“Conference Report: Threshold 2030 - Modeling AI Economic Futures” by Deric Cheng, Justin Bullock, Deger Turan, Elliot Mckernon

This is an 8-page comprehensive summary of the results from Threshold 2030: a recent expert conference on economic impacts hosted by Convergence Analysis, Metaculus, and the Future of Life Institute. Please see the linkpost for the full end-to-end report, which is 80 pages of analysis and 100+ pages of raw writing and results from our attendees during the 2-day conference.

Comprehensive Summary

The Threshold 2030 conference brought together 30 leading economists, AI policy experts, and professional forecasters to evaluate the potential economic impacts of artificial intelligence by the year 2030. Held on October 30-31st, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts, it spanned two full days and was hosted by Convergence Analysis and Metaculus, with financial support from the Future of Life Institute.

Participants included representatives from the following organizations: Google, OpenPhil, OpenAI, the UN, MIT, DeepMind, Stanford, OECD, Partnership on AI, Metaculus, FLI, CARMA, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Convergence [...]

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Outline:

(00:35) Comprehensive Summary

(02:31) Three Scenarios of AI Capabilities in 2030

(04:13) Part 1: Worldbuilding

(04:47) Significant Unemployment

(05:28) Increasing Wealth Inequality

(06:02) Wage and Labor Share Impacts

(06:43) Cost of Goods and Services

(07:16) Rate of Diffusion

(07:50) Transformed Voting and Governance Systems

(08:31) Legal Status of AI Agents

(09:08) Human Responses to AI-Driven Economies

(09:55) Part 2: Economic Causal Models

(10:51) Group 1: Total Factor Productivity

(12:39) Group 2: Economic Diffusion of AI

(13:55) Group 3: Income Inequality via the Palma Ratio

(15:40) Group 4: GDP of Developing Countries

(16:57) Group 5: Quality of Life via the OECD Better Life Index

(18:34) Part 3: Forecasting

(20:00) Debates on Labor Share of GDP

(21:45) Forecasting Questions Generated by Attendees

(23:27) Conclusions

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First published:
February 24th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyEuDQksQBiHuz7M5/conference-report-threshold-2030-modeling-ai-economic

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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