Maybe I’m too black-pilled / doomer now (is that what the kids say?), but these articles really feel written from an ivory tower. Many of the economic measures are variants of universal safety nets (negative tax income credit, UBI, UBServices, UBCapital, which is new to me). It seems hard to believe those have a chance in America, due to the decades of propaganda against such socialist notions.

Likewise, the article on new utopianism highlights these miraculous changes & humanity’s past faults. The issue is that we see gross atrocities happening every day. AGI won’t fix the Middle East, won’t fix proxy wars, or malicious actors who believe the Iron Law matters more than the Golden Rule.

AGI doesn’t make everyone a rational actor, because humans are messy. While the article mentions the messiness of humanity & notes how idealists caused horrific crimes in the past, it seems to neglect that many of those crimes are still happening, not just in history books.

All the shiny & new thought labs’ ideas require people in power to care more about our species than themselves. I’ve yet to be convinced that trend will change, and there’s more evidence of that continued direction as certain actors see this time as an opportunity to enrich themselves over everyone else.