stripping all humans of longterm control of capital ... ceding control to ... ASI with ... equal distribution
The whole problem with ASI-soon is that it's extremely unlikely for any humans at all to keep control. It's already a dubious endeavor to keep control of LLM/pretraining/RLVR AGIs developed at the current pace (once they hit the stage of slow-learning prosaic RSI of autonomous next-model building), but it's plausible. If the AGIs then don't soon turn superintelligent for technical reasons, this kind of prosaic control/alignment can even endure for some time. Discussions of concentration of power, resource distribution, or gradual disempowerment make sense within that scope. But then the same technical reasons suggest (to me) that the transition to superintelligence is going to be sufficiently sudden and paradigm-breaking that the modest hope of guiding the LLM/pretraining/RLVR AGIs doesn't transfer to a meaningful hope of guiding the ASIs to promote/follow the interests of the future of humanity.
Thus permanent disempowerment is the baseline outcome of crossing the superintelligence threshold (in the sense of starting to move towards technological maturity), and the distribution of resources (within the breadcrumbs left for the future of humanity) is going to be decided by the ASIs for their own reasons (where literal extinction is also an option). Any human-level changes in society before that (that don't influence the values of the ASIs) are not going to have an impact, and might only introduce additional chaos in the critical period between AGI and ASI.
The whole problem with ASI-soon is that it's extremely unlikely for any humans at all to keep control.
This is a niche view that is barely held outside this website. I happen to largely agree with it, but many people don't. I basically agree with the rest of your argument contingent on there being a 90+% chance of loss of control though but think if there is even a 20-30% chance the people in control at the time of first asi remain in control it doesn't really hold.
The other caveat is incentives. For the people who don't think we will lose control, or think there is at least a moderate % we don't loose control, they are incentivized to gather as much capital as possible to "escape the permanent underclass". This meme is not a tiny part of why we are in a race right now. For the people who are building/investing in this stuff right now and don't believe it will take control, it would be helpful if they felt like the government or society will just take and redistribute all their wealth anyway before they lock in infinite life and 60 galaxies.
Again, this isn't what I want but I'd rather have this than let the capital owners own galaxies and control politics because they made or inherited a bunch of money right before the singularity.
It sounds fine to me. What do you want if you don't want that?
... although in technical terms I think you're looking at something closer to the (never tried and never before even possibly feasible) Marxian post-transitional communist economic system, grafted onto a political system that might not even have a name. Which is still fine.
Non-communist socialism assumes that humans should be rewarded for contributing, either because of incentive structures or just because they should. If human contributions become irrelevant, that all kind of falls apart.
Or maybe it's neither socialist nor communist, since even communism assumes that people are still at least participating in production. Your gorillas aren't really socialist and don't seem communist either.
It sounds fine to me. What do you want if you don't want that?
Assuming you are referring to ceding control and letting the ASI decide rations as the thing that sounds fine to you here? For now I'd like to reflect longer, preserve option value, and keep humans in the loop. I don't have a clear sense of what utopia would look like. Perhaps this would be approximately my preferred set up eventually, but I'm highly uncertain to the point that I would like to delay much longer. I guess this is kind of skirting your question.
... although in technical terms I think you're looking at something closer to the (never tried and never before even possibly feasible) Marxian post-transitional communist economic system, grafted onto a political system that might not even have a name. Which is still fine.
Thanks for the clarification. My word choice is definitely not the best here. I asked claude and it said that what I'm describing might best fit as a "trust", "zoo", "conservatorship", or "sanctuary". It said some people use communism to describe this situation but not everyone.
I'm not clear on the scope of time you are asking for. I don't have a solid 10k year plan. I think in one version, each human is given an equal share (%) of the total capital owned/created by the singleton, and in another version, we would received a fixed amount. Where the excess capital goes and whether the ASI or no one gets access to it I don't know. There are many different iterations of this but I think the core of the idea would be that if we are going to hit ASI (or whatever threshold where the AI can obviously and easily self sustain the economy) on day x, then around day x-1, we hard reset the capital among humans to flat. I.E. on that day me you and elon will have the same amount of capital.
There are two main reasons for this. (1) Is that once we have a super intelligence that can easily grow capital there seems to be little justification for letting some humans have more control over outcomes than others because they came in with more capital. (2) is incentives. Currently a bunch of people are racing to invest and build in AI. Some of these people also think we will get to ASI pretty soon and that there is a decent chance we don't lose control and they become god emperors of galaxies. It would be helpful if they thought even if they don't lose control to the ASI that they will not be rich kings.
I'd prefer we stop improving AI before we hit ASI. But if we don't, I think we should implement something like socialism right before.
I am not currently a socialist and have mostly identified in the abundance center left wing of liberalism. Socialism is a loaded term so let me try to clarify. What I mean is stripping all humans of longterm control of capital and ceding it to the state right before we hit ASI (loosely defined), and then ceding control to that ASI with an equal distribution constitution. This ASI may or may not use markets or other economic tools, but it's goal will just be to give us good, equalish lives. If it needs to run sub agent pseudo capitalism it will do that, but we need not be involved. Again, this isn't what I want but I'd rather have this than let the capital owners own galaxies and control politics because they made or inherited a bunch of money right before the singularity.
One analogy is gorillas in a zoo. The gorillas survive because we give them food. However we fix the amount of food they will receive and otherwise ~ let them do their thing. The gorillas then live in some sort of semi-natural tribal type thing.
Do we say the gorillas are capitalists, since they are funded by capitalist society?
No, they are gorillas in a zoo.
Do we give the strongest or sexiest gorilla more bananas?
No, that makes no sense if we care about gorilla utility.
If we get ASI it will just do whatever it wants or whatever it thinks is right, so why should we seize the means of production first?
The first ASI might be corrigible, in which case the owners of it actually will be able to point it at their goals. Even if it isn't, there might be some small chance that it isn't worth it taking control of earth as opposed to just setting off into the solar system or working with us. We should make sure in that case it is working with the people and not some small few.
What about thorny issues of inelastic supply like who gets to live in New York City?
There will be many thorny issues but I'm sure the ASI can think of something relatively fair and utility promoting.
Why is this different than all the other times we tried socialism?
Usually there are two arguments against socialism, bad political incentives and bad economic incentives. In terms of the internal politics and corruption I'm not sure. I don't really have strong thoughts on the ASI political economy. It might be easy enough to have a benevolent singleton or maybe it's impossible. But in terms of loss of efficiency this time it is different. The economic argument for capitalism is that it boosts productivity. If singleton socialism is 1% as efficient as post ASI capitalism, that will still have far more than enough production to give us all extremely reasonable standards of living.
Isn't this plan incredibly half baked?
Yes, but so is our current trajectory.