Transformative AI will demand a rethink of the entire economic system. The world economy is based on an underlying assumption that most humans are essentially capable of being productive in some real way that generates value. Once that concept is eroded, and my intuition is that it will only take a surprisingly small percentage of people being rendered unproductive, some form of redistribution will probably be required. Rather than designing this system in such a way that ‘basic’ needs are provided/paid for, I think a percentage of output from AI gains should be redistributed. After all, defining ‘basic’ needs is hard-people have drastically different definitions that change over time and location. The basic needs of someone in 1000AD are obviously not the same as in 2023.
If this approach is used, it also lessens popular anxiety about AI. They have direct benefits that scale with the success of it. Most likely, the hardest part of all this is changing an economic system that is highly entrenched.
I don’t think AI in the long run will be comparable to events like the industrial revolution (or anything, historically) because AI will be less tool like and more agent like in my view. That is not a situation that draws any historical precedent. A famous investor, Ray Dalio made a point something along the lines that recessions, bubbles etc (but really any rare-ish economic event) are incredibly hard to model because the length of time the economic system has existed is actually relatively short so we don’t have that large a sample size. That point can be extrapolated across to this situation almost exactly. Technological revolutions are incredibly rare and we do not have enough of them to find two that are very similar. I don’t think AI is going to be like anything that came before and I don’t see why the economic system would be durable towards shocks like it.