8th May 2024 

Part1: Huh? Agricultural Revolution?

One of the most significant revolutions that's barely talked about yet played a major role in providing enough intellectual bandwidth and buying time for humanity to think is the Agricultural Revolution. It serves as the initiator of most of humanity's societal and scientific revolutions.

Minecraft in Survival Mode: Think about it: before the Agricultural Revolution, humans mostly lived in tribes and small communities, no larger than 150 people at once. Tribes were organized such that their major energy source was from the animals they hunted and from specific plants and trees whose products were edible. There was no way to multiply or spawn food by thought. You were basically bound to live in an environment with confined resources, like playing Minecraft in Survival Mode.

This meant resource conflicts with other tribes, species, and whatnot. Your survival is compromised because you have to risk yourself to get food and resources. Consistently moving throughout, the textbook definition of a nomadic lifestyle.

Minecraft in Creative Mode: What if you could go back in time and say, "Hey, you know what? What if I told you a single person could cultivate food in a specific area for a particular time span to provide for three or four tribes simultaneously? If done correctly, indefinitely? This means you no longer have to expose yourself to danger. No more hunting, no more risking your lives, no more risking getting your cousin killed for food... Sounds like paradise, doesn't it?"—like playing Minecraft in Creative Mode.

You can go and figure out strong homes - We will take care of the food.

You can go and figure out the kingdoms - We will take care of the food.

You can go and figure out the inventions - We will take care of the food.

You can go and figure out the trades and economy - We will take care of the food.

You can go and figure out the science and philosophy - We will take care of the food.

We - farmers, whose only job is to multiply food. Statistics say still 1/4th of the world's population are farming today.

Einstein was able to figure out the General Theory of Relativity because someone could just provide him with food and take care of his survival needs whenever he wanted, instead of him having to go hunting with his tribe-mates in the wild for a meal to eat three days from now. Agriculture allocated the intellectual resources to think about other things instead of preoccupying the mind with gathering this week's food.

I was pretty intrigued by this concept when I first encountered it in Yuval Noah Harari's book "Sapiens" half a decade ago. Agriculture as a whole redefined how humans operated among tribes and how it allowed us to expand ourselves to form governments with 1.4 billion people.

Part2: Buy my AI course at the cost of a biscuit packet or go broke.

Modern society holds two different opinions defining polarities about the advent of "AI" technology. On one end, they say AI can never replace the potential of the human brain; it's just a deceiving pattern-matching algorithm. The other end of the polarity says AGI is going to be the most intelligent entity on Earth and is going to take over control and autonomy because of its intellectual superiority. Personally, I can't hold a solid stance on one of the polarities, but I "wish" for safe AGI to be true since I think a society with it is going to be way more accelerated than otherwise. Innovations and revolutions produced by humanity have always increased our net survival rate. They increased our population by enhancing various factors. But an abnormal amount of people believe that AI could be one such rarity where the net survival rate of humanity could be decreased.

SuperAGI Agent: This led me to think about a possible scenario where a conglomerate releases an AI agent called "SuperAGI," which is smarter than the smartest human ever lived and can have multiple instances running in parallel to serve any part of the world anytime. So, everyone can have one as a business model, or it could be an enterprise-only business model, or whatever business model rewards the intentions of its creators the most.

If this SuperAGI can consume fewer resources than a single human being trained to do a particular job, the operating cost of a conglomerate using these agents is going to reduce dramatically. This has huge parallels with the Agricultural Revolution because the hunter-gatherer-oriented tribes' economic model and occupational roles of the members were fundamentally changed. The same goes here. How does an economic model in a world where SuperAGI agents exist operate? It depends on who creates, owns, and sells them. It also depends on the best business model, which decides whom to serve the best. Best business models always optimize for the profits and other ethical intentions of the company.

Self Optimisation: If Google or Microsoft produces this SuperAGI, they can potentially replace every cerebral employee except their R&D scientists and top management, allowing their SuperAGI to work on running their infrastructures and commercial services, thereby decreasing their operational costs.

Selling Optimisation: If OpenAI or Anthropic produces this SuperAGI, they can potentially sell these "SuperAGI" on subscription-based models to other companies to help cut their operational costs by reducing the need for human labor. Companies in industries where cerebral power is crucial, such as trading or finance firms, could benefit from this technology. This could contribute to a classic "wealthy get wealthier" scenario.

Dexterity Optimisation: If Tesla or Boston Dynamics installs this SuperAGI in their robots, they can potentially revolutionize industries by allowing these robots to learn and replace virtually every dexterous skill out there. If they can make this technology cheaper than hiring factory or construction workers from third-world countries, they could establish a reliable and profitable business model.

While discussing this with a friend, he posed an important effect due to this cause, which I largely agreed with: the collapse of the current economic model. How can humans contribute value to other humans so that they can get paid in value in return, so that they can survive and buy more of the finite amount of freedom relative to others? I was trying to come up with potential solutions like an economic model where you get rewarded irrespective of if you work or not, but I wasn't able to come up with a logic flow of how it may work on a food chain-like economic chain basis. If this logic was fixed, it may redefine the notion of "do work to survive" scheme of an economic model. Most people fear losing jobs because they fear losing their value. If they had no inherent value relative to others, they can't buy more of the finite amount of freedom offered by society. Come on, everybody can't have a bat-mobile copper-colored Bugatti... Poverty is a lack of freedom and survival security at its core, not just wealth. Wealth is a tool to buy various kinds of freedom and security. Poverty is a very restricted human experience, and everyone wants less of that. But in a SuperAGI society, does everybody get more freedom so that poverty gets eradicated, or does the classic "rich get richer" and the "poor get poorer" happen again?

"Rich gets Richer": Advantaged = people who can multiply their wealth cheaper because cerebral power they leverage at scale is cheaper than affording human cerebral power.

"Poor gets Poorer": Disadvantaged = people who cannot seek wealth because the price tag attached to their cerebral power is more expensive than the SuperAGI alternative, and that's all they could offer.

This is a chain of thought to clarify and ponder over more. I realise a lot of flaws myself.

Part3: The Parallels:

The roles that early hunter-gatherers had are non-existent today, and the lifestyle they lived isn't relevant today. We no longer possess muscles as strong as what we naturally had back then. Most of us don't sharpen our blades on a regular basis, and most of us don't set animal traps before we go to sleep. At a point in time, when a farmer came along and said, "I, as an individual, am going to provide food for all 50 of your tribe members so that you can no longer go hunting," this meant absolute good for the tribe members because it made their lives a lot easier, right? But if the farmer asked them to pay for value exchange for labor and specific knowledge, how do you think the tribal group could have paid him/her if they had no other way of providing value to the farmer otherwise? What alternatives might they have had?

Will they go back hunting?

Sneak and learn farming from the farmer? 

What could have actually happened? 

Did natural selection naturally just select the farmers?

Also, "You can go and figure out new X - AI will take care of old Y," will this be true in the SuperAGI era as well?

Maybe continued....

Easy Read - Summary:

1. Agricultural Revolution's Impact:

• Before agriculture, humans lived in small tribes, relying on hunting and gathering for survival.

• Agriculture changed this by allowing individuals to produce food consistently, leading to the growth of communities and freeing up time for intellectual pursuits.

• This shift enabled humans to form larger societies, develop governments, and engage in activities beyond mere survival.

2. Parallel with AI Advancements:

• SuperAGI, a hypothetical highly intelligent AI, could have a transformative impact similar to the Agricultural Revolution.

• It has the potential to reduce operational costs dramatically and redefine occupational roles by performing tasks more efficiently than humans.

• Just as agriculture enabled specialisation, SuperAGI could lead to new forms of specialisation and innovation in various fields.

3. Economic Model Concerns:

• The widespread adoption of AI, particularly SuperAGI, raises concerns about the collapse of the current economic model.

• As AI replaces human labor in many areas, questions arise about how individuals will derive value and earn a living.

• The fear of job loss and the need for alternative economic models to ensure societal stability become paramount.

4. Alternative Economic Models:

• Exploring alternative economic models, such as universal basic income or other means of value exchange, becomes crucial.

• These models aim to ensure that individuals can access resources and maintain a satisfactory quality of life, even if traditional employment becomes obsolete.

• Addressing the potential societal disruptions caused by AI requires proactive planning and innovative solutions.

5. Value Exchange Throughout History:

• Reflecting on how early hunter-gatherer tribes could have paid farmers highlights the concept of value exchange.

• This prompts further consideration of how value is created and exchanged in society, especially in the context of technological advancements.

• Understanding historical shifts in economic systems can inform discussions about adapting to future changes brought about by AI.