Economic growth given machine intelligence

Abstract

A simple exogenous growth model is used to conservatively estimate the economic implications of machine intelligence. When computers were expensive, they were only used for a limited number of tasks where they had a strong advantage over humans, in which case they complemented human labor and raised wages. However, as computers become less expensive, they start to take over tasks where they only have a weak advantage over humans, eventually replacing them completely and thus lowering wages. As computer technology improves at a faster rate than general technology, overall economic growth increases dramatically once machine intelligence starts replacing labor. At the same time, the population of machine intelligences increases very rapidly to keep up with demand, resulting in a Malthusian population dynamic with rapidly falling per-intelligence consumption. – AI-generated abstract.