In this video we learn that Sam Altman thinks inventing AGI, or at least staying at the leading edge of AI development, will allow OpenAI to suck up all the world’s wealth–and Sam Altman plans to “redistribute” that wealth, possibly through a UBI. But he doesn’t exactly know how that will work–especially on a global scale–and he hopes GPT5 will be able to help figure it out.
But he also seems to think that the current massive inequality only exists because people “tolerate” it and with AGI’s even more massive inequality, people “won’t tolerate it”–which shows an absurd level of ignorance as to what it means to be powerless because all the power has been concentrated out of your hands.
Currently, money is a proxy for power, but in a post-scarcity world where these are decoupled, his plan is to redistribute money in order to keep the capitalist game going. But of course, that isn’t the same thing as redistributing power itself. I guess he is aiming for the Brave New World rather than 1984 outcome…but I am not sure he is accurate in his assessment that he will stay at the front of this race.
