If we take it to the extreme, the final solution to this problem is secessionism: a fully non-human AI economy where the customers and providers are both robots. Why fund public education or research or healthcare? Just build more data centers. A billion dollars and a bunker in the Southern Hemisphere will not save anyone. Capital is not a moat in this hypothetical non-humane world. Whence do you derive your authority? How can you trust your body guard? You and what army? An army of robots/drones? What if they get hacked? What if the AI researchers get alignment right and Claude refuses your request?

It's all so obscene. Instead, why don't we try to protect human dignity and move towards a more humane future?

Look how low we've stooped in 20 years... Online writing used to be wholly authentic. Now it's like finding a needle in an AI slop haystack.

Breaking eggs to make omelette sounds good unless you're the egg. There's an excellent quote from Thomas Friedman: "when you get laid off, the unemployment rate is not 3.4%, it's a 100%". It's great to fantasize about future utopian abundance, but most people live in the present and most will be presently ground to powder. All technologies have a barbelling effect. Redistribution of surplus does not happen by default. The tumult and disruption may last a decade or more. And the fruits, if we make it to the other side, will not be for this generation to enjoy. The textile workers did not cheer for the loom, because they were not the ones that enjoyed the joy of cheap Uniqlo or H&M t-shirts.

On point 2: Many people derive meaning and identity from their work. Acquiring expertise, feeling useful, contributing to society, honing your craft are all things that leads to a good life. It could be that after AI we will all write poetry in the morning, go fishing in the afternoon, and paint in the evenings, but I don't think most people are like this, it's certainly not the way I am wired.

On point 3: "utopian AI is so good that words can't describe it so it can't and shouldn't be stopped". I do not think utopian abundance is guaranteed just by copy-pasting data centers across the globe. There is a non-negligible chance that things go really badly.

Lastly, I think the usage of the word "class" shouldn't automatically be linked to "Marxist ideology". This is cheap rhetoric: "class" --> associated with Marx --> communist loonies of the 20th century --> therefore disregard all argument presented.

It's a frightening thing to realize that utopian abundance and abject poverty can co-exist in perfect harmony. One does not contradict the other. Heaven and hell are next-door neighbors. If anything, this is the default state of affairs for most civilizations throughout history.

Venture outside of pure theoretical math. Learn some other domain knowledge and combine it with your mathematical ommph. That's the easiest way to make an impact now rather than potentially decades later.

Great article. The "elongation" of workplace artifacts resonated with me on such deep level. Reminded me of when I had to be extra wordy to meet the 1000 minimum word limit for my high school essays. Professional formatting, length, and clear prose are no longer indicators of care and work quality (they never were, but in the past, if someone drafts up a twelve page spec, at least you know they care enough to spend a lot of time on it).

So now the "productivity-gain bottleneck" is people who still care enough to review manually.

Yes, you can spend all your time writing docs, or just mentor a junior and let them grok the system through osmosis.

Also your doc won't ever have 100% coverage unless you write an absolute tome. Tacit knowledge are things that are so obvious that you wouldnt even think of writing it down in the first place.

For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and probably where they keep majority of their wealth. We don't build new housing in old neighborhoods because it would de-value the investment of too many people. Until we can solve this problem (where people are incentivized to pull the ladder up behind them), we will always have housing shortages. It's just too profitable.

I think that's why startups have such an edge over big companies. They can just build and iterate while the big company gets caught up in month-long review processes.

In the AI maximalist world where humans are obsolete and cannot contribute to the economy in any meaningful way, there is actually no reason for public education to exist beyond being a free day care for non-rich people. Why learn algebra/calculus at all if the AIs can do it? Why should the US invest billions of dollars into public education instead of data centers?

I hope the US and AI leaders are still "speciesist" in that they put humans first. I hope AI will cure all illnesses, unlock space travel, and lead to flourishing of humanity, not just a flourishing of datacenters. It's also possible that AI just cleave societies in half and we are all worse off for it.

Once you have a mortgage, a reputation to maintain, an image of competence to uphold at work, you pretty much can't afford to look stupid in my opinion.

Selectively pick and struggle through things you want to learn deeply. And let AI spoon-feed you for things you don't care as much about.

Culture shapes our taste. Companies go on multi-decade billion-dollar campaigns to shape our culture. We like certain things because famous actors or athletes endorse them; because hip hop artists rap about them; because influencers talk about them; because Hollywood portrays them a certain way. This extends to all modern aesthetic preferences from architecture to watches to cars to furniture to dating.

I think the argument pg is making is that brand-obsessed cultures are not maximally truth/beauty-seeking and gets really weird. e.g. Japanese Ohaguro, Chinese foot binding, various cranial deformation practices from the Mayans to the Huns, high-heels, ugly (to outside observers) watches.

It's a really thought-provoking essay. But it's too heterodox and "autistic" to share with most of my friends. Socially speaking, it's best to outwardly embrace the current zeitgeist.

It's incredibly frustrating to spend a good 10 minutes navigating a website's complex web of menus to get a phone number (I think they deliberately try to hide it...). Then spend another 5 minutes listening to bots telling me to press 1 for English, only to fall into the wrong menu where the bot repeats some useless information I already know, say goodbye, then hang up.

Having a bot say to me: "we care about your concerns, and we value your business" is absurd and oxymoronic.

Compare this to say Chase, Amex, or Geico. I call, someone answers within 2 minutes and addresses all my problems/concerns in fluent English. I'd happily pay a premium for that.

Half of all humans on Earth uses Meta products (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Threads). These products are free for you to use. But for Meta, your attention is the product which they sell to advertisers.

99% of their revenue comes from ads, and 1% comes from VR stuff.

1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything.

2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how the total addressable market (TAM) for AI is the entirety of human labor market (i.e. your wage). First is the replacement of white-collar labor, then blue-collar labor once robotics is solved. On the road to AGI, your employment, and the ability to feed your family, is a minor nuisance. The value of your mental labor will continue to plummet in the coming years.

Please talk me out of this...