4 ms·

I think you radically underestimate how much AI will revolutionise our economy. Sure, sonnets are frivolous but there are countless applications that won't be.

Scarblac 4y ago
And those applications will let more work be done by fewer people, show people more effective ads, and make the rich richer in myriad other ways.
- TapWaterBandit 4y ago
  So you think the future is: 1. Fewer people working so fewer incomes 2. More ads to sell products to the fewer people who have incomes 3. A few people only getting rich (and buying all the stuff in the ads I guess?) This makes no coherent sense. Ads as a business model only make sense if there is a mass consumer market to sell stuff too. But if there are less people working and earning, ads by definition cannot be as effective. No, we are going to see bigger changes and more radical changes than poorly thought-out dystopia scifi plots.
  - spion 4y ago
    Could you offer an alternative vision?
    - TapWaterBandit 4y ago
      I think there will be immense social dislocation as all white collar workers simultaneously get 100x more productive virtually overnight without a corresponding increase in work to do. At the same time more people will be able to build on their ideas than ever. A few things that seem obvious to me would be: - Private AI tutors that can go at a student's pace will revolutionise schooling (say goodbye to a teacher shortage anywhere) - Helpdesk work will vanish - Art will explode like nothing we've seen before. I'm already experimenting with writing stories in collaboration with AI and this is only the beginning. - Numerous improvements in a huge number of machines and data analysis in particular will likely get much better. - Due to widespread white collar work unemployment almost certain to be UBI's springing up all over the developed world. - Far more workers will end up back in physical jobs of various types. Environmental clean up, farm work, construction, etc. - Vastly more software will be built as the effective price of building will go way down. - Robots is another area I'm interested in seeing what happens. My understanding is that building robot hardware that is useful is much easier than the software. So if this allows for much more rapid software development we couod see an explosion on robotics too. I'm more certain of some of these than others but those are the ones off the top of my head. Out atm but you could also ask the Chatbot haha.
      - risyachka 4y ago
        It will be a new level of irony if because of AI people instead of focusing on fun or creative tasks will go back to manual labour
  - beaker52 4y ago
    Immediately conjured images of humans crafting more and more elaborate offerings to a man who lives in the sky, and felt oddly, familiar.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    > A few people only getting rich (and buying all the stuff in the ads I guess?) Yes? What is incoherent about this? Especially when you consider that while some products are commodities you can just produce more of, a couple of important ones aren't: real estate, influence, power. Unless we change course, the latter will get concentrated on fewer and fewer hands, and maybe we get more of the former in return.
  - phtrivier 4y ago
    Well, this is a summary of the 2000s and 2010s, so it both not far fetched to imagine the trend continuing, and an understandable failure of imagining how the trend is going to stop (because we don't know yet.) Perhaps there is a tipping point of unemployed people in the areas affected by AI where people outlaw some usage, funnel the funding, etc... Perhaps the disappearing of "free" energy puts people back in the fields to ensure subsistence, and the few remaining intellectual tasks are automated to hell. Perhaps this AI is astonishing us today before becoming boring and failing at the next hard task, buying us some time. I think it's still very much in our power not to blindly follow decisions written automatically on a computer screen. Don't give it a gun anytime soon, though.
- Brybry 4y ago
  I would argue that more work can be done by more people because more accessible tools enable anyone to produce based on ideas rather than only a small subset of people blessed with the required skills. Did digital art tools, compared to something like oil painting, destroy art as a field? No, there's more art and artists than ever.[1] I believe the same thing is true for music. I don't see AI replacing the artist or the author or the musician. I see AI enabling more artists and authors and musicians to produce even greater art. [1] https://www.arts.gov/news/press-releases/2019/new-report-reveals-findings-artists-and-other-cultural-workers https://www.arts.gov/news/press-releases/2019/new-report-rev...
moritonal 4y ago
I don't. I use AI every day at work and agree that it will revolutionise most industries. I do however stand by the fact that at the end of the day, companies like Google and OpenAI want to spend billions on AI, and less on other things. Thus my gold statue comment.

Scarblac 4y ago

And those applications will let more work be done by fewer people, show people more effective ads, and make the rich richer in myriad other ways.

TapWaterBandit 4y ago
So you think the future is: 1. Fewer people working so fewer incomes 2. More ads to sell products to the fewer people who have incomes 3. A few people only getting rich (and buying all the stuff in the ads I guess?) This makes no coherent sense. Ads as a business model only make sense if there is a mass consumer market to sell stuff too. But if there are less people working and earning, ads by definition cannot be as effective. No, we are going to see bigger changes and more radical changes than poorly thought-out dystopia scifi plots.
- spion 4y ago
  Could you offer an alternative vision?
  - TapWaterBandit 4y ago
    I think there will be immense social dislocation as all white collar workers simultaneously get 100x more productive virtually overnight without a corresponding increase in work to do. At the same time more people will be able to build on their ideas than ever. A few things that seem obvious to me would be: - Private AI tutors that can go at a student's pace will revolutionise schooling (say goodbye to a teacher shortage anywhere) - Helpdesk work will vanish - Art will explode like nothing we've seen before. I'm already experimenting with writing stories in collaboration with AI and this is only the beginning. - Numerous improvements in a huge number of machines and data analysis in particular will likely get much better. - Due to widespread white collar work unemployment almost certain to be UBI's springing up all over the developed world. - Far more workers will end up back in physical jobs of various types. Environmental clean up, farm work, construction, etc. - Vastly more software will be built as the effective price of building will go way down. - Robots is another area I'm interested in seeing what happens. My understanding is that building robot hardware that is useful is much easier than the software. So if this allows for much more rapid software development we couod see an explosion on robotics too. I'm more certain of some of these than others but those are the ones off the top of my head. Out atm but you could also ask the Chatbot haha.
    - risyachka 4y ago
      It will be a new level of irony if because of AI people instead of focusing on fun or creative tasks will go back to manual labour
- beaker52 4y ago
  Immediately conjured images of humans crafting more and more elaborate offerings to a man who lives in the sky, and felt oddly, familiar.
- vintermann 4y ago
  > A few people only getting rich (and buying all the stuff in the ads I guess?) Yes? What is incoherent about this? Especially when you consider that while some products are commodities you can just produce more of, a couple of important ones aren't: real estate, influence, power. Unless we change course, the latter will get concentrated on fewer and fewer hands, and maybe we get more of the former in return.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  Well, this is a summary of the 2000s and 2010s, so it both not far fetched to imagine the trend continuing, and an understandable failure of imagining how the trend is going to stop (because we don't know yet.) Perhaps there is a tipping point of unemployed people in the areas affected by AI where people outlaw some usage, funnel the funding, etc... Perhaps the disappearing of "free" energy puts people back in the fields to ensure subsistence, and the few remaining intellectual tasks are automated to hell. Perhaps this AI is astonishing us today before becoming boring and failing at the next hard task, buying us some time. I think it's still very much in our power not to blindly follow decisions written automatically on a computer screen. Don't give it a gun anytime soon, though.
Brybry 4y ago
I would argue that more work can be done by more people because more accessible tools enable anyone to produce based on ideas rather than only a small subset of people blessed with the required skills. Did digital art tools, compared to something like oil painting, destroy art as a field? No, there's more art and artists than ever.[1] I believe the same thing is true for music. I don't see AI replacing the artist or the author or the musician. I see AI enabling more artists and authors and musicians to produce even greater art. [1] https://www.arts.gov/news/press-releases/2019/new-report-reveals-findings-artists-and-other-cultural-workers https://www.arts.gov/news/press-releases/2019/new-report-rev...

moritonal 4y ago

I don't. I use AI every day at work and agree that it will revolutionise most industries. I do however stand by the fact that at the end of the day, companies like Google and OpenAI want to spend billions on AI, and less on other things. Thus my gold statue comment.