I thoroughly enjoyed “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, but that doesn’t persuade me that Kahneman is a prophet. I’ve experienced 60 years of reports that computers are about to surpass humans. Still waiting...
If machines did manage to take all our jobs away, then who could afford and want to buy the goods and services that they provide? It doesn’t seem very sustainable.
I agree and that's what concerns me.
Currently, 10% of the population has an IQ of 80 or below. The US Army won't take them in the belief (probably rightly) that such people cannot be trained to perform any useful work.
As automation increases, there may be less need for burger flippers with IQs of 90 or below. Meanwhile the AI that we already have today performs a lot of white collar work -- a lot of legal work is handled by machines now, and the typical run-of-the-mill lawyer is outclassed.
One way or another I think we are heading to a society in which an increasing percentage of people have no significant labor to contribute. 10% today? 20% tomorrow? What happens when half the people have no labor to contribute? And how will the other half feel? The people who still "have to work"? That's going to be a problem.
The devil makes work for idle hands. Even if we had a bunch of automated farms and automated factories and we could send lots of "stuff" to people at home who no longer need to contribute, I figure those people will get bored and just start causing trouble. Kind of like Portland.
What's the solution? I don't know. But I think The Powers That Be have come to the conclusion that we have far too many people. Don't need 'em. We have machines now. So, what happens to the "excess people"? I don't know, but I haven't been vaccinated.
Someone or corporations will own each AI machine. They will reap the profits accordingly.
And
Even if basic resources are not “scarce”, resource allocation will still need to happen. I suspect energy, processing power, and data storage will replace fiat currency in the long term. Amazon could issue a crypto currency right now, backed by data storage (terabyte*years).