[seaucre]

In the long run, absent intervention, virtually all income flows to the owners of compute.

We need more than UBI. AGI is the culmination of all human activity up to that point and all humanity deserves ownership of it. It should not belong solely to those who put the cherry on top with the rest of us at their mercy. They don't deserve to control the humanity's destiny. AGI, at some point, has to be made into ... I don't know. Not nationalized - something more. A force of pure good for all humans unaffiliated with any corporation or state.

[jstummbillig]

Why would compute be any less of a commodity than electricity?

[cogman10]

The same reason why owning a business is less of a commodity than electricity.

It's the ultimate monopoly. Anyone with more compute will ultimately be able to out perform any business you could invent ultimately locking you out of competition.

The owners of compute will make a killing and can set whatever price they like. But if the owner is someone like say amazon, then what actually stops them from using their massive compute army they already own to enter the most lucrative businesses for compute slowly dominating everything?

[bryanrasmussen]

attempting to come up with reason here:

because compute is owned and sold by people who have businesses built on top of compute, thus they let you have their excess compute, it follows that their needs will come before yours.

[markus_zhang]

You are kinda calling for Communism without spelling it out, I think.

[raincole]

Of course. If AGI becomes real I don't see any reason to keep a capitalism society. Ultimately capitalism works because it incentivizes people to produce goods and services efficiently. If AI is more efficient than humans in every single aspect then what's the point of giving people economic incentives?

[isoprophlex]

Let's call it Commonism then. Where we recognize the need for economic activity that furthers whatever we humans have in common. Instead of tumour-like, zero-sum, number must go up turbocapitalism that just concentrates wealth.

[dizzydes]

If AGI occurs some form of communism will be necessary no? How else will they cover all the costs of UBI? It's our work/earths resources/internet its been born from, it should benefit us all.

[general1465]

And some hybrid of capitalism and socialism eventually will happen. Target would be to prevent rich few from hoarding wealth and force them to put it back into economy. Otherwise people with nothing to lose will just repeat social revolutions from 19-20th century.

[stego-tech]

Because too many HN folk see that word and recoil as they're only casually "familiar" with human attempts at it during the era of scarcity as told by mass media, with no understanding as to the reality of why said systems failed or succeeded.

In a post-scarcity society (which we're technically in now, if we took this seriously), Communism is a more appropriate model of governance than Capitalism. It would ensure a more equitable distribution of resources, incentivize stronger environmental policies to minimize waste, and drive technological innovation towards preservation (of truly scarce resources - rare elements, for instance) over extraction.

The problem is that humans desire power for themselves and the humiliation of others, which results in every method of governance becoming corrupted over time, especially if it doesn't see regular change to address its weaknesses (as we see now with neoliberal societies resisting populism on both extremes of the political scale). Combined with centuries of nationstates lumbering onwards and fighting for their own survival in an increasingly nebulous and ever-shifting digital landscape, and no wonder things are a tinderbox.

All that being said, Communism is an (maybe not the, but an) appropriate choice for a post-scarcity, post-AGI society. It's something we need to discuss in earnest now, and start dismantling Capitalism where feasible to lay the foundation for what comes next. As others (myself included) have pointed out repeatedly, this is likely the last warning we'll get before AGI arrives. It's highly unlikely LLMs and current technology will give rise to AGI, but it's almost a certainty that we'll see actual glimmers of AGI within the next fifty years - and once that genie is out of the bottle, we'll be "locked in" to whatever society we've created for ourselves, until and unless we leave our planet behind and can experiment with our own alternatives at scale.

Good craftsmen know when they've reached the limits of their current tooling. We need to recognize that Capitalism is the wrong tool for an AGI era if we value our humanity.