Robin Hanson’s singularity economy model suggests that the development of super-intelligent machine labor—specifically, brain emulations (“Ems”) or advanced Artificial Intelligence—will lead to a sudden, hyper-exponential acceleration in economic growth, potentially reaching a doubling period measured in weeks or even days, rather than the current doubling time of about 15 years.
This analysis is based on two key parts:
- The “Sequence of Exponential Modes”
Hanson argues that human economic history can be viewed as a series of distinct eras, or “growth modes,” where the rate of growth dramatically increased with each transition:
- Forager Era: Economic output doubled roughly every 250,000 years.
- Farming Era: Output doubled roughly every 900 years.
- Industrial Era: Output doubles every 15 years (current rate).
Hanson hypothesizes that a transition to a fourth, machine-based era would follow this pattern of acceleration, leading to a new, much faster growth mode where the economy doubles in a week to a month.
- The Nature of the Machine Economy
This hyper-growth rate is plausible because the constraints on production change entirely:
- Labor becomes Digital and Cheap: If intelligence can be copied or easily manufactured (via Ems), the supply of highly skilled labor is no longer constrained by slow human reproduction. The cost of labor would fall rapidly.
- Rapid Innovation: Super-intelligent entities can improve their own designs and knowledge vastly faster than humans, creating a feedback loop of innovation (the Intelligence Explosion).
- The Malthusian Future: Paradoxically, Hanson suggests that even with this hyper-growth, the economy would revert to a Malthusian state for the digital workers. Because the cost of “reproduction” (copying Ems) becomes near-zero, their population would grow so quickly that it would outpace even the massive production capacity, driving the “wages” (or consumption levels) of the Ems down to a bare subsistence level.
In this scenario, humans would remain wealthy only if they own a significant share of the capital (the machines and infrastructure) that the Ems use, not from selling their own labor.
For more on Robin Hanson’s views on the profound economic shifts involved in a potential Singularity, you can watch Robin Hanson on the Technological Singularity 01/03/2011.
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