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1810v t1_j2dkcbi wrote

I believe that AI is incredibly deflationary. So many things will become cheap or almost free. It would make more sense for governments to guarantee housing & food (rather than provide money) because governments could do so with very little cost by using some combination of robotics and AI. I believe a large portion of housing in the future will be “owned” by the government and provided to people for their lifetime.

I think that a market for goods and services will still exist, but it will be a luxury market, while your necessities are provided for you through some form of non-profit government agency that deploys AI to keep society stable.

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hawkinomics t1_j2dymfx wrote

This is closest to the right answer. Basics will become almost free and what cannot be made plentiful will rise in relative cost. Unless people choose to live entirely outside the physical world there will still be scarcity in where to live, travel, etc. Humans will still use real or created scarcity to derive status no matter where they are.

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TheTomatoBoy9 t1_j2ebapo wrote

Fundamentally, things will never become cheaper than the cost of the energy it takes to make them, even with full automation

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Surur t1_j2ew06z wrote

With solar energy, prices often go negative and some companies get paid to use energy.

There is an idea that we would create 7x as much solar capacity as we need, for reliability reasons, and then have massive amounts of waste energy on many days.

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1810v t1_j2ecl1d wrote

With the potential for fusion energy, this could radically change the cost of energy in the next few decades.

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TheTomatoBoy9 t1_j2eefax wrote

True enough. But even if (or when) it becomes economically viable, it will take decades to implement it at scale. So what happens during this transition?

An ideal scenario would be easily accessible energy through fusion, and then the AI replacement. But for now it looks like the reverse scenario is happening. Which I'm not too optimistic about.

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xt-89 t1_j2ezvam wrote

There’s also renewables. When the entire supply chain for wind mills or solar panels become fully automated, energy prices will quickly trend to zero without any new technology beyond AI. Even if you are concerned about rare earth minerals there’s undersea mining that would become more reasonable at that point in time

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enilea t1_j2fgf37 wrote

I doubt fusion will become an option that soon. Maybe a few decades to make it a viable source of energy, but then a few more decades for widespread implementation. So not soon enough before most jobs have been automated.

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