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Another comment talked about the need for legislative controls, but mostly to account for the risk of societal breakdown. I have the same comment but a differe

Another comment talked about the need for legislative controls, but mostly to account for the risk of societal breakdown. I have the same comment but a different domain: > After that, focus should then shift to dealing with the obsolete worker population in the maximally economical way. Tax companies at 2x the single-taxpayer withholding amount lost per employee displaced. So if an employee normally makes 100,000 per year and the average withholding is ~35,000, if 10 jobs are displaced, the tax charge is 700,000. Company still saves 300k, and the AI displacing those ten heads probably Costa 10k per license anyway, so there's still room for AI to make economic sense while backstopping the sociological consequences. Put that tax revenue directly towards social services or minimum monthly reimbursement for everyone (UBI, just with a different name)

anonylizard 4y ago
1. Why doesn't every company try to hire contractors then? Making firing employees expensive beyond reason, always seems to significantly increase unemployment rate (Eg France)/drastically increase informal employment (Japan) 2. Why isn't this money paid to the fired workers directly? They are the ones who suffer the most, so why isn't the compensation directly routed to them, but instead through a grubby government? This can be simply done by doubling the severance pay requirements, no need for complicated determination of "jobs lost because we used robots" 3. If AI becomes dominant, there will be new roles such as prompt engineers, that could pay surprisingly well. However, making hiring/firing more risky, will pretty much eliminate business appetite for experimenting with new roles. People arm-chairing policy requirements need to consider that bureaucracy, just like programming specifications, are not free, best to keep it as simple as possible. Also, in Europe, its pretty much very difficult to fire full time employees already, so we'll see how their economy responds to the AI shock. Judging by the total absence of nearly any continental European AI company (It seems like the only one successful is DeepL), it probably won't end well for them.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  > 3. If AI becomes dominant, there will be new roles such as prompt engineers, that could pay surprisingly well. A lot seems to be relying on the idea that this role will pay well or will somehow reach an equivalent level of complexity as modern knowledge work, but that just seems to be speculation at this point. As the complexity of a tool like ChatGPT increases, the complexity (skill) required for prompt engineering might diminish to the point where customers are just interacting with the tool instead of a prompt engineer who can "translate the business logic". Or it might go the other way. No one knows really at this point.
- eganist 4y ago
  > 1. Why doesn't every company try to hire contractors then? Making firing employees expensive beyond reason, always seems to significantly increase unemployment rate (Eg France)/drastically increase informal employment (Japan) This doesn't make firing expensive beyond reason, it makes it only modestly cheaper as opposed to absurdly cheap. Napkin maths: * Per annum 200,000 spent per employee (100,000 plus benefits, perks, infrastructure, etc.) * Per annum 25,000 spent per AI agent (10,000 per license plus infrastructure) * Without tax, 175,000 savings. * With tax of 70,000 per displaced employee (approximate 2x federal withholding of a Single employee in the US), 105,000 savings to use AI. This isn't rigorous math, but it should help get the point across. --- Now, if you just make it a salary conversation: * 100,000 per employee * 10,000 per license * 90,000 savings based on salary v. license alone * 20,000 savings after that tax. Either way, AI comes ahead. This just makes sure some of that savings goes into the common welfare rather than upstream to investor pockets.

anonylizard 4y ago

1. Why doesn't every company try to hire contractors then? Making firing employees expensive beyond reason, always seems to significantly increase unemployment rate (Eg France)/drastically increase informal employment (Japan) 2. Why isn't this money paid to the fired workers directly? They are the ones who suffer the most, so why isn't the compensation directly routed to them, but instead through a grubby government? This can be simply done by doubling the severance pay requirements, no need for complicated determination of "jobs lost because we used robots" 3. If AI becomes dominant, there will be new roles such as prompt engineers, that could pay surprisingly well. However, making hiring/firing more risky, will pretty much eliminate business appetite for experimenting with new roles. People arm-chairing policy requirements need to consider that bureaucracy, just like programming specifications, are not free, best to keep it as simple as possible. Also, in Europe, its pretty much very difficult to fire full time employees already, so we'll see how their economy responds to the AI shock. Judging by the total absence of nearly any continental European AI company (It seems like the only one successful is DeepL), it probably won't end well for them.

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
> 3. If AI becomes dominant, there will be new roles such as prompt engineers, that could pay surprisingly well. A lot seems to be relying on the idea that this role will pay well or will somehow reach an equivalent level of complexity as modern knowledge work, but that just seems to be speculation at this point. As the complexity of a tool like ChatGPT increases, the complexity (skill) required for prompt engineering might diminish to the point where customers are just interacting with the tool instead of a prompt engineer who can "translate the business logic". Or it might go the other way. No one knows really at this point.
eganist 4y ago
> 1. Why doesn't every company try to hire contractors then? Making firing employees expensive beyond reason, always seems to significantly increase unemployment rate (Eg France)/drastically increase informal employment (Japan) This doesn't make firing expensive beyond reason, it makes it only modestly cheaper as opposed to absurdly cheap. Napkin maths: * Per annum 200,000 spent per employee (100,000 plus benefits, perks, infrastructure, etc.) * Per annum 25,000 spent per AI agent (10,000 per license plus infrastructure) * Without tax, 175,000 savings. * With tax of 70,000 per displaced employee (approximate 2x federal withholding of a Single employee in the US), 105,000 savings to use AI. This isn't rigorous math, but it should help get the point across. --- Now, if you just make it a salary conversation: * 100,000 per employee * 10,000 per license * 90,000 savings based on salary v. license alone * 20,000 savings after that tax. Either way, AI comes ahead. This just makes sure some of that savings goes into the common welfare rather than upstream to investor pockets.