see also:

• artificial intelligence
• timeline of artificial intelligence development and related issues
• AI and the future

• in Dec 2023, International Monetary Fund publishes “Scenario planning for an AGI future” ¹⁾
  • concept of “Frontier of Automation” - humans have a maximal limit of ability for complex task completion and it is probable that AI electro-mechanical device machines will reach this within 5-20 years and surpass the ability of the far majority of humans in cognitive tasks and will be faster and cheaper than humans
    • humans become increasingly productive with usage of AI agents (and with potential real wage increases) UNTIL humans are no longer needed for this productivity and this is when human productivity is rapidly outpaced by AI productivity at lower costs and thus human wages and employment could rapidly fall and be replaced by more reliable, faster, cheaper AI machines
• likely scenarios:
  • it is likely that unless major development barriers are hit, the spheres of automation potential are likely to increase exponentially
  • this is likely to impact industries which are more fault tolerant first such as creative writing, image generation, video generation
  • less fault tolerant areas (these are usually highly regulated) such as law, medicine, construction will take longer for AI to replace humans
  • nostalgic jobs are likely to be kept human for emotional sentimental reasons eg. mayor of a town, certain clergy
  • shared human experience jobs are likely to be kept human
  • empathetic care jobs are likely to be kept human eg. childcare, nursing, early education, etc

• consumers are increasingly becoming like the serfs of the old feudal systems
• consumers don't really own products but “rent” them with subscriptions is already rapidly expanding in many areas:
  • most software is now heavily leveraged towards a subscription model and if they do allow outright purchase, this is often of limited utility as it rapidly becomes out of date
  • most modern products (including cars, smartphones, computers, the AI robots of the future) are designed to fail or become obsolete within 3-10 years forcing purchase of replacements as repair costs are too expensive - even if you can repair it - this is a de facto rental system
  • car ownership rates in cities is falling and instead consumers increasingly rely upon hourly or daily rentals or Uber
  • access to mobile phone services and internet is a rental system with monthly or annual subscriptions
  • access to utilities such as energy and water is a rental system with annual subscriptions PLUS a pay-as-you-use component
  • online purchases embed a “rental” fee to the online service provider such as Amazon
  • most music or videos are now streamed for an ongoing subscription fee instead of being owned on physical media such as CDs or DVDs
  • accommodation has become far too expensive for a large proportion of the population who are then forced to rely on renting to land lords
    • this rent alone is already high enough to consume much of a retiree's pension leaving little for food and other expenses - they are unlikely to be able to afford subscriptions
  • AI requires multi-million dollar “super-computers” to train and thus if you wish to use AI services, the far majority will have to pay for it by subscription or pay as you go method
• this means the AI juggernaut companies will essentially become the feudal lords and consumers become the paying serfs, practically totally dependent upon a range of these lords
  • the uber-rich will get richer, the rest will become poorer
  • the issue will be - how will humans pay when their earning power may decline substantially as AI machines become more productive than they are and cheaper?