8 ms·

If AI makes human labor obsolete, who decides who gets to eat?

51 points by n1b0m 8mo ago

HardCodedBias 8mo ago
Seriously Guardian, this has to be the least interesting question possible "if AI makes human labor obsolete", I mean FFS talk about a lack of understanding.
zb3 8mo ago
Unfortunately current answer is capital owners = owners of the means of production..
- goatlover 8mo ago
  Does capitalism work without human labor? What is the economic model for an automated society?
  - beej71 8mo ago
    If the people running these things are doomers, there's no need for capitalism to work beyond what it takes them to build their compounds and bunkers right now. And since a large number of them seem to be building compounds and bunkers...
  - Beretta_Vexee 8mo ago
    Feudalism : The nobility held lands and means of production from the Crown in exchange for service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's offices, factories and give him homage and labour, in exchange for protection.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  - thrance 8mo ago
    Capitalism can only sort of work when there is balance between the classes. Inevitably, one wins over the other, which leads to fascism or communism, and later a big reset. If the proletariat (i.e. those who depend on a salary to survive) aren't able to sell their work anymore, the owner class won't need them anymore. I personally see three outcomes: * Apocalyptic but unlikely: the bourgeoisie gets rid of the proletariat and goes on to enjoy boundless luxury. * Awful but likely: the bourgeoisie throws just enough to the proletariat that they won't rebel, and goes on to enjoy boundless luxury. * Utopic: the machines' output is democratically decided and evenly distributed among the entire human population. Keep in mind that the scenario in which machines are able to replace all human labor is still very remote, and won't happen suddenly. I'm sure many things will occur between now and then that will completely invalidate my simplistic predictions.
Razengan 8mo ago
Me
k310 8mo ago
First they came for our crops to power the data centers. Then the people. My hope is that a breakthrough makes these planet-eaters complete folly, as a $100 optical processor trounces them. And we'll have all that defaulted power generation capacity to run our human heating and cooling needs. That is, unless we spend trillions fill the black holes created upon stellar collapse. [0] Grift can make that happen. [0] The death star. Destroy a planet just to get quicker results. A total Faustian bargain. Now I can't afford memory chips. What'll it be next?
- Aardwolf 8mo ago
  > My hope is that a breakthrough makes these planet-eaters complete folly, as a $100 optical processor trounces them. Wouldn't one then just want to make even more compute-intensive ones by combining a million of these $100 optical processors?
- SAI_Peregrinus 8mo ago
  First they came for our crops, to power our cars. Replacing corn ethanol with nearly anything else is a net benefit, corn ethanol is terrible for the environment & costs taxpayers billions in subsidies.
echelon 8mo ago
We need open source infra and models ASAP. This is quite possibly the last ship.
davidguetta 8mo ago
Nobody will prevent you to grow your own food and raise your own cattle like it was the case for 99.9% of humanity's time. One of the biggest problem we have these days is that most people don't want to live in the countryside and consider that
- gdubs 8mo ago
  Farming requires inputs unless you started an agroforestry farm 10 years ago and are now just maintaining it. It's also insanely time consuming.
  - davidguetta 8mo ago
    The entire point is that you won't have a job to do so time is not the biggest issue then
    - gdubs 8mo ago
      As someone who owns a small farm — and actually enjoys land, growing things — I'm just saying this is not a "solution" for the vast majority of people.
      - davidguetta 8mo ago
        Why ? Food has to bé made Somewhere. Lets just try to empower more people on it in the future
        gdubs 8mo ago
        Don't get me wrong – I think if people grew more of their own food it would be fantastic! And technology combined with alternative farming practices has the potential to be hugely transformative. I'm all for it. But the way things are currently, it's a monumental effort to grow food for sustenance on any meaningful scale, and would take enormous amounts of time, energy, and effort – leaving very little for other pursuits. I want people to also be able to make art, music, etc.
plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago
Unfortunately, if we extrapolate from history, those questions will be answered with blood.
- HardCodedBias 8mo ago
  What a poor take if "AI makes human labor obsolete" Given comparative advantage gives a offramp to this for a lot of what we currently understand as "economics", if the author is positing that we will be beyond this, then your response is missing the forest from the trees.
  - plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago
    There is no indication that the surplus extracted by automated labour will be distributed to the advantage of the population. If we look at how things are going at the moment and in the present, there will be a further concentration of power and capital. And I don't see any reasons why the billionaire class should give this up. You could, of course, give an argument why things are will be different this time.
    - HardCodedBias 8mo ago
      I will repeat myself: comparative advantage [edit] I will further repeat myself: If comparative advantage will not hold then that's really something, no one understands what happens in that future, proposing some random solution at this point is unbelievably premature.
- tim333 8mo ago
  In the UK, home of the Luddites, we've managed to get through a lot of different economic setups by means of elections without much blood involved.
  - red-iron-pine 8mo ago
    was that domestic, or foreign bleeding, tho? a lot of reforms happened post-World War(s). after beating Jerry thousands of soldiers demanded better healthcare, for example, and promptly voted Churchill out it just wasn't a civil war but boy howdy was there bloodshed in WW2
ddtaylor 8mo ago
The same people who decided yesterday.
- beej71 8mo ago
  That only makes sense if capitalism is irrelevant.
0xy 8mo ago
Another luddite article complaining about farming automation putting farmers out of work, but a modern equivalent. This article wrongly assumes AGI is not only possible but also imminent, because if they were taking into account only the transformation we're seeing from AI at the moment -- it wouldn't be a story as it is not job ending. AGI, however, is mathematically impossible. The only people telling you otherwise are the CEOs of labs who need to publicly fundraise on this premise, while privately admitting bearish sentiments on AGI. AGI bulls assume all of the following to be true: there are no constraints to grid infrastructure (clearly false), there are no manufacturing constraints for AI hardware (clearly false) and exponential accuracy, speed and efficiency improvements will continue (clearly false, it's slowing down already). Hell, just look at local opposition to data center deployment. You can't even get DCs built in rural towns that would benefit dramatically from the 1,000+ temporary and permanent jobs. Incredibly bearish on AGI.
- TZubiri 8mo ago
  The article is mostly inquisitive, it asks a question. What you are attributing to the article author is mostly in your head.
- HardCodedBias 8mo ago
  I upvoted you right off reading the first line. But then you drifted. I have no idea what you mean by "AGI, however, is mathematically impossible." Further, your point about political pushback is short sighted. As AI becomes more lucrative there will be more impetuous to "pay" locations to have data centers, and as that becomes too expensive space is clearly the next answer.
  - 0xy 8mo ago
    The development of AGI assumes zero constraints, when constraints exist at every layer of the stack. That's why it's mathematically impossible. In a system driven by capital, manufacturing can ramp to an extent but they generally can't exponentially ramp due to dependencies they have. When you ramp one layer of the stack, other layers of the stack are pressurized. We're seeing a small preview of that now with memory pricing. But these break points for AGI are everywhere. Power capacity, power infrastructure, DC labor, cooling systems, memory, motherboards, GPUs. All of these things have dependencies that cannot be scaled exponentially, or quickly. As you pressure points of each of these dependencies, prices rise exponentially. Let's take memory for instance, it is merely one block in the jenga tower but it's a good example. Memory is already at close to 100% capacity. Spinning up new capacity is highly constrained, and money can't really make it faster. Lead times are 4+ years on new plants, which cost billions. The same is true for other components, and in some cases the situation is worse.
jawns 8mo ago
I'm a big fan of an economic philosophy known as distributism, popularized by G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc more than a century ago. It basically says that the economy works best when ownership of productive property is as diffuse as possible -- when a high percentage of the population has some ownership, and it's not concentrated in the hands of a relatively few wealthy shareholders (in the case of capitalism) or the government (in the case of communism/socialism). Under distributist principles, I would say that we should pursue economic policies that allow the ownership of productive AI to be widespread, whether that's in the form of cooperatives, employee ownership, or other means of giving the average person access to that ownership. (I acknowledge that it's currently possible to invest in publicly traded AI companies, but would prefer to see other ownership opportunities as well.)
- ap99 8mo ago
  This type of economic philosophy is impossible. There will always be people who are more motivated and capable of consolidating power. That cannot be stopped. Capitalism and democracy (both with guardrails) are meant to harness and contain that energy such that it doesn't instantly destroy a society. Religion goes in there somewhere too. None of these systems of organization are perfect, and they don't seem ideal on the surface. When you see them in practice there are many flaws. But they are feasible. Your 'distributism' system doesn't pass the feasibility test.
  - pu_pe 8mo ago
    This already happens in Europe and China, today.
  - jawns 8mo ago
    Are you not familiar with the many ways in which distributism is already practiced and has been practiced during the past two centuries? Every federal credit union in the U.S., every worker's cooperative or consumer cooperative -- including biggies like Mondragon in Spain and The Cooperative in U.K. -- is organized in the way that distributism advocates. There is nothing stopping us from electing lawmakers who recognize that society becomes healthier when the ownership of productive property is not concentrated, and who advocate for economic policies that promote more diffuse ownership.
ap99 8mo ago
This is why UBI should scare everyone. People see UBI and think, "Oh everyone will get basically what I have and I'm happy so they'll be happy too." Humanity or economics don't work like that. With capitalism we have the power to control our economic outcomes (to a large extent). Work more; earn more. This isn't perfect or always fair but life is never 100% fair. With UBI, who do you think decides how much income you get? And how do you think those people get that power? And what happens when some resource is scarce and can't be given to everyone? Be it oil, medicine, medical services, food, clean water, a birth permit, etc. Life isn't fair now - but it took a lot of blood and effort to get to this point and life can get A LOT more unfair if we're not careful.
- NicuCalcea 8mo ago
  As opposed to what, the same situation and no UBI? UBI doesn't prevent you from accumulating additional capital if you want better economic outcomes. It's a floor, not a ceiling.
- beej71 8mo ago
  Right now the AI bros are shouting from the rooftops that we're going to have no income and we'll have plenty of time to grow our own food. So I guess we have to weigh the pros and cons of that against UBI. And, further, if people aren't getting enough food, all bets are off. I'm not a huge UBI fan, but if we keep concentrating wealth, it's an inevitability. So we better start trying to make life more fair.
- atmavatar 8mo ago
  > Work more; earn more. That's only true from a very narrow perspective. Sure, if you have one job and you pick up another, you make a little more. But, from a broader perspective, it's pure fiction. The hardest working people are often the poorest among us. Your connections matter far more than your work ethic ever will.
- thrance 8mo ago
  > With capitalism we have the power to control our economic outcomes (to a large extent). Work more; earn more. Go tell that to the slave laborers in the global South that made the clothes you are currently wearing. These people work way harder than me and make way less. Truth is, capital earns more than labor under Capitalism. It is absolutely not a fair system for the vast majority of humanity, and should be improved upon. But otherwise, I agree with your take on UBI.
threethirtytwo 8mo ago
The thread always opens the same way. “If AI makes human labor obsolete, who decides who gets to eat?” And within six comments we’re back to the sacred mantra: it can’t even solve a trick logic puzzle from 1983, therefore capitalism remains intact. Allow me to contribute in the proud tradition of the Extremely Calm Skeptic. First, the entire premise is unserious. Labor cannot become obsolete because the model does not “understand.” I know this because someone on Twitter asked it a riddle about a barber and it got confused. An entity that fumbles a barber paradox is clearly incapable of displacing accountants, paralegals, translators, mid-level engineers, support staff, or analysts. Second, demos are misleading. Yes, it can draft contracts, generate production code, summarize regulatory filings, build internal tools, design marketing campaigns, and tutor students. But those are not real jobs. Real jobs are the parts that feel difficult and validating when I do them. The fact that those parts are shrinking is a coincidence. Third, intelligence is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is vibes. And regulation. And GPU supply. And “human judgment.” There will always be a final layer of ineffable judgment that only carbon-based life can provide. If pressed for examples, I will gesture broadly. Fourth, labor markets adapt. We replaced elevator operators and invented social media managers. Therefore if large chunks of cognitive labor become cheap, the economy will effortlessly invent millions of new roles titled “Senior Human in the Loop.” The transition will be smooth. There will be no political consequences. History has a flawless track record here. As for the eating question, that only becomes serious if labor is no longer the main mechanism for income distribution. And that won’t happen, because the models hallucinate sometimes. When something occasionally makes an error, it cannot possibly be economically transformative. By that standard, humans have been non-disruptive for millennia. If I’m being honest, the resistance has less to do with token prediction and more to do with self-preservation. I invested years building scarce skills. Scarcity is flattering. If intelligence becomes abundant, that flattery evaporates. So I do what any rational actor would do: redefine scarcity. When it automates my junior tasks, that’s augmentation. When it handles mid-level tasks, that’s assistance. When it approaches senior tasks, that’s hype. If it ever clears that bar, I’ll discover a higher one. This is not fear. This is prudent analysis performed while quietly pasting my entire codebase into three different models before standup. So who decides who gets to eat? If productive capacity detaches from human effort, ownership becomes the obvious lever. That’s not speculative. That’s how capital has always worked. But acknowledging that would mean treating the premise seriously. Much easier to point at a cherry-picked failure and conclude that intelligence on tap changes nothing. Anyway, back to my workflow where the fake autocomplete drafts the spec, writes the code, generates the tests, and explains the tradeoffs while I reassure myself that the important part was my supervision.
AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
Watching people debate whether AI will displace labor is like watching someone in 1850 sincerely ask whether the steam engine might affect employment.
bm3719 8mo ago
You won't eat, because you won't be. Industrial economic systems (including capitalism, which is better at it, but also Soviet communism for another) will always reinvest some of its surplus back into itself. That form is either scale or efficiency, the latter of which is usually the replacement of labor with capital. It may not do this very well or as fast as it could, but that transition is always permanent, and therefore cumulative. So, what happens when we do that? Well, for awhile, nothing. When labor is the bottleneck, then there's always more outlets for it. But eventually there comes an inflection point, where there is so much labor replacement and the bar has been raised so high, that the surplus is in labor itself. At lower tiers, its value approaches 0. Spoiler alert: this point has already been passed. Probably everyone here knows multiple surplus individuals, who have no place in the economy, and the bar for their entry or reentry into it is so high now, they can only produce negative value in current market conditions. So, we have an ever-increasing surplus of unrealized labor. Our overlords may feel bad about that for awhile, decide to bear the burden of a mass multitude of dependents. We better hope they do, because this works fine until it doesn't. The zeitgeist only needs to shift once for it to all be over. This won't happen tomorrow, but they only need to look at the balance sheet from a certain angle once for the massive cost center to be seen as yet another inefficiency to be optimized for. On long enough time scales, the probability of any possible event approaches 1.
CryptoBanker 8mo ago
The poor will realize that they can eat the rich
- haunter 8mo ago
  How do you eat a datacenter?
  - RankingMember 8mo ago
    I think that monkey-wrenching at a critical level would do it.
  - GeoAtreides 8mo ago
    seasoned with molotov cocktails
    - butterbomb 8mo ago
      Unfortunately your attack plan was discovered when an AI system connected to speaker outside flagged a private conversation you were having as a domestic terroist risk and a swarm of Amazon Secuirty (tm) drones have to been dispatched to paint the concrete with your brain before you even get to the data center.
dns_snek 8mo ago
> The problem is that the owners of these disruptive technologies must be convinced to do something that does not come naturally to them: share. Taxes in the US amount to less than 26% of GDP, 8 percentage points less than the OECD average. Capital taxation amounts to just over 2% of GDP. These numbers will have to go much higher, since people will no longer have wages to live on and will rely more heavily on government largesse. The tone of this article is really frustrating, the author is seemingly living in a self-imposed box in which capital has an inalienable right to rule the world. "owners must be convinced to share" - No sir, they're not kings, nor were they elected into any position, and we don't have to "convince" them of anything. We need to have a thorough discussion about what a future without human labor should look like, and whether we really want to live in a dystopia when the only thing preventing us from living in a utopia is the ego of a few rich assholes. One way or another they will lose their kingdoms because they don't actually have an inalienable right to control the world's resources. They only had these ownership rights because they were [thought to be] good for society as a whole. In a robotic AI future that's no longer the case and those rights will no longer exist. The only question is whether this transition will be peaceful or extremely violent.
- tavavex 8mo ago
  > the author is seemingly living in a self-imposed box in which capital has an inalienable right to rule the world. "owners must be convinced to share" - No sir, they're not kings, nor were they elected into any position, and we don't have to "convince" them of anything. That box was something that humans imposed on themselves on the scale of a civilization. At this point, I agree with the author's view because I can't see how it can ever change. Every little additional bit of the scales tipping in their favor means an exponential amount of additional effort that will be needed to undo the imbalance. By the time society wants to talk about transitioning to a different model (if they ever want to talk about it - remember, humans are shockingly vulnerable to informational warfare and many opinions can be changed with the tweak of an algorithm), the amount of power will be more imbalanced than it likely has ever been in history. If this future comes to pass, they'll be 10x as powerful by that point. And they will have effectively endless amounts of money and power to buy themselves the best armies, automated defenses, production facilities, employees, bunkers, drones, whatever, to ensure their safety. In this worst-case scenario where demand for human labor is a shadow of what it is today, how is this in any way winnable? They could take whomever they need and clock out, automatically overseeing the rest to ensure they won't have anyone threatening them ever again.
tim333 8mo ago
We'll probably end up switching to something more like a socialist system - each according to their needs. When China decided to allow capitalism they kept their socialist system running but allowed capitalism in parallel, at first in a small way but it picked up. With AI you could probably do something a bit like that the other way. A small amount of UBI say that increases as AI takes on more work.
senectus1 8mo ago
the real question is who is going to pay for the AI resource? NONE of them are turning a profit. NONE of them look to EVER turn a profit... they're forcing it down everyones throats atm for mostly free, that will stop eventually. once it does the real cost of running these (currently) constantly growing services is going to start being charged to the users. the actual cost is going to be not very affordable. in the end I suspect only tax payers will be paying for them via the only real owners... Governments.
cykros 8mo ago
What a hyperbolic nonsensical title from a bastion of Keynesian slop.
richardnuttall 8mo ago
[dead]

51 points by n1b0m 8mo ago

Seriously Guardian, this has to be the least interesting question possible "if AI makes human labor obsolete", I mean FFS talk about a lack of understanding.

zb3 8mo ago

Unfortunately current answer is capital owners = owners of the means of production..

goatlover 8mo ago
Does capitalism work without human labor? What is the economic model for an automated society?
- beej71 8mo ago
  If the people running these things are doomers, there's no need for capitalism to work beyond what it takes them to build their compounds and bunkers right now. And since a large number of them seem to be building compounds and bunkers...
- Beretta_Vexee 8mo ago
  Feudalism : The nobility held lands and means of production from the Crown in exchange for service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's offices, factories and give him homage and labour, in exchange for protection.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- thrance 8mo ago
  Capitalism can only sort of work when there is balance between the classes. Inevitably, one wins over the other, which leads to fascism or communism, and later a big reset. If the proletariat (i.e. those who depend on a salary to survive) aren't able to sell their work anymore, the owner class won't need them anymore. I personally see three outcomes: * Apocalyptic but unlikely: the bourgeoisie gets rid of the proletariat and goes on to enjoy boundless luxury. * Awful but likely: the bourgeoisie throws just enough to the proletariat that they won't rebel, and goes on to enjoy boundless luxury. * Utopic: the machines' output is democratically decided and evenly distributed among the entire human population. Keep in mind that the scenario in which machines are able to replace all human labor is still very remote, and won't happen suddenly. I'm sure many things will occur between now and then that will completely invalidate my simplistic predictions.

Razengan 8mo ago

k310 8mo ago

First they came for our crops to power the data centers. Then the people. My hope is that a breakthrough makes these planet-eaters complete folly, as a $100 optical processor trounces them. And we'll have all that defaulted power generation capacity to run our human heating and cooling needs. That is, unless we spend trillions fill the black holes created upon stellar collapse. [0] Grift can make that happen. [0] The death star. Destroy a planet just to get quicker results. A total Faustian bargain. Now I can't afford memory chips. What'll it be next?

Aardwolf 8mo ago
> My hope is that a breakthrough makes these planet-eaters complete folly, as a $100 optical processor trounces them. Wouldn't one then just want to make even more compute-intensive ones by combining a million of these $100 optical processors?
SAI_Peregrinus 8mo ago
First they came for our crops, to power our cars. Replacing corn ethanol with nearly anything else is a net benefit, corn ethanol is terrible for the environment & costs taxpayers billions in subsidies.

echelon 8mo ago

We need open source infra and models ASAP. This is quite possibly the last ship.

davidguetta 8mo ago

Nobody will prevent you to grow your own food and raise your own cattle like it was the case for 99.9% of humanity's time. One of the biggest problem we have these days is that most people don't want to live in the countryside and consider that

gdubs 8mo ago
Farming requires inputs unless you started an agroforestry farm 10 years ago and are now just maintaining it. It's also insanely time consuming.
- davidguetta 8mo ago
  The entire point is that you won't have a job to do so time is not the biggest issue then
  - gdubs 8mo ago
    As someone who owns a small farm — and actually enjoys land, growing things — I'm just saying this is not a "solution" for the vast majority of people.
    - davidguetta 8mo ago
      Why ? Food has to bé made Somewhere. Lets just try to empower more people on it in the future
      - gdubs 8mo ago
        Don't get me wrong – I think if people grew more of their own food it would be fantastic! And technology combined with alternative farming practices has the potential to be hugely transformative. I'm all for it. But the way things are currently, it's a monumental effort to grow food for sustenance on any meaningful scale, and would take enormous amounts of time, energy, and effort – leaving very little for other pursuits. I want people to also be able to make art, music, etc.

plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago

Unfortunately, if we extrapolate from history, those questions will be answered with blood.

HardCodedBias 8mo ago
What a poor take if "AI makes human labor obsolete" Given comparative advantage gives a offramp to this for a lot of what we currently understand as "economics", if the author is positing that we will be beyond this, then your response is missing the forest from the trees.
- plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago
  There is no indication that the surplus extracted by automated labour will be distributed to the advantage of the population. If we look at how things are going at the moment and in the present, there will be a further concentration of power and capital. And I don't see any reasons why the billionaire class should give this up. You could, of course, give an argument why things are will be different this time.
  - HardCodedBias 8mo ago
    I will repeat myself: comparative advantage [edit] I will further repeat myself: If comparative advantage will not hold then that's really something, no one understands what happens in that future, proposing some random solution at this point is unbelievably premature.
tim333 8mo ago
In the UK, home of the Luddites, we've managed to get through a lot of different economic setups by means of elections without much blood involved.
- red-iron-pine 8mo ago
  was that domestic, or foreign bleeding, tho? a lot of reforms happened post-World War(s). after beating Jerry thousands of soldiers demanded better healthcare, for example, and promptly voted Churchill out it just wasn't a civil war but boy howdy was there bloodshed in WW2

ddtaylor 8mo ago

The same people who decided yesterday.

beej71 8mo ago
That only makes sense if capitalism is irrelevant.

0xy 8mo ago

Another luddite article complaining about farming automation putting farmers out of work, but a modern equivalent. This article wrongly assumes AGI is not only possible but also imminent, because if they were taking into account only the transformation we're seeing from AI at the moment -- it wouldn't be a story as it is not job ending. AGI, however, is mathematically impossible. The only people telling you otherwise are the CEOs of labs who need to publicly fundraise on this premise, while privately admitting bearish sentiments on AGI. AGI bulls assume all of the following to be true: there are no constraints to grid infrastructure (clearly false), there are no manufacturing constraints for AI hardware (clearly false) and exponential accuracy, speed and efficiency improvements will continue (clearly false, it's slowing down already). Hell, just look at local opposition to data center deployment. You can't even get DCs built in rural towns that would benefit dramatically from the 1,000+ temporary and permanent jobs. Incredibly bearish on AGI.

TZubiri 8mo ago
The article is mostly inquisitive, it asks a question. What you are attributing to the article author is mostly in your head.
HardCodedBias 8mo ago
I upvoted you right off reading the first line. But then you drifted. I have no idea what you mean by "AGI, however, is mathematically impossible." Further, your point about political pushback is short sighted. As AI becomes more lucrative there will be more impetuous to "pay" locations to have data centers, and as that becomes too expensive space is clearly the next answer.
- 0xy 8mo ago
  The development of AGI assumes zero constraints, when constraints exist at every layer of the stack. That's why it's mathematically impossible. In a system driven by capital, manufacturing can ramp to an extent but they generally can't exponentially ramp due to dependencies they have. When you ramp one layer of the stack, other layers of the stack are pressurized. We're seeing a small preview of that now with memory pricing. But these break points for AGI are everywhere. Power capacity, power infrastructure, DC labor, cooling systems, memory, motherboards, GPUs. All of these things have dependencies that cannot be scaled exponentially, or quickly. As you pressure points of each of these dependencies, prices rise exponentially. Let's take memory for instance, it is merely one block in the jenga tower but it's a good example. Memory is already at close to 100% capacity. Spinning up new capacity is highly constrained, and money can't really make it faster. Lead times are 4+ years on new plants, which cost billions. The same is true for other components, and in some cases the situation is worse.

jawns 8mo ago

I'm a big fan of an economic philosophy known as distributism, popularized by G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc more than a century ago. It basically says that the economy works best when ownership of productive property is as diffuse as possible -- when a high percentage of the population has some ownership, and it's not concentrated in the hands of a relatively few wealthy shareholders (in the case of capitalism) or the government (in the case of communism/socialism). Under distributist principles, I would say that we should pursue economic policies that allow the ownership of productive AI to be widespread, whether that's in the form of cooperatives, employee ownership, or other means of giving the average person access to that ownership. (I acknowledge that it's currently possible to invest in publicly traded AI companies, but would prefer to see other ownership opportunities as well.)

ap99 8mo ago
This type of economic philosophy is impossible. There will always be people who are more motivated and capable of consolidating power. That cannot be stopped. Capitalism and democracy (both with guardrails) are meant to harness and contain that energy such that it doesn't instantly destroy a society. Religion goes in there somewhere too. None of these systems of organization are perfect, and they don't seem ideal on the surface. When you see them in practice there are many flaws. But they are feasible. Your 'distributism' system doesn't pass the feasibility test.
- pu_pe 8mo ago
  This already happens in Europe and China, today.
- jawns 8mo ago
  Are you not familiar with the many ways in which distributism is already practiced and has been practiced during the past two centuries? Every federal credit union in the U.S., every worker's cooperative or consumer cooperative -- including biggies like Mondragon in Spain and The Cooperative in U.K. -- is organized in the way that distributism advocates. There is nothing stopping us from electing lawmakers who recognize that society becomes healthier when the ownership of productive property is not concentrated, and who advocate for economic policies that promote more diffuse ownership.

ap99 8mo ago

This is why UBI should scare everyone. People see UBI and think, "Oh everyone will get basically what I have and I'm happy so they'll be happy too." Humanity or economics don't work like that. With capitalism we have the power to control our economic outcomes (to a large extent). Work more; earn more. This isn't perfect or always fair but life is never 100% fair. With UBI, who do you think decides how much income you get? And how do you think those people get that power? And what happens when some resource is scarce and can't be given to everyone? Be it oil, medicine, medical services, food, clean water, a birth permit, etc. Life isn't fair now - but it took a lot of blood and effort to get to this point and life can get A LOT more unfair if we're not careful.

NicuCalcea 8mo ago
As opposed to what, the same situation and no UBI? UBI doesn't prevent you from accumulating additional capital if you want better economic outcomes. It's a floor, not a ceiling.
beej71 8mo ago
Right now the AI bros are shouting from the rooftops that we're going to have no income and we'll have plenty of time to grow our own food. So I guess we have to weigh the pros and cons of that against UBI. And, further, if people aren't getting enough food, all bets are off. I'm not a huge UBI fan, but if we keep concentrating wealth, it's an inevitability. So we better start trying to make life more fair.
atmavatar 8mo ago
> Work more; earn more. That's only true from a very narrow perspective. Sure, if you have one job and you pick up another, you make a little more. But, from a broader perspective, it's pure fiction. The hardest working people are often the poorest among us. Your connections matter far more than your work ethic ever will.
thrance 8mo ago
> With capitalism we have the power to control our economic outcomes (to a large extent). Work more; earn more. Go tell that to the slave laborers in the global South that made the clothes you are currently wearing. These people work way harder than me and make way less. Truth is, capital earns more than labor under Capitalism. It is absolutely not a fair system for the vast majority of humanity, and should be improved upon. But otherwise, I agree with your take on UBI.

threethirtytwo 8mo ago

The thread always opens the same way. “If AI makes human labor obsolete, who decides who gets to eat?” And within six comments we’re back to the sacred mantra: it can’t even solve a trick logic puzzle from 1983, therefore capitalism remains intact. Allow me to contribute in the proud tradition of the Extremely Calm Skeptic. First, the entire premise is unserious. Labor cannot become obsolete because the model does not “understand.” I know this because someone on Twitter asked it a riddle about a barber and it got confused. An entity that fumbles a barber paradox is clearly incapable of displacing accountants, paralegals, translators, mid-level engineers, support staff, or analysts. Second, demos are misleading. Yes, it can draft contracts, generate production code, summarize regulatory filings, build internal tools, design marketing campaigns, and tutor students. But those are not real jobs. Real jobs are the parts that feel difficult and validating when I do them. The fact that those parts are shrinking is a coincidence. Third, intelligence is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is vibes. And regulation. And GPU supply. And “human judgment.” There will always be a final layer of ineffable judgment that only carbon-based life can provide. If pressed for examples, I will gesture broadly. Fourth, labor markets adapt. We replaced elevator operators and invented social media managers. Therefore if large chunks of cognitive labor become cheap, the economy will effortlessly invent millions of new roles titled “Senior Human in the Loop.” The transition will be smooth. There will be no political consequences. History has a flawless track record here. As for the eating question, that only becomes serious if labor is no longer the main mechanism for income distribution. And that won’t happen, because the models hallucinate sometimes. When something occasionally makes an error, it cannot possibly be economically transformative. By that standard, humans have been non-disruptive for millennia. If I’m being honest, the resistance has less to do with token prediction and more to do with self-preservation. I invested years building scarce skills. Scarcity is flattering. If intelligence becomes abundant, that flattery evaporates. So I do what any rational actor would do: redefine scarcity. When it automates my junior tasks, that’s augmentation. When it handles mid-level tasks, that’s assistance. When it approaches senior tasks, that’s hype. If it ever clears that bar, I’ll discover a higher one. This is not fear. This is prudent analysis performed while quietly pasting my entire codebase into three different models before standup. So who decides who gets to eat? If productive capacity detaches from human effort, ownership becomes the obvious lever. That’s not speculative. That’s how capital has always worked. But acknowledging that would mean treating the premise seriously. Much easier to point at a cherry-picked failure and conclude that intelligence on tap changes nothing. Anyway, back to my workflow where the fake autocomplete drafts the spec, writes the code, generates the tests, and explains the tradeoffs while I reassure myself that the important part was my supervision.

AndrewKemendo 8mo ago

Watching people debate whether AI will displace labor is like watching someone in 1850 sincerely ask whether the steam engine might affect employment.

bm3719 8mo ago

You won't eat, because you won't be. Industrial economic systems (including capitalism, which is better at it, but also Soviet communism for another) will always reinvest some of its surplus back into itself. That form is either scale or efficiency, the latter of which is usually the replacement of labor with capital. It may not do this very well or as fast as it could, but that transition is always permanent, and therefore cumulative. So, what happens when we do that? Well, for awhile, nothing. When labor is the bottleneck, then there's always more outlets for it. But eventually there comes an inflection point, where there is so much labor replacement and the bar has been raised so high, that the surplus is in labor itself. At lower tiers, its value approaches 0. Spoiler alert: this point has already been passed. Probably everyone here knows multiple surplus individuals, who have no place in the economy, and the bar for their entry or reentry into it is so high now, they can only produce negative value in current market conditions. So, we have an ever-increasing surplus of unrealized labor. Our overlords may feel bad about that for awhile, decide to bear the burden of a mass multitude of dependents. We better hope they do, because this works fine until it doesn't. The zeitgeist only needs to shift once for it to all be over. This won't happen tomorrow, but they only need to look at the balance sheet from a certain angle once for the massive cost center to be seen as yet another inefficiency to be optimized for. On long enough time scales, the probability of any possible event approaches 1.

CryptoBanker 8mo ago

The poor will realize that they can eat the rich

haunter 8mo ago
How do you eat a datacenter?
- RankingMember 8mo ago
  I think that monkey-wrenching at a critical level would do it.
- GeoAtreides 8mo ago
  seasoned with molotov cocktails
  - butterbomb 8mo ago
    Unfortunately your attack plan was discovered when an AI system connected to speaker outside flagged a private conversation you were having as a domestic terroist risk and a swarm of Amazon Secuirty (tm) drones have to been dispatched to paint the concrete with your brain before you even get to the data center.

dns_snek 8mo ago

> The problem is that the owners of these disruptive technologies must be convinced to do something that does not come naturally to them: share. Taxes in the US amount to less than 26% of GDP, 8 percentage points less than the OECD average. Capital taxation amounts to just over 2% of GDP. These numbers will have to go much higher, since people will no longer have wages to live on and will rely more heavily on government largesse. The tone of this article is really frustrating, the author is seemingly living in a self-imposed box in which capital has an inalienable right to rule the world. "owners must be convinced to share" - No sir, they're not kings, nor were they elected into any position, and we don't have to "convince" them of anything. We need to have a thorough discussion about what a future without human labor should look like, and whether we really want to live in a dystopia when the only thing preventing us from living in a utopia is the ego of a few rich assholes. One way or another they will lose their kingdoms because they don't actually have an inalienable right to control the world's resources. They only had these ownership rights because they were [thought to be] good for society as a whole. In a robotic AI future that's no longer the case and those rights will no longer exist. The only question is whether this transition will be peaceful or extremely violent.

tavavex 8mo ago
> the author is seemingly living in a self-imposed box in which capital has an inalienable right to rule the world. "owners must be convinced to share" - No sir, they're not kings, nor were they elected into any position, and we don't have to "convince" them of anything. That box was something that humans imposed on themselves on the scale of a civilization. At this point, I agree with the author's view because I can't see how it can ever change. Every little additional bit of the scales tipping in their favor means an exponential amount of additional effort that will be needed to undo the imbalance. By the time society wants to talk about transitioning to a different model (if they ever want to talk about it - remember, humans are shockingly vulnerable to informational warfare and many opinions can be changed with the tweak of an algorithm), the amount of power will be more imbalanced than it likely has ever been in history. If this future comes to pass, they'll be 10x as powerful by that point. And they will have effectively endless amounts of money and power to buy themselves the best armies, automated defenses, production facilities, employees, bunkers, drones, whatever, to ensure their safety. In this worst-case scenario where demand for human labor is a shadow of what it is today, how is this in any way winnable? They could take whomever they need and clock out, automatically overseeing the rest to ensure they won't have anyone threatening them ever again.

tim333 8mo ago

We'll probably end up switching to something more like a socialist system - each according to their needs. When China decided to allow capitalism they kept their socialist system running but allowed capitalism in parallel, at first in a small way but it picked up. With AI you could probably do something a bit like that the other way. A small amount of UBI say that increases as AI takes on more work.

senectus1 8mo ago

the real question is who is going to pay for the AI resource? NONE of them are turning a profit. NONE of them look to EVER turn a profit... they're forcing it down everyones throats atm for mostly free, that will stop eventually. once it does the real cost of running these (currently) constantly growing services is going to start being charged to the users. the actual cost is going to be not very affordable. in the end I suspect only tax payers will be paying for them via the only real owners... Governments.

cykros 8mo ago

What a hyperbolic nonsensical title from a bastion of Keynesian slop.

richardnuttall 8mo ago

[dead]