Artificial Intelligence, robotics and their implications

I think there is a problem with your assumption that governments will be powerful enough to impose these taxes. The wealth these new technologies promise to create is utterly staggering and there's not much in history to suggest that the wealthy do not use increased riches to further entrench their political power. If you think western governments are bought and owned now, etc etc.

Perhaps for a time a UBI might be introduced, but more as a salve to stop the world economy generally imploding, but I worry this would be little more than a holding period as the Curtis Yarvins of the world do some thinking on how to move to a post-consumerist economy where most of humanity is no longer really needed, the robots do all the grunt work, and an exalted elite get to live in a garden Earth…

If robots are doing all the work, it won't be long term necessary to keep a large population of humans around to consume.

I can turn that question around to ask what value would all these people be contributing to the economy to then receive money that they can exchange for the goods and services that robotics and AI produces?

In the robot/AI economy, the machines are the labour, and the only thing they need to receive for their part in the new economy is maintenance, power and some kind of general oversight.

In this version of the future, humanity isn't necessarily wiped out, but vastly reduced to some sort of Georgia Guidestones level, i.e. a billion or less. Jobs would still exist, but mainly in the fields related to whatever roles AI/robotics cannot fill.

The technology is moving so fast in this realm that I don't think the architects of it yet know what its implications will really be, but like I say UBI may be introduced as a holding solution until ways to move to a post-consumerist economy are figured out and then the question will be, 'what do we really need this other 7 billion people for?'.

You could absolutely argue that, and if you're a mega-billionaire sitting at the very top of the tree, you could say to yourself that getting rid of 90 percent of humanity would both allow you to keep your wealth and not need to share it, and heal the planet at the same time. Two birds with one stone.

Right now, economies basically run on the principle that people work to make money for the goods and services they use. In the post-labour world that AI and robotics promises to introduce, it will reduce large swathes of the population to a class who don't produce any value themselves, and only really consume, presumably by being apportioned wealth generated off the machines' effort to then pay for the stuff the machines generate. This seems like something of a redundant and pointless cycle from a purely utilitarian perspective and one that eats up a large amount of natural resources just to keep a large sector of the population alive just because.

Not that I'm advocating for getting rid of most of humanity. Aside from my feeling I'd be in the goner bracket, it's just not a very nice thing to do. However, I'm not sure the super/hyper-rich of the world would see it quite the same…