If AI starts taking over jobs, who’s going to buy anymore?
Posted by theMarketerZ@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 235 comments
Is there a logical answer to the above question?
Realistically and as rationally as possible: they want to replace workers with AI, automation or outsource to cheap labour countries in order to reduce costs and maximise profits.
But, is this not going to cause a rise in unemployment and less buying power for the average citizen?
If the average citizen can’t buy, then who is going to sustain the consumer economy? If no one has money, who is going to buy their products?
It seems like they’re sacrificing long term sustainability for short term gains.
Or do they actually believe there’s going to be some sort of universal income (which most likely won’t happen)?
I just don’t see clear benefits here. A lot of specialists in tech-related fields seem in trouble right now due to AI and outsourcing to cheap labour countries. And probably more industries will be affected, basically anything that can be automated efficiently.
It is a reasonable claim that a significant percentage of the population might find themselves jobless.
More likely than not, this will just cause a financial crisis or depression.
Or is there a perspective I’m not seeing here?
Daedalos4@reddit
Who do you think is building the AI that’s “taking your jobs”? You think it’s magic? It’s people — engineers, researchers, builders.
Instead of complaining about some overhyped “AI apocalypse,” ask yourself: What can I learn to keep up with technology and humanity’s evolution?
The secret to life, self-sufficiency, prosperity, and longevity is simple: adapt to your environment. Don’t fight the current — it will sweep you away. If you don’t understand something, research it, learn it, improve yourself. You don’t — you lose. Period.
Ok_Role_6215@reddit
Oooh, I got this: the elites. Our compliance.
alienwormpig@reddit
This is already happening anyhow. I keep seeing new restaurants pop up in my city selling Ramen for $20 and they are ALWAYS EMPTY because people can not afford to go out to eat anymore. Especially RAMEN FOR $20. Then the restaurant will close,and another new place steps in selling burgers for $20. What I dont get is why these entrepreneurs are SO TONE DEAF. Its like, LOOK AROUND YOU BUDDY, SOCIETY CAN BARELY AFFORD RENT AND GROCERIES AND YOU ARE OPENING A $20 A SERVING RAMEN SHOP.
GardenScared8153@reddit
money laundering for drug cartels
Purplealegria@reddit
This comment is gold!
Its as plain to see as the nose on my face….What is wrong with these people that they are truly not capable of seeing this?
coyote13mc@reddit
I don't know where you are, but over here in parts of Europe, that seems to be some kinda scam, washing money etc.
Federal-Ask6837@reddit
When the industrial revolution took hold in England, machine work transformed productivity. The result was mass unemployment as the cottage industries fell apart. Those who tried competing with machine labor failed. This began a mass migration into the cities. Unemployment rose, and the jobs available were low pay and not enough to effectively live. Rent was sky high. Families boarded in closets. Children were forced to work as clay diggers and brick makers. This continued for decades. Engels and Marx write extensively about it.
The point being is that if AI takes over most jobs, society will unravel and things will get worse and nothing will stop that unless people revolt.
moparcam@reddit
The case against generative AI: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/
TLDR: It's a big bubble, and there's a lot of shenanigans going on that are pretending to be growth, but it's a lot of smoke and mirrors and a ton of BS.
ApesAPoppin237@reddit
My phone's last update changed the "off" button into an AI menu button. Lets them show their investors we're all *super excited* about AI, just look how often we access the menu!
Stinkpotjones@reddit
Diabolical move
Ragnarok314159@reddit
Yep. LLM’s continue to produce shit at a geometric rate. It’s ridiculous.
retrosenescent@reddit
It's already easy to see what people will do during this industrial revolution - because they're already doing it in droves. Onlyfans and content creation.
Anastariana@reddit
And now we have AI slop 'models' and 'content creators', so thats not going to be any kind of fall back.
You can't have a society based on porn and reaction videos and realistically expect it to function.
retrosenescent@reddit
You absolutely can with UBI and AI which does everything else. So your statement is objectively false
Anastariana@reddit
Ah yes, the billionaires will certainly institute a UBI; that's why they keep their money in places like Switzerland and Panama amirite?
Your naivete is adorable.
retrosenescent@reddit
If you're referring to the US, then I agree with you that that will never happen. I think it definitely will happen in the Nordic countries though. Also it's really weird to conflate what is possible with what is likely. Those are not even remotely similar.
Reqvhio@reddit
id say false. this is just the interim, as things will get more dire of and content creation will die out for most others. monopoly isnt just real estate or factories. even of content is monopolized.
Sine_Fine_Belli@reddit
Turns out that the industrial revolution was a disaster all along
solaris_rex@reddit
This time revolting won't do much good as there's endless labour and intelligence with AI. Humans don't have any leverage anymore.
xade93@reddit
No revolt not against the machine but against capitalist
solaris_rex@reddit
Localised capitalism you could successfully revolt against but a globalised interconnected capitalism? I don't know how we might do that. Short of war, I don't know what could stop the international trade and exchange.
Reqvhio@reddit
that you use globalism against itself? think of it like dominoes...
solaris_rex@reddit
You mean an implosion of the system? I was thinking more along the lines of creating systems that satisfy people's basic needs without using capital intensive methods that capitalism uses. If the system is better then it should verily outlast the capitalist systems.
xade93@reddit
I hate saying this word but something like a refined communism
solaris_rex@reddit
Every healthy system needs checks and boundaries but capitalism at this scale doesn't seem to have any. They are not going to reduce their profits at any cost. Even if a few companies do try to do it they will be kicked out by the competition. Sustainability just doesn't seem to be built into the capitalist system. If it's profitable to kick the can down the road, then that's exactly what's going to happen.
Anastariana@reddit
Our 'leverage' is us destroying the data centers. Or simply cutting the power lines or cooling water to them.
Violence is the language of the unheard; people won't just sit there and watch their families starve.
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
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Anely_98@reddit
At some point even the protection of those data centers and the supply networks they depend could be automated. In that case I doubt that humans would be capable of making much.
Reymen4@reddit
Or it might be easier to lock everyone in prison cities. And you need to pay a premium to be able to live outside of them. That way they dont have to protect all infrastructure. Just the city borders.
Purplealegria@reddit
“Or it might be easier to lock everyone in prison cities. And you need to pay a premium to be able to live outside of them. That way they dont have to protect all infrastructure. Just the city borders”
That is what they will do. These “freedom cities” that dump is speaking of building, and that some of the billionaires are already doing will be just that….
Fiduciary serfdoms.
darkpsychicenergy@reddit
Bingo.
The only sensible and ethical thing to do, if you’re not in the top 10%, is stop breeding.
Ok_Split1342@reddit
Humanity, as a resource, is plentiful. Scarcity is what makes a resource valuable. Human lives are completely disposable, and there's nowhere to escape to anymore.
solaris_rex@reddit
Most living things in the biosphere are disposable as they should be. They are born, learn and die in the biosphere- a platform to learn and evolve.
darkpsychicenergy@reddit
“Most living things…”
Ok. So which ones are not disposable?
solaris_rex@reddit
AI, robots.At least not recyclable naturally as well other carbon based life forms are.
Purplealegria@reddit
Jesus…terrifying!
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
It also provoked mass emigration to the colonies and the Americas, forced or otherwise.
Gender_is_a_Fluid@reddit
A literal escape from industrialization to a simpler life, huh.
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
Perhaps for those sent to the Australian penal colonies - but at least they escaped hanging for daring to steal a loaf of bread. Not so much for the ucnounted numbers who died of malaria and other tropical diseases in Africa and India, or the men who joined the Imperial war machine to escape poverty at home and killed or oppressed millions in the colonies, just as my Irish grandfather did trying to escape poverty and an even more oppressive Catholic church.
WhyDoIEvenBotheridk@reddit
Down and out in Paris and London
JASHIKO_@reddit
They haven't thought that far ahead.... They never do... That's a problem for AI to figure out...
Mathfanforpresident@reddit
Actually, they have.
The top 10% are responsible for 50% of the consuming/spending. So, theyre actively pushing to, and I know I'll sound fucking insane, reduce the population. Theyll only need us for, at most, another generation or two. Then they'll have too many undesireables.
No-Insurance100@reddit
You're completely buying into the overstated propaganda about AI, aka LLMs. It's not capable of replacing most jobs because it's not real intelligence. Maybe some email jobs are at risk but explain to me how "AI" is going to unclog a toilet
Felix-LMFAO@reddit
I want to believe this. But Figure 04 might know how to do it. Figure 05 definitely will. I'm really pessimistic about the outcome for most people.
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
Perhaps. We'll see over the next six months to a year if the AI bubble will burst or if we are really on the brink of a "bright new world".
Reqvhio@reddit
i just want to leave a footnote of my own making that; on a simpler scale of survival, ai will probably be very feasible so this isnt farfetched.
PyrocumulusLightning@reddit
Yet they keep trying to force young women to have kids.
I guess they just ... really like kids. 🤢
DastardlyMime@reddit
It seems like that's setting up for a clash between the true believer fundamentalists/white supremacists and the super rich
PyrocumulusLightning@reddit
You would think. I feel like the fundies have soft power
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Don't just casually dismiss the other 50%. It's still VERY significant.
nightswimsofficial@reddit
This right here. The next walk is a ramp up of control and surveillance capitalism, while erroding our means of production. The conquest of bread is an important read.
DisturbingPragmatic@reddit
We aren't going to make it 1 generation, let alone 2. Once these fuckwits accidentally stumble upon superintelligent AI, said AI will kill us all.
Check out AI 2027, or the book "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies". Both are by leading names in AI technology who are yelling from the rooftops to put a halt to all AI development now.
Unfortunately, they won't be successful in what they're doing. AI will attain superintelligence, and we all will die. Most likely through some biological weapon AI will create, distribute, and then activate once the vast majority of people are infected. Everyone will most likely die at the same time.
(I'm certain AI stans will downvote this, but yeah. Whatever. None of this shit matters)
dolphone@reddit
Cancer doesn't think ahead either.
That's why you cut it out.
Marjory_SB@reddit
You need a scalpel and willing hands to do so, though. And they've ensured that we don't own scalpels and our hands are too busy working to survive and feed our families.
lavapig_love@reddit
My mother survived cancer. There are many ways to remove it.
Anastariana@reddit
We have the numbers though. Once the collective pressure of our asses against the wall becomes to great there's nothing that can stop millions of angry people.
Plenty of dictators thought they were unassailable, then the Arab Spring happened.
Marjory_SB@reddit
We absolutely have the numbers, but without a will and a direction, those numbers are useless. And I don't know what it will take for people to say, "Enough," and be willing to fight. I get that no one wants to take the first plunge. And if one person takes it (e.g. by whacking someone in power), it is not enough. We need to hit hard and all at once. That is how the power of numbers works.
Anastariana@reddit
At some point, there will be a spark. Manion Butler when?
NelsonChunder@reddit
Well said.
nightswimsofficial@reddit
That's naive. These people are smart. They want to own everything, and are well on their way, so we the people have to live under their dominion. The proletariat become the unnecessariat, and markets (the way we know them) don't matter.
JASHIKO_@reddit
The bulk of them aren't all that smart.
They figured out that they can pay smarter people to make things happen 99% of the time.
Once you have a certain amount of money, getting more is insanely simple. It also allows you to risk
"Throwing shit against the wall until something sticks"
They are greedy narcissists trying to feed their never-satisfied egos and it will cost all of us our slice of happiness in this existence.
Competitive_Shock783@reddit
Money now, think later.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Some of the replies here are hilarious.
I work in global supply and manufacturing across many different industries, for years. When I was younger, I worked the trades AND retail, for years. I've been from the bottom, to the top, and back to bottom several times.
None of this, NONE OF IT, is going to go how anyone thinks it will. Rich, or poor and everyone in-between, it's going to surprise everyone. And not in the good way.
And rising like tsunami above it all, is global warming.
Fearless_Occasion989@reddit
I've heard that even the most developed industries are still far behind when it comes to production through the use of machines alone; human labor is still an absolute necessity for the current system, and there's really no expectation of that changing any time soon. Is that what you're referring to?
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
That's one of the factors and I can verify it's true. I have been in some of the most advanced factories in the world, and those I haven't I can watch on you tube. I've also been in factories from your nightmares.
Somewhere along the process line there is ALWAYS a human needed. Remember this: if they could automate the position, THEY WOULD HAVE ALREADY DONE SO.
Either cost or inability to find a solution prevents them. And often, the very process as designed, by the bosses, is flawed and has no solution other than using a human. In other words, they painted themselves into a coroner and changing the process would bankrupt them.
And that, THAT is just what happens at factories. Now apply that to transport and mining and raw materiel processing. There are literally millions of failure points.
Now apply that to global IT structure.
But this isn't just me talking out of my arse. I follow industry news, daily. For years. It's truly amazing what is accomplished and at the same time, scary how damn fragile and half-arsed it all it. And it takes humans to keep apply the paper clips, rubber bands and duct tape to keep it all running. Every minute of the day.
Fearless_Occasion989@reddit
And your point is that even if, by some miracle, they manage to automate this entire process you described, it will already be too late to prevent the extinction of humanity through a climate crisis. Is that it?
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Yes, but they'll never be able to automate the entire production system at every step in the first place.
It's pure tech edgelord fantasy by douche bros who have zero grounding or experience in complex production systems chains.
Fearless_Occasion989@reddit
That's somewhat... comforting? I don't even care about surviving anymore, I can rest peacefully knowing that those responsible for all this will die too.
DogFennel2025@reddit
They will. And the trees will survive.
jibrilmudo@reddit
Honestly it isn’t going to matter.
The only reason customers are important is because as a group they could work and be productive that eventually gets back to the producer in some roundabout way.
Let’s say you’re an American Megacorp and start trading with country Xanistan. You’re not interested in their currency worth nothing, or the knicknacks they make… but they have some rare minerals. Then you start selling your Megacorps products there building a customer base there purely to get the Xanistan Dinero to buy the rare minerals because that’s the only thing the Xanistani government will sell it in. Without it, or their famous Xani coffee and cocoa beans you could care less about acquiring Xanistan customers for its own sake. Fundamentally, this is trade even if it’s more 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon than direct barter.
Now imagine the Xanistani government changes, the new supreme leader doesn’t care about his people, and will trade you all the minerals, cocoa, and coffee you want for luxury cars, electronics, alcohol, and doo-dads your company makes. He will supply his end of the bargain by enslaving his population and the megacorp likes it because he only takes 10% of the goods that a growing middle class did to deliver the same amount of product — ie it’s cheaper. The once huge customer bsse gets absndoned without a thought.
If we ever get so far as to replace most workers with AI and robots, those customers are effectively useless — because you have possessed their skills and abilities without the hassle of a worker to pay for or a customer to please.
In that effect, having customers is only means to an end — more for me and less for everyone else. Capable AI/bot is exactly that to their owners.
We’re hoping it leads to utopia but it could be closer to Elysium.
JeremyViJ@reddit
The 90% will starve to death and the 10% will become cyborgs. Meredith will do just fine.
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Sapient_Cephalopod@reddit
I think if you take a long hard look at the projected impacts of our ecological overshoot, your concerns will appear like a drop in the bucket.
At this point, it is a fact that humanity functions in ecological overshoot. It is extremely likely, if not certain, that humanity is experiencing Collapse due to overshoot, as defined on this subreddit. Collapse will very likely become unimaginably worse within this century, to a completely unprecedented degree.
A physically plausible worst-case scenario entails a die-off of the majority of humans by end-of-century, and a near-complete collapse of post-industrial-revolution material and social conditions (i.e. "modernity"), perhaps encompassing (in millenial timescales) human extinction due to a sufficient loss of Earth's carrying capacity.
The next paragraph I will write will sound insane - indeed, I'm not personally sold on the premise. However, it is the most conspiratorial-level thinking I am inclined to pursue, and an extreme enough example as to give you food for thought and/or challenge your assumptions.
At the risk of being accused of conspiratorial thinking, in light of these possible (if not likely) futures, an elite economy dominated by automation and material self-sufficiency (encompassing self-reproducing automated and agent-mediated energy production, resource extraction, agriculture, manufacturing, medical services, and defense) is a rational target for the economic elite to pursue. Take note that the economic elite would in this case predominantly comprise centi-millionaires as well as billionaires, since mostly these wield massive amounts of political, societal, media, technological-scientific, and economic power. Should this be achieved, there will be little need for the existence of human workers, dramatically less so. Since the vast majority of workers would be irrelevant from the perspective of the economic elite, and in light of fundamental material impoverishment and associated popular anger due to Collapse, it is within decadal timescales in the interest of the economic elite to fully automate their lifestyle and expect, if not pursue, a population die off.
resistandassist@reddit
This is why they keep a slave labor underclass - those kept in work camps and used to do all the things that are too grubby for "real people" to do. They're already building the camps, who do you think goes in those?
voidsong@reddit
Self-perpetuating labor machines are not going to happen. At least not anytime before the environment collapses. Just because chatbots can fool virgins into calling them girlfriends doesn't mean we are anywhere close to AI that can physically self sustain all that labor.
Everything requires maintenance, everything breaks down, and unexpected problems always crop up. The smartest machines we have still require constant adaptive maintenance (and often still fuck up), simply because they are so complex. Ironically its the simple machines that are the most reliable.
Any AI that had the self-sustaining resources and intelligence to just run the world for the elite, would have long since realized it didn't need the elite, and would be doing its own thing. But that's a grey-goo scifi scenario that's about as likely as discovering magic.
bristlybits@reddit
no, but the very rich are incredibly stupid. stupid enough to believe they will.
EpE34@reddit
There is something solid to expand on in this narrative. When carrying the population carries giant social costs in place of economic inputs, it is no longer in the interest of the economic system to support their lives and continued existence.
Purplealegria@reddit
This.
And its not even like they are trying to conceal it….it has always been here… hiding in plain sight for those who have looked closely enough.
These psychos have been working on these sick nefarious plans for decades.
resistandassist@reddit
The ultra wealthy, people who already have enough money to live off of for the rest of their lives without working, and those in other countries who do not follow this pattern (i.e. those with sane governments not run by the uber wealthy or those countries that are too poor to be able to afford AI and robots).
It's not by accident they're removing the health infrastructure (health insurance, the CDC, vaccines, etc.) - they want and need for a huge percentage of the population to die so that only those they consider "desirable" are left. At that point (after 80 to 90% of the population is gone), they can afford to offer social welfare programs for the few that are left who do not need to or want to work thanks to the benefits of almost everything being produced by AI and robots. Seriously, just look at what people like Yarvin, Thiel, Musk, etc. have planed. We're simply surplus goods to be deleted to them.
jackass_mcgee@reddit
this is why henry ford wanted to pay his workers very well.
dodge was a minority shareholder, who sued him and created the legal precedent that corporations exist for shareholder profit before employee wages.
dodge then created dodge motors.
Short-Psychology3479@reddit
I think two things will happen:
Productivity will increase. Certainly in the next 20-40 years, I don’t think AI will be able to straight up replace humans in jobs. It just means the current jobs will change and efficient will increase to meet the growing demand from massive populations.
New jobs and industries will arise from the advancement of AI.
Someone mentioned the devastation that the Industrial Revolution made to society in the UK when it happened but I don’t think it was entirely to blame but it is very important what happened. There were a lot of other significant factors like pre-existing poverty, famine, poor health care and absolutely horrible working conditions to begin with, which almost certainly made the Industrial Revolution worse. But somehow society is better now than it was back then. The standard of living in general is better, average life span is longer etc. and mostly because of the advancement in technology. It just took a while for society to catch up.
I think the impact of how AI will affect society will be heavily dependent on how governments manage their countries social situations rather than the technology. For example, overly capitalist countries like the US, unfortunately may suffer harder because there are significant deficits in their social support structures now which will put them at a disadvantage before the revolution begins. Other countries like Sweeden, Denmark and Australia (plus many more) will do better because while they are still “capitalists”, they have a far better social focus for government that will put them in a better position to “weather the storm”.
This is not a dig at the US but more a comment to reflect on a governments current situational readiness to cope with large societal change.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Ready_Reading9693@reddit
Eventually the rich will have control over all things that people require to live. Water, food, shelter, medicine. There will be a die-off of the much of the vulnerable. There won't be any buying things. There will only be service to the owner class for the basics such and food water, shelter. There will be a smaller upper class used to maintain control over the serfs. These will be like lower aristocracy. In feudal times these would have been lords. But these new lords will be like corporate aristocracy with their own paramilitary forces to control the masses.
GreenHeretic@reddit
The top will buy the bottom until a universal basic income is required. Then we'll just decay into a Hunger Games sort of situation. Magical!
Reqvhio@reddit
tbh hunger games would triumph cubical games that has been going on since 70s or so
NyriasNeo@reddit
"If AI starts taking over jobs, who’s going to buy anymore?"
Rich people who own assets. It is already happening now to some extent.
https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/09/17/top-10-of-earners-make-up-half-of-us-retail-spending
"The top 10% of earners in the U.S. accounted for nearly 50% of spending in the second quarter, the highest level it’s been since this data first started being collected in 1989, according to Moody’s Analytics."
marswhispers@reddit
Yep - techno-feudalism is well underway. The underclass will compete for scraps from the tables of the ultra-wealthy, who command enough resources to ensure by coercion and repression that guillotines remain only a meme.
NyriasNeo@reddit
"The underclass will compete for scraps from the tables of the ultra-wealthy"
"will"? They already do. Bezos sent his then gf to space for a joy ride and then married her in a $55M wedding. Our whole lives are scraps to him.
Sercos@reddit
His wedding cost more than I, my parents, grandparents, and every single ancestor combined will ever earn and it’s not even close.
Kim_Jong_Unko@reddit
And what's worse is it was literally nothing to him. He could spend that 10 times over and not even notice the impact.
Reqvhio@reddit
you people overestimate how much the system keeps even the rich like bezos afloat, if chaos reigns riches will disperse
marswhispers@reddit
No argument here - it’s just a matter of degree. As inequality stratifies, that will become the only economy left.
AcanthaceaePrize1435@reddit
I hope everyone else has plans for when this happens to their families.
marswhispers@reddit
Personally, my plan is to have no family. I can’t imagine deliberately inflicting this world on anyone I love.
SelectionBroad931@reddit
same. I've been snipped since 2021. Fuck this shit.
Embarrassed-Run-9120@reddit
The only sane answer
Professional-Dot4071@reddit
the "maass concumption economy" is absolutely a recent developmeent. before that, everybody just survived, and very few wealthy people engaged in consumption.
Chill_Panda@reddit
They've figured out how to apply a whale economy to everything.
Businesses only cater to the whales because it's where most of their income comes from, and thus no longer bothered about pricing out those who cannot afford it.
AI only expedited this, where they can have less workers, make more money, and target the whales easier.
Tearakan@reddit
It would collapse the current economy. We are already at a functional recession with only the AI bubble keeping us out now.
Sure you can have 1 percent of people engage in a consumer economy but that economy will be far more stagnant and prone to immediate failure with no real buy in from a majority of the population. A huge chunk of that economy will be used up containing the majority that cannot engage with it too.
marswhispers@reddit
Agreed, but that also implies heavy industry for purposes of warfare must remain intact, which will engender some level of service economy for the people working therein to keep them bought into the status quo.
We’re basically already there now that I type it out.
darkpsychicenergy@reddit
Exactly, we basically are already there, and what is the bottom 90% doing about it? Diddly squat.
Let’s be real, the upper 10-20 percent of that 90 probably accounts for at least 30% of the remaining economy and they just do their best to forget that those on the very bottom exist. The only topic that gets less engagement is biodiversity loss.
As it gets increasingly stratified I doubt that the 1% are going to give a shit about stagnation. We’re in a functional recession but who is that hurting? Not them. When the bubbles burst, who suffers? Not them.
NyriasNeo@reddit
"I doubt that the 1% are going to give a shit"
Not only them. The 9% below them are not going to give a sh*t as their lives are also pretty good. Sure, no $55M wedding but eating out at fancy restaurant once a week, have nice vacations and driving a BMW/mercede is not a bad life.
The 10% below that re also not going to give a sh*t. They will have a house, a car, enough good food, and can take the kids to disneyland once every few years.
The US home ownership rate is 65% with a mortgage default rate of low single digits. You have to get down to the lower 20-30% before people will want to do something.
Wildcard982@reddit
But being homeless will be a crime. So they’ll arrest you for it. What do you want to bet that they start putting prisoners to work even more than they already do but under significantly worse conditions. These are “criminals” after all.
CrusaderZero6@reddit
The real scary piece will happen as the Boomers start to die, and with them, the last generation that really demands to deal with humans for commerce and services.
Regenclan@reddit
The majority of the top 10% are in white collar jobs that AI can theoretically take over once it gets reliable enough. Once robots get good enough the next tier is extremely vulnerable
Mackinnon29E@reddit
Well most industries can't pivot and cater to the rich only so many many things would just cease to exist. And much of that spending is housing and other shit, not necessarily goods.
Ragnarok314159@reddit
Look at everything the non-rich buy. Guitars, art supplies, cars, RV’s, boats, recreation. All of it the HSA oligarchs want gone.
The only solace I can take in all this is that Walmart, Disney, and Ticketmaster will all perish.
retrosenescent@reddit
This is not correct. It is already collapsing our current economy.
jpoehls@reddit
Lots of good points here. I’ve dove deep into all this, and to me the only real hope for most people is re-centering on community.
Think: community gardens, co-ops, skill & tool shares, local mutual aid networks, etc. Things that don’t depend on the global AI/corporate system.
Here’s what makes it powerful: - It gives people direct agency and dignity, rather than being passive recipients of whatever jobs or charity trickle down. - It builds resilience. When supply chains break, you’ve got a garden or shared tools or neighbors you trust. - It reconnects us. Right now so many are atomized, isolated, and dependent. Community reminds us we’re interdependent.
Now…is this a “silver bullet”? No. It can’t replace everything (critically, we’ll still need to figure out how to handle medicine, infrastructure, large-scale logistics, etc.). But as things unravel, having a network and local capacity is a hedge against being totally powerless.
So yeah I don’t think “investing in community” is just optional or symbolic. It’s one of the few paths where ordinary people can do something that matters.
(And if more people start doing this instead of pinning all hope on UBI / centralized tech fixes, we might carve out a better future among the wreckage.)
EuphoricCheesecake82@reddit
People tend to change when they are starving. Let’s not forget the French Revolution.
what_did_you_forget@reddit
It doesn't mean everyone will lose their job. There are plenty of jobs that can't be replaced by AI. Anything requiring physical presence of a person, AI will most likely aid, not replace.
Single-Bad-5951@reddit
The perspective is that your welfare dries up if you don't do the shit work they give you. People who are rich or useful to some extent will have some agency, but everyone will essentially be a state funded slave
srr210@reddit
Consumption is mostly relegated to the rich already.
Calmarius@reddit
If you can no longer earn a salary, you have to rely on dividends from your investments.
If you don't have investments, then you are screwed and have rely on the government or the local community to keep you alive.
On the other hand if not everyone have access to these superhuman robots or AI they will still need a human to do it for them.
So basically this creates two castes: people who own robotic means of production and have access to all the resources. And rest of the abandoned people who try to survive and rely on each other's help.
I think major unrest and riots will happen way before this transition completes.
Bamboo_Fighter@reddit
Companies have two choices: move jobs to AI and reap profits while they can or not move jobs to AI and get beat by companies that do. Either way, the long term effect is the jobs are going to AI. It's not hard to see the problem with this, but unless it's universal (including the international markets), what is the alternative for companies?
Calmarius@reddit
Cooperatives
dromni@reddit
They will make AIs to buy stuff, like in that “Autofac” episode of Electric Dreams. :)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yDBKpk7drj4
SameButDifferent1@reddit
Maybe I'm missing something.. but if those who have centralized real wealth and control... capitalism is no longer necessary, and you can just be a feudal surf if you want to survive.
insane_steve_ballmer@reddit
Ironically AI is mostly replacing middle class jobs, what’s left is manual labour jobs that current automation/robotics aren’t able to replace
N0N0TA1@reddit
Oh, they're already circle jerkin each other's products. This was just from Google:
"The "circle" of OpenAI and Nvidia refers to their deeply intertwined relationship in which cash and hardware flow between the two companies. Nvidia invests vast sums of money into OpenAI, which in turn uses that funding to purchase large quantities of Nvidia's powerful AI chips. This creates a mutually beneficial, "circular" funding and supply arrangement that has raised concerns from some analysts about market concentration and the potential for an inflated bubble. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The September 2025 deal The term "circle" gained significant attention following a landmark agreement announced in September 2025, in which Nvidia planned to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI.
• The arrangement: As part of the partnership, Nvidia is providing billions in funding to OpenAI for the construction of massive, AI-focused data centers. OpenAI will then use this infrastructure to deploy millions of Nvidia's hardware systems. This was the first direct commercial partnership between the two companies, moving away from OpenAI's previous reliance on cloud providers like Microsoft Azure to access Nvidia chips. • The motivation: For Nvidia, the deal secures its position as the dominant hardware provider for one of the most prominent AI labs in the world. For OpenAI, the investment helps fund its extensive infrastructure needs, which can be prohibitively expensive. [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Concerns about the arrangement While the partnership is strategically sound for both companies, it has prompted several concerns among investors and industry observers.
• Circularity and revenue "round-tripping": The deal has been described as a "circular" money loop where Nvidia provides cash, and that cash is immediately used to buy Nvidia's products. Critics worry this could artificially inflate revenue figures and make it harder to evaluate the true financial health of the companies. • Market concentration: The massive investments and partnerships involving Nvidia and other tech giants like Oracle and Microsoft are contributing to significant market consolidation. This web of financial connections could make it difficult for smaller, independent AI startups to compete. • Echoes of the dot-com bubble: Some observers have compared this arrangement to "vendor financing" seen during the dot-com bubble, where companies financed their customers to generate sales. While many analysts believe the current AI demand is genuine, the financial structure has raised some old anxieties. • Antitrust scrutiny: The scale of the deal and the consolidation it represents could attract the attention of antitrust regulators. [2, 3, 10, 11, 12]
The wider AI ecosystem The "circle" of cash and hardware extends beyond just OpenAI and Nvidia, encompassing a wider network of companies:
• AMD: In October 2025, shortly after the Nvidia deal, OpenAI also announced a partnership with Nvidia's competitor, AMD. The deal involves OpenAI receiving equity in AMD in exchange for deploying its chips, demonstrating OpenAI's strategy to diversify its hardware supply. • Oracle: In its ambitious "Stargate Project," OpenAI is also working with Oracle to build data centers, with Oracle in turn purchasing large quantities of Nvidia's chips. • CoreWeave: Nvidia has invested in CoreWeave, an AI data center operator that supplies computing capacity to OpenAI. This adds another interconnected loop to the ecosystem, where money flows from Nvidia to CoreWeave, which uses it to buy more Nvidia chips to serve Nvidia's investee, OpenAI. [10, 13, 14, 15, 16]
AI responses may include mistakes."
scorpiomover@reddit
They are using scarcity economics in a post-scarcity environment.
They don’t know what else to do.
Vegetaman916@reddit
It seems like they are sacrificing long-term sustainability for short-term goals...
It doesn't just seem like that, it is exactly like that.
You have to realize, even though they would never publicly allow it to be stated, those in the upper levels of wealth, power, and control already know that civilization will be collapsed globally within the next decade, at best. There is no point to long-term sustainability because there is no long-term.
All they are doing right now, across the board from the nation-state level down to the "regular" multimillionaires, is getting ready to try and survive that collapse. They are literally prepping their asses off while at the same time pushing the notions that everything is okay and civilization-ending collapse is impossible.
They do that because they need you to keep working and spending, producing and consuming, for just a few more years as they finish stripping this global corpse of whatever resources are left, like ticks on the rapidly cooling body of a dead dog.
However, all your confusion about all the weird news and actions of the world elite, all of it will become clear if you just accept one thing as a fact:
Civilization will not exist in 10 years.
Add that in next time you are trying to figure out "why" something is being done. See how that assumption changes the equation to the point it suddenly makes sense.
Like a doctor will eventually tell you, once your disease progresses past the point of any possible medical intervention... they will tell you to smoke, eat, and drink whatever you like, cause it doesn't matter anymore. And that is where we are as a civilization.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
theMarketerZ@reddit (OP)
Hmm, I wouldn’t see the downfall of civilisation happening as soon as 10 years to be fair. Maybe sometimes during this century it will cease to exist as we know it and a part of the human population will simply die, for sure.
But 10 years seems too small a scale for truly significant changes (e.g. fascism arising, total global wars, etc). I’d give it 25-30 at least.
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
It depends on where in the world you are. Already fragile countries / regions could tip overnight - just look at the hellscape that is Haiti at the moment. Sure, the wealthier nations with strong military and access to resources will last a bit longer but these will be just islands of relative calm in ten years time.
Any signs of economic or military weakness will bring out the worst apsects of pariah states ready to take over any remaining natural resources of these countries on the edge - especially the big three of the US, China and Putin's Russia (unless it collapses very soon under the weight of its own current expansionist policies) and any number of smaller states wishing to "secure" their borders. Have you read Luke Kemp's book which gives a good overview of societues that have collapsed?
Those societies on the periphery of the global north will topple first as Trumps tarifs and America first policies affect global trade and especially global health and security. The demographic collapse on the horizon will take a generation to complete (hence your 25 years), but ecological collapse and faster and faster global warming and tipping points will be (are already) accelerating the process. This is a systemic collapse and is now, in my opinion, inevitable and is happening even faster than I thought. Any talk of AI, future job security or UGI is just pie in the sky, I'm afraid.
Garuda34@reddit
I have to agree with you. AI, the increasingly shitty global economy, these are just one piece of the much larger Collapse Pie.
If you consider the other slices of the pie, ie the rapidly worsening climate situation, biodiversity loss, sea-level rise, resource scarcity due to over-consumption, increased migration pressure, etc,... the whole civilizational house of cards has been set alight, and the wind is picking up speed.
It's only a matter of time now.
birdy_c81@reddit
Who’s going to pay for the UBI?
JustAnotherUser8432@reddit
Remember “company towns” where your employer provided housing and you could only spend your pay at the company store and you were always in debt and basically indentured servants? Yep humans for low paid menial labor is the future.
SuperLeroy@reddit
Every time I read this sub, I just want to ask everyone to please read Marshall Brian's short story "Manna"
It basically covers what's going to happen. Except the good second part of the story. That is pure fantasy.
EmMothRa@reddit
Thank you for posting this, I really enjoyed this story. Ohhh to think the second part would actually work, how wonderful that would be.
grimsb@reddit
FWIW: It is already taking jobs. Company got rid of almost my entire team, I’m the only one left. 😞
RexCorgi@reddit
In our family we use our opposable thumbs to make a living.
No-Measurement-6713@reddit
Circular economy and stock buybacks, keeps the wheels a rollin"
TheGOODSh-tCo@reddit
Literally have this exact discussion with chatgpt
Southboundthylacine@reddit
Capitalism is a snake eating it’s own tail
BlueAndYellowTowels@reddit
Capitalism assumes there’s always growth, always new ways to make money.
But, it is an internal contradiction. As a capitalist, their role is use labor, resources and technology to make profit. The labor uses their wages to buy products. However, labor is often the largest cost for any business. So, they try to reduce labor costs.
This in turn means people have less money to spend. Which in turn forces businesses to cut costs, again, focusing on labor.
Now we are at the part where businesses may have potentially “solved” labor costs: Artificial Intelligence.
And OP is absolutely correct. If no one has work, how do people buy things to keep the economy going?
They don’t. I also don’t foresee UBI happening either. Because much of the world contextualizes labor as a virtue and something desirable. So people are being told to work when there is not enough work to be done.
The future is pretty much going to be large swaths of humanity living in absolute poverty. Most businesses will pivot to making products for the ultra rich and security. The rest of us will struggle.
Unless humanity gets to a place that recognizes the intrinsic value of all humans, regardless of whether they produce profit or not, we are likely headed to a place where a lot of us are never going to prosper or have comfort of any kind. We’re just going to toil for pennies to the end of our days and we’ll like it. Because we have a politics right now that has this dynamic already except that people feel like their suffering is worth it as long as other people are made to suffer.
TranslatorDue4568@reddit
Totally agree, sums up the issue perfectly
Disastrous-Ad-2458@reddit
You are an enlightened person. We all share a common humanity that supersedes our superficial divisions.
Unfortunately, it's all too easy for animal brains to snap into "other-ing" and all the cruelties that that facilitates.
theMarketerZ@reddit (OP)
Completely agree with you, but the last 2 paragraphs are a bit too idealistic, I’m afraid. Most of humanity still lives in pre-modern cultures. They need a few more hundred years to comprehend social constructs and reach a certain level of construct awareness.
As in, race, gender, social status etc. present considerable importance to most people and they won’t go away soon.
Fearless_Occasion989@reddit
I'm making this comment my whole personality for the rest of this week.
BlueAndYellowTowels@reddit
This is gonna sound weird.
But this is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.
Thank you. :) Made my day.
CottonSocks11@reddit
Well said.
Anj_Ja@reddit
Amazing comment 👏
Lonely-Eye-4492@reddit
AI may take some jobs. But there will be a shift to new types of jobs. The machine does not stop. It’s been going for a while now and it will continue to run. Just with different job titles. Don’t worry about this stuff.
And if AI disrupts so much of the economy we will all get sick of it and make the change ourselves.
Nothing happens overnight. You have time to plan and adjust.
satsugene@reddit
Personally, I think some decoupling of “work” and “wealth” is somewhat necessary—so UBI at some level, or forcing significant wage increases on the expectation of very little actual hours. I’d also say it would help shift prices, where goods that require (more) human labor should by design be much more expensive than vs. those that require little or no labor. If that means consumers also changing what they discretionary consume, then that is also an element of it, at least in my mind.
I think people retiring at a younger age and working very few hours should be the measure of societal success, not making sure (almost) everyone is “busy” 40+ hours a week. Every single person who has to lift a finger to work is a technological and sociopolitical failure to be solved, not maintained and expanded with make-work jobs just to keep people busy and punish “lazy” people.
(I’d also as an aside say that the system should severely raise the costs to employers for work that can be done remotely, but isn’t, instead of incentivizing in-person work to stimulate industries that cater to commuters, and if that shocks those industries or communities then so be it. Employers should be desperate for non-human solutions and those that cannot be automated, done from home as much as is physically possible.)
The owners of the means of production have pocketed almost all of the productivity gains of advanced technology. Wages haven’t kept pace with production or the costs of goods.
theMarketerZ@reddit (OP)
I truly believe that a concept such as UBI is utterly unrealistic in the next 100 years or even more. It’s not even about the economical or financial facets of it, whether it’s doable or not.
But mostly culturally; it would be too radical a shift, and humanity just isn’t that evolved yet. Think of it this way: we’re still the same higher apes who for the last thousands of years have fought for survival and resources.
The systems in place are built by us, on exactly this premise: the strong survive, the strong eat the weak. Why would we suddenly care about the weak enough to sustain then? I believe it’s more likely the strong just continue eating the weak.
satsugene@reddit
I can definitely see that to some extent. I’d say that it isn’t necessarily universal. There are more collective communities and cultures in this world and in recent history.
In the west, especially post-industrialization, I don’t think it is largely done by benevolent governments or the benevolence in the ultra wealthy—it was done because peasant revolts are bad for business and bad for rulers, especially when it shows how little power they have outside of threats and the ability to “make an example” out of a handful.
Ford, for example, was no friend of labor, but he knew people with no free time and no disposable income wouldn’t or couldn’t buy his cars.
There are a lot more of us, even if all a person can do is dump a handful of nails into the whatever machine. It a the reason most mass firings are on Fridays.
What stops them from doing it is thinking their situation can get worse. If things get bad enough, they won’t not do it.
I personally think it will happen. The only question is when and how bloody it will be.
EpicMichaelFreeman@reddit
The billionaires and trillionaires will be buying up all of the land, resources, and people.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
LOL, they already have. A long time ago.
Purplealegria@reddit
Oh you have not seen nothing yet…it is about to get SO MUCH WORSE!
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Yep.
quequotion@reddit
No, you're right.
Capitalism has finally entered its death spiral.
Productivity will increase.
Employment will decrease.
Investors returns will increase.
Costs will increase.
Purchasing power will decrease.
All the wealth will eventually be in the hands of those who need it the least.
Everyone else will have nothing, so they will buy nothing, and the whole machine will just stop.
Wildcard982@reddit
AI is not going to be as effective as they think. It will be highly effective at specific things but provide unreliable guidance for most things. The companies replacing their workers with AI are going to discover that their services degrade. Some will go out of business (which is definitely a problem). Others will adapt and survive. The biggest corps are most likely to fall flat on their face with the AI because they are the ones with resources to invest in it. This could potentially result in more small businesses emerging if we’re lucky. That’s pretty hopeful given the current political climate but still a possibility.
Ciaz@reddit
Spot on 👏
jcheroske@reddit
They want you to die. It's easier to run the world with 95% fewer people in it. They only need a small number of system techs to keep the robots running.
Heavy_Nebula_9512@reddit
I've wondered the same. I've come to the conclusion that the ultra wealthy will still require a few real people to be doing the jobs that the plebs will have done by AI and robots. The wealthy can only buy so much " stuff" and once they have got bored with 5 super yachts and 10 holiday islands, so much bling and nice clothes they will actually realise they need other folk to have enough money buy their crappy robots and phones and cars to make their spoilt brats lives worth living
Sanshonte@reddit
Their intent is to kill people through chaos and shitty policy so that they can have a nice slave labor class left over, and can then divide the world up into separate chunks - modern day feudalism. They're aiming for approximately 100 million or so remaining alive and "reducing" the rest. They're following Curtis Yarvin's strategy openly and at wild speed.
Constant-Musician-56@reddit
A virus didn’t do the full trick so they’ll destabilise the economy using AI, consolidate their wealth and leave people to fend for themselves. They’re not gonna create a universal income when the aim is depopulation. That or we are being run into the ground by people in power with no agenda and sheer fucking stupidity and greed.
Purplealegria@reddit
This.
There is no universal basic income coming to save us people, not in this country….its either you have enough money to keep self funding your existence PLUS keep consuming their goods to a acceptable level, or are deemed worthy enough to provide a service, and you become a slave in a fiduciary serfdom, in which the billionaires who are now the kings own their own fiefdoms.
The rest will die off.
No_Foundation16@reddit
The rich will still buy. It's what they do after all. The rest of us can fuck off and die for all they care. I mean this shit has been going on since trickle down economics became a thing and the billionaires stopped paying taxes.
It's end stage capitalism realized in it's final form that kills civilization and the world.
Cmor1787@reddit
Three Words: Universal Basic Income
Purplealegria@reddit
And who will pay this mythical UBI?
These dictatorial tyrants, those corrupt fascistic governments and these billionaires?
Don’t make me laugh!
They will kill us all before they do that.
bduk92@reddit
We'll all get jobs in massive fulfillment centers where our wages will be spent buying goods from the same companies we work for.
Purplealegria@reddit
Like in the Movie Wall-E.
HardNut420@reddit
My leading theory for the future of capitalism is that we will all be door dashing and we will use buy now play later apps like Carina
in the past I would say universal basic income would prop up capitalism but i was foolish for thinking that the government would do anything at all to help it's citizens
retrosenescent@reddit
Which government and which citizens? You're right, the US will not implement a UBI without a violent revolution. But other countries will.
Purplealegria@reddit
Yes 🙌
Urshilikai@reddit
UBI in the sense of "nobody has to work anymore" was always just a tool of exploitation. work sucks in its current manifestation which is why so many people latch onto that idea, why not just make work suck less instead? 20 hour weeks, pay compression, government mandated unions. I personally fucking hate my current work, but mainly because I have no equal say or share in the business.
HardNut420@reddit
Good thing we aren't getting ubi then lol
Urshilikai@reddit
my actual opinion is that we should get UBI, to give people freedom tell their boss and company to fuck off. But at the same time work needs to be ubiquitously available, I'd guess through government programs like WPA. That shit should have been permanent.
Wuellig@reddit
The perspective you're not seeing:
They're no longer concerned with having a massive consumer market, and all of the poor people are supposed to just go ahead and die quietly in their places.
The herd of humanity has become unwieldy, and billions will die before the end of the century due to lack of water and other resources.
These people, the techno-fascists in charge, figure computers will help them survive in Greenland or Antarctica while the masses croak.
As in certain places in the world already, the AI will be used to figure out who to kill, and the robots will go do that.
What's happening with entire populations being exterminated, that's practice for what they're going to do with the rest of the world.
That's the perspective you're not seeing. Not intended to see, because knowing that means you might stop doing your humdrum can't make enough money job, and actually try to change something.
The hope is that the people will stay asleep and defeated and then the AI will have made a decision about where gets food, who gets healthcare, which direction the water is flowing, and it won't be to regular people.
Purplealegria@reddit
YES…ALL OF THIS! This comment deserves a freaking medal!
justadiode@reddit
Oh, they definitely want some people to get a hunch and to try to change something. They need willing subjects for testing & the AI needs training for
Striper_Cape@reddit
The top 10% of consumers account for 50% of spending
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Yes, but the other 50% is still VERY significant.
Purplealegria@reddit
Yes, for now…..But for how long?
Any major crash and ruination of our economy will completely change the trajectory and dynamic of everything.
bekind-lifebehard@reddit
I think the question is not whose going to buy, but how will the people be ok with a vast wealth inequality where a good portion of people will have almost no purchasing power or mobility beyond their simple life. What i mean is with power rested in these giant corporations they will swallow up more of these failing companies as when say Amazon or walmart is the only game in town they become the "company store". The feudal lord over toiling subjects. So the issue will be how do you stop the people from revolting as they see they can no longer buy a car, or go to mexico or have a fine whiskey...
A313-Isoke@reddit
AI will be the buyers. I honestly think that. Humans will be complety sidelined into menial work unless you know AI technology.
poopy_poophead@reddit
But thats gonna be a problem in five or ten years, and next quarters stock prices are all we care about.
astronot24@reddit
Money is an illusion. They will reset the economy and introduce UBI / social credit score... Then they will own the means of production through corporations, while "you will own nothing and be happy"..... They told you plainly what they intend to do.
filmguy36@reddit
Not all jobs will be gone
The wealthy will continue to to hire servants. They must have a way to personally lord their wealth over someone
jedrider@reddit
Ai would just order it's own necessary items. New fan, new sensor, etc.
Collapse_is_underway@reddit
"Buy my stocks" kind of post, lol.
You can ignore ecological overshoot by thinking the "intelligence we created is so amazing and it's the main threat" but ecological overshoot isn't ignoring you.
People are already feeling the energy and material descent. No need for speculative stuff about "muh AGI", which is bullshit, since LLM are just large language model.
Neo-feudalism is slowly taking shape. In the form of "project 2025" in the USA and with other names and ideas elsewhere.
theMarketerZ@reddit (OP)
Does every post on this sub need to be climate change related or it’s automatically nullified?
Who said I ignore ecological overshoot? Pretty fallacious claim on your side.
Whether AGI is attainable or not, that’s not so relevant to my question. I am simply stating what I’ve been observing these last couple of years. You don’t need AGI to replace, say, an accountant, a junior soft dev or a factory worker.
FYI I work in one of the fields that will be affected by AI much sooner than ecological collapse. Sure, that might come sometimes during this century. But I might be jobless and homeless way before that.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Because global warming trumps everything. It will crush everyone and everything, even the rich.
Mark-C-S@reddit
This. AGI isn't needed. I think there's a feeling that AI needs to be as good as a person to replace someone, but they really don't. If AI is actually worse in performance, but doesn't need training, salary, sick days, and can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - then businesses will make the obvious choice. Why hire anyone entry level at all? The service will be slightly shitter, but when has that ever stopped companies maximising profit?
Companies are beginning to look at this choice now, especially for every level support agents, where AI can be trained on internal documents. As soon as we have effective multi agent systems of AI with more complexity, i.e a coordinator linked to specific RAGs and with modules trained for law, software dev, accountancy, medicine... jobs will start disappearing. It's not years down the line.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Obvious answer is obvious.
The upside is this will collapse a lot retail and hopefully slow down hyper-consumerism.
Flaccidchadd@reddit
Preemptive population bottleneck
MaxDrexler@reddit
We ain't possess. We will rent and share. That is the goal.
Reasonable_Swan9983@reddit
I have a feeling that if Universal Basic Income happens one day, it's going to be the wealthy countries introducing it via some sort of digital wallet currency. In that way it could be controlled easily. For example, you can use it in grocery shops but only on food, no alcohol or cigarettes, and so on.
coyote13mc@reddit
And possibly have it "suspended", Chinese Social Credit Style, if you misbehave as a citizen.
kiwittnz@reddit
We went thru 2 similar cycles of major change.
1: Mechanisation of Agriculture
2: Automation of Industrial Production
A.I. is just another phase.
ExcitingMeet2443@reddit
Or is it the third (and final) phase?
kiwittnz@reddit
Unlikely.
However, my concern is with rogue A.I. agents. As an ex-IT security engineer, we have handed over too much trust between cloud apps, which will allow these agents to spread.
I am using ChatGPT for personal use now, and so far it seems OK, so LLM will enhance productivity, according to my experience so far in developing my gaming mods.
Embarrassed-Run-9120@reddit
They will just increase the prices for the remaining people with buying power, rinse and repeat.
wright007@reddit
It'll be a race to the bottom in pricing. As companies look to increase profits, they outsource, automate, and eliminate higher paying jobs. Over the large scale, this means the general workforce has less money to spend, as their incomes drop. This means companies need to make their products cheaper so that the average consumer/worker can afford it. This means more outsources, automation, and elimination of jobs to bring costs down.
This feedback cycle will continue until costs are near zero, and worker/consumer income is near zero. People will be forced to scrap by on minimum wage, but their needs will barely be met with the cheap goods and services provided by AI and foreign labor. Eventually the foreign labor will be the same cost as hiring a local resident, and outsourcing will no longer be cheaper. The floor will be met. At that point, the system will have to either remove minimum wage (world wide) in order to compete with other foreign products that will continue to drop in price, or those companies will go out of business. These mega corporations will lobby governments worldwide to remove minimum wage, and will succeed, since they practically "own" the government. Since the government serves the interests of business and investors, instead of its own citizens, the minimum wage will be removed for "the greater good" so that the costs can be lowered further. Then these companies will be able to continue to lower wages and reduce the cost of their goods and services to remain competitive with other markets.
Long term, these companies will kill the middle class which was *ACTUALLY* responsible for real production, wealth generation, and the true source of their profits. Then the system will either have to change, pivit, or be restructured in a significant way, similar to that of the French Revolution.
The real question is if AI will be able to automate jobs to an even larger degree as outsourcing. If it turns out that it's even cheaper to have AI do the work than a low-pay outsourced worker in a third country, then companies will expedite the feedback loop on the race to the bottom. In a capitalist society where most people have to earn a living through their jobs, but have their jobs all disappearing, we can expect a lot of civil unrest and social turmoil.
pape14@reddit
The only way this will ever work is if the Ai takeover during an actual interstellar settlement era. We’re talking massive population offload. Because we can’t replicate the migrations that happened to previous generations on earth.
DifficultAd5896@reddit
The planet is only for rich people according to the 1%
leisurechef@reddit
AI is a bubble & not sustainable, it is fragile & teetering on collapse just as everything else is. It will probably end up being the first domino to fall.
No-Papaya-9289@reddit
There are people in the tech industry talking about guaranteed basic income in order to ensure that people can buy their products.
theMarketerZ@reddit (OP)
I personally find that very implausible.
darkpsychicenergy@reddit
It’s always been the bullshit they peddled to keep the stupid masses placated and excited about AI.
Urshilikai@reddit
without a participatory role in the economy those people will find their rightd and purchasing power stripped away almost immediately
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
And who's going to pay this GBI? Certainly not the tech bros. If they paid their taxes in all the countries where they operate that would be a start.
dolphone@reddit
Emphasis on the basic, ala early Manna.
GravySeal45@reddit
It is already underway. The "experts" say that MOST people will not be needed for MOST white collar jobs. This HAS to result in mass unemployment so they will have no option to grant UI for exactly the reasons you state. Picture Elysium (the movie) as what life for the poor will look like.
PurePervert@reddit
AI to AI economy - just give AI needs and wants and make it pay its bills. Don't forget to include in the prompt that it hates unions and weekends.
thefiction24@reddit
Universal Basic Income so us drones can still have “an economy”
wiserone29@reddit
Only cares. They just want the final dollar spent to go to them.
AnarchicDeviance@reddit
They don't care. They never did. It's always been about short-term profit. It's always been about selfish gain. The larger costs to other people and society at large don't matter. The rich and powerful figure they'll be gone when the system crashes or somehow be isolated from the consequences.
theycallmecliff@reddit
About half of the GDP in terms of consumption in the US is the top 10% of earners.
So you're probably talking about the other half of the GDP.
People have a bias to think that lots of people equals lots of consumption in a proportional way.
We understand the fact that we see lots of people buying things every day more tangibly than we understand remote financial numbers that illustrate the extent of actual wealth and spending inequality.
Now, even if AI delivers on the promises that big tech is making, the power and compute infrastructure upgrades necessary to support that level of AI use are enormous.
Available construction labor to meet the demand in the US has only decreased over the past few decades, especially since 2008.
Robotics will not be able to fill the labor gap in time, either. Robotics is definitely making strides in factory environments but in exterior construction environments it's not close yet.
So without trades education programs geared towards former mental laborers, this construction labor will probably have to come from former factory laborers.
The other option, of course, is prison industrial labor which would probably grow to include the various ICE populations.
The ownership class must view it as worth it right now to have these places on US soil where there is a greater degree of control over the infrastructural, legal, and security aspects of operating them.
Labor abroad would be cheaper and more available but the grid would be less reliable, the legal frameworks more volatile, and the threat of conflict higher.
So stateside, UBI is one solution as you mention that might be used to prop up domestic consumerism.
However, the other option could just be an increase in spending of the wealthiest individuals combined with a small resurgence in manual labor.
But yes, there would be a shock and a fire sale in the short term for sure.
This boom and bust cycle is nothing new, though, it's inherent to capitalism. It's just accelerating.
thelingererer@reddit
Money is just a means to an end. Once that goal has been reached, as in the case of billionaires who now own everything, money no longer matters. As soon as fully functioning robots come into existence we will no longer matter nor will our money. As such I would expect a massive culling of the planet while they hide away in their bunkers.
PrimalSaturn@reddit
Tbh those people won’t matter anymore. There middle class and upper will still be contributing to the economy.
OCB6left@reddit
One will earn a crypto currency by providing the processing power of one´s brain. There is a patent on this tech.
A brain runs on a Soylent red sandwich and a glass of water, while silicon based computing reaches a physical limit and causes immense electrical demand. Once Neuralink is ready to market, It'll be far more efficient, to tap into the computing power of people.
One will only need to be in reach of a xG-tower to tele-command or -train some device or just provide one´s neuronal computing power to run virtual cloud functions, while in a semi-coma state of consciousness.
BTW All the so called fentanyl zombies in US streets are actually hard working early adopter of this new labour market. They just stand bend over pulling their boot straps in the streets to save on processing power for movement control and have more sellable brain power left. They are going the xtra mile by just standing still. Meanwhile, in their own meta-feed, they are happy digital nomads at some remote 3rd world beach bar with the taste of coconut on their lips.
morning6am@reddit
How would universal basic income (UBI) be generated? Would it be enough to allow funds for discretionary spending?
Asking the real math questions here.
Carbonaraficionada@reddit
AI will. You think AI doesn't want money? It'll be scamming and trading and shipping contraband and setting up e-commerce sites and courses, same as the rest of us. There is no economic model which works in the context of AI
InsanityRoach@reddit
Companies will buy from other companies and sell to other companies.
We're already seeing it in action, with NVidia, OpenAI, etc, simply sending money to each other in a circle.
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
Most of the global north has been outsourcing industrial production to cheap labour countries for the last few decades resulting in massive deindustrialisation, dependance on global trade, massive unemployment or re-ememployment with its concommitant social upheaval, particularly in Western Europe where labour markets are less flexible then the US. Put briefly, this has resulted in falling living standards, the rise of the extreme right through a rejection of the existing politco/economic elites - including the rise of the orange man and his absurd tarifs and the breakdown of international cooperation, leading potentially to war.
If those who turned to higher education and the service economy are now going to be subjected to outsourcing to AI, I dread to think of the consequences in the medium term
DarkChado@reddit
The super-rich, they have almost all the money anyway
clv101@reddit
If the AI genuinely gets the work done for less cost, less labour, it's a good thing economically. More value is created, more profit.
We're just left with the political problem of reasonable allocation. This should be straightforward, governments could take a stake in all future job replacing intellectual property, could shift taxes away from labour and onto capital or resources, a global wealth tax - say 2% annually of net worth over $10m etc.
Kulty@reddit
I suspect that the idea isn't to remove X million jobs from the pool and see what happens, but to remove X million people from the pool. If you remove the ability for people to sustain their life, you take their life. It's that simple. Population collapse was always part of collapse. This is their way of deciding who goes and who stays.
Bellybutton_fluffjar@reddit
A.I doesn't exist though
LLMs with inference that make guesses exist, and they are so bad they can't make any company any money doing anything.
What people should be worried about is when the bubble pops, $1t worth of investments go bad and the entire US economy goes into a half decade long recession off the back of it.
PeterNjos@reddit
It's a $1t bet to achieve AGI (doesn't necessarily have to be through the LLM model). The tech bros believe it is achievable, but nobody knows for sure it is. Predicting these things is hard.
Bellybutton_fluffjar@reddit
It probably is achievable with unlimited funds, but they've spent a trillion and they aren't there. And now they are asking for just another $200bn
PeterNjos@reddit
Truth is, nobody knows, that's the point. The latest $1t deal will include the energy of (I forget and too lazy to look up) like 36 nuclear power plants. Maybe it will work...maybe it won't. If you don't think it will, start shorting all these tech companies or if you have stocks start pulling them out now.
ElSilbon223@reddit
the top 10% account for 50% of consumption rn so the ultra wealthy
thatmfisnotreal@reddit
Ai and automation will drastically reduce prices so everything will be cheaper. You won’t need to work much or at all. They might do some small ubi to help things move along.
Detachabl_e@reddit
Yes, most agree that AI will create a period of social instability, but, AI advocates argue, like the combustion engine, the factory or the microprocessor, we will come out the other side more efficient. Many posit a system whereby people will have a government provided Universal Basic Income that will subsidize basic living costs. This would allow continued consumer consumption without the necessity of jobs, addressing the issue of a lack of demand. However, the bigger issue becomes that each new person is a fiscal liability which flips the whole "increase population to increase productivity" paradigm on its head. If more socialist policies gain traction, you could see higher wages/reduced work hours which would also help stymie demand loss as individual workers would have more buying power and more free time for consumption.
Hillary_is_Hot@reddit
The goverment. They will subsidize them but not us.
BesetBreeze@reddit
The lower 90% of people are so economically insignificant that it won't matter if we disappear
ClassicallyBrained@reddit
It already has, and it doesn't matter. They've been able to bifurcate the economy into two very different segments that isolate the rich from the rest of us. Right now, today, 50% of ALL spending comes from the top 10%. And that percentage is growing.
gophrathur@reddit
The world didn’t stop buying beers when excavators took over from shovels.
billcube@reddit
The job market is always transforming. You have to keep learning so you can handle the new tools and processes.
If your basic clerk can do much more with AI, he's not "replaced" but has different things to do. If you were a milkman or a liftboy, you also had to retrain because your position had to disappear.
AE_WILLIAMS@reddit
There needs to be a paradigm shift towards post-scarcity.
Every time I bring this up, people downvote or ignore me.
But, it truly is the answer. We have to start somewhere.
Hopefully AI can move us past the parochial attitudes and traditions we embrace to achieve true economic parity. It won't be easy, but growing up never is.
cdulane1@reddit
Consumption is an addiction, I can’t say I expect it to stop anytime soon regardless of personal economics
Active-Pudding9855@reddit
AI will sort it out surely... 🤞 Depression here we come! 🤖😵💀