I am half /s, half dead serious. The sarcastic half is me playing along with AGI singularity maximalists like Sama.
The other half is me dead scared that he is right. LLMs/GPTs != cryptocurrency. There are actual use cases other than money laundering. If you are paying attention, then the insane scaling in capabilities should have us all dumbfounded. I agree with Linus Torvalds: "just" predicting the next token is not an insult, that's mostly what we are all doing.
Human productivity/the global economy has been growing at an exponential rate[0] since the industrial revolution. In our lifetimes we have ridden the close-to-vertical part, and if GPTs continue to scale, then it will continue to near-vertical. This will be near-post-scarcity society. Capitalism will soon have become so successful that it will make itself obsolete. Are we ready for that, politically? Most of our ruling a-holes maintain power via scarcity, how will they react?
Culling might not be an action, just an apathy. The transition is going to suck as the poors now will also have taken advantage of that hockey stick of asymmetric warfare aka "productivity" via things like ML powered kill drones. This tech is happening now, in 2024-25, in Ukraine.
We are at a crossroads, more than when horse-driven carriages turned horseless. The humans are the horses now, and they will not be happy.
We really should have worked out global civility by now, given the risks of truly global destabilization.
>> This will be near-post-scarcity society. Capitalism will soon have become so successful
Not even close.
Take something like the iPhone. Everyone will want a pro max latest version. Great we can make 8 billion of them. How do you hand them out... we have to get in line I think.
The person at the back of the line, looking at 8 billion assholes in front of them is gonna get stabby...
The chart you're pointing out is showing us that an increase in productivity and/or creativity only will serve to exacerbate disparity, not improve it. Who goes first when there are more firsts is going to be a bigger problem.
/s