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Healthcare is a massive cost for people, businesses, and governments. >So we basically just become operators of the machines. Driving down the cost of manufac

Healthcare is a massive cost for people, businesses, and governments. >So we basically just become operators of the machines. Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods, and labor's value. If you don't think this is coming for every single area of business, you're foolish. Driving down labor costs is the golden goose. We've been able to collect some eggs through technology, but AI and the like will be able to cut that goose open and take all the eggs.

happytoexplain 2y ago
"don't think will happen" != "don't think is good"
coliveira 2y ago
> will be able to cut that goose open and take all the eggs You're completely right! AI will kill the golden goose, that is what this metaphor is all about.
thefz 2y ago
> Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods, and labor's value. And quality as well.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Not really, the quality we're able to produce at scale is the best it's ever been in the world. The "quality of everything has been in decline" isn't due to advances in manufacturing but the economic factors that are present even without those advances. Rapid inflation over a relatively short period of time has forced everyone to desperately try and maintain close to their pre-inflation prices because workers didn't and aren't going to get the corresponding wage increases. I hope eventually there's a tipping point where the powers that be realize that our economy can't work unless the wealth that naturally accumulates at the top gets fed back into the bottom but the US pretty unanimously voted for the exact opposite so I desperately I hope I'm wrong or that this path can work too.
  - deepsquirrelnet 2y ago
    This is so hard to vocalize, but yes, exactly. Prices aren’t coming down. That’s largely not something that happens. Instead, wages are supposed to increase in response. You might see little blips around major recessions, but prices go up, driven by inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL Fortunately the rate of change of CPI appears to have cooled off, but the best scenario is for it to track with the previous historical slope, which means prices are staying where they are and increasing at “comfortable” rates again.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > because workers didn't Do you mean immediately? At peak inflation wages weren't keeping pace, but wage growth is exceeding inflation right now to catch back up. Incomes have been, on average, stagnant for hundreds of years – as far back as the data goes. It is unlikely that this time will be different. > I hope eventually there's a tipping point where the powers that be You did mention the US. Presumably you're not talking about a dictatorship. The powers that be are the population at large. I'm sure they are acutely aware of this. They have to live it, after all.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods, and labor's value. We don't need AI to bring down the cost of healthcare. It's well documented to a ridiculous degree now that the United States spends vastly more per-patient on healthcare while receiving just about the worst outcomes, and it has nothing the fuck to do with how much the staff are paid, and everything to do with the for profit models and insurance industry. Our healthcare system is comprised to a large amount of nothing but various middlemen operating between what should be a pretty straightforward relationship between you, your doctor, your pharmacist and the health oversight of the Government.
- coldpie 2y ago
  Well put. The goal of AI isn't to bring down costs. It's to move (even more of) the profits from the workers to the owners. If the goal was to bring down costs, there are way, way more effective ways to do that.
  - vladms 2y ago
    What references you have for "even more of"? Global inequality is dropping : https://ourworldindata.org/the-history-of-global-economic-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/the-history-of-global-economic-in... Yes, probably the richest do now crazier stuff than before (ex: planning to go to Mars rather than making a pyramid), but lots of people have access to more things (like food, shelter, etc.) There are enough open source models weights so that everybody can use AI for whatever they want (with some minor investments in a couple of GPU). It is not some closed secret that nobody can touch.
jprete 2y ago
Efficiency and lowered costs are not universally good. They strongly favor easily-measured values over hard-to-measure values, which in practice means preferring mechanisms to people.
stego-tech 2y ago
> If you don't think this is coming for every single area of business, you're foolish. Driving down labor costs is the golden goose. I mean, that’s saying the quiet part out loud that I think more people need to hear and understand. The goal of these technocrats isn’t to improve humanity as a whole, it’s to remove human labor from the profit equation. They genuinely believe that it’s possible to build an entire economy where bots just buy from other bots ad infinitum and humans are removed wholesale from the economy. They aren’t building an AI to improve society or uplift humanity, they’re building digital serfs so they can fire their physical, expensive ones (us). Deep down, I think those of us doing the actual labor understand that their vision fundamentally cannot work, that humans must be given the opportunity to labor in a meaningfully rewarding way for the species to thrive and evolve. That’s not what these AI tools intend to offer. The people know it, and it’s why we’re so hostile towards them.
wiz21c 2y ago
The more you put AI, you automate, the more you centralize control. Heck, when you don't need humans anymore, then there's no work anymore and it remains a few very wealthy people. You end up with a big inequal society. And I believe there's a 99% chance that you will be on the wrong side of it.
HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
> Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods This is true, but it has nothing to do with AI.
015a 2y ago
Ok, fine, but how do you vibe your sense of "automation and AI will help drive down the cost of healthcare" with the absolute undeniable reality that healthcare has been adopting automation for decades, and over the decades it has only gotten (exponentially) more and more expensive? While outcomes are stagnating or getting worse? Where is the disconnect between your sense of how reality should function, and how it is tangibly, actually functioning?
- qgin 2y ago
  Outcomes have been getting worse for decades?
  - 015a 2y ago
    Not the best source, but its at least illustrative of the point: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-...
    - tqi 2y ago
      That other than 2020 (ie COVID), life expectancy has been continuously rising for the last 100 years?
      - 015a 2y ago
        Its actually much scarier than that: the trend started reversing ~2017, COVID accelerated it, and it hasn't recovered post-COVID. Naturally, changes to any sufficiently complex system take years to truly manifest their impact in broad statistics; sometimes decades. But, don't discount this single line from the original article: > Then in 2018, the hospital bought a new program from Epic
        tqi 2y ago
        How does that qualify as evidence that "outcomes have been getting worse for decades?"

happytoexplain 2y ago

"don't think will happen" != "don't think is good"

coliveira 2y ago

> will be able to cut that goose open and take all the eggs You're completely right! AI will kill the golden goose, that is what this metaphor is all about.

thefz 2y ago

> Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods, and labor's value. And quality as well.

Spivak 2y ago
Not really, the quality we're able to produce at scale is the best it's ever been in the world. The "quality of everything has been in decline" isn't due to advances in manufacturing but the economic factors that are present even without those advances. Rapid inflation over a relatively short period of time has forced everyone to desperately try and maintain close to their pre-inflation prices because workers didn't and aren't going to get the corresponding wage increases. I hope eventually there's a tipping point where the powers that be realize that our economy can't work unless the wealth that naturally accumulates at the top gets fed back into the bottom but the US pretty unanimously voted for the exact opposite so I desperately I hope I'm wrong or that this path can work too.
- deepsquirrelnet 2y ago
  This is so hard to vocalize, but yes, exactly. Prices aren’t coming down. That’s largely not something that happens. Instead, wages are supposed to increase in response. You might see little blips around major recessions, but prices go up, driven by inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL Fortunately the rate of change of CPI appears to have cooled off, but the best scenario is for it to track with the previous historical slope, which means prices are staying where they are and increasing at “comfortable” rates again.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- randomdata 2y ago
  > because workers didn't Do you mean immediately? At peak inflation wages weren't keeping pace, but wage growth is exceeding inflation right now to catch back up. Incomes have been, on average, stagnant for hundreds of years – as far back as the data goes. It is unlikely that this time will be different. > I hope eventually there's a tipping point where the powers that be You did mention the US. Presumably you're not talking about a dictatorship. The powers that be are the population at large. I'm sure they are acutely aware of this. They have to live it, after all.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods, and labor's value. We don't need AI to bring down the cost of healthcare. It's well documented to a ridiculous degree now that the United States spends vastly more per-patient on healthcare while receiving just about the worst outcomes, and it has nothing the fuck to do with how much the staff are paid, and everything to do with the for profit models and insurance industry. Our healthcare system is comprised to a large amount of nothing but various middlemen operating between what should be a pretty straightforward relationship between you, your doctor, your pharmacist and the health oversight of the Government.

coldpie 2y ago
Well put. The goal of AI isn't to bring down costs. It's to move (even more of) the profits from the workers to the owners. If the goal was to bring down costs, there are way, way more effective ways to do that.
- vladms 2y ago
  What references you have for "even more of"? Global inequality is dropping : https://ourworldindata.org/the-history-of-global-economic-inequality https://ourworldindata.org/the-history-of-global-economic-in... Yes, probably the richest do now crazier stuff than before (ex: planning to go to Mars rather than making a pyramid), but lots of people have access to more things (like food, shelter, etc.) There are enough open source models weights so that everybody can use AI for whatever they want (with some minor investments in a couple of GPU). It is not some closed secret that nobody can touch.

jprete 2y ago

Efficiency and lowered costs are not universally good. They strongly favor easily-measured values over hard-to-measure values, which in practice means preferring mechanisms to people.

stego-tech 2y ago

> If you don't think this is coming for every single area of business, you're foolish. Driving down labor costs is the golden goose. I mean, that’s saying the quiet part out loud that I think more people need to hear and understand. The goal of these technocrats isn’t to improve humanity as a whole, it’s to remove human labor from the profit equation. They genuinely believe that it’s possible to build an entire economy where bots just buy from other bots ad infinitum and humans are removed wholesale from the economy. They aren’t building an AI to improve society or uplift humanity, they’re building digital serfs so they can fire their physical, expensive ones (us). Deep down, I think those of us doing the actual labor understand that their vision fundamentally cannot work, that humans must be given the opportunity to labor in a meaningfully rewarding way for the species to thrive and evolve. That’s not what these AI tools intend to offer. The people know it, and it’s why we’re so hostile towards them.

wiz21c 2y ago

The more you put AI, you automate, the more you centralize control. Heck, when you don't need humans anymore, then there's no work anymore and it remains a few very wealthy people. You end up with a big inequal society. And I believe there's a 99% chance that you will be on the wrong side of it.

HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago

> Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods This is true, but it has nothing to do with AI.

015a 2y ago

Ok, fine, but how do you vibe your sense of "automation and AI will help drive down the cost of healthcare" with the absolute undeniable reality that healthcare has been adopting automation for decades, and over the decades it has only gotten (exponentially) more and more expensive? While outcomes are stagnating or getting worse? Where is the disconnect between your sense of how reality should function, and how it is tangibly, actually functioning?

qgin 2y ago
Outcomes have been getting worse for decades?
- 015a 2y ago
  Not the best source, but its at least illustrative of the point: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-...
  - tqi 2y ago
    That other than 2020 (ie COVID), life expectancy has been continuously rising for the last 100 years?
    - 015a 2y ago
      Its actually much scarier than that: the trend started reversing ~2017, COVID accelerated it, and it hasn't recovered post-COVID. Naturally, changes to any sufficiently complex system take years to truly manifest their impact in broad statistics; sometimes decades. But, don't discount this single line from the original article: > Then in 2018, the hospital bought a new program from Epic
      - tqi 2y ago
        How does that qualify as evidence that "outcomes have been getting worse for decades?"