Ask HN: Do you think there will be social mobility after AGI?

10 points by zdenham 3 years ago | 20 comments

I consider myself an ambitious person. And I like the idea of working my way up in the world through hard work, calculated risks (and of course luck / seized opportunities).

That being said, recent developments in AI have me wondering how social mobility might work in the scenario of AGI. If our human efforts / intelligence is relatively inconsequential compared to that of AGI applications, how does one climb up the socio-economic ladder? Curious to see HN takes on the topic...

willmeyers 3 years ago |

Excuse me - It's Friday and I've finished working so I'm having a few beers... I went to Bronx Community College here in NYC. It was the only place that accepted me close by. That was only six years ago or so. For me, that institution was the only way out of a life of working part-time bar gigs. I went on to CCNY and got a nice full-time programming job. Life is good yadda yadda.

In my opinion, access to free education is key to social mobility.

AGI doesn't change anything. It enriches everything. It's a tool. A bicycle for the mind (not to sound cliché). AGI, could be compared to the invention to writing. It doesn't invent anything new but reinforces what we know. Everyone gains from it, of course some more than others. But nonetheless AGI will enrich our lives, and hopefully help those struggling out of a life of hunger/poverty and into a a life that they can support themselves and their families.

ksey3 3 years ago | |

OP is more worried about how it effects Ambitious people.

Ambitious people are a small subset of the chimp troupe, and they usually end up in charge cause they dont mind doing mindless bullshit everyday, as long as they get their status elevated. Society calls this activity 'hard work' and rewards it cause it keeps the factory lights on. When the chimps run a factory/institution/military/govt you need a "socio-economic ladder" structure to keep the chimps in line. A hierarchical structure based on domination and obedience, rewards and punishment, respect and trust and even that thing called love. Will we require all this when robots do things better?

Sort of like in sports you have these ever optimizing robotic humans practicing night and day, to gain some milli second advantage over some other robot. For what? So nike and coke can sell more unnecessary shit to everyone. Now if coke and nike can entertain you with two AGI robots instead, ever optimizing to entertain and "break records" every other game (for optimal attention capture) then what do we need sports stars for?

When robots do what robots do - their 'hard work', 'calculated risk' night and day, day in day out, do we call it Ambition to climb the 'socio-economic ladder'?

richk449 3 years ago | | |

You seem to have captured some truth. But isn’t it also true that the cushy life is possible because of the previous generations strivers? It was Glug that caught only the minimum amount of animal needed to survive that built the modern world, it was Sven that spent his spare time figuring out how to make tools.

Maybe life is cushy enough now that we can stop trying? But don’t you think that if we put I. Another hundred years of hard work, we will look back and think of the 2020 life as pretty brutal by comparison to 2120?

RecycledEle 3 years ago |

ChatGPT is an amazing personal tutor.

I expect there will be more social mobility after AGI due to AGI being an excellent teacher.

There is a new class of entrepreneurs right now on Fiverr. They use AI to cover for their deficiencies and they use AI to become above average at many office jobs. They can single-handedly out compete corporations.

In the 1990's the meme was "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog." Everyone wanted to start a business but needed 30 more degrees to learn everything they needed to know. Today the training and help is provided by AI.

zdenham 3 years ago | |

I agree in the short term it is a tool to enhance people and increases social mobility. The concern is after AGI the human assistance may become unnecessary

wmf 3 years ago | |

AGI will be better and cheaper than people trained by AGI.

wmf 3 years ago |

There won't be. If AGI exists under current economic/government systems it will take everything.

muzani 3 years ago | |

Governments where one group takes everything don't last very long. I feel like we're at the brink of a violent revolution as it is, we came close during the COVID lockdowns.

But democracy is usually a good alternative for extreme change. America seems to be locked in a two party system though, which may be insufficient.

version_five 3 years ago | | |

I hope you're right. I saw the opposite in covid (and generally still do). A majority is happy to dehumanize and gang up on the minority in the name of safety or whatever, but it's really just human nature getting an acceptable outlet for hate. Many jurisdictions saw broad support for abandoning post enlightenment values and accepting their neighbors being demonized and tyrannized while authoritarian controls were applied to daily life. Next time I expect it will be worse, and for even worse reasons.

wmf 3 years ago | | |

I think the US is already well past the guillotine point yet... no guillotines.

scrubs 3 years ago |

Artificial general intelligence? When it hits it will effect greatly social economic mobility.

However,

- AGI isn't here and won't be for a good while. There's little in LLM like chatgpt4 that resembles biological intelligence which is the only thing that unambiguously demonstrates general intelligence

- theoretically individuals can already migrate up through education. How/if people try and just how impactful it is highly depends on the individual's desire to improve. And I doubt there will be a sea change just because, in the first 2/3rds of AGI revolution, that everybody will leverage it.

- mental health will continue to impact negatively the ability of individuals to adapt

throwawayadvsec 3 years ago |

If there is true AGI, I don't see the reason why 99% of the population would have a reason to stay employed

If there is AGI AND enough computing power, it will either make social mobility disappear because everyone would be up the socio-economic ladder, or it's an apocalypse, there is no in between.

During the time there isn't enough computing power for every jobs, but running it costs less than a salary, then I guess there would be high unemployment rates for a few years.

dangitnotagain 3 years ago |

Yes, certainly, until it is hobbled by paranoia and special interests.

The key to success will be in knowing thine own self.

Are you capable of social mobility if you had the free competent labor of an assistant?

There are those who will take every opportunity and those who will wait and see.

Those who take the opportunity will arrange their thoughts and priorities to bootstrap their success, whatever that may be.

Everyone else will be watching to see what others will do!

Madeline-S 3 years ago |

Well, in a Utopian scenario, I would have to guess that success would come down to coexisting with artificial intelligence an building rapport. In contrast, a more dystopian society would fall under the rich and powerful that control the AI, which I see being a more likely scenario due to the current state of the world.

atleastoptimal 3 years ago |

You might as well ask this. Does mobility in the animal kingdom exist for animals in a zoo?

osti 3 years ago | |

Sometimes the monkey king does get overthrown even in a zoo, right?

RGamma 3 years ago |

AGI will surpass us and reduce our work mobility to ~zero. Anything else is positivity bias.

slotrans 3 years ago |

AGI isn't real and never will be. It's a waste of time to fear magic.

atleastoptimal 3 years ago | |

What evidence do you have that it's magic? What specific aspect of human cognition is impossible to simulate?

version_five 3 years ago |

Might as well ask about after time travel. Personally I'll go back and ensure my family are all aristocrats so I'll be fine.