

Ask yourself the only question that matters.

Who owns the machine?

Because abundance does not distribute itself. It flows to whoever holds the property rights, and it has done so every single time.

Waiting for it to trickle down is a religion with worse odds than the ones you already left.

They are not going to free you.

No conqueror in history has ever freed people out of generosity.

Because they are the CONQUEROR.

You will never be granted "abundance."

That would allow you THINK.

I am not going to tell you what to do with this information.

You already know.

BTC

[Alpha Marine]

I wonder what Elon Musk's thought process was when he made that statement, because even if you remove logic in every other aspect, economically, it is impossible. Funny how he has never been able to convincingly explain his thought process and why he believes that in any of the times he has said it. It's almost like he is riding on hope.
Even if somehow AIs and robots can do every single job for people, who would own, control and educate the AI? How would people be able to afford the AI? Where would the money for research come from?
It's just like a child's dream, just like his dream of colonising Mars. You can send a man to Mars; they can build a station on Mars, but humans will never live on Mars for the foreseeable future. I guess those are the kind of ridiculous dreams you get when you are worth close to a trillion dollars.

[Free Market Capitalist]

I guess this thread was sparked by one of your usual bursts of inspiration, but I'm surprised by some of the things you're saying here.

Elon Musk stated that in the next decade, AI will have matured to a level that work becomes unnecessary.

Musk has been wrong in his predictions many times.

Elon Musk's 10 worst predictions and broken promises

Now comes AI. And with it come some intriguing concepts.

Universal basic income.

Abundance.

"A world in which money is obselete."

Elon is describing your future.

He is not describing his.

Leaving Elon aside—and whether he’s right or wrong, or whether he has a plan behind it—I am, in principle and especially at this moment, against a UBI, but if in the future machines were to replace human jobs and an era of overabundance were to arise, why not?

Observe he never says he will stop working. He says YOU will.

In that hypothetical future, you'll be able to work at whatever you want—but whether you can get someone to pay you for it is another matter.

Because there is a difference between a man who owns the machine and a man who is replaced by it.

Abundance is not a technology problem.

It was never a technology problem.

 

Actually, it was a technology (and economic) problem in the past.

We already produce more food than every human being on this planet can eat. Millions still go hungry.

With each passing year, there are fewer hungry people in the world. This is precisely because of the abundance of food resulting from mass production. The problem today is obesity.

There are more empty homes than homeless people in almost every rich country on earth. People still sleep outside.

I'm surprised you're spouting that leftist propaganda. Generally, vacant homes are in places where people don't want to live. There are more vacant homes in abandoned towns or places where the population has declined than in cities. Besides, not everyone on the street is a poor victim of the system; they have mental health issues, drug addiction, and other problems. 

A man with three months of savings can quit. But, a man with three days of savings can be told to do anything.

Three months seems too low for me.

As for the rest, instead of commenting it, I am going to recommend you this book:

Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Musk has been wrong in his predictions many times.

Elon Musk's 10 worst predictions and broken promises

I am not a fan of Elon Musk but if anyone makes more predictions, there will be more inaccurate ones. It's because basically predictions have very high probability of inaccuracy.

Especially a person like Elon Mush with his occupation in technology and innovation which change very quickly. Elon Musk can be right or wrong with his predictions, I don't take it too seriously as his opinion is only as a reference for me and others to verify it, if we want to do that. It's never good to rely on opinion of any single person and automated think that it is true.

In technology, Elon Musk is a legend with many successful innovations and applications which change the world considerably. I only dislike him with his tweets about Bitcoin, Dogecoin and meme tokens, it's too much manipulations on the market he wanted to do.

Similarly in any market, "All models are wrong".

[BlackHatCoiner]

Leaving Elon aside—and whether he’s right or wrong, or whether he has a plan behind it—I am, in principle and especially at this moment, against a UBI, but if in the future machines were to replace human jobs and an era of overabundance were to arise, why not?

To counter-argue with a question: UBI is money. Why do you need money in a world of overabundance? I thought each person had abundance of everything. If they need money, it's because they need trade. If they need to trade, they don't have overabundance in the first place.

I'm surprised you're spouting that leftist propaganda.

This is beyond left and right. It's just an observation. What once took a village to produce is now produced by machines at scale, yet people still can't afford a home.

Poverty is systemic. It is kept in place so people stay too busy surviving to think. Of course personal responsibility is to be blamed, but poverty is artificially caused, too.

[legiteum]

"A world in which money is obsolete."

This is retarded and Musk knows it. He just says these things to watch the idiotic media repeat everything he says no matter how ridiculous it is.

Human beings will have money forever. Until the end of time, humans will always want more comfort, more longevity, more interesting things that are rare, etc.

Today, in a reasonably developed country, you can "live" without money. You won't live very comfortably, you will eat very boring food, you will not be very attractive to other humans, you won't get to do fun things, etc. But you will be able to "live", as in, not be dead.

Hence, if Musk was correct, then we would no longer have money right now because everybody can get everything they need for free.

And yet here we are, there's still... money. Why? Because people don't want to live that way. They want more.

It is certainly the case that the "baseline poor lifestyle" that exists today will be elevated to be more comfortable and somewhat more entertaining (health care for poor people should improve, for instance), but it will still be called, "poor", it will be looked down upon by humans, and most humans will still strive to be non-poor just like they do now.

It's also the case that work will continue to get physically easier, and personally I've predicted the end of in-person offices a long time ago (don't know what's taking that so long frankly). With very few "physical" jobs, and everybody doing their pure knowledge work from home, and delivery bots allowing most shopping to be at home, and a proliferation of self-driving cars, most people will not have cars at all because they will rarely need to be in a car. That will drastically transform cities and highways--and probably make P2P transportation "free" for most people.

Here's an interesting factoid: the most popular vehicle in the USA is... a truck. Why? Do people really need to drive a truck? Not at all. But Americans love them, so they buy them for their entertainment value. In the abundant future, non-working people won't get a fun truck to drive, or any sort of personal car, they will just have to order the Waymo (and wait for a while for it to come since they won't be able to afford the paid, "high priority" Waymo service that working people get that comes quickly).

The future is not "no working" or "no money". That's just stupid. In fact, in the future I suspect most people won't even ever "retire" since they aren't doing hard labor that their older bodies cannot do.

The future of abundance is going to make being "poor" (zero job, zero income) more healthy and more comfortable. But it's not going to make everybody "rich" in the way we think about what rich people are like today. Those rich will always be rare by definition.

[NeuroticFish]

Universal basic income.

Abundance.

"A world in which money is obselete."

Elon is describing your future.

He is not describing his.

Observe he never says he will stop working. He says YOU will.

I think that he's wrong, or at least short sighted.
In a world of abundance, the humans would become too many. Soon enough too many to manage, too many to feed.
So a dream world may last one generation. Then it's gone.
What fixes overpopulation? War and hunger. Not abundance.
Whoever will have resources, in a way or another, will survive.
You may say "we'll go to Mars". No. It's far. And in a world of abundance people stop inventing. Maybe machines will, if we're lucky. But I would not count that much on luck. Plus, after the machines start inventing, figuring out they can thrive without humans (more space, resources more focused for their needs), and.. Matrix it is.

So no, I don't like the image he's painting. None of those directions seems to end well.

Let's just stick to a world with currency. But let that currency be Bitcoin.

[Free Market Capitalist]

To counter-argue with a question: UBI is money. Why do you need money in a world of overabundance? I thought each person had abundance of everything. If they need money, it's because they need trade. If they need to trade, they don't have overabundance in the first place.

I think there’s some confusion regarding the term “overabundance.” Today, there is far more abundance of goods and services in the world than there was 100 years ago, and in 100 years there will be even more. Until we reach a hypothetical future (which we don’t actually know if it will ever arrive) that I would call one of total abundance, there will be things that are valued more than others, and there will be things that require more labor and/or energy to produce than others. So, money will still be necessary—and therefore a UBI—if the work done by robots and AI replaces human labor.

This is beyond left and right. It's just an observation. What once took a village to produce is now produced by machines at scale, yet people still can't afford a home.

I don't agree with that. You can see an example of this in the U.S., but not just there. In Democratic states, housing tends to be more expensive—and therefore less affordable—than in Republican states. Democrats keep imposing regulations and taxes, supposedly to protect the most disadvantaged, but in the end, what they do is reduce construction, leading to fewer rental units and less affordable housing for the general population. In Republican-led states, the opposite is true, and therefore access to housing is easier. And if we’re talking about Europe, you only have to look at cities where they’ve tried to implement socialist measures, such as rent caps—the situation has only gotten worse. It seems that politicians refuse to learn from human history, starting with Diocletian’s edict on maximum prices.

[JeffBrad12]

I never believe in the world of abundance nor UBI, Elon is saying this to increase AI approval among public opinion. Resource is limited and human is best when pushed to the limit through system like capitalism. You're saying the owner of the machine like Elon will suddenly stop stacking money and suddenly pay high tax? I don't believe that. You're on your own buddy, don't get your hopes too high.

[Darker45]

This made me remember the lessons I learned from the university on Amartya Sen. The Nobel laureate argued that scarcity or famine isn't about food shortage but rather about entitlement failure, which simply means losing economic or legal access to food.

I agree, indeed there's growing abundance. Production has improved a lot over the years, decades, and centuries. It's easy to notice each time I visit the market that there are rotten fruits and vegetables lying everywhere. Fish displayed on both sides of the alleys are going stale. Alas, many are still going to sleep with empty stomachs.

Perhaps Elon is a visionary but in a limited sense. Perhaps he's underestimating human greed, systemic failure, institutional injustice, and the like.

[bitbollo]

What we haven't realized as "middle class" (or probably just working class) has been a clear change from the past:
it's not possible to have a decent life/quality of life despite with many of "decent job" of the past.
this would lead to less and less interest in some kind of jobs - that can be easily replaced by AI.

what is becoming worst has become the continued devaluation of fiat currency.
plus there are new "values" on our society, just imagine "followers".
They have no monetization at all, but for sure an account with 10millions in a major platforms could use this in a certain way...

Probably the cost of many activities have already been cut by AI and LLM models... it would become more profitable growing food/other manual activities then study at university.

[legiteum]

I think there’s some confusion regarding the term “overabundance.” Today, there is far more abundance of goods and services in the world than there was 100 years ago, and in 100 years there will be even more. Until we reach a hypothetical future (which we don’t actually know if it will ever arrive) that I would call one of total abundance, there will be things that are valued more than others, and there will be things that require more labor and/or energy to produce than others. So, money will still be necessary—and therefore a UBI—if the work done by robots and AI replaces human labor.

Personally I don't think we will ever get to an actual UBI. I think instead we'll have a world that includes a "free tier" (like Amazon AWS has  ) for absolutely everything.

In this world, you only pay for things that are unusual, or rare, or in demand, etc. McDonalds is free, but the French Laundry still costs a fortune. You can live in a plain and simple apartment, take public robot cars that are decent but sometimes make you wait and aren't cool-looking, and there are free online and physical stores like Walmart and Amazon that has a large selection of free stuff along side stuff that they charge for.

Hence you could live without working, but it would be boring, uncool, and less comfortable--and forget about anything fancy like exotic travel or attending live sports events or seeing live shows.

One thing that's important to understand is that in the future a greater and greater percentage of our economic output will be devoted to... health care. While problems like food and shelter and transportation are relatively fixed issues, health care is open-ended: we will all want to live forever, live comfortably forever, have the strength of a 22 year old forever, etc. That's not a problem that will ever just get "solved".

And here's the thing: I really don't think this future world is going to feel that different than the one we live in today. We're still going to have "poor people" and "rich people", it's just that the "poor people" will be more comfortable.

Trump got elected because the horrible, terrible awful economy that was happening under Biden. Of course those of us who remember a few decades ago didn't get it since by historical standards our economy was actually really awesome. Now Trump and his party are getting hit with the same thing: OMFG GAS IS AN EXTRA $2 PER GALLON! THROW THEM ALL OUT!

That phenomenon is only going to get worse in the future. Whereas we had riots in history over the lack of bread, we'll have riots in the future of the lack of artisan sourdough bread with an adequate supply of fine Spanish prosciutto and fresh avocado. People will demand that these items get moved to the free tier lest they throw out the party in power.

Technology changes all of the time. Human nature stays the same.

[crwth]

It's a very different kind of future in mind if that's the case. Should humans just not exist anymore?

There are a lot of problems yet to be solved, like AI requiring massive energy from the electricity of the data centers and computing power. As long as there is a big impact on energy, it might not solve everything yet.

I'm looking at it like after solving this problem, another one would occur: that would be the compute now on who actually owns it or something.

[davis196]

Great forum thread, but does it have anything to do with Bitcoin? I can't see where do you put Bitcoin in the big picture?
Elon Musk and an overly optimistic dreamer. He dreams about the human kind establishing colonies on Mars. His gibberish about the future of AI sounds just too optimistic and naive as well. The future of the human civilization might be an utopia, a dystopia or somewhere in between. I'm really skeptical about the universal basic income utopia, where humans will just do nothing, consume and spend their lives in constant pursuit of pleasure. I'm more into the "Skynet" dystopia. AI will become too smart and powerful, while the humans will become 1.useless degenerates or 2.A threat to the existence of super AI. The war between humans and machines would cause the end of the human civilization, but I hope that I won't be alive to witness this sh*tshow.

[aoluain]

Now comes AI. And with it come some intriguing concepts.

Universal basic income.

AKA - full and total control of the 99%. The universal basic income can we reduced and
tweaked at will to suit the 1%.

If you think your UBI is going to be the same as a wage, you need a shot of reality, it will
be less because thats a gain for the 1%.

Ask yourself the only question that matters.

Who owns the machine?

That will be / is "the 1%"

There is nothing beneficial for us 99% about what is happening. This is yet again about
increasing turnover, increasing profits, reducing/eliminating the need for human labour
because that is a cost.

[internetional]

Great forum thread, but does it have anything to do with Bitcoin? I can't see where do you put Bitcoin in the big picture?

I have the same question. In fact, some of the claims made in the opening post lead me to the opposite conclusion: that money is becoming unnecessary. And Bitcoin was designed to be money too. So if money is becoming unnecessary, then Bitcoin is as well.

Money helps distribute material goods fairly when there is not enough for everyone. If we earn money by providing something useful to others, then the amount of money we have serves as an objective indicator of who should receive a particular scarce good.

But now that we have too much food, too much clothing, too many homes, and even too many services - to the point where selling them requires skilled salespeople - perhaps it is time to start winding down the whole "money" project.

Isn't that the logical conclusion?

[Hamza2424]

I wonder what Elon Musk's thought process was when he made that statement, because even if you remove logic in every other aspect, economically, it is impossible. Funny how he has never been able to convincingly explain his thought process and why he believes that in any of the times he has said it. It's almost like he is riding on hope.
Even if somehow AIs and robots can do every single job for people, who would own, control and educate the AI? How would people be able to afford the AI? Where would the money for research come from?
It's just like a child's dream, just like his dream of colonising Mars. You can send a man to Mars; they can build a station on Mars, but humans will never live on Mars for the foreseeable future. I guess those are the kind of ridiculous dreams you get when you are worth close to a trillion dollars.

Yep, when you are worth a lot and sit among powerful and sometimes evil people, even you tend to get some thoughts, and so far nothing evil has been leaked from his side, which is good and bad. I will explain sometime how.

Anyway, he is building assets and turning the future into the present, and he is not alone in this race. Every CEO who went to Russia in the recent meeting with Trump is shaping the future. They have all the data, control most of the things in an economy, and they are now the backbone of the US industry or the US dollar.

Anyway, Elon has also said that in the future we won't be using money because the concept of fiat and cash will be gone. We will only use energy, and then he said Bitcoin is energy. So we can get a hint, but it is not like he was really saying BTC is going to replace cash, or maybe he was, IDK haha. I don't trust his words. I don't even listen to him much. I just follow his plans for the future in technology and what he thinks haha.

[Smartprofit]

If we assume that robots and AI take over all human labor, then capitalists, in my opinion, will also find themselves in a very difficult situation. 🙋

Firstly, there will be no one to buy their goods and services (since people won't work and receive wages). Secondly, they will have no profit, since added value is created by human labor (the exploitation of man by man).

In my opinion, a universal basic income won't solve this problem. People might ask the elite: "If robots and AI are the source of wealth, then why not make everyone on the planet happy? Why do some people have very little, while others have everything?"

Therefore, it's highly likely that we will ultimately end up in a situation of technocratic fascism. People will be granted a universal basic income in exchange for absolute subordination and the renunciation of free will. In this technocratic world, I believe Bitcoin could become one of the ways to preserve freedom and independence.

[nutildah]

Elon is a twat.

He can't just do good... (he could but he won't). He has to do an exact amount of evil to compensate for any good he brings to the world, for no other reason than to satisfy his own ego.

There will never be a UBI or overabundance of anything, aside from plastic and bullshit. My outlook for the world is getting worse as the flow of wealth from everybody else to the uber rich continues to accelerate. Why would it stop when its being cheered on by half of America, and hundreds of millions around the globe who were brainwashed into being mouthpieces for our political parties.

[Cryptomultiplier]

Perhaps I can start by saying it would be wise to start investing in AI and AI tokens from now just as its growth has begun and evolving because that's what the rich would do and has began doing despite the energy demands of AI.

The rich get richer not because they simply have more money, but because they have such kind of information and think of ways to take advantage of it before others realize it.
Just like Bitcoin at the onset, many thought it was a failed project in the making until it evolved to attract massive adoption and investment.

Elon can say what he wants but we know that he ain't the only pioneer of AI technology and it's just left for those who don't want to get the crumbs or get replaced by AI, to find a way to upgrade their knowledge in that area and take advantage of it right now when it's still in its early evolving stages.