You made it obvious: techno-utopic dreams only matter to us 1%-ers.

The average person on earth would love it we could have readily available clean water, cheaper housing and food, reliable healthcare to retire without worrying.

That would actually be blissful beyond our wildest dreams: everyone around you and beyond being able to have a peaceful life.

Affordable housing is already easily possible from a technical perspective, it's a social problem. I have some hope that AI will help with this, by at the very least providing faster ways to make decisions, but that's about it.

It's not so much a social problem as a political problem. Zoning rules are applied at the local level, with the result that having a vote requires already living somewhere and then the rules reflect what people who already own a home there want (higher prices) rather than what people who would like to own a home there want (lower prices).

But technology often can solve political problems by shifting the balance of power. Come up with more ways to make it easier for people to live away from high cost of living areas, for example, so that governments with high housing costs start losing tax base to other jurisdictions.

AI is not going to solve the world's political or social problems. Every person on the planet can have affordable housing, clean water, food, medicine and lots more today if people can collectively agree that we want it to happen. There are no equations standing in our way. Artificial intelligence is best applied to problems our brains cannot comprehend.

I wonder if the California High Speed Rail will be done by then.

If I were a centibillionaire and I really thought Georgism was a good idea, I would make it my life's work to prove it out by using my vast net-worth to buy land in existing urban areas and actually implement it at a large scale. But instead the closest thing we have is the California Forever thing in East Solano County.

Affordable space colonization will solve that. ;)

Do you think we've run out of space to build or something?

Think bigger. Earth will only be good for the next 2 billion years or so.

okay, for now I'll just continue to live in a tent in some Berkeley NIMBY's backyard for $50/week while I pick up whatever small time gig-app contract jobs I can. You've convinced me to look at the bigger picture. Our generation really doesn't deserve to benefit from any solutions anyway.

Not sure if humanity will survive next 2 years necessarily

How will any of this solve "affordable housing".

Well, it won't, but it's fun to fantasize about! Plus, who cares about homeless people now when we're comparing them to potentially trillions of future humans.

how does that solve anything now?

Sort of? I wouldn't want to cover a ton of the planets surface with low rise suburbs, and the hinterland requirements for cities are vast.

At the very least, moving heavy extractive industries out of the biosphere would be a sensible allocation of resources: metal and energy are common in the solar system, but life supporting ecosystems are not.

I have this dream of having 4-5 robotic construction workers* capable of tearing down a Single Family home and building a four-plex in its stead overnight.

Then, I just buy houses in High COL areas and start popping them up and moving families in ASAP. What are they gonna do evict working families? Good luck

Then dissolve the underlying corporation before the municipal fines kick in and escape into the night. Render municipal and neighborhood control laws meaningless.

*may not be humanoid, I'm skirting that debate here.

> What are they gonna do evict working families? Good luck

This seems optimistic.

If a "professional tenant" with an adversarial landlord can hang on for years, I feel like my chances with no landlords and a clean deed is actually much better.

It's simply pitting the most dysfunctional municipal and judicial systems against each other with the default outcome being people being housed.

I don't understand this plan. Won't you lose all the money you spent buying the houses and building the quadplexes?

I think that the plan isn't to make money, but to make real progress on solving housing availability.

Kind off, the potentially low marginal cost of everything housing construction related (due to AI and robotics) really creates a lot of space for creative business plans here.

The municipality can’t take away the land (most of the value here) and putting the house on top will be relatively cheap, given the low total labor costs.

If you have not, do read Cory Doctorow's 'The Lost Cause': it features a rebuild like this (no robots tho iirc.) You might like his mid-singularity novel Walkaway, too :)

> What are they gonna do evict working families? Good luck

they do this all the time!

Or healthcare?

(Or both)

No, that's too complicated. Best we can do is space colonization.

I immediately envisioned the Pawn Stars meme. Bravo.

> How about affordable housing?

But space colonization is cool and poor people are yickie.

Our best shot at affordable housing died with government throwing it's lot in with C-suite feelings and moving to kill work from home.

It was the one genuine, serious potential improvement.

Affordable yachts for me, something something for thee

Healthcare pls