The road to AI Utopia Goes Through Hell

In this prophecy which I made in 2023, AI in 100 years is a matter of philosophy, I described a utopian future when AI has matured. I predicted that people no longer work, everything is free, the concept of property and ownership disappears. Two years later, Elon Musk made a very similar prediction.

However, before AI evolves into that maturity, the transition period is extremely bleak and terrifying. The tumbling down the cliff has already started. Large enterprises such as Amazon are conducting massive lay-offs while their profit significantly increases. This is the result of replacing humans with AI. 

This started a vicious cycle:

1. The more intelligent AI becomes, the less humans businesses need to employ. Microsoft CEO recently predicted that within 18 months all white-collar jobs will be gone. Blue collar jobs will soon follow when robots mature.

2. When a large percentage of people in a society are unemployed, the profits of businesses will decrease because there are less and less people who can afford their products. Thus, businesses are forced to reduce cost more aggressively by replacing more humans with AI, which cools down the economy further.

3. The businesses know where it leads to, but if one business refuses to replace humans with AI, its cost is higher than others, so it dies first. So everyone will be forced to strengthen this vicious cycle.

Until one day, governments no longer have money for hospitals, roads, and police. Massive unemployment will cause social unrest, demagogues ten times more vicious than Trump, Orbán and  Erdoğan will ride the anger of the mob to establish dictatorship, plunging humanity into eternal darkness.

This is not fear mongering. I can see it happening with my own eyes.

How to prevent this catastrophe from happening?

One of the possible solutions is that the government taxes businesses for the profits they make by replacing humans. 

If a business saves $50K per year by replacing a human with AI, then it needs to pay $20K or $30k to the government as a special tax. 

This way, the government is not trying to stem the inevitable AI tide – businesses can still benefit from AI and the government is with them, not against them. 

Then, the government uses this special tax to help jobless people to maintain a decent life, and this guarantees that AI-powered businesses do not run out of customers. This will soften the pressure on the businesses to cut humans more and more aggressively, and help the transition to the ultimate utopian stage to be rolled out in a controlled manner.

All developed countries must launch this AI tax together. Otherwise, if one country launches it, the busineses in this country will simply move to another county.