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I feel like the whole ChatGPT bubble has really highlighted what feel like some fundamental shortcomings in the worldview that is represented in tech. That is,

I feel like the whole ChatGPT bubble has really highlighted what feel like some fundamental shortcomings in the worldview that is represented in tech. That is, there seems to be a winner take all dynamic baked into the tech world. Maybe this arises from the simple fact that tech places a lot of power in the hands of individuals. But there's an emergent downside to this which is that it makes those who were already much more powerful even more so. Because who is best suited to take advantage of all the power but those who were already perched up above everyone else and permitted to pick and choose their opportunities? I've found it exceptionally hard to stay positive about all of this. It almost feels as though the advent of LLMs has shined light on a fundamental law of the universe that does not work out in the little person's favor. It's like survival of the fittest on steroids. Guys, what the heck are we doing??

RHSman2 4y ago
Human nature, not just tech
- davesque 4y ago
  Is it though? I remember feeling much more positive about society roughly 20 years ago.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    You were also twenty years younger, surely youthful naïveté plays a role in how you felt about society. And regardless, your feeling about society doesn't necessarily correspond to how society actually is.
  - RHSman2 4y ago
    20 years ago was the Golden Years. We thought it was just like that but no. It isn’t.
JohnFen 4y ago
> there seems to be a winner take all dynamic baked into the tech world. This has been a pathology in the computer/software industry for a very long time. It's never been actually true except in a couple of special cases, but the industry acts as if it is. That has led to all sorts of bizarre and undesirable things. > Guys, what the heck are we doing?? I think we're playing with fire and, without extreme caution and careful consideration (which I'm not seeing much of), this could end very, very badly for both the industry and society. I have always been optimistic about technology and society, but (perhaps like you), my optimism has largely evaporated over the last several weeks. I wish the future didn't look so dark. Perhaps, though, things will look less gloomy with time.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  What's your main concern with all of this?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    People are perceiving (rightly or wrongly, I'm not debating that in this comment) that this software is powerful enough that it can replace people even in jobs that were always considered safe. If that perception is accurate, it's really hard to see how this can lead to anywhere that isn't much worse for most people. If that perception is not accurate, people will still be upset by what looks like an existential threat to them, and if there's economic disruption for any unrelated reason, they will blame AI. Either way, I'm really struggling to see a good outcome from any of this. I'm not saying ChatGPT is bad, but I think the rollout of it has been done in a way that is incredibly insensitive, reckless and damaging.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      > it's really hard to see how this can lead to anywhere that isn't much worse for most people. It's very easy to see that, actually. Consider the problem statement again: economy is becoming more productive overall because we now have robots that can do some things that previously required people. This means that we can generate more total wealth for the same effort as before. That this translates to people being worse off, somehow, is a problem with the distribution of that generated wealth, not the ability to produce it. Even a sensible implementation of UBI could fix the most immediate problem, and I think we're looking at much bigger shifts in our economic system within the next couple decades.
shadowpho 4y ago
> That is, there seems to be a winner take all dynamic baked into the tech world. In tech world the cost for R&D/design/code is generally much larger then continuous code. That means that it's extremely expensive to have 1 user, but really cheap to have 1M users. Thus winner-takes-all makes sense, as company who is ahead can continue developing/designing at a cheaper price as opposed to company with no users.
hobo_in_library 4y ago
Pre-tech, the winner take all dynamic was prevented by physics: - Customers were only willing to walk so far to go to a bakery - A store could only stock so many varieties on it's shelves Now, the cost of distributing goods across the globe, and the incremental cost of creating new goods has shrunk to virtually zero for digital goods, combined with people's general hesitance to the friction of switching providers, creates a the natural "winner take all" effect The places where you'll see this NOT happening are areas where those costs are still significant for some reason. Examples: - Different ride sharing services are popular in different countries, many of them local ones, since foreign companies had a harder time getting distribution started. - Legal regulations also have been hindering the spread of payment companies across country-level borders
- api 4y ago
  > the friction of switching providers Without this the gravity is much less powerful. Seems like where to focus if you want to empower people against the winner take all monopoly effect. Areas where switching costs are low are areas where you have standard APIs and where your data resides locally, is easy to move, or are not data intensive at all.
WanderPanda 4y ago
This is literally threatening the winner (Google) taking it all forever. Some of these innovations are winner take all until they aren't anymore. The cycle seems to be 1 to 2 decades. The profits during that cycle are probably fair on average given the risk necessary to make the tech ready for wide-spread usage
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > This is literally threatening the winner (Google) taking it all forever Sure, but look who is over there in the corner next to OpenAI: Microsoft with their $10B stake. The company that was the winner prior to Google being a winner.
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  Well it seems like the biggest winner over google is Microsoft?
sj8822 4y ago
At some point, I became disenchanted with tech and working as a software engineer when I realized that tech doesn't ethically fit into our primitive economic organization right now. It's made me feel bad about myself and the career path I've chosen. Basically, with tech, you can build a product with a very limited amount of people and resources with a potentially infinite customer base. And this means that this product can suck up money from the whole world and redirect it into the hands of very few. At its essence, this is the case. With tech, this phenomena is exacerbated to the extreme compared to other industries where more physical resources and labor are required to scale production and distribution of the product, which means more wealth getting spread. At its core, tech has the potential to exacerbate wealth inequality in mind-boggling proportions. Our current economic system is not made for tech.
- xyzzy4747 4y ago
  I think ultimately tech will result in humans being like the rest of animals - completely unable to participate in the economy. This will only start to happen once AGI is reached though which might only be a decade away or less.
  - jordwest 4y ago
    I think you're right, we're going to need to completely rethink our economy to decouple the idea of human effort (Unfortunately I can't see how that's going to happen without everything first falling apart). A single barrel of oil is estimated to replace about 5-10 years of a human's effort in pure energy terms. Our human ability in physical terms was already significantly obsoleted by that. AI feels like the discovery of cheap oil but for mental effort. At the same time, oil is getting more and more expensive and energy intensive to drill (and costly to the environment to use).
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    I suspect there will be essentially three different economies - Digital Human-experiences, and hybrid. AGI will focus primarily on problems that can be mostly solved within digital worlds where it can cycle incredibly fast. Building software, finance, paperwork, etc, etc It will eventually evolve to design, control, and operate physical systems, but will need humans to intervene and fix systems (hybrid). The human economy will built on experiences that are explicitly, and intentionally void of computers. Restaurants, guided tours, exploration, etc, etc.
sebmellen 4y ago
This is nowhere near new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect "To those who have everything, more will be given, and from those who have nothing, everything will be taken."

RHSman2 4y ago

Human nature, not just tech

davesque 4y ago
Is it though? I remember feeling much more positive about society roughly 20 years ago.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  You were also twenty years younger, surely youthful naïveté plays a role in how you felt about society. And regardless, your feeling about society doesn't necessarily correspond to how society actually is.
- RHSman2 4y ago
  20 years ago was the Golden Years. We thought it was just like that but no. It isn’t.

JohnFen 4y ago

> there seems to be a winner take all dynamic baked into the tech world. This has been a pathology in the computer/software industry for a very long time. It's never been actually true except in a couple of special cases, but the industry acts as if it is. That has led to all sorts of bizarre and undesirable things. > Guys, what the heck are we doing?? I think we're playing with fire and, without extreme caution and careful consideration (which I'm not seeing much of), this could end very, very badly for both the industry and society. I have always been optimistic about technology and society, but (perhaps like you), my optimism has largely evaporated over the last several weeks. I wish the future didn't look so dark. Perhaps, though, things will look less gloomy with time.

weatherlite 4y ago
What's your main concern with all of this?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  People are perceiving (rightly or wrongly, I'm not debating that in this comment) that this software is powerful enough that it can replace people even in jobs that were always considered safe. If that perception is accurate, it's really hard to see how this can lead to anywhere that isn't much worse for most people. If that perception is not accurate, people will still be upset by what looks like an existential threat to them, and if there's economic disruption for any unrelated reason, they will blame AI. Either way, I'm really struggling to see a good outcome from any of this. I'm not saying ChatGPT is bad, but I think the rollout of it has been done in a way that is incredibly insensitive, reckless and damaging.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    > it's really hard to see how this can lead to anywhere that isn't much worse for most people. It's very easy to see that, actually. Consider the problem statement again: economy is becoming more productive overall because we now have robots that can do some things that previously required people. This means that we can generate more total wealth for the same effort as before. That this translates to people being worse off, somehow, is a problem with the distribution of that generated wealth, not the ability to produce it. Even a sensible implementation of UBI could fix the most immediate problem, and I think we're looking at much bigger shifts in our economic system within the next couple decades.

shadowpho 4y ago

> That is, there seems to be a winner take all dynamic baked into the tech world. In tech world the cost for R&D/design/code is generally much larger then continuous code. That means that it's extremely expensive to have 1 user, but really cheap to have 1M users. Thus winner-takes-all makes sense, as company who is ahead can continue developing/designing at a cheaper price as opposed to company with no users.

hobo_in_library 4y ago

Pre-tech, the winner take all dynamic was prevented by physics: - Customers were only willing to walk so far to go to a bakery - A store could only stock so many varieties on it's shelves Now, the cost of distributing goods across the globe, and the incremental cost of creating new goods has shrunk to virtually zero for digital goods, combined with people's general hesitance to the friction of switching providers, creates a the natural "winner take all" effect The places where you'll see this NOT happening are areas where those costs are still significant for some reason. Examples: - Different ride sharing services are popular in different countries, many of them local ones, since foreign companies had a harder time getting distribution started. - Legal regulations also have been hindering the spread of payment companies across country-level borders

api 4y ago
> the friction of switching providers Without this the gravity is much less powerful. Seems like where to focus if you want to empower people against the winner take all monopoly effect. Areas where switching costs are low are areas where you have standard APIs and where your data resides locally, is easy to move, or are not data intensive at all.

WanderPanda 4y ago

This is literally threatening the winner (Google) taking it all forever. Some of these innovations are winner take all until they aren't anymore. The cycle seems to be 1 to 2 decades. The profits during that cycle are probably fair on average given the risk necessary to make the tech ready for wide-spread usage

UncleOxidant 4y ago
> This is literally threatening the winner (Google) taking it all forever Sure, but look who is over there in the corner next to OpenAI: Microsoft with their $10B stake. The company that was the winner prior to Google being a winner.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
Well it seems like the biggest winner over google is Microsoft?

sj8822 4y ago

At some point, I became disenchanted with tech and working as a software engineer when I realized that tech doesn't ethically fit into our primitive economic organization right now. It's made me feel bad about myself and the career path I've chosen. Basically, with tech, you can build a product with a very limited amount of people and resources with a potentially infinite customer base. And this means that this product can suck up money from the whole world and redirect it into the hands of very few. At its essence, this is the case. With tech, this phenomena is exacerbated to the extreme compared to other industries where more physical resources and labor are required to scale production and distribution of the product, which means more wealth getting spread. At its core, tech has the potential to exacerbate wealth inequality in mind-boggling proportions. Our current economic system is not made for tech.

xyzzy4747 4y ago
I think ultimately tech will result in humans being like the rest of animals - completely unable to participate in the economy. This will only start to happen once AGI is reached though which might only be a decade away or less.
- jordwest 4y ago
  I think you're right, we're going to need to completely rethink our economy to decouple the idea of human effort (Unfortunately I can't see how that's going to happen without everything first falling apart). A single barrel of oil is estimated to replace about 5-10 years of a human's effort in pure energy terms. Our human ability in physical terms was already significantly obsoleted by that. AI feels like the discovery of cheap oil but for mental effort. At the same time, oil is getting more and more expensive and energy intensive to drill (and costly to the environment to use).
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  I suspect there will be essentially three different economies - Digital Human-experiences, and hybrid. AGI will focus primarily on problems that can be mostly solved within digital worlds where it can cycle incredibly fast. Building software, finance, paperwork, etc, etc It will eventually evolve to design, control, and operate physical systems, but will need humans to intervene and fix systems (hybrid). The human economy will built on experiences that are explicitly, and intentionally void of computers. Restaurants, guided tours, exploration, etc, etc.

sebmellen 4y ago

This is nowhere near new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect "To those who have everything, more will be given, and from those who have nothing, everything will be taken."