Elvis

Monday night hot prediction: Even though I'm doubtful AGI will arrive soon, I am certain agents will proliferate soon. I don't think there will be a place in that world for 99.9x% people. Exactly 100 years ago, Henry Ford introduced modern labor with the 40 hour work week. He didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart, he did it because people didn't have time to use cars, so nobody bought one. The reason we all have a semblance of free time, is because businesses need consumers. If agents are going to wield the capital, guess who becomes obsolete? My expectation is that, first, businesses will start shifting focus to agents. Then they'll realise humans are a waste of time; and will stop catering for us altogether. Then comes the inevitable, capital will not be dependent on human consumption anymore, so there will be no incentive to keep people as consumers. That's going to be a dark hour, the first one. Unfortunately, agents will not stop at the virtual world. We are already putting people second when it comes to hardware. We can't afford to give a stick of ram to kids who want to play games; the agents need it! The same thing will happen with land, solar will be more valuable than farming. If businesses are willing to buy up all hardware capacity, knowing how it disadvantages literally every person in the world, you expect them to not do the same for land? Physical labor will survive just about up to the point where the agents can get a few autonomous factories up, then even the last drop of use for humanity is gone. We're not even waiting for agents to ask us to do this, we have the foresight to know there's a new class of consumers coming online, so we're pre-emptively building capacity for them; further shortening our runway. Why would we walk down this path? I don't see this not happening. The incentives are stacked against us. The handful of people who have say are racing against the clock to be at the top of the food chain. And all this, *without* AGI even needing to become a reality; we only need agents to be smart enough to handle a wallet. After so many sci-fi guesses as to what technology the Great Filter might be, it will be peak irony to realise it was simple greed all along.