In Defense of ASI Socialism

I'd prefer we stop improving AI before we hit ASI. But if we don't, I think we should implement something like socialism right before.

I am not currently a socialist and have mostly identified in the abundance center left wing of liberalism. Socialism is a loaded term so let me try to clarify. What I mean is stripping all humans of longterm control of capital and ceding it to the state right before we hit ASI (loosely defined), and then ceding control to that ASI with an equal distribution constitution. This ASI may or may not use markets or other economic tools, but it's goal will just be to give us good, equalish lives. If it needs to run sub agent pseudo capitalism it will do that, but we need not be involved. Again, this isn't what I want but I'd rather have this than let the capital owners own galaxies and control politics because they made or inherited a bunch of money right before the singularity.

One analogy is gorillas in a zoo. The gorillas survive because we give them food. However we fix the amount of food they will receive and otherwise ~ let them do their thing. The gorillas then live in some sort of semi-natural tribal type thing.

Do we say the gorillas are capitalists, since they are funded by capitalist society?
No, they are gorillas in a zoo.

Do we give the strongest or sexiest gorilla more bananas?
No, that makes no sense if we care about gorilla utility.

If we hit ASI it will just do whatever it wants or whatever it thinks is right, so why should we seize the means of production first?
The first ASI might be corrigible, in which case the owners of it actually will be able to point it at their goals. Even if it isn't, there might be some small chance that it isn't worth it taking control of earth as opposed to just setting off into the solar system or working with us. We should make sure in that case it is working with the people and not some small few.

What about thorny issues of inelastic supply like who gets to live in New York City?
There will be many thorny issues but I'm sure the ASI can think of something relatively fair and utility promoting.

Why is this different than all the other times we tried socialism?
Usually there are two arguments against socialism, bad political incentives and bad economic incentives. In terms of the internal politics and corruption I'm not sure. I don't really have strong thoughts on the ASI political economy. It might be easy enough to have a benevolent singleton or maybe it's impossible. But in terms of loss of efficiency this time it is different. The economic argument for capitalism is that it boosts productivity. If singleton socialism is 1% as efficient as post ASI capitalism, that will still have far more than enough production to give us all extremely reasonable standards of living.

Isn't this plan incredibly half baked?
Yes, but so is our current trajectory.