3 ms·

Who's giving you that paycheck? Why don't they just hire that AI agent themselves and cut out the middle man?

Mtinie 11mo ago
In this scenario the person who wants to be paid owns the output of the agent. So it’s closer to a contractor and subcontractor arrangement than employment.
- georgehotz 11mo ago
  How do they own it? I see two scenarios. 1. They built the agent and it's somehow competitive. If so, they shouldn't just replace their own job with it, they should replace a lot more jobs and get a lot more rich than one salary. 2. They rent the agent. If so, why would the renting company not rent directly to their boss, maybe even at a business premium? I see no scenario where there's an "agent to do my work while I keep getting a paycheck."
  - dr_dshiv 11mo ago
    If you know contracting, you know that’s exactly how it’s always worked.
  - oarsinsync 11mo ago
    It's the equivalent of outsourcing your job. People have done this before, to China, to India, etc. There are stories about the people that got caught, e.g. with China because of security concerns, and with India because they got greedy, were overemployed, and failed in their opsec. This is no different, it's just a different mechanism of outsourcing your job. And yes, if you can find a way to get AI to do 90% of your job for you, you should totally get 4 more jobs and 5x your earnings for 50% reduction in hours spent working.
    - georgehotz 11mo ago
      Maybe a few people managed to outsource their own job and sit in the middle for a bit. But that's not the common story, the common story is that your employer cut out the middle man and outsourced all the jobs. The same thing will happen here.
      - catlifeonmars 11mo ago
        The trick is to register an LLC, and then get your employer to outsource the work to your consulting company. You get laid off, and then continue to work through your company. Only mild sarcasm, as this is essentially what happens.
  - EGreg 11mo ago
    Let me generalize The problem is the organizing principle for our entire global society is competition. This is the default, the law of the jungle or tribal warfare. But within families or corporations we do have cooperation, or a command structure. The problem is that this principle inevitably leads to the tragedy of the unmanaged commons. This is why we are overfishing, polluting the Earth, why some people are freeriding and having 7 children with no contraception etc. Why ecosystems — rainforests, kelp forests, coral reefs, and even insects — are being decimated. Why one third of arable farmland is desertified, just like in the US dust bowl. Back then it was a race to the bottom and the US Govt had to step in and pay farmers NOT to plant. We are racing to an AIpocalypse because what if China does it first? In case you think the world don’t have real solutions… actually there have been a few examples of us cooperating to prevent catastrophe. 1. Banning CFCs in Montreal Protocol, repairing hole in Ozone Layer 2. Nuclear non-proliferation treaty 3. Ban on chemical weapons 4. Ban on viral bioweapons research So number 2 is what I would hope would happen with huge GPU farms, we as a global community know exactly the supply chains, heck there is only one company in Europe doing the etching. And also I would want a global ban on AGI development, or at least of leaking model weights. Otherwise it is almost exactly like giving everyone the means to make chemical weapons, designer viruses etc. The probability that NO ONE does anything that gets out of hand, will be infinitesimally small. The probability that we will be overrun by tons of destructive bot swarms and robots is practically 100%. In short — this is the ultimate negstive externality. The corporations and countries are in a race to outdo each other in AGI even if they destroy humanity doing it. All because as a species, we are drawn to competition and don’t do the work to establish frameworks for cooperation the way we have done on local scales like cities. PS: meanwhile, having limited tools and not AGI or ASI can be very helpful. Like protein folding or chess playing. But why, why have AGI proliferate?
  - kgwxd 11mo ago
    > agent to do my work while I keep getting a paycheck. They already exists, and have for a very long time, but I'm sure as shit not telling my customers about it.
fijiaarone 11mo ago
Can you explain why we pay Sam Altman & Elon Musk? Or Jeff Bezos & Bill Gates? They’re just middlemen collecting money for other people’s labor.
- georgehotz 11mo ago
  You are welcome to try to cut them out and start your own business. But I suspect you might find it a bit harder than your employer signing up for a SaaS AI agent. Actually wait, isn't that what this website is? Does it work?
- gridspy 11mo ago
  They are a bridge between those with money and those with skill. Plus they can aggregate information and act as a repository of knowledge and decision maker for their teams. These are valuable skills, though perhaps nowhere near as valuable as they end up being in a free market.
  - nawgz 11mo ago
    A mistake lies in thinking it’s a market, but it’s egregious you’d call it free
    - gridspy 11mo ago
      The free market is an analyzable simplification of the real market, however I think the assumptions hold in this case. If a CEO delivers a certain advantage (a profit multiplier) it's rational that a bidding war will ensue for that CEO until they are paid the entire apparent advantage of their pretense for the company. A similar effect happens for salespeople. The key difference between free and real markets in this case is information and distortions of lobbying. That plus legal restrictions on the company. The CEO is incentivized to find ways around these issues to maximize their own pay.
  - gausswho 11mo ago
    Sounds like skills that bots already do better than humans.
zwnow 11mo ago
How are businesses going to get money if there are no humans that are able to pay for goods? Lots of us are not cut out for blue collar work.
- macintux 11mo ago
  As long as someone else is still paying their employees, it’s all good.
- vbezhenar 11mo ago
  Some humans will be rich and they'll buy things. For example those humans who own AI or fabs. And those humans, who serve to them (assuming that there will be services not replaced by AI, for example prostitution), will also buy things. If 99.99% of other humans will become poor and eventually die, it certainly will change economy a lot.
  - ares623 11mo ago
    That’s assuming a large chunk of humanity will just lay down and die off.
    - lawlessone 11mo ago
      Probably why Elon etc want to replace militaries with drones. https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2024/11/25/elon-musk-criticized-the-f-35-called-for-armed-drones-instead/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2024/11/25/elon-musk...
      - ares623 11mo ago
        Not a lot of difference between an F-35 and a fleet of drones when it comes to it tbh. If F-35s are not enough then I don't see how drones will fare better. IMO drones are just a way for Elon to get his foot in the door.
    - jmoggr 11mo ago
      All they have to do is not reproduce. This is already happening.
danenania 11mo ago
A question is which side agents will achieve human-level skill at first. It wouldn’t surprise me if doing the work itself end-to-end (to a market-ready standard) remains in the uncanny valley for quite some time, while “fuzzier” roles like management can be more readily replaced. It’s like how we all once thought blue collar work would be first, but it turned out that knowledge work is much easier. Right now everyone imagines managers replacing their employees with AI, but we might have the order reversed.
- jMyles 11mo ago
  > This begs the question of which side agents will achieve human-level skill at first. I don't agree; it's perfectly possible, given chasing0entropy's... let's say 'feature request', that either side might gain that skill level first. > It wouldn’t surprise me if doing the work itself end-to-end (to a market-ready standard) remains in the uncanny valley for quite some time, while “fuzzier” roles like management can be more readily replaced. Agreed - and for many of us, that's exactly what seems to be happening. My agent is vaguely closer to the role that a good manager has played for me in the past than it is to the role I myself have played - it keeps better TODO lists than I can, that's for sure. :-) > It’s like how we all once thought blue collar work would be first, but it turned out that knowledge work is much easier. Right now everyone imagines managers replacing their employees with AI, but we might have the order reversed. Perfectly stated IMO.
OtherShrezzing 11mo ago
The AI agents don’t appear to know how & where to be economically productive. That still appears to be a uniquely human domain of expertise. So the human is there to decide which job is economically productive to take on. The AI is there to execute the day-to-day tasks involved in the job. It’s symbiotic. The human doesn’t labour unnecessarily. The AI has some avenue of productive output & revenue generating opportunity for OpenAI/Anthropic/whoever.
- ruined 11mo ago
  i don't think you could find a single economist that believes humans know how and where to be economically productive
  - OtherShrezzing 11mo ago
    It’s a fundamental principle of modern economics that humans are assumed to act in their own economic interests - for which they need to know how and where to be economically productive.
    - ruined 11mo ago
      humans are assumed to act, and some activities may generate consequences, to which a human may react somehow. certainly there is a "survivor bias" but the rationality, long-term viability, and "economic benefit" of those activities and reactions is an open question. any judgement of "economic benefit" is arbitrary and often made in aggregate after the fact. if humans knew how to create "economic benefit" in some fundamental and true way, game theory and most regulatory infrastructure would not exist, and i'm saying that as an anarchist.
chasing0entropy 11mo ago
Because ultimately every job AI replaces will supplanted by two jonpbs - one to maintain the agent and another to maintain the infrastructure. I believe once AI scales my theory will be proven universal. My wife believes there will eventually also be a third job created to do the job.

Mtinie 11mo ago

In this scenario the person who wants to be paid owns the output of the agent. So it’s closer to a contractor and subcontractor arrangement than employment.

georgehotz 11mo ago
How do they own it? I see two scenarios. 1. They built the agent and it's somehow competitive. If so, they shouldn't just replace their own job with it, they should replace a lot more jobs and get a lot more rich than one salary. 2. They rent the agent. If so, why would the renting company not rent directly to their boss, maybe even at a business premium? I see no scenario where there's an "agent to do my work while I keep getting a paycheck."
- dr_dshiv 11mo ago
  If you know contracting, you know that’s exactly how it’s always worked.
- oarsinsync 11mo ago
  It's the equivalent of outsourcing your job. People have done this before, to China, to India, etc. There are stories about the people that got caught, e.g. with China because of security concerns, and with India because they got greedy, were overemployed, and failed in their opsec. This is no different, it's just a different mechanism of outsourcing your job. And yes, if you can find a way to get AI to do 90% of your job for you, you should totally get 4 more jobs and 5x your earnings for 50% reduction in hours spent working.
  - georgehotz 11mo ago
    Maybe a few people managed to outsource their own job and sit in the middle for a bit. But that's not the common story, the common story is that your employer cut out the middle man and outsourced all the jobs. The same thing will happen here.
    - catlifeonmars 11mo ago
      The trick is to register an LLC, and then get your employer to outsource the work to your consulting company. You get laid off, and then continue to work through your company. Only mild sarcasm, as this is essentially what happens.
- EGreg 11mo ago
  Let me generalize The problem is the organizing principle for our entire global society is competition. This is the default, the law of the jungle or tribal warfare. But within families or corporations we do have cooperation, or a command structure. The problem is that this principle inevitably leads to the tragedy of the unmanaged commons. This is why we are overfishing, polluting the Earth, why some people are freeriding and having 7 children with no contraception etc. Why ecosystems — rainforests, kelp forests, coral reefs, and even insects — are being decimated. Why one third of arable farmland is desertified, just like in the US dust bowl. Back then it was a race to the bottom and the US Govt had to step in and pay farmers NOT to plant. We are racing to an AIpocalypse because what if China does it first? In case you think the world don’t have real solutions… actually there have been a few examples of us cooperating to prevent catastrophe. 1. Banning CFCs in Montreal Protocol, repairing hole in Ozone Layer 2. Nuclear non-proliferation treaty 3. Ban on chemical weapons 4. Ban on viral bioweapons research So number 2 is what I would hope would happen with huge GPU farms, we as a global community know exactly the supply chains, heck there is only one company in Europe doing the etching. And also I would want a global ban on AGI development, or at least of leaking model weights. Otherwise it is almost exactly like giving everyone the means to make chemical weapons, designer viruses etc. The probability that NO ONE does anything that gets out of hand, will be infinitesimally small. The probability that we will be overrun by tons of destructive bot swarms and robots is practically 100%. In short — this is the ultimate negstive externality. The corporations and countries are in a race to outdo each other in AGI even if they destroy humanity doing it. All because as a species, we are drawn to competition and don’t do the work to establish frameworks for cooperation the way we have done on local scales like cities. PS: meanwhile, having limited tools and not AGI or ASI can be very helpful. Like protein folding or chess playing. But why, why have AGI proliferate?
- kgwxd 11mo ago
  > agent to do my work while I keep getting a paycheck. They already exists, and have for a very long time, but I'm sure as shit not telling my customers about it.

fijiaarone 11mo ago

Can you explain why we pay Sam Altman & Elon Musk? Or Jeff Bezos & Bill Gates? They’re just middlemen collecting money for other people’s labor.

georgehotz 11mo ago
You are welcome to try to cut them out and start your own business. But I suspect you might find it a bit harder than your employer signing up for a SaaS AI agent. Actually wait, isn't that what this website is? Does it work?
gridspy 11mo ago
They are a bridge between those with money and those with skill. Plus they can aggregate information and act as a repository of knowledge and decision maker for their teams. These are valuable skills, though perhaps nowhere near as valuable as they end up being in a free market.
- nawgz 11mo ago
  A mistake lies in thinking it’s a market, but it’s egregious you’d call it free
  - gridspy 11mo ago
    The free market is an analyzable simplification of the real market, however I think the assumptions hold in this case. If a CEO delivers a certain advantage (a profit multiplier) it's rational that a bidding war will ensue for that CEO until they are paid the entire apparent advantage of their pretense for the company. A similar effect happens for salespeople. The key difference between free and real markets in this case is information and distortions of lobbying. That plus legal restrictions on the company. The CEO is incentivized to find ways around these issues to maximize their own pay.
- gausswho 11mo ago
  Sounds like skills that bots already do better than humans.

zwnow 11mo ago

How are businesses going to get money if there are no humans that are able to pay for goods? Lots of us are not cut out for blue collar work.

macintux 11mo ago
As long as someone else is still paying their employees, it’s all good.
vbezhenar 11mo ago
Some humans will be rich and they'll buy things. For example those humans who own AI or fabs. And those humans, who serve to them (assuming that there will be services not replaced by AI, for example prostitution), will also buy things. If 99.99% of other humans will become poor and eventually die, it certainly will change economy a lot.
- ares623 11mo ago
  That’s assuming a large chunk of humanity will just lay down and die off.
  - lawlessone 11mo ago
    Probably why Elon etc want to replace militaries with drones. https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2024/11/25/elon-musk-criticized-the-f-35-called-for-armed-drones-instead/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2024/11/25/elon-musk...
    - ares623 11mo ago
      Not a lot of difference between an F-35 and a fleet of drones when it comes to it tbh. If F-35s are not enough then I don't see how drones will fare better. IMO drones are just a way for Elon to get his foot in the door.
  - jmoggr 11mo ago
    All they have to do is not reproduce. This is already happening.

danenania 11mo ago

A question is which side agents will achieve human-level skill at first. It wouldn’t surprise me if doing the work itself end-to-end (to a market-ready standard) remains in the uncanny valley for quite some time, while “fuzzier” roles like management can be more readily replaced. It’s like how we all once thought blue collar work would be first, but it turned out that knowledge work is much easier. Right now everyone imagines managers replacing their employees with AI, but we might have the order reversed.

jMyles 11mo ago
> This begs the question of which side agents will achieve human-level skill at first. I don't agree; it's perfectly possible, given chasing0entropy's... let's say 'feature request', that either side might gain that skill level first. > It wouldn’t surprise me if doing the work itself end-to-end (to a market-ready standard) remains in the uncanny valley for quite some time, while “fuzzier” roles like management can be more readily replaced. Agreed - and for many of us, that's exactly what seems to be happening. My agent is vaguely closer to the role that a good manager has played for me in the past than it is to the role I myself have played - it keeps better TODO lists than I can, that's for sure. :-) > It’s like how we all once thought blue collar work would be first, but it turned out that knowledge work is much easier. Right now everyone imagines managers replacing their employees with AI, but we might have the order reversed. Perfectly stated IMO.

OtherShrezzing 11mo ago

The AI agents don’t appear to know how & where to be economically productive. That still appears to be a uniquely human domain of expertise. So the human is there to decide which job is economically productive to take on. The AI is there to execute the day-to-day tasks involved in the job. It’s symbiotic. The human doesn’t labour unnecessarily. The AI has some avenue of productive output & revenue generating opportunity for OpenAI/Anthropic/whoever.

ruined 11mo ago
i don't think you could find a single economist that believes humans know how and where to be economically productive
- OtherShrezzing 11mo ago
  It’s a fundamental principle of modern economics that humans are assumed to act in their own economic interests - for which they need to know how and where to be economically productive.
  - ruined 11mo ago
    humans are assumed to act, and some activities may generate consequences, to which a human may react somehow. certainly there is a "survivor bias" but the rationality, long-term viability, and "economic benefit" of those activities and reactions is an open question. any judgement of "economic benefit" is arbitrary and often made in aggregate after the fact. if humans knew how to create "economic benefit" in some fundamental and true way, game theory and most regulatory infrastructure would not exist, and i'm saying that as an anarchist.

chasing0entropy 11mo ago

Because ultimately every job AI replaces will supplanted by two jonpbs - one to maintain the agent and another to maintain the infrastructure. I believe once AI scales my theory will be proven universal. My wife believes there will eventually also be a third job created to do the job.