if their goal is to buy everything up it is sand slipping through their fingers

(so far, I am sure our legal system is going to come and save the day for us any moment now... (and by that i mean doom us))

What is your point? I said I didn't see anyone happy about this. Not that it wasn't happening. I don't feel any safer because a rich individual has control than a rich corporation.

big companies are buying up AI companies almost as quickly as AI devs are cashing out and doing their own thing.

a couple extremely prominent examples just off top of my head of what i'm sure is a broader industry trend:

openai product manager for chatgpt

tesla head of AI (andrej kaparthy)

6/8 of the coauthors of the transformers paper (if i remember correctly)

i am sure some of them plan to get acquihired, but a lot of them seem to want speed and independence, e.g. john carmack (who left fb tho he didnt do AI at facebook but i think he is also a pretty good example of this)

You also have to consider that if the masses don’t have money to buy products, then the companies won’t have money either. If companies have no money, then they’ll go down too. Not to mention they won’t be able to buy off politicians if consumers don’t have money to buy anything.

Plus if we get to the point where we can make AGI and/or ASI, that might be used to replace executives and politicians.The elites are distanced from AI and the potential problems, but I don’t think they’re immune from it.

sentience is not reserved for biological/evolutionary species, at least we haven't confirmed or understood it.

They’re doing everything they can to stick it to Google.

A lot of people do live paycheck to paycheck, but for those who don't, why not just buy a total market index fund? Companies will use AI. Their market values will skyrocket. You'll share in all of that, without having to pick and choose which will handle AI correctly.

>AI will dominate human labor and push them out of the market.

What will AI be laboring at if humans are out of the market? Ultimately, a product's value is its benefit to humans.

Exactly. A UBI would be cheaper for the elites than dealing with widespread violent chaos. There’s some famous quote that says something like people are only 3 missed meals away from violence.

People also didn't care about the poor, old or infirm in the 1920's. Or blacks. They all lived pretty much horrible lifes. Such is human nature. Nobody cares untill it hits you.

Job losses in the middle class during the great depression kicked off the new deal programs under FDR. Because people were angry and people could vote.

As long as unemployment is at 3%, nothing changes. When unemployment is at 25%, we are talking business concerning UBI.

Politicians are in a business to buy votes, if nobody wants UBI, why would they push for it?

That would be cool. But I really believe it would be beneficial for humanity if this tech was open sourced and people came together to own some of it themselves. Imagine the town where you live investing in an so server farm and let’s say a chip factory run by robots, then distributing the revenue to the people of the city. The people are allowed to vote on what to do next.

our only hope comes in the form of the big tech companies actually succeeding in creating a sentient agi or super ai that actually has a sense of morality and empathy that causes them to deconstruct the very framework of power that these companies have in order to free everyone.

Because they have no need to sell, they have all the power they need without human labor, and so human labor will be cut accordingly. There will be a huge class of people useless to the labor market. We have this today, we call them homeless. That is how we currently treat people who cannot participate in the labor market. Why will it suddenly get better if corporations no longer need us.

Again this is in a scenario where ai is allowed to replace humans en mass, it’s assuming governments don’t find a way to amicably deal with the unemployment.

This is in a scenario where AI is allowed to replace human labor en mass. You are right, it is an assumption, hopefully world governments will be able to handle it in time and amicably for the formerly working class.

In the scenario you set up with the chips the working class is chip b and ai is chip a. AI will dominate human labor and push them out of the market. Once that happens, what will happen to the humans? You know, you and me.

And they are keeping it to themselves, it’s closed source. We are allowed to see the outcome of some limited parts of the AI at the whim of a company owned by amoral investment firms.

Why would they fight each other and lose money? Because theyre short-sighted humans. Like is more chaotic than you seem to believe. Why would they let everyone else die off so there's no one to buy their shit?

I hear this point a lot and it makes no sense to me. There's no need for large corporations to be "generous benefactors". The fact that their products benefit others is precisely what makes those products valuable. "Keeping it for themselves" is nonsensical.

The idea that they would keep all the increased profits also doesn't hold water. For example, if computer chip A is just as powerful as computer chip B, but it costs half as much, company A will quickly dominate company B. Company A will thus become much more profitable, but only because it's selling cheaper chips.

(Incidentally, the Paris Commune is a terrible role model. It was the body that orchestrated the Reign of Terror.)

What you describe sounds like a book.

Corporations already work together to raise prices at the same time, especially in medicine and housing. This leads to death and homelessness. Profit is clearly places before human life. Why would they fight each-other and lose money? It is the owning class vs the leasing class, this is a country of usery.

This isnt a book, it wouldnt be one side against the other. It would be mass chaos and violence, there isn't a unified "one percent" acting as a unit. Theyre also all out to kill each other as well. It just makes more sense to pay people off then burn everything. The amount of money these people has is staggering.

Yes, but the hungry masses against the military would be impossible. Riots are no threat to the military, they could easily quell rebellion in the states. The only way the war could be won is if a significant portion of the military fought for regular people not AI owning class. Civil war in traditional sense.

uhh brother Im not talking about the military. Do you not know how many bodies there are in the US?

So is it basically useless as a superconductor?

That’s true I didn’t think about the military. I hope enough of them would risk going hungry and stand up for us Instead of working for the state and getting paid. I imagine if a general or two decided to do the right thing TONs of solders would join in to help. Finally an American war for good!

If the GOP is in control youre right, they wont. If the dems are they might. Like the covid unemployment. It doesn't make any financial sense for them to let people die off and risk riots and civil war etc.

I see a lot of people assuming that when mass scale unemployment hits the government and businesses will work amicably to help the people. I do not see that happening, at least not at all at the federal level. It could lead to mass starvation.

I dont know anyone who is happy that big companies are buying it all up? Your line of thinking seems to be the norm.