Man made stuff does not self-repair and self-replicate.
So, no. You are not thinking far enough, only the next step. But it is a complex vast network, and every single thing in it except the humans has that man-made item deficiency of decay without renewal.
You miss even repairs of the tiniest item - which in turn requires repairing he repairers, everything eventually stops.
Humans have to intervene fixing unforeseen problems all the time! It is humans that hold all those systems together.
Even if you had AGI, human brains are far from perfect too so that would not change anything in the end, we have biology to the rescue (of us in general, not necessarily the individual ofc) when we miss stuff.
Let us assume, at some point in the near future, it is possible to build a humanoid robot that is able to operate human-run machines and mimic human labor:
> Man made stuff does not self-repair and self-replicate.
If robots can repair a man-made object or build an entirely new one, the object is effectively self-repairing and self-replicating for the purposes of a larger goal to automate manufacturing.
> You miss even repairs of the tiniest item - which in turn requires repairing he repairers, everything eventually stops
So… don’t? Surely the robots can be tasked to perform proactive inspections and maintenance of their machines and “coworkers” too.
> But it is a complex vast network
…that already exists, and doesn’t even need to be reimagined in our scenario. If one day our hypothetical robots become available, each individual factory owner could independently decide the next day to purchase them. If all of the factories in the “supply chain graph” for a particular product do this, the complex decentralized system they represent doesn’t require human labor to run. It doesn’t even need to happen all at once. By this mechanism I propose the supply chain could rapidly organically automate itself.
So, no. You are not thinking far enough, only the next step. But it is a complex vast network, and every single thing in it except the humans has that man-made item deficiency of decay without renewal.
You miss even repairs of the tiniest item - which in turn requires repairing he repairers, everything eventually stops.
Humans have to intervene fixing unforeseen problems all the time! It is humans that hold all those systems together.
Even if you had AGI, human brains are far from perfect too so that would not change anything in the end, we have biology to the rescue (of us in general, not necessarily the individual ofc) when we miss stuff.