3 ms·

Many of the major harms of these things were neglected, and downplayed even to this day people don't recognize just how changed the world has become. The mere d

Many of the major harms of these things were neglected, and downplayed even to this day people don't recognize just how changed the world has become. The mere delusion that AI will replace work has been used to justify mass layoffs. The persistence of indistinct ghost jobs that are generated by computer for pennies to flood and bind with prospective job seekers (similar to RNA interference), has resulted in severe brain drain in many fields. Worse, the fact these people have often been forced into poverty as a result will have a lasting impact. You might have planned for up to a year out of work pre-AI and had the financial resources, but now how long does it take? Conversion ratios for the first step have changed by two magnitudes or order (from x100 to x10,000). What are the odds of these people finding a job given their finite time, and requirements that are un-automatable for submission (nil). The media keeps claiming that everything is getting better, the stats say so (while neglecting the fact that the stats are being manipulated to the point of uselessness/fabricated), but you have 1/3 of welfare payouts now going to these people in California (in the US), just for basic food. When you can't find work, you go where the work is abandoning the bad economic investment and choice you made regardless of how competent you were. It is a psychologically sticky decision. When there is no chance at finding work, you get desperate, and many desperate people turn to crime and unrest. This was foreseen by a number of very intelligent people many decades ago, and ignored following business as usual. The mere demonstration that we are unable to react in time is what gave engineers such great pause to write about these things, as far back as in the 70s. Hysteresis is a lagging time problem where you can't react fast enough to avert catastrophic failure given chaotic conditions, leaving survival up to chance. Its the worst type of engineering problem with real consequences. Given how western society is structured dependently on labor exchange, its a perfect weapon of chaos and debasement in the value of labor, that effectively destroys half of its underlying economic structure (factor markets). This forces sieving conditions of wealth that become spinodal, and eventually falter under their constraints and spiral into deflationary trends over time. Business wins so much that they lose everything. Its quite a disadvantaged environment and the general trend is that everyone is ignoring the pink elephant. Actions (and inaction) have consequences. When people don't listen and take appropriate action, consequences get dire, it hits the fan.

cgio 2y ago
I agree that we are often missing in our analyses the true materialised impact of expectations by focusing on the validity of said expectations instead. Organisations, even if not laying off, are pausing hiring plans with a conviction that AI will replace some of the workers. It then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy to some extent. It doesn’t matter if it can, what matters is if it will. And to assume that people won’t place a bet is futile, as everyone does, and even if it’s wrong the market will allocate the losses to the baseline.
- trod1234 2y ago
  There are two aspects of your line of reasoning that don't jive for me. People can choose to not place a bet by not participating in the economy, or tying physical assets to it. In other words, de-banking, off-grid farming, unemployment on welfare (not their money, printed guaranteed loss absorbed by the baseline). The assumption that the market can always allocate the losses to the baseline has already been shown to be foundationally flawed. It depends upon whether the baseline can absorb the losses to keep the market going, not the other way around. Those who believe in MMT don't pay head to the fact that money printing has caused societies to fail many times in the distant past, in the ever quoted phrase, but it will be different this time. When the economic engine stalls, so too does order and money-printing/debt issuance (without fractional reserve) drives this as a sieve (which we've seen over the past several decades in the form of bailout, marketshare concentration, and consolidation). Central banks set reserve allocations to 0% in 2020, adopting a capital reserve, risk-weighted system based in fiat that is opaque and stock-market tied (Basel III modified). Value is subjective, and fiat may have store of value, right up until it doesn't. Of particular note, societal order is required to produce enough food for 8bn globally, without order and its now brittle dependencies, we can only feed 4bn globally. Malthus has a lot to say about population dynamics in ecological overshoot. TL;DR Half of all people die when modern chemical production (Haber-Bosch fertilizer) and other food dependencies (climate) fail. AI drives chaos and disruption. Its like throwing a wrench into a gear system, maybe it will stall, maybe it gets thrown out (still slowing it), maybe it runs rough wearing it faster further degrading the system towards failure. When the baseline cannot absorb the cost in terms of purchasing power, it absorbs the cost from the resulting chaos in lives. Intelligent people pay attention to history because the outcomes that repeat in history occur as a result of dynamics that repeat, and in matters where lives or survival are on the line risk management shifts from permissive to restrictive (where the requirements of proof are flipped).

cgio 2y ago

I agree that we are often missing in our analyses the true materialised impact of expectations by focusing on the validity of said expectations instead. Organisations, even if not laying off, are pausing hiring plans with a conviction that AI will replace some of the workers. It then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy to some extent. It doesn’t matter if it can, what matters is if it will. And to assume that people won’t place a bet is futile, as everyone does, and even if it’s wrong the market will allocate the losses to the baseline.

trod1234 2y ago
There are two aspects of your line of reasoning that don't jive for me. People can choose to not place a bet by not participating in the economy, or tying physical assets to it. In other words, de-banking, off-grid farming, unemployment on welfare (not their money, printed guaranteed loss absorbed by the baseline). The assumption that the market can always allocate the losses to the baseline has already been shown to be foundationally flawed. It depends upon whether the baseline can absorb the losses to keep the market going, not the other way around. Those who believe in MMT don't pay head to the fact that money printing has caused societies to fail many times in the distant past, in the ever quoted phrase, but it will be different this time. When the economic engine stalls, so too does order and money-printing/debt issuance (without fractional reserve) drives this as a sieve (which we've seen over the past several decades in the form of bailout, marketshare concentration, and consolidation). Central banks set reserve allocations to 0% in 2020, adopting a capital reserve, risk-weighted system based in fiat that is opaque and stock-market tied (Basel III modified). Value is subjective, and fiat may have store of value, right up until it doesn't. Of particular note, societal order is required to produce enough food for 8bn globally, without order and its now brittle dependencies, we can only feed 4bn globally. Malthus has a lot to say about population dynamics in ecological overshoot. TL;DR Half of all people die when modern chemical production (Haber-Bosch fertilizer) and other food dependencies (climate) fail. AI drives chaos and disruption. Its like throwing a wrench into a gear system, maybe it will stall, maybe it gets thrown out (still slowing it), maybe it runs rough wearing it faster further degrading the system towards failure. When the baseline cannot absorb the cost in terms of purchasing power, it absorbs the cost from the resulting chaos in lives. Intelligent people pay attention to history because the outcomes that repeat in history occur as a result of dynamics that repeat, and in matters where lives or survival are on the line risk management shifts from permissive to restrictive (where the requirements of proof are flipped).