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Your criticism is completely pointless. I’m not sure what your expectation is, but even your claim about the assumption the paper makes is incorrect. For one

Your criticism is completely pointless. I’m not sure what your expectation is, but even your claim about the assumption the paper makes is incorrect. For one thing, the paper assumes that the amount that will be transferred from the human lawyer to the AI lawyer would be $500 + the productivity gains brought by AI, so more than 100%. But that is irrelevant to the actual paper. You can apply whatever multiplier you want as long as the assumption that human labor will be replaced by AI labor holds true. Because the actual nature of the future is irrelevant to the question the paper is answering. The question the paper is answering is what impact such expectations of the future would have on today’s economy (limited to modeling the interest rate). Such a future need not arrive or even be possible as long as there is an expectation it may happen. And future papers can model different variations on those expectations (so, for example, some may model that 20% of labor in the future will still be human, etc). The important point as far as the paper is concerned is that the expectations of AI replacing human labor and some percentage of the wealth that was going to the human labor now accrues to the owner of the AI will lead to significant changes to current interest rates. This is extremely useful and valuable information to model.

mechagodzilla 2y ago
The $500 going to the "AI Owner" instead of labor (i.e. the human lawyer) is the productivity gain though, right? And if that was such a productivity gain (i.e. the marginal cost was basically 0 to the AI owner, instead of, say, $499 in electricity and hardware), the usual outcome is that the cost for such a product/service basically gets driven to 0, and the benefit from productivity actually gets distributed to the clients that would have paid the lawyer (who suddenly get much cheaper legal services), rather than the owner of the 'AI lawyer.' We seem pretty likely to be headed towards a future where AI-provided services have almost no value/pricing power, and just become super low margin businesses. Look at all of the nearly-identical 'frontier' LLMs right now, for a great example.
- larodi 2y ago
  Indeed, fair chance AI only amplifies certain sector's wages, but the 100% automated work will not get any magic margin. Not more than say smart trading to have too many people focus there.
visarga 2y ago
> You can apply whatever multiplier you want as long as the assumption that human labor will be replaced by AI labor holds true. Do you think we will be doing in 5 or 10 years the same things we do today, but with AI? Every capability increase or cost reduction stimulates demand. AI is no different, it will stimulate both demand and competition. And since everyone has AI, and AIs are not much different between them, then the differentiating factor remain the humans. Even if we solve all our current problems with AI there is no reason to stop there, we could reduce poverty, pollution, fight global warming, conquer space. The application space is unbounded. Take electricity or internet for example and think how they expand the scope of work. Programming has been automating itself for 60 years, with each new language, library or open source project, and yet we have great jobs in the field. No matter how much we have, we want more. Our capability of desiring progress is faster than AI capability to provide it.
- addicted 2y ago
  Again, whether I think this or not is irrelevant to the question the paper is tackling. The question the paper is tackling is how human behavior today (limiting this to modeling interest rates) would change if people generally expected money to transfer from labor to AI. A future where this happens isn’t necessary for this paper to be valuable. Heck, even if people never believe this will actually happen makes this paperback less valuable. As an analogy, let’s say someone wrote a paper on how humanity could respond to a catastrophic hit by a large meteor. This paper would be valuable even if the earth is never hit by a meteor while humans are still here. Further, it would be additionally valuable because the insights gained here could then be applied to other, less catastrophic scenarios, such as a volcano eruption that destroys a single city.

mechagodzilla 2y ago

The $500 going to the "AI Owner" instead of labor (i.e. the human lawyer) is the productivity gain though, right? And if that was such a productivity gain (i.e. the marginal cost was basically 0 to the AI owner, instead of, say, $499 in electricity and hardware), the usual outcome is that the cost for such a product/service basically gets driven to 0, and the benefit from productivity actually gets distributed to the clients that would have paid the lawyer (who suddenly get much cheaper legal services), rather than the owner of the 'AI lawyer.' We seem pretty likely to be headed towards a future where AI-provided services have almost no value/pricing power, and just become super low margin businesses. Look at all of the nearly-identical 'frontier' LLMs right now, for a great example.

larodi 2y ago
Indeed, fair chance AI only amplifies certain sector's wages, but the 100% automated work will not get any magic margin. Not more than say smart trading to have too many people focus there.

visarga 2y ago

> You can apply whatever multiplier you want as long as the assumption that human labor will be replaced by AI labor holds true. Do you think we will be doing in 5 or 10 years the same things we do today, but with AI? Every capability increase or cost reduction stimulates demand. AI is no different, it will stimulate both demand and competition. And since everyone has AI, and AIs are not much different between them, then the differentiating factor remain the humans. Even if we solve all our current problems with AI there is no reason to stop there, we could reduce poverty, pollution, fight global warming, conquer space. The application space is unbounded. Take electricity or internet for example and think how they expand the scope of work. Programming has been automating itself for 60 years, with each new language, library or open source project, and yet we have great jobs in the field. No matter how much we have, we want more. Our capability of desiring progress is faster than AI capability to provide it.

addicted 2y ago
Again, whether I think this or not is irrelevant to the question the paper is tackling. The question the paper is tackling is how human behavior today (limiting this to modeling interest rates) would change if people generally expected money to transfer from labor to AI. A future where this happens isn’t necessary for this paper to be valuable. Heck, even if people never believe this will actually happen makes this paperback less valuable. As an analogy, let’s say someone wrote a paper on how humanity could respond to a catastrophic hit by a large meteor. This paper would be valuable even if the earth is never hit by a meteor while humans are still here. Further, it would be additionally valuable because the insights gained here could then be applied to other, less catastrophic scenarios, such as a volcano eruption that destroys a single city.