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It seems like a more and more recurring shareholder wet dream that companies could one day just be AI employees for digital things + robotic employees for physi

It seems like a more and more recurring shareholder wet dream that companies could one day just be AI employees for digital things + robotic employees for physical things + maybe a human CEO "orchestrating" everything. No more icky employees siphoning off what should rightfully be profit for the owners. It's like this is some kind of moral imperative that business is always kind of low-key working towards. Are you rich and want to own something like a soup company? Just lease a fully-automated factory and a bunch of AI workers, and you're instantly shipping and making money! Is this capitalism's final end state?

mechagodzilla 1y ago
If anyone can pay-as-you-go use a fully automated factory, and the factories are interchangeable, it seems like the value of capital is nearly zero in your envisioned future. Anyone with an idea for soup can start producing it with world class efficiency, prices for consumers should be low and variety should be sky-high.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
rahimnathwani 1y ago
If I'm buying soup, I'd prefer the manufacturer, the retailer, and any other part of the supply chain to be as efficient as possible, so they can compete in the market to offer me soup of a given quality at the lowest possible cost. An individual consumer doesn't derive any benefit from companies missing out on automation opportunities. Would you prefer to buy screws that are individually made on a lathe?
- mikeocool 1y ago
  Personally, the best soups I’ve ever had were not made in kitchens that were optimized for efficiency or automation, they were optimized for quality. They weren’t cheap soups, but they sure were good.
  - dyauspitr 1y ago
    Quality is a function of the ingredients used and the correct preparation. Neither of these things are something machines can’t do.
  - awb 1y ago
    Luxury goods and staple goods have distinct optimizations, both viable for generating profits and economic utility. A high end soup and an affordable soup might be serving two different markets.
- goatlover 1y ago
  I'd prefer not to live in a fully automated society where shareholders and CEOs reap all the profits while the rest of us scrape by on just enough UBI to prevent a revolution.
  - jack_h 1y ago
    I don't understand this scenario. If everyone is on UBI then most people are essentially near poverty. Where are these CEOs deriving all of their profit from? I personally think a far more likely scenario is that small businesses of one or a few people become vastly more commonplace. They will be able to do a lot more by themselves, including with less expertise in areas they may not have a lot of knowledge in. I don't think regular employees today should see LLMs as competition, rather they should see it as a tool they can use to level the playing field against current CEOs.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > I don't think regular employees today should see LLMs as competition, rather they should see it as a tool they can use to level the playing field against current CEOs. LLMs aren't some magic silver bullet to elevate people out of poverty. Lack of access to capital is an extreme restriction on what most people can actually accomplish on their own, it doesn't matter if they have the worlds best LLM helping them or not. It doesn't matter if you use an LLM to build the most brilliant business in the world if you can't afford to buy real world things to do real world business Also, Historically when regular people decide to level the playing field against the ultra wealthy, they use violence I don't think anyone should be expecting LLMs to be the great equalizer. The great equalizer has always been violent and probably always will be violence.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  > Would you prefer to buy screws that are individually made on a lathe? I don't think that was your point but pressed screws got way better properties than cut screws.
- delusional 1y ago
  You're picturing a utopia at the limit of some idealized world. Try and take a second to return to planet earth. There will not be a "quality" dial that you get to tweak to decide on your perfect quality of soup. There will be graduations, and you will be stuck with whatever the store provides. If you want medium quality soup, but the store only carries 3 brands of soup (because unlike in your utopia somebody actually has to maintain an inventory and relationships with their supply chain) and your favourite brand decides to bottom out their quality. It's not "good actually" because of economic whatever. Your soup just sucks now. Oh but "the market will eventually provide a new brand" is a terrible strategy when they start spicing the soup with lead to give it cinnamon flavor or whatever. I'm not an ethereal being. I'm a human, I need it to be good now. Not in theory land.
  - rahimnathwani 1y ago
    You describe three potential undesirable outcomes: - consolidation, such that there are only a few different choices of soup - a race to the bottom in quality - poisoning These are all possibilities under our current system, and we have mechanisms (laws and market competition) which limit the extent to which they occur. What is it about extreme automation technology that you think will increase these prevalence of these issues? By what mechanisms will these issues occur more frequently (rather than less frequently), as production technology becomes more capable?
    - const_cast 1y ago
      Automation returns more power (abstract) to the owning class, which will make inequality more severe over time, which then results in said owning class having enough power to change legislation and market dynamics to their own desires. So, in turn - more poisoning, less quality, and more consolidation. A lot of people think wealth inequality isn't a big deal, but I disagree. The more proportion of money a select few have in comparison to everyone else, the higher the likelihood those select few can mold society to their whim. Corruption thrives off of wealth inequality. Without it, it cannot exist.
      - 1y ago
- lukebechtel 1y ago
  don't mind me I'm just moloch posting https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Hammershaft 1y ago
Sounds unironically great if we could do it, the productivity improvements would allow dramatic improvements in living standards with moderate redistribution. I don't think this is where these llms are getting us.
taberiand 1y ago
Final end state where it eats itself? Who buys all that soup when the workers have no jobs and no money? How much soup can one human CEO drink? (And why isn't the CEO also replaced by the AI?)
- booleandilemma 1y ago
  The solution to this is to begin exporting your soup to other countries that have people who still work and have money. In the end it still eats itself though, but not before eating everything else.
chanux 1y ago
Great question. I want this idea to be drawn to an extreme where I can't buy soup or anything for that matter. Sure I will starve and die soon, but I feel the kind of burning the world will go through will be fun to watch. With tears of course.
yMEyUyNE1 1y ago
Felt like deja vu “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment” – Warren G. Bennis.
A1kmm 1y ago
To side-track on your soup company analogy... For almost all businesses these days, distribution (getting customers to know about your product and have access to it) is much harder than actually creating the product. There are gatekeepers to getting audience - whether it is is supermarkets, search engines, big players in the ad tech industry, well established websites, and traditional media. And they all see profitability of businesses benefiting from them for distribution as money left on the table.
csa 1y ago
> Are you rich and want to own something like a soup company? This already exists. > Just lease a fully-automated factory and a bunch of AI workers, The current solution is not “fully automated”, but it can be fairly hands off for the owner. > and you're instantly shipping and making money! … but this is the hard part. Just because you can make soup doesn’t mean anyone will buy it. Marketing and distribution are very real challenges in markets like this, and the players in those markets will put tremendous pressure on the owner via their costs such that the owner doesn’t make money unless they commit to producing a relatively high level of volume. Source: My family members who have retail food product lines.

mechagodzilla 1y ago

If anyone can pay-as-you-go use a fully automated factory, and the factories are interchangeable, it seems like the value of capital is nearly zero in your envisioned future. Anyone with an idea for soup can start producing it with world class efficiency, prices for consumers should be low and variety should be sky-high.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

rahimnathwani 1y ago

If I'm buying soup, I'd prefer the manufacturer, the retailer, and any other part of the supply chain to be as efficient as possible, so they can compete in the market to offer me soup of a given quality at the lowest possible cost. An individual consumer doesn't derive any benefit from companies missing out on automation opportunities. Would you prefer to buy screws that are individually made on a lathe?

mikeocool 1y ago
Personally, the best soups I’ve ever had were not made in kitchens that were optimized for efficiency or automation, they were optimized for quality. They weren’t cheap soups, but they sure were good.
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  Quality is a function of the ingredients used and the correct preparation. Neither of these things are something machines can’t do.
- awb 1y ago
  Luxury goods and staple goods have distinct optimizations, both viable for generating profits and economic utility. A high end soup and an affordable soup might be serving two different markets.
goatlover 1y ago
I'd prefer not to live in a fully automated society where shareholders and CEOs reap all the profits while the rest of us scrape by on just enough UBI to prevent a revolution.
- jack_h 1y ago
  I don't understand this scenario. If everyone is on UBI then most people are essentially near poverty. Where are these CEOs deriving all of their profit from? I personally think a far more likely scenario is that small businesses of one or a few people become vastly more commonplace. They will be able to do a lot more by themselves, including with less expertise in areas they may not have a lot of knowledge in. I don't think regular employees today should see LLMs as competition, rather they should see it as a tool they can use to level the playing field against current CEOs.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > I don't think regular employees today should see LLMs as competition, rather they should see it as a tool they can use to level the playing field against current CEOs. LLMs aren't some magic silver bullet to elevate people out of poverty. Lack of access to capital is an extreme restriction on what most people can actually accomplish on their own, it doesn't matter if they have the worlds best LLM helping them or not. It doesn't matter if you use an LLM to build the most brilliant business in the world if you can't afford to buy real world things to do real world business Also, Historically when regular people decide to level the playing field against the ultra wealthy, they use violence I don't think anyone should be expecting LLMs to be the great equalizer. The great equalizer has always been violent and probably always will be violence.
rightbyte 1y ago
> Would you prefer to buy screws that are individually made on a lathe? I don't think that was your point but pressed screws got way better properties than cut screws.
delusional 1y ago
You're picturing a utopia at the limit of some idealized world. Try and take a second to return to planet earth. There will not be a "quality" dial that you get to tweak to decide on your perfect quality of soup. There will be graduations, and you will be stuck with whatever the store provides. If you want medium quality soup, but the store only carries 3 brands of soup (because unlike in your utopia somebody actually has to maintain an inventory and relationships with their supply chain) and your favourite brand decides to bottom out their quality. It's not "good actually" because of economic whatever. Your soup just sucks now. Oh but "the market will eventually provide a new brand" is a terrible strategy when they start spicing the soup with lead to give it cinnamon flavor or whatever. I'm not an ethereal being. I'm a human, I need it to be good now. Not in theory land.
- rahimnathwani 1y ago
  You describe three potential undesirable outcomes: - consolidation, such that there are only a few different choices of soup - a race to the bottom in quality - poisoning These are all possibilities under our current system, and we have mechanisms (laws and market competition) which limit the extent to which they occur. What is it about extreme automation technology that you think will increase these prevalence of these issues? By what mechanisms will these issues occur more frequently (rather than less frequently), as production technology becomes more capable?
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Automation returns more power (abstract) to the owning class, which will make inequality more severe over time, which then results in said owning class having enough power to change legislation and market dynamics to their own desires. So, in turn - more poisoning, less quality, and more consolidation. A lot of people think wealth inequality isn't a big deal, but I disagree. The more proportion of money a select few have in comparison to everyone else, the higher the likelihood those select few can mold society to their whim. Corruption thrives off of wealth inequality. Without it, it cannot exist.
    - 1y ago
lukebechtel 1y ago
don't mind me I'm just moloch posting https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Hammershaft 1y ago

Sounds unironically great if we could do it, the productivity improvements would allow dramatic improvements in living standards with moderate redistribution. I don't think this is where these llms are getting us.

taberiand 1y ago

Final end state where it eats itself? Who buys all that soup when the workers have no jobs and no money? How much soup can one human CEO drink? (And why isn't the CEO also replaced by the AI?)

booleandilemma 1y ago
The solution to this is to begin exporting your soup to other countries that have people who still work and have money. In the end it still eats itself though, but not before eating everything else.

chanux 1y ago

Great question. I want this idea to be drawn to an extreme where I can't buy soup or anything for that matter. Sure I will starve and die soon, but I feel the kind of burning the world will go through will be fun to watch. With tears of course.

yMEyUyNE1 1y ago

Felt like deja vu “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment” – Warren G. Bennis.

A1kmm 1y ago

To side-track on your soup company analogy... For almost all businesses these days, distribution (getting customers to know about your product and have access to it) is much harder than actually creating the product. There are gatekeepers to getting audience - whether it is is supermarkets, search engines, big players in the ad tech industry, well established websites, and traditional media. And they all see profitability of businesses benefiting from them for distribution as money left on the table.

csa 1y ago

> Are you rich and want to own something like a soup company? This already exists. > Just lease a fully-automated factory and a bunch of AI workers, The current solution is not “fully automated”, but it can be fairly hands off for the owner. > and you're instantly shipping and making money! … but this is the hard part. Just because you can make soup doesn’t mean anyone will buy it. Marketing and distribution are very real challenges in markets like this, and the players in those markets will put tremendous pressure on the owner via their costs such that the owner doesn’t make money unless they commit to producing a relatively high level of volume. Source: My family members who have retail food product lines.