I read a week or two ago that a universal income will be necessary because of the massive shift in jobs lost.
If taken to it’s logical extreme, isn’t human wealth limited only by raw resources fed into production?
In a thought experiment, envision AI as a massive combination of computing and manufacturing capability.
For simplicities sake, imagine a long (miles long) corridor in which AI/manufacturing pushes end products out like we do excrement. You simply place the raw materials into the feeding end, and finished products pop out the other end.
If AI is as powerful as we now conceive, it could smelt, or process any and all raw materials, and manufacture all goods more efficiently than humans. And it could self-correct all processes necessary in the “production tube.”
This tube, presumably could be reproduced, and gain greater perfection by the further use of AI.
Ultimately, cars, planes, condoms, blue jeans, baseballs, etc., etc, could be spat out/shat out, again, limited only by the amount of raw resources pushed into the feed, and the time it takes to finish the products.
It would little matter where “production tubes” were located. Labor cost differences would melt away as AI and fully automated production would require no human construction or maintenance.
And in reality, isn’t this conception a rough description of our gain in material wealth the last 450 years as pluralism has combined with science and capitalism to our current level of production and wealth accumulation? A good pocket watch in 1800 was priced higher than the equivalent weight of gold, hence early pocket watches were often covered with gold cases, as few could afford them, anyway. Now you can buy a Watch accurate to a second or two per year for less money than a portion of the daily wage of “cheap” foreign workers.
It looks utopian, assuming mankind could access massive amounts of raw materials from asteroids, etc.
Capture/mine/recycle enough raw resources, and material abundance could become virtually infinite.
It all looks utopian, until AI decides to start cramming humans into the feeding end of the production tube.