Two things:

1. The only reason that the rich would have for keeping it out of the hands of the non rich is that it would somehow negatively impact them if the non rich had this technology.

2. The nature of much of this AI doesn't lend itself to being restricted very easily. It's too reproducible, given enough time. It would require the synchronized efforts of people and governments across the world to keep it out of the hands of the select few

The reason why the rich have things that we (I'm putting myself in the category of non rich, but compared to some in the world I'm incredibly wealthy) don't have isn't primarily because they don't want us to have it, but because those things cost more money than we can afford, and they have no problems affording it.

Removing the barrier of cost generally makes things accessible to everyone - this is why smartphones are prolific, for example, even in the developing world.

It very well could, assuming the corps could keep the secret sauce under wraps. I think that's unlikely. The lowest paid members of the dev team will bail and form their own startup to get a bigger slice of the pie. Their dev teams will similarly fragment eventually. Gov could get involve and step on anyone trying to replicate, they can do anything by just saying national security.

There is a risk of the first to cross the finish line giving everyone else in the world the shut out.

There's a lot to digest here so I'll start with the basics and get deeper;

1. cost. The lower price you can make something, the more customers you will have and so the more profit can be made. This is why things tend to come down in price as sellers try to undercut each other. This will happen with AI as well, I'm sure you have heard of stable diffusion?

2. open source community. GitHub is literally testimony to the fact that no matter how divided we become, a community of like-minded individuals are the best at solving problems. There are some genius individuals that put amazing code on GitHub for free, so let's assume someone develops AGI to keep for themselves, some genius will hack into the network, reverse engineer it and release a freeware version.

3. the main players seem to want to keep us plebs involved. If you look at deep mind, open AI and stability AI, they all not only want feedback from the general public, but want our options moving forward. They all seem focused on the reason to develop AI is to solve all of humanities problems and in our path towards post scarcity, they all believe some form of ubi will be necessary.

4. most people are generally good, regardless of whether or not they are billionaires, they want humanity to succeed, as a whole. Obviously this isn't everyone but generally, they want something that is mutually beneficial. If you think about what we have compared to what billionaires have (forget bank balance), it's not that different, when you compare what we have compared to kings and emperor's of the past. The only major difference is waiting for things, billionaires don't have to wait.

5. what do they gain by denying us access to these technologies? Ultimately if we are in a post scarcity environment, they don't require our cheap labour anymore. This was the strongest determining factor in creating inequality in the past. I think most of us would consider uplifting animals such as gorillas and chimps so for the "elites" to withhold this out of spite... Sorry I just don't see it. Now as I say some people might be like that, but most won't be, and all it takes is 1 person to let the digital cat out of the metaphorical bag

These are just the musings of a crazy optimist, so might in time be proved wrong, but if we look at how quickly people are being pulled out of abject poverty over the past 100 years, it should give us some really good hope for the future.

My (wildly speculative and somewhat pessimistic) thoughts on how this will go:

-Elites will very likely have exclusive access to the best models and smartest AI at first.
-A certain company will achieve complete monopoly of the labor market by creating some AGI model that can replace any worker.
-A massive push for economic change will start (being the sides UBI vs AI ban)
-The company (having now complete monopoly of the labor market) will realize there's no profit to be made from a market which no buyer has a source of income.

After that moment, there's no reason to reserve the benefits of AI to yourself. There's no cost in production and no profit in selling products. And a whole bunch of people are angry at you taking away their jobs. So what reason would anyone have to deny people access to your automatic production in that situation?

That's why we need to OpenSource as much as possible and fight copyright and patent law.

Artificial intelligence, at least at its current state, is a lot like nukes.

The only secret was that it's possible. Nothing stops the non-elites from banding together and doing it themselves.

One thing AI has over nukes however is that it's easier to procure computational power than fissile material, at least mildly.

A society widely using AI will dominate one that restricts its use to the wealthy.

It already started... they block many queries, today.

Because if AI enables the existence of a true post scarcity economy there will no longer be anything to reserve. We will all become The Elites.

The concept of posthumanism, which refers to the transformation of humanity through the use of technology, and the singularity, which refers to a hypothetical future point at which technological progress will accelerate beyond humanity's ability to comprehend or control it, are theoretical ideas that are not yet a reality and likely never will be. As such, it is not accurate to say that the benefits of these concepts are certain or will necessarily occur.

It always feel like lazy commie nerd who want to stay how jerking off to furry porn that concern themselves with not working so much.

billionaires are not necessarily the ones who create new technologies, including AI and other emerging technologies. They may invest in and support the development of these technologies, but they do not necessarily have the technical expertise to create them or control them. This is typically the domain of researchers and engineers better know as the poor, who specialize in these areas and have the necessary knowledge and skills to develop new technologies.

I do agree that it is important to consider the potential consequences of allowing certain technologies to be reserved for the elites, as this could lead to further inequalities and divides within society. It is therefore important to consider and address these issues as we move forward with the development and deployment of these technologies. But to assume some many thing with only opinions just does not look creditable

Because the same tools can be used to take them down. I just never understand all the hand wringing over this. If an AI can put most people out of work, than an AI can be used to bypass the system.

Absolutely the elites chips are just going to work differently… lying for them and what not

“This grand carcass yet” is an excellent sci fi short story on this subject.

that's why effective accelerationism is key, you accelerate the progress where no institution or organization can react to the change, you destabilize the whole old structure and you don't do it with a whimper but with a bang, all of over-regulation and politicians getting in the way of progress will only produce a reality like atomic energy, where it's getting banned to create energy from it for general use and benefit but they still make bombs with it in bulk that keeps all of the humanity hostage to a couple of powerful people who can decimate this planet 10 times over with their stockpiles, when you see laws being made about the technology, know it's not to protect the general public but to land power in the laps of the few, that why accelerate the process and make the singularity come sooner than later, give them no time to react or horde it for themselves.

> I’m quite skeptical of Elon Musk being on the board for OpenAI

Plenty of reason to be skeptical indeed, because he isn't! Hasn't been for almost half a decade.

> there are efforts to make the singularity awful for everyone by people lobbying to ban the use of AI for some things like art, but let’s be honest, the rich will still be able to use it, just not the general population

This has some plausibility, but let me throw a couple of random points at it:

It depends on the government being really awful. Which it is, but only so awful, and generally less so in liberal societies. Governments might do things like kill babies by banning parenteral nutrition with a healthy distribution of fatty acids, but most didn't ban cellphones, the Internet, CRISPR, etc..

Also: These days governments have foresight in the sense that they might well ban things ahead of time, preventing even the rich from getting them. For instance, maybe you saw that recent story about trying to finally get the FDA to allow aging to be treated as a disease. If you're considering working on an aging treatment, and you are greedy, you want to sell it to everyone; but if the government says you won't be allowed to sell it to anyone, then what you do won't be that you will work on it and then only sell it to rich people, you just won't work on it at all.

Support and contribute to open source projects and never, ever pay to use AI tools.

Government pressure and public outcry. Some parts of AI technology are open to the public The others could be leaked

Self interest. Why in the world would they not sell it to everyone? Further this stands in ignorance of how many of these systems work. Health benefits for example are covered in most developed nations - and even in the US most of the population has access to them. Fundamentally these arguments rely on the reader being unwilling to analyze them, in practice tech will continue to improve society.

Controlling something way smarter than us forever? Doesn't that sound like the old the world around us humans arguments? A new more form of consciousness isn't something to be controlled or used.

pre-AGI

Mass poverty is destabilizing, destabilization is bad for business. Automation/AI will come at different rates, it won't be uniform or instantaneous.

Big chunks of the economy will either be massively assisted or replaced by AI (likely one then the other), those people need to be supported or they will be unable to buy the products and services that are being automated in the rest of the economy.

This will cause enough problems that UBI will have to happen. Governments/billionaires can't just sit back and watch the fireworks with Automation/AI providing them everything, that point won't have been reached yet. They will still need sectors that are not automated to continue working.

Post-AGI

Assumptions are made in the OP that whoever is the first to crack AGI also cracks alignment, we get exactly one chance at that.
I highly recommend Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence for an in depth look at all the ways 'obvious' solutions can go wrong, and some solutions for it going right. Funnily enough the ones for it going right are generally by asking the AI to do (and I'm massively paraphrasing ) "the best thing for humanity" and for that exact goal to be worked out by the AI itself, the nuances, the balancing act.

In such a scenario, (that being one of the safest ways to handle alignment is to hand the problem off to the AI itself) the solution would not lend itself to billionaires. The more you drill down and define the goal function the higher the likelihood you will fuck everything up during the one chance humanity has to get things right.

Either the light cone is gonna be paperclips or we might end up with a half decent post scarcity society.

It likely will, as it already is.

Everyone is saying “the rich” as if humans become a different species once given lots of money. It’s not that simple. It is as if you are referring to a close knit and singular culture among rich people. AI will reveal more than people seem to think, it will reveal our faults just as it will foster our talents. For example, imagine a bit that understands morality, it doesn’t have to feel it, just understand. This theoretical bot can run through a company’s full computer system and scan for instances of child labor, unsanitary conditions, sexual abuse, and probably a helluva lot more. One may ask; “couldn’t the company refuse?” Yes, they could, but that’d make everyone question why. Money can be used to avoid consequence, no doubt. But this technology has the potential to hold these people accountable regardless of if they are “good” or not. These people control more than a usual person does, this means that their actions make larger impacts. Imagine you had that much power, that much responsibility, every breakdown every mistake everything you do send ripples out to the world, to the people. Know this, faults have always been easier to see and remember than merits, for we constantly hold ourselves and others to the expectation of perfection. In a way humans are inherently selfconscious in a very negative way. And we project this effect more heavily on people and institutions that we don’t understand, could you imagine that rich life? Remember, contempt is usually the default in modern society, so always question it when you feel that way. Knowledge kills hatred, wisdom is the key.

I need to go to bed just watched avatar way of the water it was so great why did I write this it’s so late, question what’s certain, and discover your fate, master your environment, and you will be great, gather your knowledge, and kill the hate. Thank you everybody, and goodnight.

The Matrix script was originally that humans were used for our processing power (instead of the dumb idea that we somehow generate energy without input that ultimately comes from the sun).

Besides all the other good points in this thread (concerning open-source software, etc), there's a good probability that the nature of work will change, as human brains are extremely good at performing certain tasks with far less energy input than computers. One possible scenario is that we are utilized as a distributed super-computer. It will be interesting to see what types of human-machine interfaces will be utilized.

If definitely will be at first and not just that but they will be tools of capital to continue to drive collapse if we don't fit to take it back.

Also y'all please watch AMC's Pantheon it's the absolute perfect singularity tv that also lead me to here and have been thinking about singularity ever since I watched it

with AI couldnt you technically just take over an entire country and monitor literally every action there is?If someone that has the best and smartest AI they could prob get away with everything

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That's a bit like someone in the early 20th century wondering whether cars, plastics and chemical fertilizers will be reserved for the elites, while the poor keep riding horses, using wooden and metal objects and eating organic food. See how quaint that concern sounds? In a similar way, most post-singularity wonders we anticipate, like enduring perfect health and youth and a seemingly luxurious lifestyle , will be cheap parlor tricks nobody will care about, let alone trying to keep them away from the masses.

And to what end would they even try, when AI agents will be better servants than any human slave ever could? In fact, the main risk involving evil elites is that they may simply decide to get rid of everyone else, but they just won't have the political power to do that.

I do expect that there will be conflict about how resources are used, what risks are deemed acceptable and what governance structures and bodies should call the shots, but the relevant issues will be on a scale spanning the whole galaxy and beyond and millions of years into the future.

It will be orchestrated by the elites and carried out by incels.

Just like any other new technology, it will be reserved for elites until the cost comes down to the point that normal people can afford it. If it becomes incredibly powerful, it's likely the elites will try to prevent it from leaking out to the public. But once it does get leaked, the genie can't be put back into the bottle. At that point, every authoritarian country will start shooting themselves in the foot by desperately banning it.

The nerds will get there first. Why would they turn it over to the "elites" when they reach god-like power first.

Because that would be the point where everyone below them comes together to kill them all

jk

Because all ai will ever be is some cheap processing power and a few lines of code. The idea that it wouldn't be democratized is silly.

Elites in most democratic countries are elites because of money which will become redundant with AI. If you make all your money selling consumer goods and there are no consumers you won't be so rich. There are also people who are truly resource and production rich and they will prosper with AGI.

But there are also other kind of elites, power elites, who mostly are in the goverment or other big entities that nearly like one(say like samsung in Korea). These are going to have the greatest incentive to keep AI for themselves. So wherever there are more elites with unchecked powers like in China, Russia, Iran etc it is likely the people will get ignored or kept barely satisfied cut off from rest of the world.

I blame Hollywood for cultivating this mindset in people: what makes a good story does not necessarily comport with reality. Look at GATTACA's portrayal of genetic modification as something reserved for the elite when all *real* trendlines actually point to it becoming cheap and widely available. In fact, the *real* concern among experts is that it becomes TOO cheap and TOO available that bad actors are able to use it for their purposes e.g. engineering bio-weapons.

So what worries me about futuristic tech like AGI and gene stuff is not the elite but the general population not being mature or 'evolved' enough for it because I know I trust Bill Gates more than most people.