5 ms·

Maybe this is alarmist, but I don't see how LLMs don't collapse our entire economic system over the next decade or so. This is coming for all of us, not just th

Maybe this is alarmist, but I don't see how LLMs don't collapse our entire economic system over the next decade or so. This is coming for all of us, not just the NLP experts in big company research groups. Being able to cheaply/instantly perform virtually any task is great until you realize there is now nobody left to buy your product or service because the entire middle class has been put out of work by LLMs. And the service industries that depend on those middle class knowledge workers will be out of work because nobody can afford to purchase their services. I don't see how this doesn't end with guillotines coming out for the owner class and/or terrorism against the companies powering this revolution. I hope I'm wrong.

qwerty3344 4y ago
There are entire sectors of the economy that LLMs can't touch - hospitality, manufacturing, caregivers, religious sectors, live-action entertainment, etc. Sure some of these will be replaced by robots but there will always be new jobs too.
- jurassic 4y ago
  No, there are not. Everything in the economy is connected and you can't have a vibrant industry without customers. The customers of hospitality/entertainment/healthcare/etc businesses are largely the middle class who will be put out of work by LLMs. So the person who today makes $200/night in tips waiting tables at a nice restaurant.... who will be buying those meals?
  - woah 4y ago
    Someone who uses an LLM as a tool to perform a useful service
    - seydor 4y ago
      That would be another LLM or a robot then
    - bilbo0s 4y ago
      I think the material point is that there will be far fewer of those people if everything goes well. You should need fewer people to do any arbitrary task when you are leveraging LLMs. My own opinion is that people are going to have to become creators. And quickly. You can still create digital products, but you'll need to be a lot more quiet about what you're doing. And you'll need to have a facility for abstract thought to come up with ideas that no one else has yet.
    - s__s 4y ago
      With a few exceptions, using an LLM to perform a useful service is something that almost anyone will be able to do. Therefore these jobs will be not pay well.
      - qwerty3344 4y ago
        There is huge variation in how well people can prompt LLMs, prompt-engineering has many tricks that aren't obvious, that's why there's prompt engineers,
      - listenallyall 4y ago
        That seems kind of like saying "using Excel to add numbers is something that almost anyone will be able to do" -- true, but the difficult part is (obviously a vast simplification) determining which numbers to add, under what conditions, and to decide what to do based on the result.
- seydor 4y ago
  white collar workers detest these jobs the only reason they studied, went to university etc was to avoid doing manual labour. this has been happening for decades, a century. they ll be depressed
  - krapp 4y ago
    Just give them the same lecture they like to trot out about supply and demand and how automation simply creates new opportunities. And then have an AI compose a dirge to play on the world's smallest violin for them.
    - seydor 4y ago
      it's not even their fault. societies, cities have been built to produce this kind of people
      - krapp 4y ago
        It isn't anyone's fault but the capitalist class. Still, real life holds no sympathy for people who consider any work beneath their dignity. They'll be depressed? Tough shit, we're all depressed.
        theelous3 4y ago
        I'm not depressed:) Software dev. If computer steal my computer job, I have plenty of other physical skills. Specialisation is for insects.
  - timeon 4y ago
    > the only reason they studied I was just curios.
toss1 4y ago
The owner class gets enlightened and makes sure that the govt taxes them and implements a solid Universal Basic Income This is part of what the original UBI concept was about. If this doesn't happen, yes, there will likely be violence until it is fixed. The other view is that many technologies that were supposed to reduce work actually net added work, because now more sophisticated tasks could be done by the humans, so the net was similar to the highway paradox where more and wider highways breed more traffic by induced demand. Where would this demand come from? IDK, but at least initially, these LLMs make such massive errors that keeping a lid on the now-hyper-industrial-scale bullshit[0] spewed by these machines will make many more full time jobs. Seriously, just today I was amazed at how the GPT model tried to not only BS me with completely fabricated author names for an article that I had it summarize, but it repeatedly did so even after being successively prompted more and more specifically to where it could find the actual author (hint: right after the byline starting with the word "Author". It just keep apologizing and then doubling down on more fantastic lies, as if it were very motivated to hide the truth (I know it's not, that's just how fantablous it was). [0] Bullshit being defined as speech or writing telling a good tale but with zero regard to the truth or falsehood of any part of it — with no malice but nonetheless a salad of truth and lies.
- nottathrowaway3 4y ago
  The answer will either be some socialist rationing policy, or genocide. Current "work for a living" systems only sustained the population because a human could be the most cost-effective way to get something done. Unless there are still tasks where human labor is the best option (research jobs maybe), this entire economic system will collapse.
- xdennis 4y ago
  > The owner class gets enlightened and makes sure that the govt taxes them and implements a solid Universal Basic Income But where will they make their billions from if everyone will be living on a basic income? Less money for them will mean less tax money, and less UBI. It will spiral out of control into complete societal collapse if AI doesn't hit a plateau soon.
  - 4y ago
blablabla123 4y ago
Yeah also considering the article on Ars today about people testing whether ChatGPT poses no harm. I think singularity is coming but much differently than anticipated. So yes, the economy will have to change massively and less work hours are needed. (And the concepts are there: Negative Income tax, Universal basic income...) The change will be more graceful the less everybody is in denial. As mentioned elsewhere this is not the first technological disruption in the economy. The change from heavy industry to a service industry didn't go well, hopefully it's possible to take learnings from this and do it right this time.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  What does "doing it right this time" entail? How does it look like?
  - blablabla123 4y ago
    I'm not completely sure but considering how the coal industry went slowly out-of-business with subsidiaries going on for decades - at least that's how it was in Germany - this doesn't seem the way to go. At least I'm more than surprised that companies and the state were looking into early pensions instead of options to start from 0 at a new job. For other legacy industries like the German ICE car industry it was at times a close call, so that's when the 35 hour week became widely adopted during the 90s. Even today it is still an option for new people joining (working on non-legacy products of course).

qwerty3344 4y ago

There are entire sectors of the economy that LLMs can't touch - hospitality, manufacturing, caregivers, religious sectors, live-action entertainment, etc. Sure some of these will be replaced by robots but there will always be new jobs too.

jurassic 4y ago
No, there are not. Everything in the economy is connected and you can't have a vibrant industry without customers. The customers of hospitality/entertainment/healthcare/etc businesses are largely the middle class who will be put out of work by LLMs. So the person who today makes $200/night in tips waiting tables at a nice restaurant.... who will be buying those meals?
- woah 4y ago
  Someone who uses an LLM as a tool to perform a useful service
  - seydor 4y ago
    That would be another LLM or a robot then
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    I think the material point is that there will be far fewer of those people if everything goes well. You should need fewer people to do any arbitrary task when you are leveraging LLMs. My own opinion is that people are going to have to become creators. And quickly. You can still create digital products, but you'll need to be a lot more quiet about what you're doing. And you'll need to have a facility for abstract thought to come up with ideas that no one else has yet.
  - s__s 4y ago
    With a few exceptions, using an LLM to perform a useful service is something that almost anyone will be able to do. Therefore these jobs will be not pay well.
    - qwerty3344 4y ago
      There is huge variation in how well people can prompt LLMs, prompt-engineering has many tricks that aren't obvious, that's why there's prompt engineers,
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      That seems kind of like saying "using Excel to add numbers is something that almost anyone will be able to do" -- true, but the difficult part is (obviously a vast simplification) determining which numbers to add, under what conditions, and to decide what to do based on the result.
seydor 4y ago
white collar workers detest these jobs the only reason they studied, went to university etc was to avoid doing manual labour. this has been happening for decades, a century. they ll be depressed
- krapp 4y ago
  Just give them the same lecture they like to trot out about supply and demand and how automation simply creates new opportunities. And then have an AI compose a dirge to play on the world's smallest violin for them.
  - seydor 4y ago
    it's not even their fault. societies, cities have been built to produce this kind of people
    - krapp 4y ago
      It isn't anyone's fault but the capitalist class. Still, real life holds no sympathy for people who consider any work beneath their dignity. They'll be depressed? Tough shit, we're all depressed.
      - theelous3 4y ago
        I'm not depressed:) Software dev. If computer steal my computer job, I have plenty of other physical skills. Specialisation is for insects.
- timeon 4y ago
  > the only reason they studied I was just curios.

toss1 4y ago

The owner class gets enlightened and makes sure that the govt taxes them and implements a solid Universal Basic Income This is part of what the original UBI concept was about. If this doesn't happen, yes, there will likely be violence until it is fixed. The other view is that many technologies that were supposed to reduce work actually net added work, because now more sophisticated tasks could be done by the humans, so the net was similar to the highway paradox where more and wider highways breed more traffic by induced demand. Where would this demand come from? IDK, but at least initially, these LLMs make such massive errors that keeping a lid on the now-hyper-industrial-scale bullshit[0] spewed by these machines will make many more full time jobs. Seriously, just today I was amazed at how the GPT model tried to not only BS me with completely fabricated author names for an article that I had it summarize, but it repeatedly did so even after being successively prompted more and more specifically to where it could find the actual author (hint: right after the byline starting with the word "Author". It just keep apologizing and then doubling down on more fantastic lies, as if it were very motivated to hide the truth (I know it's not, that's just how fantablous it was). [0] Bullshit being defined as speech or writing telling a good tale but with zero regard to the truth or falsehood of any part of it — with no malice but nonetheless a salad of truth and lies.

nottathrowaway3 4y ago
The answer will either be some socialist rationing policy, or genocide. Current "work for a living" systems only sustained the population because a human could be the most cost-effective way to get something done. Unless there are still tasks where human labor is the best option (research jobs maybe), this entire economic system will collapse.
xdennis 4y ago
> The owner class gets enlightened and makes sure that the govt taxes them and implements a solid Universal Basic Income But where will they make their billions from if everyone will be living on a basic income? Less money for them will mean less tax money, and less UBI. It will spiral out of control into complete societal collapse if AI doesn't hit a plateau soon.
- 4y ago

blablabla123 4y ago

Yeah also considering the article on Ars today about people testing whether ChatGPT poses no harm. I think singularity is coming but much differently than anticipated. So yes, the economy will have to change massively and less work hours are needed. (And the concepts are there: Negative Income tax, Universal basic income...) The change will be more graceful the less everybody is in denial. As mentioned elsewhere this is not the first technological disruption in the economy. The change from heavy industry to a service industry didn't go well, hopefully it's possible to take learnings from this and do it right this time.

ignoramous 4y ago
What does "doing it right this time" entail? How does it look like?
- blablabla123 4y ago
  I'm not completely sure but considering how the coal industry went slowly out-of-business with subsidiaries going on for decades - at least that's how it was in Germany - this doesn't seem the way to go. At least I'm more than surprised that companies and the state were looking into early pensions instead of options to start from 0 at a new job. For other legacy industries like the German ICE car industry it was at times a close call, so that's when the 35 hour week became widely adopted during the 90s. Even today it is still an option for new people joining (working on non-legacy products of course).