A news summary based on the article: Kaushik Basu writes that the prospect of artificial general intelligence (AGI) has inspired both hope and anxiety, as it could increase global living standards but also reduce demand for human labor, fueling unemployment and social unrest. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a blog post originally published in 2023 and updated in 2025, recognized that AGI could lead to “drastic accidents and societal disruptions.” Basu notes that a 2024 paper by Jörgen Weibull and himself used game theory to explore how scientific discovery can create situations resembling the classic prisoner’s dilemma. Altman argues that challenges cannot be left solely to the private sector and will require resource redistribution and international cooperation. The most serious likely consequence of AGI is a decline in the demand for labor, which could render labor obsolete in an AGI-powered world where machines outperform humans in virtually every domain.