So, to respond to the snark seriously, the problem it is trying to solve assumes that we have encountered a particular economic failure case - that AI has outcompeted humans in cost and quality of work, such that most humans have zero economic value.
So without some scheme, there will be no wealth distribution whatsoever, and potentially grim actions by national leadership.
It's a "utility-based" wealth distribution scheme.
I prefer to find a distribution scheme that is not isomorphic to communism.
The social graph described in the article is what you see in a high school or small community or anywhere material productivity is not important. Relationships and attention are the source of value.
Ironically, those places are the most communist. Everybody enters on a relatively even footing, and there are strong norms against directly profiting off your peers.
Have you ever been to a high school? Nobody is on equal footing, socially speaking. The authoritarian nature of high school is about the only communist thing about it.
> I prefer to find a distribution scheme that is not isomorphic to communism.
Communism as it was practiced, or communism as Marx envisioned it?
Because what Marx was envisioning was communal ownership of the means of production, which in the case of AI would mean communal ownership over the very businesses that necessarily have to replace humans with AI for cold hard business reasons.
I don't think Marx's idea of utopia is stable, game theoretically, but then very little utopian ever is.
What you've got certainly has enough merit to be interesting! But, as Communism demonstrated, the difference between theory and practice can have a genocide or three between them.
Might be better to have a hubs and authority score. It could be “being a good producer” and “being a good judge” are different things. Problem is you can clone somebody’s hub score by stealing their judgements.
> It could be “being a good producer” and “being a good judge” are different things
Yes I agree with this in principle. Although in this case what "good" is, is ill-defined - or rather different to everyone. The scoring each person performs is actually most directly a statement of utility to the scorer. That should probably go into the piece as an edit :-)
btw I also agree that pure PageRank on the endorsement links might benefit from tweaking, although some of the common failure cases for PR on the web don't apply here - you can't generate piles of extra humans to endorse-link to yourself.
Calls it “HumaneRank”, this is already off to a shaky start.
> Imagine a system in which every month, every human in the nation state or other political polity participates in an exercise of the grant of endorsements to other humans
My guy, we’ve literally written dystopian sci-fi stories about this. The most 1:1 identical one being that Black Mirror episode. How can you possibly think this is a good idea?
Interesting idea, I bet it can still be gamed because this is fancy voting and voting gets gamed a lot — the devil is in the details, rather than the grand vision.
Isn't this the plot to the episode "Nosedive" of Black Mirror? Isn't the outcome of such a system obvious? It's very clear that allowing people to rank one another in a way that results in dire economic outcomes results in a deeply bifurcated society, and in this scenario there's no out.
This is terrible idea that will be aggressively rejected by humanity.
This is exactly the type of "tech bros are completely out if touch with how people work" vision of the future I guess we should expect from the guy that wrote this article.
Humanity has never lived in a world where leisure and idle time are not constantly being invaded by the oppressive survival demands or a hierarchal authoritarian mandate from a ruling class. If AI does provide a mechanism to allow humans to spend their free time in true leisure, like most of humanity living in the Star Trek future, then we should embrace it. Not straddle humans with artificial subordination.
The possibility of "humans to spend their free time in true leisure" is actually cited and specifically not rejected in the piece. It's addressing a very specific, and very dangerous, failure mode of a post-AI society.
Read the piece and be enlightened.
Also, jeez, I pine for the day when silly randomly-applied ad-hominems like "tech bros" just get dogpiled. For your own sake, elevate your discourse, man (or woman).
If superintelligence means a robot that looks, acts like a human in every way plus infinitely smarter, that does not mean human is lower value. There are people smarter and richer than me, but so what? Maybe they got lucky, and had better upbringing etc. same with machines/agi
A popularity-based wealth distribution scheme. What could go wrong?
Reminds me of https://community-sitcom.fandom.com/wiki/MeowMeowBeenz
So, to respond to the snark seriously, the problem it is trying to solve assumes that we have encountered a particular economic failure case - that AI has outcompeted humans in cost and quality of work, such that most humans have zero economic value.
So without some scheme, there will be no wealth distribution whatsoever, and potentially grim actions by national leadership.
It's a "utility-based" wealth distribution scheme.
I prefer to find a distribution scheme that is not isomorphic to communism.
The social graph described in the article is what you see in a high school or small community or anywhere material productivity is not important. Relationships and attention are the source of value.
Ironically, those places are the most communist. Everybody enters on a relatively even footing, and there are strong norms against directly profiting off your peers.
Have you ever been to a high school? Nobody is on equal footing, socially speaking. The authoritarian nature of high school is about the only communist thing about it.
> I prefer to find a distribution scheme that is not isomorphic to communism.
Communism as it was practiced, or communism as Marx envisioned it?
Because what Marx was envisioning was communal ownership of the means of production, which in the case of AI would mean communal ownership over the very businesses that necessarily have to replace humans with AI for cold hard business reasons.
I don't think Marx's idea of utopia is stable, game theoretically, but then very little utopian ever is.
What you've got certainly has enough merit to be interesting! But, as Communism demonstrated, the difference between theory and practice can have a genocide or three between them.
Either one :-)
I'm not inclined to run the communism experiment again, I think we've got enough data.
"20th Century Democide" https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.2.GIF
from: https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Regardless of if you're "right" or not, I cannot imagine living in this society as an individual to br anything but depressing.
Maybe let's not build the Torment Nexus.
Great, you just had to give them the idea of adding "humane" punishment to disincentivize low Rank behavior...
Might be better to have a hubs and authority score. It could be “being a good producer” and “being a good judge” are different things. Problem is you can clone somebody’s hub score by stealing their judgements.
Also consider that a good judge is doing a useful service to society, but isnt necessarily in the business of maximizing other people’s happiness.
> It could be “being a good producer” and “being a good judge” are different things
Yes I agree with this in principle. Although in this case what "good" is, is ill-defined - or rather different to everyone. The scoring each person performs is actually most directly a statement of utility to the scorer. That should probably go into the piece as an edit :-)
btw I also agree that pure PageRank on the endorsement links might benefit from tweaking, although some of the common failure cases for PR on the web don't apply here - you can't generate piles of extra humans to endorse-link to yourself.
One major point I don’t see addressed, are endorsements public or private?
I could see major (but different) issues with both scenarios.
Calls it “HumaneRank”, this is already off to a shaky start.
> Imagine a system in which every month, every human in the nation state or other political polity participates in an exercise of the grant of endorsements to other humans
My guy, we’ve literally written dystopian sci-fi stories about this. The most 1:1 identical one being that Black Mirror episode. How can you possibly think this is a good idea?
Read the piece?
Interesting idea, I bet it can still be gamed because this is fancy voting and voting gets gamed a lot — the devil is in the details, rather than the grand vision.
Isn't this the plot to the episode "Nosedive" of Black Mirror? Isn't the outcome of such a system obvious? It's very clear that allowing people to rank one another in a way that results in dire economic outcomes results in a deeply bifurcated society, and in this scenario there's no out.
This is terrible idea that will be aggressively rejected by humanity.
This is exactly the type of "tech bros are completely out if touch with how people work" vision of the future I guess we should expect from the guy that wrote this article.
Humanity has never lived in a world where leisure and idle time are not constantly being invaded by the oppressive survival demands or a hierarchal authoritarian mandate from a ruling class. If AI does provide a mechanism to allow humans to spend their free time in true leisure, like most of humanity living in the Star Trek future, then we should embrace it. Not straddle humans with artificial subordination.
Reject this as all costs.
Hey yesbut
The possibility of "humans to spend their free time in true leisure" is actually cited and specifically not rejected in the piece. It's addressing a very specific, and very dangerous, failure mode of a post-AI society.
Read the piece and be enlightened.
Also, jeez, I pine for the day when silly randomly-applied ad-hominems like "tech bros" just get dogpiled. For your own sake, elevate your discourse, man (or woman).
no
"A freedom-preserving proposal for distributing wealth in a post-AI society"
If superintelligence means a robot that looks, acts like a human in every way plus infinitely smarter, that does not mean human is lower value. There are people smarter and richer than me, but so what? Maybe they got lucky, and had better upbringing etc. same with machines/agi