I don't see that as a guaranteed outcome if there's something like UBI to sustain demand, and automation to sustain supply.

UBI is only valuable if money is valuable though...what are you going to trade it for if no one has a job and everyone has access to super powerful production tools like advanced LLMs (which are at the low end of automated tooling overall)?

MIT's motto is mens et manus: mind and hand. These are, basically, the two primary attributes of human labor. They're the reason almost anyone gets hired to do anything. Our brains and our opposable thumbs are what set us ahead of the animal kingdom.

The industrial revolution first attempted to replace our hands. But the labor that was displaced had places to go: into smaller-scale manual work, where mass-production machinery was too expensive, and into knowledge work.

Now the AI is coming for knowledge work, and robots are getting better at small-scale work. We're not at that point yet, but looking down the road I'm not sure there will really be anything competitive left flesh-and-blood humans can offer to an employer.

The only exceptions I can think of are, maybe, athletics, live music performances, and escort services. But with only a few wealthy people as customers, I don't think there will be many job opportunities even in those fields. And I'm not sure that robots won't come for those too.

Why do you need a job in the scenario where machines have replaced all human labor?

You're forgetting that work is a means, not an end, for humanity.

Again, this betrays a strong hindsight bias.

Nobody had any idea what was coming with the industrial revolution. There wasn't obviously other work for people. And for long periods of time nobody had an answer to that question for large percentage of the population.

In hindsight, we know the answers NOW, but then they did not know what was going to happen. We also don't know what's going to happen, it could go as you hypothesize. Or the Jevon's paradox people might be right and there's way more work to do.

The uncertainty is the historical lesson, not that "it'll all work out"

Your comment betrays a lazy survivorship bias.

ITAR is only a US law.

you’re free to share tricks you think the Gp should be aware of.

I feel like if it took thirty or forty more years of research before a more advanced, more goal-oriented AI became capable of destroying humanity for paperclips, that would still be a bad outcome. The road ahead is long and we're moving too fast to only consider what's in the rear view mirror.

What kind of AI do you envision that would ever not fit that description?

I don't really care if the machine is conscious; all I worry about is whether it can execute a plan that ends with all of us dying.

And it's getting close to the point where I think that would be possible. If I were commenting today after 30 years of an AI plateau; if my parents had grown up with ChatGPT and Claude Code in the same state as they are today, with no progress after decades of effort, then probably I wouldn't worry. But that's not the world we live in. I have no idea what to expect from AI capabilities in the next five or ten years.

I think in the span of my infant's adulthood, we will see AI able to run and manage companies as CEO, direct investments worth tens of billions, design and plan chemical factories as chief structural engineer, and maybe even perform as an automated labor force to construct them. But even if they still rely on human hands to do the work, AI will be capable of signing the paychecks and issuing the directions. And at that point I really think AI would be capable of taking us out by surprise.

There's a significant lag between the longer days and the resulting higher temperatures though, which does make the seasons make more sense temperature-wise.

If one took the view that communism was holding back roughly half of their their potential, then it would have been a reasonable prediction.

No, it wouldn’t have. Only with cetera peribus would that make any sense. And losing half your population is not “all other things being equal.”

It’s a major difference that has a huge impact on output and relative standing globally.

I don't understand your comment. Over the long term, communism (or any sort of economic central planning) will obviously cripple any country's economy. The absolute number of people is meaningless if they're only pretending to work.

Look at the war between Russia and Ukraine today. Every day Russia sends hundreds of men to their deaths in human wave attacks with nothing to show for it. They have a large population but but they're not doing anything useful. If they had double the population it wouldn't change anything.

> Over the long term, communism (or any sort of economic central planning) will obviously cripple any country's economy. The absolute number of people is meaningless if they're only pretending to work.

I’m as anti-communist as can be, but saying population is meaningless when it comes to national output is ridiculous. There are many capitalist nations around the world, but the United States is the most populous, and therefore has the most output… because population plays a major role in national output. The socioeconomics of a nation certainly play a role too, but not enough to overcome population being cut in half.

Ceteris peribus, a capitalist country will beat a communist one long term in output and influence. But that’s not the only thing that can influence output and influence.

> Look at the war between Russia and Ukraine today. Every day Russia sends hundreds of men to their deaths in human wave attacks with nothing to show for it. They have a large population but but they're not doing anything useful.

The entire nation is not devoted to Ukraine, they still need to maintain defenses against NATO and China simultaneously. The Ukraine war is just what they can spare on top of those other goals.

Nah, they're not maintaining defenses against NATO and China. Most of those have already been stripped bare due to a mix of corruption and sending everything that still works to Ukraine. Except the nuclear weapons, and most of those probably no longer work reliably anyway due to lack of competent maintenance.

IMO, basic income for parents is absolutely a policy that Japan should enact.

And the question of how much the payment should be has a straightforward answer: adjust until the birth rate reaches replacement.

If the payment ends up high enough that some mothers or fathers opt to leave the labor force to focus on raising their kids, then so be it; that's probably healthier for society in the long term.

It would be expensive, yes, but cheaper than the alternatives. And anyway, Japan's stagnant economy would likely benefit from the boost to consumer demand.

There is no guarantee people with no wants will have kids, in fact I expect the opposite

Those people can work for their income then; the policy I was discussing only relates to the government paying parents an income, ideally on a per-child basis (up to some maximum, maybe four; you need to have some people having bigger families to balance out the ones who don't have any children at all, but you also don't want people farming kids for money).

I take it you haven't lived in a country that invests significantly in its public transportation infrastructure, like Switzerland or Japan?