Work and meaning after AGI
A dive into the essay, "Machines of Loving Grace"
This past week another great interview dropped on Lex Fridman’s Podcast with Dario Amodei. Dario Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic. Anthropic is producing some of the best models in the world especially in the domains of coding. Recently, they released an experiment that allowed for models to control a computer in the same way a human does. This was a crazy peak into the possible future of agentic systems within AI.
As part of the interview there was discussion around an essay Dario wrote called Machines of Loving Grace. This essay is long but goes into detail around describing a future of AI that is good.
I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be.
In this essay I try to sketch out what that upside might look like—what a world with powerful AI might look like if everything goes right.
Dario discusses 5 different sections describing a positive future. I’m a bad reader and decided to skip around. Mainly I was so curious about the section called “Work and meaning”. This section is honestly the most intriguing to me and something I think a lot about so I just skipped to it.
Work and meaning
“It’s great we live in such a technologically advanced world as well as a fair and decent one”, someone might object, “but with AI’s doing everything, how will humans have meaning? For that matter, how will they survive economically?”.
— Dario, Machines of Loving Grace
We as human beings are able to create meaning for ourselves in so many ways. Ways we don’t even think about. We have hobbies, we love our hobbies! For me I enjoy video games, programming, playing sports such as golf and baseball. Plus I love playing with my son and hanging with my family. In a world where my families needs are taken care of I could absolutely come up with my own meaning and I think I’d enjoy it.
So then what’s the problem?
How the heck am I going to make money to provide for my family? How are any of us going to do so in a post AGI world?
This is the question that keeps me up at night. I don’t understand how more folks working on AI are not discussing it more and more. In fact, in pretty much every interview I’ve been able to find of the more prominent people working in this space not one of them really discuss it. Perhaps they are avoiding the topic because they are not economists but it is something I wish folks would start talking about more.
Dario mentioned in the interview that he believes AGI will be here within the next 5-10 years. If that’s the case, it’s time to start saving money. Even by doing so, will money even matter?
What does this mean for everyone?
Stay optimistic. While reading the essay there was discussion around a topic called comparative advantage. The essay linked to a post by Noah Smith called “Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI”. I’m so glad I read this post and I suggest you read it as well. Dario mentions in his essay that he agrees in the short term that comparative advantage will continue to keep humans relevant.
So what is comparative advantage?
The ability of an individual or group to carry out a particular economic activity (such as making a specific product) more efficiently than another activity.
(ChatGPT has entered the chat)
You and your friend make snacks. You're great at cookies, your friend is better at sandwiches. You focus on cookies, they focus on sandwiches, and you trade—everyone gets more snacks. That's comparative advantage!
— ELI5 ChatGPT
Get it? Good.
Noah’s post goes into great detail about a post AGI economy and how comparative advantage is an incredibly powerful idea. He goes onto paint a picture of a world where humans will continue to have similar jobs that we have today and that those jobs will be enhanced by AI but we will still be compensated well for doing our jobs.
How could this be?
AI is bound by compute. Humans are not. The use of powerful AI will boil down to deciding what it should work on given the resources it has. That annoying business task might have to wait or not be worth the money in AI compute. I’m sure I’m getting this wrong but it kind of makes sense to me.
So humans will remain better at certain tasks especially physical tasks for some time. I have to hope that there can be a world where economically I can work hard and provide for my family in a meaningful way with the help of AI.
Thank you for reading this post! If you enjoyed it, feel free to follow me below and visit my website for more content.