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As someone who has persistently laughed off the "it's different this time" idiocy from "revolutionary" technology, and as someone who has called 10 out of the l
by caeril 3y ago
As someone who has persistently laughed off the "it's different this time" idiocy from "revolutionary" technology, and as someone who has called 10 out of the last 4 bubbles, I would like to say that it really is different this time.
We're on the precipice of obviating 80% of white collar work, and 99% of Graeber's Bullshit Jobs.
- pixl97 3y agoMassively decreasing pay, while not solving the asset inflation problem... this ain't going to go well at all.
- rayval 3y agoEconomic dislocation will lead to rise of angry/insane populists/nationalists (like Trump 2.0) in multiple regions. Already a trend, will get worse. One unfortunate but plausible outcome is catastrophic global conflict. To avoid this, countries need to plan for and mitigate the social effects of economic dislocation, such as UBI. Unfortunately that ain't gonna happen. Brace yourselves.
- Nesco 3y agoCould you please detail why do you think Machine Learning will obviate jobs that are already useless?
- kajaktum 3y agoEasy, managers will have to do what they usually told their useless subordinates to do. “Write a report on this thing that no one will ever read anyway”. Then even if the higher ups actually read it, they will ask for another LLM to provide a summary. There’s no shortage of useless jobs out there. Cashiers for one.
- laratied 3y agoWe won't. This is the myth of Homo economicus. "humans as agents who are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested, and who pursue their subjectively defined ends optimally." We will figure out new, irrational and suboptiomal ways to make new bullshit jobs. The AI ethics department will be hiring a ton of people.
- tenpies 3y agoI agree with you, especially on un-regulated white-collar work (e.g. no one with magic letters after their name is in danger just yet). But give it a few years and I'm really curious how regulatory and licensing bodies react because they have almost always moved uniformly in whichever direction is necessary to suppress wages. There are few exceptions to this (e.g. physicians). The output benefits of worker + AI could potentially lead to some professional services becoming dirt cheap, while others become ludicrously expensive. I'm also curious what this means for immigration. For the West, the primary justification to siphon the world's talent fundamentally vanishes. That's talent that potentially stays put and develops in non-Western countries. For countries where the entire country is a demographic ponzi using immigrants to prevent collapse, it's potentially an existential problem.
- photonbeam 3y agoImmigration is just a really simple way to increase GDP
- Macuyiko 3y agoYou're right, but I don't think so. From the moment that 80/99% realizes they're out of work, it's over. That's why you see idiot anti-AI spokespeople showing up, why Altman is invited to Bilderberg, why EU is making AI-laws. They're not against AI, as such, but please do not "awaken" the working class. Keep it for "trusted parties" or the military only. What I am curious about is how NVIDIA will position itself against that background. Personally, I did really wish this would have been a new-era moment where society would take a step back and evaluate how we are organizing ourselves (and living, even), but I fear that AI comes too late for us, in the sense that we're so rusted and backwards now that we cannot accept it. Or any important change, in fact. It's pretty depressing.