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>The construction worker it replaces isn't going to start managing a team of robots construction robots Some of them will. You've slashed construction labor c
by treis 4mo ago
>The construction worker it replaces isn't going to start managing a team of robots construction robots
Some of them will. You've slashed construction labor cost to 5% of what it was before. With that and a similar reduction throughout the supply chain means we're going to start building a lot more stuff.
- rglullis 4mo agoLabor costs are not the limiting factor on production.
- treis 4mo agoWhat is?
- jonners00 4mo agoIn theory breakeven demand, but ecosystens are basically economies, so termites are break even demand, and that's not good news.
- rglullis 4mo agoDemand and primary resources go way higher on the list.
- treis 4mo agoDemand and primary resources are effectively infinite.
- rglullis 4mo agoWhat?! The primary resource needed to build a home is land. Do we have infinite availability of land in desirable areas to build on?
- twoodfin 4mo agoIn a world where it’s dramatically cheaper to build infrastructure like roads, power, and plumbing, lots more land becomes desirable as a place to live. Take Phoenix, for example, once air conditioning became cheap and pervasive.
- rglullis 4mo ago> In a world where it’s dramatically cheaper to build infrastructure... You can not make things dramatically cheaper by bringing only the cost of labor to zero. Your argument is circular!
- hunterpayne 4mo agoIts also the 'labor theory of value'. That's the economic theory that Communism is based on. It has never been accurate and wasn't even considered legitimate during Marx's lifetime. It has possibly the worst track record of predictions of any theory ever conceived by people. Yet somehow academics still reference it. Nobody who actually is impacted by making the wrong economic predictions does though. Funny that...
- chadgpt3 4mo agoSolve the diamond/water paradox?
- twoodfin 4mo agoThe argument isn’t that AI brings the labor cost down to 0 in isolation. It brings the labor cost of the same amount of production down. So you get more production (more things = more supply -> lower prices) out of less labor.
- rglullis 4mo ago> So you get more production out of less labor. We don't need "AI" to figure out that technological advances increase productivity. The problem with yout argument is assuming that increased productivity mean overall reduced costs. It does not. Healthcare, housing, education all have gone up despite increased productivity. Then you have things that are already so automated that there is no way to make them cheaper unless sacrificing quality - food, clothing, etc. Then we have all the types of consumer products that have prices completely decoupled from the cost of labor. No one in their right mind the "cost of labor" has any relation whatsoever with Apple charging $1000 for an iPhone and/or Motorola charging $180 for a Moto G.
- djeastm 4mo ago>primary resources are effectively infinite You just solved economics?
- kys11 4mo ago[dead]
- fragmede 4mo agoIf they were suddenly cut to near zero, a lot of projects that were previous uneconomical become viable.
- rglullis 4mo ago"Becoming viable" does not mean "automatically put into execution". You still need to take overall demand in account. Consider this: if demand was not a factor, anyone living in a moderately wealthy country would be practicing labor arbitrage and sending money to poorer places. Ask yourself why this doesn't happen.
- fragmede 4mo agoI'm sorry, I must be missing your point, because isn't that exactly what's happening with manufacturing having gone to China?
- rglullis 4mo agoNo. It's different in two ways: 1) corporations moved manufacturing to where labor was cheap, but brought back the goods to sell them. This only works for as long as there is healhy consumer market somewhere. If AI really gets to automate most white-collar work, there will be no healthy consumer market left anywhere around the world. 2) The essay touches on this: any of the previous offshoring / job displacement movements happened on a much longer timeframe than what is being pushed now by the powers that be.
- galactushonor 4mo agoFor which poor unemployed people who just got laid off due to AI are the Robots building house for? More abstractly, for whom are we creating are these productivity miracles and surplus for. Does a rich person suddenly need a million iPhones for himself and himself alone?
- treis 4mo agoThere's not going to be much additional poor unemployed people. They're going to get different jobs.
- rglullis 4mo agoDoing what, exactly?
- treis 4mo agoCould you have predicted in 1920 that in 2020 that 48% of the country would stop farming and some would be programmers?
- rglullis 4mo ago"Past performance is not indicative of future results". People stopped being in farms because automation freed manual labor and people could move up in the value chain. We are getting to the point where there will be no chain left to go up to, at all. If you don't see the difference, I don't know what else to tell you.
- NothingAboutAny 4mo agothis time we're automating humans that can do anything that humans can do. you should be asking what happened to the horses which were replaced by the tractors. the answer is elsewhere in the thread, their pop dropped 88% or w/e, we didnt need them anymore.
- wookmaster 4mo agoSo just hope something else appears?
- idopmstuff 4mo agoEven if we start building a lot more stuff, you still don't need those construction workers. You have a GC to manage the whole project, aided by an AI who's handling scheduling/operations/logistics. You have a detailed plan to build against. So why do you need former construction workers to manage the robots? Why can't the GC and management AI run the whole thing? Maybe there's some scenario where you still need something like one licensed person from each skilled trade to be responsible for the robots employing those trades. But there's no way you need everyone who worked on building sites managing robots, no matter how much construction you're doing.
- treis 4mo agoThat's pretty far away from where we're at. If things do get that far it's not going to be a problem. Eventually the robots will murder us in our sleep and our worries will be over.