Intelligence Superabundance

Will AI steal our jobs, let us work less, or force us to do more, better?

Induced demand, Jevons Paradox, the Marchetti constant, and consumer psychology 101 suggest that the increased supply of intelligence will create more demand for tasks that require intelligence, that we’ll turn gains in intelligence efficiency into ways of doing new things that weren’t previously feasible.

Instead of a zero sum competition with the bots, we might be on the cusp of intelligence superabundance. We may the same amount of time working, we’ll just achieve much more in those hours than we currently do.

Parkinson’s Law – that the amount of work expands to fill the time available for its completion – suggests that when each discrete piece of work takes less time, the amount of work will expand to fill the rest of the time. But that’s just a rule of thumb.

We can examine it a little more rigorously with a little mental flip. Instead of thinking about AI as something separate from human intelligence, we should think of it as an increase in the overall supply of intelligence.

As internet pioneer David Gelernter wrote in a prescient 2010 piece, Dream Logic, The Internet, and Artificial Thought, “Human intelligence is the most valuable stuff in the cosmos, and we are always running short. A computer-created increase in the world-wide intelligence supply would be welcome, to say the least.” There’s latent demand for brainspace.

Treating intelligence as a resource with a growing supply, we can use economic theories like induced demand and Jevons Paradox, the Marchetti constant, and even observations from Jeff Bezos to explore the idea that with AI, humans will need to do more, better.

Then the important question becomes not “Will I lose my job?” but “What would I do with superabundant intelligence?”

We’ll get there, but first, a little econ.

Συνέχεια εδώ