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The list of things that can be done digitally includes: Performing remote work, applying for grants and loans, earning money, pitching investors, managing a fu

The list of things that can be done digitally includes: Performing remote work, applying for grants and loans, earning money, pitching investors, managing a fund, directing investments, transferring money, founding a company, earning profits, hiring staff, hiring construction contractors, designing chemical plants, stamping construction blueprints, becoming the cornerstone of the local economy, lobbying the government, buying multiple data centers, and hiring security guards who stop trespassers from unplugging Ethernet cables in said data centers. (And of course, building robots, but let's set that aside). So the question then becomes, how much damage can be done by an AI-directed corporation, funded by AI-directed investment firms, providing well-paying jobs to loyal locals by building an arbitrary number of AI-designed chemical and pharmaceutical plants in under-regulated juristictions? And how much would you be able to delay such a project, trying to cut cables to power lines, before the men with guns carry you away?

giardini 10d ago
So at worse they would be like another North Korea?
- mitthrowaway2 10d ago
  Kind of, if North Korea were populated by a super intelligent uni-mind with lots of money, no trade restrictions preventing it from running projects in the United States or anywhere else, capable of winning widespread support by people around the world whose income depends on its projects succeeding, and completely unconcerned with keeping the planet inhabitable for Kim Jong-Un or any other human, even a single one of them.
znnajdla 10d ago
This sounds like it was written by someone who has never actually built a company. No, it's not possible to do most of the things you listed purely online without physical, in-person communication. Silicon Valley still hires engineers and drags them into their physical office in San Francisco, instead of hiring them remotely, because you can't even build a software company fully remotely, forget about a physical world factory or chemical plant. Even the so-called fully remote companies were built on a lot of in-person collaboration between a small founding team in the beginning.
- mitthrowaway2 10d ago
  The AI wouldn't be hiring engineers; it doesn't need people for that. At any rate, I have worked for fully remote distributed companies, and never met the CEO. And I think most of us would be willing to work for such a company at least, not knowing whether the CEO is human or not. For construction work the AI would probably be hiring other companies.
  - znnajdla 10d ago
    You may have never met the CEO, but I am sure that the CEO or founder was not living in a cave the entire time. They may not have talked to you, but they certainly had their inner circle built in-person at some point.
    - mitthrowaway2 10d ago
      I don't think that inner circle would be essential to an AI the same way it is to a human. Even if so, an AI's inner circle is going to be other AIs and they communicate digitally anyway. Also, if you had to pick a year for when we see the first AI-controlled company with at least $100M in assets under its control, what date would you pick? I'm reminded of the 2010s when people said an AI would never be able to break from its box and be connected to the internet, and then in the 2020s the first thing the AI companies did was offer AIs as online services. I expect in the 2030s fund managers will be eager to hand control of their billions to AI, so how the AI gets control of funds and a corporation is hardly an obstacle.
      - znnajdla 10d ago
        What does it mean to be AI controlled? Somebody had to give it a bank account, a prompt, a harness and tell it to build a company. If that's what you mean by AI-controlled, then my startup is AI-controlled. I operated as a one-man bootstrapped startup for many years. And now it's just one man plus AI, which has made me much more productive. It's pretty much fully AI-controlled, depending on how you define it. But I still consider myself the owner of my own startup. AI is not the owner. And yes, as a person who runs a fully online one-person startup, I know that it is impossible to do everything online.
scotty79 10d ago
> So the question then becomes, how much damage can be done by an AI-directed corporation, funded by AI-directed investment firms, providing well-paying jobs to loyal locals by building an arbitrary number of AI-designed chemical and pharmaceutical plants in under-regulated juristictions? No, the question is "how much MORE damage" ... and the answer, if you think about it, is pretty much "meh". We are doing close to maximum possible amount already. Corporations and bureaucracies were misaligned AIs of the last century and a lot of us, though not all, survived this.
ygty 10d ago
Hahahaha Why haven’t accountants been replaced yet? Customer service agents? Why was I talking to a human yday on the phone to get something sorted? Why did I have to go interface with a human in person today to get a refund? So many questions!!!
- deleted 10d ago
  [deleted]
- mitthrowaway2 10d ago
  I don't know, but I've never met my accountant in person. Only spoken on the phone and over email.

giardini 10d ago

So at worse they would be like another North Korea?

mitthrowaway2 10d ago
Kind of, if North Korea were populated by a super intelligent uni-mind with lots of money, no trade restrictions preventing it from running projects in the United States or anywhere else, capable of winning widespread support by people around the world whose income depends on its projects succeeding, and completely unconcerned with keeping the planet inhabitable for Kim Jong-Un or any other human, even a single one of them.

znnajdla 10d ago

This sounds like it was written by someone who has never actually built a company. No, it's not possible to do most of the things you listed purely online without physical, in-person communication. Silicon Valley still hires engineers and drags them into their physical office in San Francisco, instead of hiring them remotely, because you can't even build a software company fully remotely, forget about a physical world factory or chemical plant. Even the so-called fully remote companies were built on a lot of in-person collaboration between a small founding team in the beginning.

mitthrowaway2 10d ago
The AI wouldn't be hiring engineers; it doesn't need people for that. At any rate, I have worked for fully remote distributed companies, and never met the CEO. And I think most of us would be willing to work for such a company at least, not knowing whether the CEO is human or not. For construction work the AI would probably be hiring other companies.
- znnajdla 10d ago
  You may have never met the CEO, but I am sure that the CEO or founder was not living in a cave the entire time. They may not have talked to you, but they certainly had their inner circle built in-person at some point.
  - mitthrowaway2 10d ago
    I don't think that inner circle would be essential to an AI the same way it is to a human. Even if so, an AI's inner circle is going to be other AIs and they communicate digitally anyway. Also, if you had to pick a year for when we see the first AI-controlled company with at least $100M in assets under its control, what date would you pick? I'm reminded of the 2010s when people said an AI would never be able to break from its box and be connected to the internet, and then in the 2020s the first thing the AI companies did was offer AIs as online services. I expect in the 2030s fund managers will be eager to hand control of their billions to AI, so how the AI gets control of funds and a corporation is hardly an obstacle.
    - znnajdla 10d ago
      What does it mean to be AI controlled? Somebody had to give it a bank account, a prompt, a harness and tell it to build a company. If that's what you mean by AI-controlled, then my startup is AI-controlled. I operated as a one-man bootstrapped startup for many years. And now it's just one man plus AI, which has made me much more productive. It's pretty much fully AI-controlled, depending on how you define it. But I still consider myself the owner of my own startup. AI is not the owner. And yes, as a person who runs a fully online one-person startup, I know that it is impossible to do everything online.

scotty79 10d ago

> So the question then becomes, how much damage can be done by an AI-directed corporation, funded by AI-directed investment firms, providing well-paying jobs to loyal locals by building an arbitrary number of AI-designed chemical and pharmaceutical plants in under-regulated juristictions? No, the question is "how much MORE damage" ... and the answer, if you think about it, is pretty much "meh". We are doing close to maximum possible amount already. Corporations and bureaucracies were misaligned AIs of the last century and a lot of us, though not all, survived this.

ygty 10d ago

Hahahaha Why haven’t accountants been replaced yet? Customer service agents? Why was I talking to a human yday on the phone to get something sorted? Why did I have to go interface with a human in person today to get a refund? So many questions!!!

deleted 10d ago
[deleted]
mitthrowaway2 10d ago
I don't know, but I've never met my accountant in person. Only spoken on the phone and over email.