What if we don’t hit AGI and instead the tools just get pretty good and put lots of people out of work while making the top 0.1% vastly richer? Now you’ve got no prospects, no power, and barely any money.
That's the scenario I'm assuming. Lots of people out of work, then they start working on ai and using it to solve the post-work survival problem.
But this relies on a few assumptions. 1) there will be open source AI that can solve low resource survival problems, 2) civilians will be able to run these AIs on whatever computing resources they're able to scrounge together, 3) the solutions the systems come up with will let civilians survive or revolt without access to high levels of capital, 4) the systems will NOT rise to the level of independent power gaining AGIs
Note that I have specifically assumed that we don't have independent AGIs. If we hit AGI, then I don't think we can assume that anyone will be able to use AI to solve the problems of post work survival. The AGI will do what it wants to do. I'm not sure how civilians should position themselves in that situation.
Developers can already deploy code on massive infrastructure today, and what do we see? Huge centralization. Why? Because software is free-to-copy winner-takes-most game, where massive economies of scale mean a few players who can afford to spend big money on marginal improvements win the whole market. I don't think AI will change this. Someone will own the physical infrastructure for economies-of-scale style services, and they will capture the market.
You, not a boss, will own the code.
And if you have any needs, you will be able to speak the word and those needs will be met.
You will no longer need to work at all. Whatever you want to build, you will be able to build it.
What about that frightens you?