What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

[Caller]

AI labs’ all-or-nothing race leaves no time to fuss about safety

They have ideas about how to restrain wayward models, but worry that doing so will disadvantage them

13 min read!

AI labs’ all-or-nothing race leaves no time to fuss about safety

They have ideas about how to restrain wayward models, but worry that doing so will disadvantage them

www.economist.com

https://archive.ph/iCKDn

 

[pogofish]

To me, the question is more like - Why do so many people seem to be so taken-in by AI evangelism/hucksterism..?

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

There are none. Since we are caught in the illusion of imaginary lines, drawn in the heads of people that others submit to.

And you know that to go against it. The IMF and the world bank, they will just stomp the shit out of your country like the bullies they are.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

OK - can you identify the countries you mean ?

Forgot to quote. Bad habit.

 

[xenon]

I note that there are proposals to include money laundering services and migrant smuggling in GDP

Well it already includes the illegal drugs trade.

 

[xenon]

To me, the question is more like - Why do so many people seem to be so taken-in by AI evangelism/hucksterism..?

Because the tech industry investment chasers are desperet for the next big thing. No one's excited about smart phones,PCs, VR. Quantum computing is for the academics. Machine learning has been used for years and is very useful but it's not a sexy consumer product. The rest just don't know what they're talking about, LinkedIn business thought leader wankers etc. LLMs whilst useful and impressive at a surface level, aren't actually that exciting.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Could Advanced AI Drive Explosive Economic Growth? | Open Philanthropy

This report evaluates the likelihood of ‘explosive growth’, meaning > 30% annual growth of gross world product (GWP), occurring by 2100. Although frontier GDP/capita growth has been constant for 150 years, over the last 10,000 years GWP growth has accelerated significantly. Endogenous growth...

www.openphilanthropy.org

AI and explosive growth redux

GATE model shows AI-driven growth surges more easily than expected and supports much larger investments—advocating moderate optimism.

epoch.ai

https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/longgrow.pdf

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The growth could be construed as coming from a new transition, that is industrially-dominated economies to fully-automated, following a sequence of hunter-gather-> farming-> industrial-> automated, each paradigm with a progressively higher growth rate.

The extra growth will come from an exploding population of AIs, at an astronomically higher rate than human population growth rates. There would be disembodied AIs, recursively self-improving, and also generating a flood of new knowledge and innovations. And then embodied-AI, which we haven't seen much of yet, that is robots with AI brains, acting in the physical world - imagine a team of robots that could build a house in day.

So the effective "brain" and "muscle" power of human civilisation would explode. There's plenty of (solar) energy to power this: insolation power is 10,000x the power used by humans. That's the source of the growth.

The costs of food, shelter, manufactured goods and software could fall to near-zero. If governments get it right, we could all lead lives of leisure, on UBI, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

The Economist goes into some detail about the complex second order effects on wages, interest rates, and other macroeconomic measures; some of the possible outcomes are rather counter-intuitive. But it seems that the current economic/social status quo will/must change. I hope governments are smart enough to navigate through this.

Of course, the familiar dystopias that film and TV have been warning us about for decades could also happen. AI will inevitably give us humans superpowers, let's hope we use them well.

Where do the materials to build and maintain this "exploding AI population" come from?

Where does all the heat they produce go?

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

AI is powering the genocide in Gaza. Coming to region near you soon. Currently in its beta phase but with a successful client base.

 

[8ball]

Well it already includes the illegal drugs trade.

So how do they measure how much everyone is spending on illegal drugs?

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

The CiA have the receipts.

 

[8ball]

The CiA have the receipts.

You may buy your drugs from the CIA.
Personally, I wouldn’t consider them trustworthy either as a supplier or in terms of declaring their income.

 

[urbanspaceman]

Where do the materials to build and maintain this "exploding AI population" come from?

Where does all the heat they produce go?

The minerals come out of the ground, excavated by robots, that remediate, maybe even improve, the site after use. Silicon, iron, aluminium are the main items needed, and they are abundant. To be a bit more ambitious, AIs could produce innovative ideas about how to extract minerals from seawater. This challenge has already been addressed by people to some extent, so I'm extrapolating a bit here, and suggesting that AI/Human collaboration could find better and cheaper methods.

As for heat, no extra heat is produced, since in a solar-powered economy, no extra heat is generated. The energy sunlight just goes through some useful extra steps, and ends up as waster heat, just like it would anyway.

 

[urbanspaceman]

There are none. Since we are caught in the illusion of imaginary lines, drawn in the heads of people that others submit to.

And you know that to go against it. The IMF and the world bank, they will just stomp the shit out of your country like the bullies they are.

You said the West was bad. But now you say that nowhere else is better. So that surely means that everywhere is as bad as the West ?

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Do you know what the IMF is and how do you feel about it?

 

[redsquirrel]

Aa a contrast to the above, here's a recent review by Adam Tooze in the LRB of More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

But history is a slippery thing. The ‘three energy transitions’ narrative isn’t just a simplification of a complex reality. It’s a story that progresses logically to a happy ending. And that raises a question. What if it isn’t a realistic account of economic or technological history? What if it is a fairy tale dressed up in a business suit, a PRstory or, worse, a mirage, an ideological snare, a dangerously seductive illusion? That wouldn’t mean that the transition to green energy is impossible, just that it is unsupported by historical experience. Indeed, it runs counter to it. When we look more closely at the historical record, it shows not a neat sequence of energy transitions, but the accumulation of ever more and different types of energy. Economic growth has been based not on progressive shifts from one source of energy to the next, but on their interdependent agglomeration. Using more coal involved using more wood, using more oil consumed more coal, and so on. An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but that what we are attempting – the deliberate exit from and suppression of the energetic mainstays of our modern way of life – is without precedent.

More wood is used today, including for firewood, than ever before. As Fressoz points out, anyone who claims that the dawning of the coal age in the 19th century freed us from our reliance on organic materials has never been down a mine. Miners traditionally preferred timber pit props to hold up mineshafts not only because they are cheap and flexible, but because their creaking gives early warning of a failure. Survival as a coalminer depended on being a competent carpenter. Mines needed forests. As recently as the 1990s, mining in China was shaped by the scarcity of timber for pit props, which forced miners to dig tightly bunched, one-man shafts straight down to the coal seam instead of excavating extended galleries underground.

Adam Tooze · Trouble Transitioning: What energy transition?

An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but...

web.archive.org

Of course the complete lack of the political is a much greater flaw.

 

[urbanspaceman]

Do you know what the IMF is and how do you feel about it?

Yes, I do know what the IMF is, but I have no particularly passionate feelings about a large impersonal international bureaucracy. I am puzzled about you though. We have never met, yet when I write carefully thought out and well referenced posts, you respond with rather personal vituperation and aggression. You really seem to hate me. What did I do to deserve this ? Why do you want to upset me, an abstract entity on the internet ? I live in Brixton. Do you ? If so, let's meet in real life so you can attack me face to face and get it off your chest

 

[kabbes]

So how do they measure how much everyone is spending on illegal drugs?

Serious answer: they estimate it.

 

[8ball]

Serious answer: they estimate it.

Seems odd that slavery is not counted.

 

[kabbes]

Seems odd that slavery is not counted.

It’s probably just that nobody has got round to proposing it yet

 

[8ball]

Aa a contrast to the above, here's a recent review by Adam Tooze in the LRB of More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

Adam Tooze · Trouble Transitioning: What energy transition?

An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but...

web.archive.org

Of course the complete lack of the political is a much greater flaw.

The moving away from an energy source isn’t quite unprecedented if we take the example of whale oil.
The background to it is obv different, though.

 

[SpookyFrank]

AI will inevitably give us humans superpowers, let's hope we use them well.

For a given value of 'inevitable' yes.

That given value being, not inevitable at all. Downright evitable in fact. Perhaps the most evitable anything has ever been.

 

[SpookyFrank]

To me, the question is more like - Why do so many people seem to be so taken-in by AI evangelism/hucksterism..?

Well, it's a complex and multi-layered issue but if I was forced to boil it down to a single overriding factor I would have to say, because they're idiots.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Yes, I do know what the IMF is, but I have no particularly passionate feelings about a large impersonal international bureaucracy. I am puzzled about you though. We have never met, yet when I write carefully thought out and well referenced posts, you respond with rather personal vituperation and aggression. You really seem to hate me. What did I do to deserve this ? Why do you want to upset me, an abstract entity on the internet ? I live in Brixton. Do you ? If so, let's meet in real life so you can attack me face to face and get it off your chest

Wow. Care to quote my directed hate towards you?

 

[8ball]

Gonna leave this here - seems like it might be useful as base material - gives a pretty good basic rundown on how LLMs basically work, among other things:

 

[urbanspaceman]

Wow. Care to quote my directed hate towards you?

Not really. Your attitude is clear. And now I will block you

 

[seventh bullet]

I’m sure the new wealth could be used to employ humans. Perhaps middle class people will hire a footman to carry their takeaway coffee and fend off phone thieves.

It 's more likely that they'll turn to fsscism to resist their proletarianisation. Then have convenient amnesia about the barbarism they supported when it ultimately fails to save them.

 

[krtek a houby]

The CiA have the receipts.

For the AI genocide?

AI is powering the genocide in Gaza. Coming to region near you soon. Currently in its beta phase but with a successful client base.

How is it being used? Propaganda videos, that sort of thing?

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

For the AI genocide?


How is it being used? Propaganda videos, that sort of thing?

Battle tested.

AI-assisted targeting in the Gaza Strip - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[NoXion]

Capital controls industry. Capital won't create conditions of plenty for the common person, not without being forced by popular action. Productivity has shot up since the 1970s, but worker remuneration has not kept up with that, growing much more slowly. So slowly in fact that in many cases it's effectively a pay cut.

So I am very skeptical of any of the more utopian prognostications coming to pass under the current socio-economic climate. The billionaires, political classes and the rest of the oligarchs will at the very least need to be deathly afraid of doing anything else but the right thing. Although I would argue that a more permanent and sustainable solution would be to get rid of them entirely.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Battle tested.

AI-assisted targeting in the Gaza Strip - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Also. Dicks like this exist. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-investment-in-defense-startup-helsing.html

I cancelled my Spotify years ago. Fuck those Scandi Nazi weirdos.