alt Hacker NewsDisplacing a vast amount of labor is what makes the numbers make sense. We don't know if they'll succeed or not, but it's obviously what they're chasing.
In addition to actual lost jobs, replacing a skilled white collar worker with a fungible operator of AI lowers the salary for that role significantly.
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Have they thought about the expenses in running continental Death Pits?
OK, dumb attempt at funny over, but certainly someone is thinking about instability costs? Even if everyone is super cool with literal Death Pits, they don't run for free. And not everyone will be cool with watching their entire family die, which will mean substantial costs in security - and money spent on security, that's just setting money on fire, that money doesn't work any more.
I know they've batted around the ideas of "compliance collars" and suchlike for the guys running the Death Pits, but I haven't seen anything that wouldn't be ultimately defeated by a typical zoo chimpanzee, let alone a psychopathic Delta Force guy with more advanced degrees than your entire family. He will not be pleased with your "compliance collar" thing.
And the brain control chips they've been trying to get working . . well, they're not ready yet. You'll just make the Delta Force guy even crazier .
The labour needs to be eliminated — essentially nobody in the economy paying them for an equivalent job — for enough money to be freed up for it to work. But then these people who are either unemployed or job sharing some remaining work don’t have the money to buy the products of all the AI companies’ customers. At the necessary scale it will trigger economic demand collapse.
The whole idea is impossible.