5 ms·

Cynical view: without new regulation in the area of AI, it will reduce the value of labor in many domains and completely eliminate the need for it in many other

by mmkos 3y ago

Cynical view: without new regulation in the area of AI, it will reduce the value of labor in many domains and completely eliminate the need for it in many others. Profits will go to companies like OpenAI, unemployment will rise and people will be left to fend for themselves, and it's exactly what's going to happen.

Kichererbsen 3y ago
optimistic (slightly distopian) view: governments will step in and build national artificial intelligence machines. OpenAI will be competing with open source LLMs. we'll all re-create society structured around a priesthood / ceremonial worship of a big ai that symbolizes how great your "tribe" is and compete with the followers of the other gods.
- adzm 3y ago
  we are humans, we need something to worship
- hardlianotion 3y ago
  Well that made the cynical view above look a little more appealing.
quonn 3y ago
I agree, except for the OpenAI part. These subscriptions are currently much cheaper than labor - about 100x even for poorly paid jobs - and so there is simply not that much value to capture in terms of total size of the economy. In other words, if the employee costs $2000 and OpenAI charges $20, then $1980 are captured by the company using the tech, not OpenAI. So there would be a problem of course, but it‘s not like the value would necessarily go just to the tech industry. Instead it might go increasingly to those who own „the means of production“ to use a Marxist term for analysis purposes. And if the prices they charge go up, it should be possible to compete with open products.
neilwilson 3y ago
How can there be profits without wage income to buy the output? The paradox of productivity will kick in and prices will plummet.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  Well, there's other kinds of income, like dividends. They just get paid to shareholders, rather than laborers.
  - neilwilson 3y ago
    A company's income comes from people spending and consuming. The propensity to consume of owners is less than workers. The more you invest in machinery and lay off workers, the fewer people you have with income they want to spend, and that's when the prices plummets.
    - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
      It depends what business you're in. If you're a company making yachts, supercars, or private jets, then owners consume much more than workers. As wealth shifts to fewer hands, companies making mass-market goods are forced to drop prices, squeezing their margins and forcing consolidation and further automation, as the buying power of the customer base disappears. Investment capital shifts into the luxury sector where demand is growing, and prices and production quantities increase. More and more of the economy gets dedicated to serving the needs of the wealthy (which is essentially what what it means for the rich to get richer).
- ehnto 3y ago
  In some industries, prices will follow wealthier people as more profit will come from gouging those on the lucky side now much larger wealth divide, and the middle class will vanish. You saw an example of this in ecommerce during the pandemic's economic upheaval. Luxury goods recorded increased sales, as did bottom of the barrel retailers. Services and items in the comfortable middle class we all deserve suffered decreases.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Realistic view: Unemployment is actually at an all time low despite centuries of industrialization, automation, etc. AI technology is becoming a commodity at a rapid rate. OpenAI has some nice data moat but their tech is being copied left right and center and much of what they do has been replicated successfully by others; including some open source projects. I don't see OpenAI end up with all the profit here. AI is a transformative technology for sure. But just like previous introductions of transformative technology it won't play out as doom predictors predict. Most of the goods we buy and consume are actually produced in parts of the world where workers are exploited just fine without the help of AI. The dystopia already exists; just not in our little bubble. And a lot of those places have leveled up quite a bit economically in recent decades. So things aren't that bad anymore. Our own past is actually built on the dystopia of the industrial revolution where people had no rights and worked until they dropped dead. Most of us on this forum have jobs that most of those people would not have considered real work. Hence us procrastinating on hacker news instead of doing real work. AI will cause more of that to happen everywhere. But we'll find ways to keep ourselves busy. And more free time means that we can do things that are valuable to us. And what are economies other than just the accumulation of things we value? It used to be that we mostly valued not starving to death. Most of our economies were basically related to food production. Now food production is only a tiny part of our economies. We found more valuable things to do. Whatever AIs do or don't do, we'll find a way to find new things that are valuable to us. AIs simply expand our economy to include more such things. That's what transformative technology does. It grows our economies.
- diggan 3y ago
  > much of what they do has been replicated successfully by others; including some open source projects This is true, except for GPT4 which no one has been able to even come close to in actual usage. As long as OpenAI maintains the lead by making the very best model available via a consumer-friendly interfaces, and via API, I'd wager they remain in the lead.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3y ago
123yawaworht456 3y ago
then you will simply see those jobs being moved/outsourced to the third world without regulations, just like virtually all manufacturing did. china, russia, india and a ton of other countries won't give a shit about 'global moratorium on AI research' and 'assault GPU ban'. US+EU are a fraction of the world's population.
Heyso 3y ago
That is already an issue with technological progress. Peoples protesting because machines are more efficient and removing jobs. The issue being the profit of increased tech not being shared correctly among humanity. This issue has not been solved. I am glad there are other peoples becoming aware of it with the rise of IA.
hackerlight 3y ago
It depends on how good AI gets. If we have slow takeoff, AI will be like any other automation. It will increase economic productivity. Capital owners will benefit the most, but everyone else will also benefit, because it's not zero-sum. People will lose their jobs but new jobs will be created and everyone will get richer. If we get ASI, then that's a paradigm shift and all bets are off.
bitcharmer 3y ago
This is not cynical; it's realistic. The billionaires will reap the rewards at everyone else's expense, as it always has been.

by mmkos 3y ago

Kichererbsen 3y ago

optimistic (slightly distopian) view: governments will step in and build national artificial intelligence machines. OpenAI will be competing with open source LLMs. we'll all re-create society structured around a priesthood / ceremonial worship of a big ai that symbolizes how great your "tribe" is and compete with the followers of the other gods.

adzm 3y ago
we are humans, we need something to worship
hardlianotion 3y ago
Well that made the cynical view above look a little more appealing.

quonn 3y ago

I agree, except for the OpenAI part. These subscriptions are currently much cheaper than labor - about 100x even for poorly paid jobs - and so there is simply not that much value to capture in terms of total size of the economy. In other words, if the employee costs $2000 and OpenAI charges $20, then $1980 are captured by the company using the tech, not OpenAI. So there would be a problem of course, but it‘s not like the value would necessarily go just to the tech industry. Instead it might go increasingly to those who own „the means of production“ to use a Marxist term for analysis purposes. And if the prices they charge go up, it should be possible to compete with open products.

neilwilson 3y ago

How can there be profits without wage income to buy the output? The paradox of productivity will kick in and prices will plummet.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
Well, there's other kinds of income, like dividends. They just get paid to shareholders, rather than laborers.
- neilwilson 3y ago
  A company's income comes from people spending and consuming. The propensity to consume of owners is less than workers. The more you invest in machinery and lay off workers, the fewer people you have with income they want to spend, and that's when the prices plummets.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    It depends what business you're in. If you're a company making yachts, supercars, or private jets, then owners consume much more than workers. As wealth shifts to fewer hands, companies making mass-market goods are forced to drop prices, squeezing their margins and forcing consolidation and further automation, as the buying power of the customer base disappears. Investment capital shifts into the luxury sector where demand is growing, and prices and production quantities increase. More and more of the economy gets dedicated to serving the needs of the wealthy (which is essentially what what it means for the rich to get richer).
ehnto 3y ago
In some industries, prices will follow wealthier people as more profit will come from gouging those on the lucky side now much larger wealth divide, and the middle class will vanish. You saw an example of this in ecommerce during the pandemic's economic upheaval. Luxury goods recorded increased sales, as did bottom of the barrel retailers. Services and items in the comfortable middle class we all deserve suffered decreases.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Realistic view: Unemployment is actually at an all time low despite centuries of industrialization, automation, etc. AI technology is becoming a commodity at a rapid rate. OpenAI has some nice data moat but their tech is being copied left right and center and much of what they do has been replicated successfully by others; including some open source projects. I don't see OpenAI end up with all the profit here. AI is a transformative technology for sure. But just like previous introductions of transformative technology it won't play out as doom predictors predict. Most of the goods we buy and consume are actually produced in parts of the world where workers are exploited just fine without the help of AI. The dystopia already exists; just not in our little bubble. And a lot of those places have leveled up quite a bit economically in recent decades. So things aren't that bad anymore. Our own past is actually built on the dystopia of the industrial revolution where people had no rights and worked until they dropped dead. Most of us on this forum have jobs that most of those people would not have considered real work. Hence us procrastinating on hacker news instead of doing real work. AI will cause more of that to happen everywhere. But we'll find ways to keep ourselves busy. And more free time means that we can do things that are valuable to us. And what are economies other than just the accumulation of things we value? It used to be that we mostly valued not starving to death. Most of our economies were basically related to food production. Now food production is only a tiny part of our economies. We found more valuable things to do. Whatever AIs do or don't do, we'll find a way to find new things that are valuable to us. AIs simply expand our economy to include more such things. That's what transformative technology does. It grows our economies.

diggan 3y ago
> much of what they do has been replicated successfully by others; including some open source projects This is true, except for GPT4 which no one has been able to even come close to in actual usage. As long as OpenAI maintains the lead by making the very best model available via a consumer-friendly interfaces, and via API, I'd wager they remain in the lead.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 3y ago

123yawaworht456 3y ago

then you will simply see those jobs being moved/outsourced to the third world without regulations, just like virtually all manufacturing did. china, russia, india and a ton of other countries won't give a shit about 'global moratorium on AI research' and 'assault GPU ban'. US+EU are a fraction of the world's population.

Heyso 3y ago

That is already an issue with technological progress. Peoples protesting because machines are more efficient and removing jobs. The issue being the profit of increased tech not being shared correctly among humanity. This issue has not been solved. I am glad there are other peoples becoming aware of it with the rise of IA.

hackerlight 3y ago

It depends on how good AI gets. If we have slow takeoff, AI will be like any other automation. It will increase economic productivity. Capital owners will benefit the most, but everyone else will also benefit, because it's not zero-sum. People will lose their jobs but new jobs will be created and everyone will get richer. If we get ASI, then that's a paradigm shift and all bets are off.

bitcharmer 3y ago

This is not cynical; it's realistic. The billionaires will reap the rewards at everyone else's expense, as it always has been.