I completely agree that in a big-picture historical sense that was unprecedented for its time and there may never be such a widescale and total destruction of so many cities again, but those kinds of things (mass killing in warfare, expansion of power over land, pillaging of cities) were not particularly new or unprecedented to the humans who experienced them and as they ultimately unfolded over a relatively much longer period of time than things occur in the modern age.

Over the next few decades with the development of AI and post-scarcity, we will experience things we literally could not have imagined, and these changes will come at an unprecedented rate. We will interact with things that push the boundaries of existence and completely flip long-understood economic and societal principles on their head.

I very much agree that this encapsulates the mechanism by which humans think and expect and scarcity is inevitable, but at a point AI's increasing production does actually outmatch satisfiable human desires.

And we will literally just be able to alter our nervous systems to be satisfied with what we have. That's the simplest answer lol.

That was an entire century and still limited to one region of the globe operating on basic, longstanding ideas of warfare not experienced as particularly special compared to other conflicts by most of the humans involved continuing to do their basic things to survive (only retrospectively by us).

All that we describe with AI here could happen in a year or a few years with unbelievable ramifications that we cannot even fathom. It really is the most uncertain period of human civilization (in a good way, I think).

If there really is post-scarcity though, that means there is an unlimited amount to go around. I severely doubt an economic collapse like the Great Depression could occur. Production will be sky-high because the labor previously done by humans that work slowly, require breaks, have to be paid, etc, will be done by AI that can work nonstop and improve at unfathomable rates without all that much cost.

Edit: To be clear, I don't disagree that this could absolutely widen wealth disparity, at the very least for some short time before that reverses, but I think that effect would mostly hinge on land ownership (the real economic creator of inequality that no one seems to discuss -- those who "own" land (literally nature, part of the Earth) profit from those who don't without doing anything, widening inequality in a way that AI can do little to fix.

I expect the changes in use of AI that precede this to happen surprisingly quickly and in a snowballing fashion where as more people realize the capabilities of AI and more jobs humans work become obsolete, more businesses will continue to increasingly deploy and improve AI systems, creating networking effects of increasing productivity.

The policy response will inevitably move much more slowly, but it will become clear that there has to be a UBI and other services as people are without jobs and production continues to reach sky-high levels, from which something like a UBI would be self-sustaining.

Beyond that, the real question is how does our traditional concept of private ownership of companies and wealth even figure into a world that is operated by exponentially-improving AI systems running nonstop that exceed the capacity of any human to be understood?

I think they will be able to do many experiments with this

Does anyone know any immediate reasons why this might not work (like some fundamental incompatibility between foreign brain cells and a new brain)? It's an interesting idea but seems like it could create problems for the complex structure and connections of brain regions.