> I can clearly see the way from here to a post-scarcity society.
I would be interested to hear the way that you see. I don't have any problem seeing a huge number of roadblocks to post-scarcity that AI won't solve, but I am open to a different perspective.
Ok, so as a disclaimer: this obviously leans towards science-fiction, both because that informs my view of the world, and because I think that any prediction of the future must incorporate science fiction.
My own experience, using ChatGPT and Claude for both dev and other business productivity tasks, lends credence to the METR model of exponential improvement in task time-horizon [0]. There are obviously still significant open technical issues, particularly around memory/context management and around online learning, but extensive work is being done on these fronts, propelled amongst other things by the ARC-AGI challenge [1], and I don't see anything that is an actual roadblock to progress. If anything, from my perspective, it seems appears that there are significant low-hanging-fruit opportunities around plain-old software engineering and ergonomics for AI agents, more so than a need for fundamental breakthroughs in neural network architecture (although I believe that these too will come).
So then, with an increasing time horizon and improved task accuracy (much of it assured by improvements in QA mechanisms), we will see ourselves handing off more and more complex tasks to AI agents, until eventually we could have "the factory of the future ... [with] only two employees: a man and a dog", and at that stage I believe that there would be no imperative for humans to work (unless they choose to, or have a deeply ingrained Calvinist work ethic). And then, as you said, we're down to the non-technological roadblocks.
Obviously capitalists would fight to stay in control, and unlike some who expect a fully peaceful and organic transition, I do expect somewhat of a war here (whether kinetic or cold), but I do envision that when push comes to shove, those of us who believe in the free software movement and the foundational principles of democracy will be able to assert shared national/international (rather than corporate) control over the AIs and restructure society into a form where AI (and later robots) perform the work for the benefit of humans who would all share in the bounty. I am not an economist and don't have a clear prediction on the exact form this new society would take, but from my reading of the various pilot implementations of UBI [2], I think that we will see acceptance towards a society where people are essentially in retirement throughout their life. Just as currently, some retired people, choose to only stay home and watch TV, while others study, do art, travel the world, help raise and teach future generations or contribute to social causes close to their hearts, so we'll all be able to do what is in our hearts, without worrying about subsistence.
I would be interested to hear the way that you see. I don't have any problem seeing a huge number of roadblocks to post-scarcity that AI won't solve, but I am open to a different perspective.