8 ms·

This is the true problem with AI. It's with who owns it, and what they will inevitably use it for. Whether it can do cool stuff with code or equal a junior deve

This is the true problem with AI. It's with who owns it, and what they will inevitably use it for. Whether it can do cool stuff with code or equal a junior developer is irrelevant. What it can do is less important than what it will be used for. The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs, which from their perspective is a cost center and always will be. If you're not an owner, then you have no control over the direction or use of AI. You are doomed to have your life disrupted and changed by it, with no input whatsoever. To quote the article, your six shillings a day can become six shillings a week, and you are left to just deal with it however you can. You are "free" to go find some other six shilling a week job. If you can. And if you think, "Oh, every technology is like this, it's always been this way", you are right. You have always been at the whims of the owning class, and barring a change towards economic democracy, where average people regain control over their lives, it likely always will be.

dontlaugh 1y ago
This was the Luddites’ position. Organised labour should one again take up this principled position. Join a trade union!
- breakyerself 1y ago
  Software engineers needs a lot more organization
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Do you really want a return to the days when "women's work" was spending every free moment spinning and weaving cloth by hand? When cloth was so valuable there was a profession called "rag pickers"? Where new clothes were rare, hand me downs were the usual, and people wore clothes until they disintegrated? And poor people made clothes out of flour sacks?
  - dontlaugh 1y ago
    That’s not what the Luddites wanted. They praised the technology itself and recognised it would save a lot of time. But they also recognised that they the workers wouldn’t reap any of those benefits, they’d just lose their jobs. Do you really think capitalists would choose to shorten the working day with no loss of pay as productivity increases? If so, you are incredibly naive.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      The workers did reap the benefits. The Law of Supply and Demand ensures it. 1.1% of the US labor force works at minimum wage jobs. When wages are raised by the government, job losses happen. 16,000 to 36,000 people lost their jobs when California raised the minimum wage for fast food workers. > Do you really think capitalists would choose to shorten the working day with no loss of pay as productivity increases? During WW2, production needed to increase, so hours were increased to 60 hour weeks. The labor force, very patriotic, was all for this. Production increased for a few weeks, and then fell below what was produced in a 40 hour week. Companies wanting to maximize profits are aware of this effect. Also, if you track employee total compensation (not just wages) against productivity increases, the two lines form the same curve. The reason for this is the Law of Supply and Demand pushes those two lines together. The more productive a worker is, the more they get paid, as such workers are more in demand.
      - schmidtleonard 1y ago
        > if you track employee total compensation (not just wages) against productivity increases, the two lines form the same curve If you count inflation in medical and housing costs as an increase in wages, the "wedge" disappears, yes -- but why would you do that for any other purpose than making the wedge disappear? No, it's very telling that labor saving devices, which have squished the largest industry into economic insignificance many times over, have not resulted in the ability for normal people to work less. Clearly, the benefits have gone elsewhere. "The benefits went into technology! Think of the iPhones!" The median financed smartphone is 1/50th the cost of median rent, try again.
  - nancyminusone 1y ago
    Sure would be nice to make clothes from flour sacks again, but alas; today's sacks are made of polypropylene.
  - lucas_membrane 1y ago
    Those days were after the rich had commenced urbanization by driving the agrarian workers off the land and encouraging them to find work at dismal wages in the city, made it a crime to be a vagrant, and funded charities that collaborated with judges to force the poor into workhouses where they could enjoy abuse, degradation and misery from cradle to early grave.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Even unions are up against it though. in the Netherlands, there have been multiple strikes from e.g. the train operators; they demand a 10% wage increase, after the train company downsized a lot during the pandemic, but who were then unable to upsize again as traffic resumed and who even now don't have the same amount of travelers as they did in 2020. But they're not profitable. They've made a loss for five years in a row, requiring government subsidies to stay operating (because them going bankrupt would make big parts of the country grind to a halt). Ticket prices are so high that it's barely cheaper than driving, and as soon as you travel with two or more people it's cheaper to just own a car. (Or even rent one; I traveled to the other side of the country once for a concert, my own car was in the garage. Did the math, it was cheaper and more convenient (door-to-door) to rent a car, pay the surcharge for long distance, pay the €35 in fuel, etc than it was to buy return tickets for three people) The answer (I think, I'm no economist / politician / etc) isn't unionising and demanding better treatment, because the limits of the capitalist system they operate in have been reached. The answer is to stop trying to make it profitable. Re-privatize it: trains and public transit are a huge and hugely important nationwide economic driver, an essential service that capitalism can't be trusted with because the owners will try and get as much money out of it as possible, the employees get overworked and exploited and will shut the system down (as is their right) out of protest, and the people will have to deal with the consequences. Just in my small bubble, the train strikes led to people not going to the office, missing events, lunch orders that either had too much stock that had to be discarded or that were cancelled entirely, costing that company thousands in income, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-union. I'm anti-capitalist though.
  - dontlaugh 1y ago
    You’ll often find trade unionists are also anti-capitalist, some are even socialists or communists.
WalterBright 1y ago
> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Of course. That's been going on since the invention of the plow. That's why today we can do more interesting things than turn over the earth with a pointy stick all day every day. > economic democracy, where average people regain control over their lives History shows us that this inevitably means people lose all control over their lives, because the state will make your decisions for you and assign you your job. For example, let's say the color of cars produce by car companies is determined by democracy. 59% vote for the cars to be green. And if you want a red car? Too bad. What if you want a 4 seat car? No dice, 53% voted for 2 seaters to be made. What if you didn't want a car stereo? You're stuck paying for it anyway, as 73% voted for it.
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
  I have a whole list of things I'd like from my car that the market does not provide because it is more profitable not to. Why do I get the feeling that instead of seeing this as a horror story you would scold me for unreasonable expectations, even though it is the identical mirror form of the horror story you just told?
  - derektank 1y ago
    My take would be to scold you to start your own company that provides the features you want from your car if it's not already being provided by the marketplace
    - schmidtleonard 1y ago
      I'd have more luck petitioning the Central Car Design Committee because > it is more profitable not to ...and if anyone thinks this is ridiculous, I'd ask them if they are for or against repealing all of our current motor vehicle regulations. If "for," they have admitted to being a hopeless libertarian, and if "against," they have acknowledged that important reasonable features can be incompatible with the profit motive of a free market and it no longer seems so strange that I might have a list which is more of the same.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Things are cyclic, nothing new; the previous big scare was (is?) outsourcing, where for the same price as one developer in western / northern Europe or SF you can hire five from eastern Europe or India. But that hasn't affected employability of the one developer, as far as I'm aware. I'm not even thinking of skill level, I'm sure that's comparable (but honestly I don't know / care enough), but both outsourcing and AI require the same things - requirements. I've grown up in this country (the Netherlands) and automatically have intrinsic knowledge of e.g. government, taxes, the energy sector, transportation, etc, so much that I'm not even consciously aware of a lot of things I know. If you spend a LOT of time and effort, you could - eventually - break that down into requirements and work orders or whatever that someone else could process. But it's much more efficient to do it yourself or just hire someone from around here.
- RainyDayTmrw 1y ago
  I know of two major examples - one personal and one word-of-mouth - where a major US company successfully took their Covid era remote work knowledge, applied it to outsourcing, and successfully replaced most of their US onshore developers with offshore.
- ge96 1y ago
  > hasn't affected employability of the one developer I wonder, combo that r&d rule, general economics, saturation in the field The norm for new grads seems to be "apply at least 2000 times, get 1 job"
  - tangjurine 1y ago
    the one developer one dev to rule them all, and in darkness bind them sounds like a 10x dev to me
- worik 1y ago
  > the previous big scare was (is?) outsourcing, I was replaced by outsourcing Seriously. Fuck off
- 1y ago
blooalien 1y ago
This is by far my biggest concern about "A.I." and "smart" robots... Not the technology itself, but what the "ruling class" intend to do with it / how they intend to use it. Their primary concern is not "worker productivity" these days. It's "How can I replace the maximum number of workers (ideally all of them) so that I can keep most / all of the profits / benefits for myself (and the shareholders)?" It's always been about profit, but they now finally see a potential to entirely rid themselves of "those pesky poors" and their annoying paychecks once and for all.
whall6 1y ago
The owning class is different today than it was in Ned’s time. Who owns MSFT? You, probably, through your 401k. Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders and effecting change. Unless you stuff your cash under your mattress, you are the owning class.
- worik 1y ago
  > Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders Sweet lies.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  > Who owns MSFT? You, probably, through your 401k. All or nothing fallacy. People have VASTLY different degrees of ownership, and this is reflected in their degree of control. > Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders Such coalitions already exist. They have names like BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity Investments [1]. Good luck competing with them. Especially if you abdicate your role in democracy, don't agitate for legal change, and restrict yourself to only market-based means of change (not BlackRock and ilk though - they use every lever available to them, they don't handicap themselves). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms
  - whall6 1y ago
    This isn’t a false dichotomy because I’m not even representing two separate choices. I get that you alone have probably an insignificant amount of control, but forming a coalition would allow you to make change. I’m aware that there are asset managers. Whose assets do you think they’re managing? Yours! Do you own VOO? Awesome, that’s why Vanguard owns 10% of almost every large cap company. Take control of those shares and go make change. Look up John Chevedden. He owns a minimal amount of shares in companies where he causes huge changes. They call him the “corporate gadfly” [1] Don’t be lured into thinking that you have to invest your money into a predesigned portfolio because it maximizes returns. If you care about control then maximize control. You already have the power! [1] https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-23-19/s72319-6733874-207512.pdf https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-23-19/s72319-6733874-207512....

dontlaugh 1y ago

This was the Luddites’ position. Organised labour should one again take up this principled position. Join a trade union!

breakyerself 1y ago
Software engineers needs a lot more organization
WalterBright 1y ago
Do you really want a return to the days when "women's work" was spending every free moment spinning and weaving cloth by hand? When cloth was so valuable there was a profession called "rag pickers"? Where new clothes were rare, hand me downs were the usual, and people wore clothes until they disintegrated? And poor people made clothes out of flour sacks?
- dontlaugh 1y ago
  That’s not what the Luddites wanted. They praised the technology itself and recognised it would save a lot of time. But they also recognised that they the workers wouldn’t reap any of those benefits, they’d just lose their jobs. Do you really think capitalists would choose to shorten the working day with no loss of pay as productivity increases? If so, you are incredibly naive.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    The workers did reap the benefits. The Law of Supply and Demand ensures it. 1.1% of the US labor force works at minimum wage jobs. When wages are raised by the government, job losses happen. 16,000 to 36,000 people lost their jobs when California raised the minimum wage for fast food workers. > Do you really think capitalists would choose to shorten the working day with no loss of pay as productivity increases? During WW2, production needed to increase, so hours were increased to 60 hour weeks. The labor force, very patriotic, was all for this. Production increased for a few weeks, and then fell below what was produced in a 40 hour week. Companies wanting to maximize profits are aware of this effect. Also, if you track employee total compensation (not just wages) against productivity increases, the two lines form the same curve. The reason for this is the Law of Supply and Demand pushes those two lines together. The more productive a worker is, the more they get paid, as such workers are more in demand.
    - schmidtleonard 1y ago
      > if you track employee total compensation (not just wages) against productivity increases, the two lines form the same curve If you count inflation in medical and housing costs as an increase in wages, the "wedge" disappears, yes -- but why would you do that for any other purpose than making the wedge disappear? No, it's very telling that labor saving devices, which have squished the largest industry into economic insignificance many times over, have not resulted in the ability for normal people to work less. Clearly, the benefits have gone elsewhere. "The benefits went into technology! Think of the iPhones!" The median financed smartphone is 1/50th the cost of median rent, try again.
- nancyminusone 1y ago
  Sure would be nice to make clothes from flour sacks again, but alas; today's sacks are made of polypropylene.
- lucas_membrane 1y ago
  Those days were after the rich had commenced urbanization by driving the agrarian workers off the land and encouraging them to find work at dismal wages in the city, made it a crime to be a vagrant, and funded charities that collaborated with judges to force the poor into workhouses where they could enjoy abuse, degradation and misery from cradle to early grave.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Even unions are up against it though. in the Netherlands, there have been multiple strikes from e.g. the train operators; they demand a 10% wage increase, after the train company downsized a lot during the pandemic, but who were then unable to upsize again as traffic resumed and who even now don't have the same amount of travelers as they did in 2020. But they're not profitable. They've made a loss for five years in a row, requiring government subsidies to stay operating (because them going bankrupt would make big parts of the country grind to a halt). Ticket prices are so high that it's barely cheaper than driving, and as soon as you travel with two or more people it's cheaper to just own a car. (Or even rent one; I traveled to the other side of the country once for a concert, my own car was in the garage. Did the math, it was cheaper and more convenient (door-to-door) to rent a car, pay the surcharge for long distance, pay the €35 in fuel, etc than it was to buy return tickets for three people) The answer (I think, I'm no economist / politician / etc) isn't unionising and demanding better treatment, because the limits of the capitalist system they operate in have been reached. The answer is to stop trying to make it profitable. Re-privatize it: trains and public transit are a huge and hugely important nationwide economic driver, an essential service that capitalism can't be trusted with because the owners will try and get as much money out of it as possible, the employees get overworked and exploited and will shut the system down (as is their right) out of protest, and the people will have to deal with the consequences. Just in my small bubble, the train strikes led to people not going to the office, missing events, lunch orders that either had too much stock that had to be discarded or that were cancelled entirely, costing that company thousands in income, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-union. I'm anti-capitalist though.
- dontlaugh 1y ago
  You’ll often find trade unionists are also anti-capitalist, some are even socialists or communists.

WalterBright 1y ago

> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Of course. That's been going on since the invention of the plow. That's why today we can do more interesting things than turn over the earth with a pointy stick all day every day. > economic democracy, where average people regain control over their lives History shows us that this inevitably means people lose all control over their lives, because the state will make your decisions for you and assign you your job. For example, let's say the color of cars produce by car companies is determined by democracy. 59% vote for the cars to be green. And if you want a red car? Too bad. What if you want a 4 seat car? No dice, 53% voted for 2 seaters to be made. What if you didn't want a car stereo? You're stuck paying for it anyway, as 73% voted for it.

schmidtleonard 1y ago
I have a whole list of things I'd like from my car that the market does not provide because it is more profitable not to. Why do I get the feeling that instead of seeing this as a horror story you would scold me for unreasonable expectations, even though it is the identical mirror form of the horror story you just told?
- derektank 1y ago
  My take would be to scold you to start your own company that provides the features you want from your car if it's not already being provided by the marketplace
  - schmidtleonard 1y ago
    I'd have more luck petitioning the Central Car Design Committee because > it is more profitable not to ...and if anyone thinks this is ridiculous, I'd ask them if they are for or against repealing all of our current motor vehicle regulations. If "for," they have admitted to being a hopeless libertarian, and if "against," they have acknowledged that important reasonable features can be incompatible with the profit motive of a free market and it no longer seems so strange that I might have a list which is more of the same.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago

> The owning class will use it to reduce payroll costs Things are cyclic, nothing new; the previous big scare was (is?) outsourcing, where for the same price as one developer in western / northern Europe or SF you can hire five from eastern Europe or India. But that hasn't affected employability of the one developer, as far as I'm aware. I'm not even thinking of skill level, I'm sure that's comparable (but honestly I don't know / care enough), but both outsourcing and AI require the same things - requirements. I've grown up in this country (the Netherlands) and automatically have intrinsic knowledge of e.g. government, taxes, the energy sector, transportation, etc, so much that I'm not even consciously aware of a lot of things I know. If you spend a LOT of time and effort, you could - eventually - break that down into requirements and work orders or whatever that someone else could process. But it's much more efficient to do it yourself or just hire someone from around here.

RainyDayTmrw 1y ago
I know of two major examples - one personal and one word-of-mouth - where a major US company successfully took their Covid era remote work knowledge, applied it to outsourcing, and successfully replaced most of their US onshore developers with offshore.
ge96 1y ago
> hasn't affected employability of the one developer I wonder, combo that r&d rule, general economics, saturation in the field The norm for new grads seems to be "apply at least 2000 times, get 1 job"
- tangjurine 1y ago
  the one developer one dev to rule them all, and in darkness bind them sounds like a 10x dev to me
worik 1y ago
> the previous big scare was (is?) outsourcing, I was replaced by outsourcing Seriously. Fuck off
1y ago

blooalien 1y ago

This is by far my biggest concern about "A.I." and "smart" robots... Not the technology itself, but what the "ruling class" intend to do with it / how they intend to use it. Their primary concern is not "worker productivity" these days. It's "How can I replace the maximum number of workers (ideally all of them) so that I can keep most / all of the profits / benefits for myself (and the shareholders)?" It's always been about profit, but they now finally see a potential to entirely rid themselves of "those pesky poors" and their annoying paychecks once and for all.

whall6 1y ago

The owning class is different today than it was in Ned’s time. Who owns MSFT? You, probably, through your 401k. Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders and effecting change. Unless you stuff your cash under your mattress, you are the owning class.

worik 1y ago
> Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders Sweet lies.
like_any_other 1y ago
> Who owns MSFT? You, probably, through your 401k. All or nothing fallacy. People have VASTLY different degrees of ownership, and this is reflected in their degree of control. > Nobody is stopping you from creating a coalition of similarly minded shareholders Such coalitions already exist. They have names like BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity Investments [1]. Good luck competing with them. Especially if you abdicate your role in democracy, don't agitate for legal change, and restrict yourself to only market-based means of change (not BlackRock and ilk though - they use every lever available to them, they don't handicap themselves). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms
- whall6 1y ago
  This isn’t a false dichotomy because I’m not even representing two separate choices. I get that you alone have probably an insignificant amount of control, but forming a coalition would allow you to make change. I’m aware that there are asset managers. Whose assets do you think they’re managing? Yours! Do you own VOO? Awesome, that’s why Vanguard owns 10% of almost every large cap company. Take control of those shares and go make change. Look up John Chevedden. He owns a minimal amount of shares in companies where he causes huge changes. They call him the “corporate gadfly” [1] Don’t be lured into thinking that you have to invest your money into a predesigned portfolio because it maximizes returns. If you care about control then maximize control. You already have the power! [1] https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-23-19/s72319-6733874-207512.pdf https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-23-19/s72319-6733874-207512....