That's a world where powerful AI, or AGI, or whatever, exists, and doesn't steal everyone's job, due to Jevons paradox.
In economics, the Jevons paradox, or Jevons effect, is the tendency for technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource's use to lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource. (Wikipedia)
Example: When steam engines became more efficient---requiring less coal---this (paradoxically?) led to an increase in demand for coal. And so, more coal was burned.
A lot of people worry that AI will steal our jobs. The common reply (citing Jevons) is that because AI will also make human labor much more efficient, demand for human labor will increase, rather than decrease. As long as this effect is greater than the replacement effect (of AI labor for human labor), demand for human labor will rise overall.
Of course, Jevons paradox is not a law of nature. It's certainly possible that AI will in fact replace human labor at a rate higher than AI-empowered human efficiency gains.
But, like I said, let's suppose we are in a Jevon's paradox world. If it's a powerful AI/AGI scenario, this means human labor will be unbelievably productive, and demand for this AI-augmented human labor will be enormous.
Unfortunately, I don't think this means we'll all get more free time for hobbies and leisure, while the AIs and robots get our busywork done for us. Rather, as we become more and more disproportionately productive, our own trade-offs between work time and leisure time will shift. Work time will be so productive that the opportunity cost of leisure time will become unbearable. Eventually, every hour you spend relaxing is another moon you could have colonized...
I worry that in a Jevons paradox world, we also get Jevons Burnout.
(I'm already addicted to going through my backlog of coding project ideas with claude. This weekend I stared at code instead of playing video games. During the Superbowl I managed a fleet of AI agents instead of watching the game. Maybe we are in a Jevons paradox world, after all.)
In a way it is already here given how the anthropologists tell us participants in hunter-gatherer societies spend much more time on leisure activity than participants in industrial societies.
Let's say we're in a Jevons paradox world.
That's a world where powerful AI, or AGI, or whatever, exists, and doesn't steal everyone's job, due to Jevons paradox.
Example: When steam engines became more efficient---requiring less coal---this (paradoxically?) led to an increase in demand for coal. And so, more coal was burned.
A lot of people worry that AI will steal our jobs. The common reply (citing Jevons) is that because AI will also make human labor much more efficient, demand for human labor will increase, rather than decrease. As long as this effect is greater than the replacement effect (of AI labor for human labor), demand for human labor will rise overall.
Of course, Jevons paradox is not a law of nature. It's certainly possible that AI will in fact replace human labor at a rate higher than AI-empowered human efficiency gains.
But, like I said, let's suppose we are in a Jevon's paradox world. If it's a powerful AI/AGI scenario, this means human labor will be unbelievably productive, and demand for this AI-augmented human labor will be enormous.
Unfortunately, I don't think this means we'll all get more free time for hobbies and leisure, while the AIs and robots get our busywork done for us. Rather, as we become more and more disproportionately productive, our own trade-offs between work time and leisure time will shift. Work time will be so productive that the opportunity cost of leisure time will become unbearable. Eventually, every hour you spend relaxing is another moon you could have colonized...
I worry that in a Jevons paradox world, we also get Jevons Burnout.
(I'm already addicted to going through my backlog of coding project ideas with claude. This weekend I stared at code instead of playing video games. During the Superbowl I managed a fleet of AI agents instead of watching the game. Maybe we are in a Jevons paradox world, after all.)