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That's like asking of the Internet "communication for whom?" The vast majority of bytes sent over the internet are neither from nor to a human writer or reader

That's like asking of the Internet "communication for whom?" The vast majority of bytes sent over the internet are neither from nor to a human writer or reader. It turns out that humans are not a necessary component in communication, although that proposition would have sounded very weird even 50 years ago. Why is it so hard to imagine that humans may not be a necessary component in the economy?

magicalist 4mo ago
I feel like I might be missing the point of your comment. > The vast majority of bytes sent over the internet are neither from nor to a human writer or reader. I don't believe that's right. Without even breaking down the remaining percentage, aren't the majority of bytes for video? > It turns out that humans are not a necessary component in communication, although that proposition would have sounded very weird even 50 years ago. But these bytes are in service of a human? Unless we're talking like intermediate steps which seems kind of vacuous. Meanwhile whales sing to each other, birds too, bees are dancing to communicate food sources... But if a large number of bytes were being transmitted on the internet from no one and to no human benefit, "communication for whom?" seems like a very reasonable question.
- jstanley 4mo ago
  I was imagining that the bulk of traffic was things like docker image layers etc. being sent around incidentally but not actually looked at by humans. Things that are to do with the running of the systems rather than directly for human consumption. Or web pages serving megabytes of Javascript code to display kilobytes of text. You may be right that most of the bytes are video however. Still you must agree that there is some level of communication that is not directly for humans, and that the proportion that is not for humans is increasing? And the same could easily be true or economic activity. Maybe there is some supposed human benefit at some point in the chain of causation, but it can be so far away that no human actually knows or cares.
- lazide 4mo ago
  Bots defrauding bots while training new fraud bots.
- pixl97 4mo ago
  Yea, the original statistic was not about bytes, but about connections, in which 57% of all traffic on the web is not from a direct human action. >But these bytes are in service of a human? I mean, lets say that 99.9% of all traffic on the net was by one person running an AI to get them rich, we'd call that traffic 'in service of a human' by your set of rules but it does kind of break historically how pretty much all communication in history worked until we started controlling stuff with wires and radios. That is, one person with one prompt can cause a hell of a lot of communication now. And we're not even at the point of AGI/ASI yet. That's when some other agent with their non-human goals can start doing things.
elvis10ten 4mo ago
In your examples, I can still find the “for whom”, even if that is several layers deep. I’m trying to understand your position: are you saying the same will be true in the ongoing case, just that we don’t know the connections yet?
- jstanley 4mo ago
  Approximately, yes. In a sense all this communication is "for somebody". But do you know all the communication your laptop is doing? Do you really claim it is all for you, or all for your benefit? Or is it just something the laptop does that isn't really for anyone in particular?
  - elvis10ten 4mo ago
    > But do you know all the communication your laptop is doing? Do you really claim it is all for you, or all for your benefit? Or is it just something the laptop does that isn't really for anyone in particular? Hmm, why would anyone add comms to a laptop if there wasn’t some benefactor in some way? The way I see it is that it’s either benefiting me or benefiting the company which ends up benefiting some individuals (and sometimes me again).
  - alnwlsn 4mo ago
    Since my laptop has a screen and keyboard, I probably would claim that.

magicalist 4mo ago

I feel like I might be missing the point of your comment. > The vast majority of bytes sent over the internet are neither from nor to a human writer or reader. I don't believe that's right. Without even breaking down the remaining percentage, aren't the majority of bytes for video? > It turns out that humans are not a necessary component in communication, although that proposition would have sounded very weird even 50 years ago. But these bytes are in service of a human? Unless we're talking like intermediate steps which seems kind of vacuous. Meanwhile whales sing to each other, birds too, bees are dancing to communicate food sources... But if a large number of bytes were being transmitted on the internet from no one and to no human benefit, "communication for whom?" seems like a very reasonable question.

jstanley 4mo ago
I was imagining that the bulk of traffic was things like docker image layers etc. being sent around incidentally but not actually looked at by humans. Things that are to do with the running of the systems rather than directly for human consumption. Or web pages serving megabytes of Javascript code to display kilobytes of text. You may be right that most of the bytes are video however. Still you must agree that there is some level of communication that is not directly for humans, and that the proportion that is not for humans is increasing? And the same could easily be true or economic activity. Maybe there is some supposed human benefit at some point in the chain of causation, but it can be so far away that no human actually knows or cares.
lazide 4mo ago
Bots defrauding bots while training new fraud bots.
pixl97 4mo ago
Yea, the original statistic was not about bytes, but about connections, in which 57% of all traffic on the web is not from a direct human action. >But these bytes are in service of a human? I mean, lets say that 99.9% of all traffic on the net was by one person running an AI to get them rich, we'd call that traffic 'in service of a human' by your set of rules but it does kind of break historically how pretty much all communication in history worked until we started controlling stuff with wires and radios. That is, one person with one prompt can cause a hell of a lot of communication now. And we're not even at the point of AGI/ASI yet. That's when some other agent with their non-human goals can start doing things.

elvis10ten 4mo ago

In your examples, I can still find the “for whom”, even if that is several layers deep. I’m trying to understand your position: are you saying the same will be true in the ongoing case, just that we don’t know the connections yet?

jstanley 4mo ago
Approximately, yes. In a sense all this communication is "for somebody". But do you know all the communication your laptop is doing? Do you really claim it is all for you, or all for your benefit? Or is it just something the laptop does that isn't really for anyone in particular?
- elvis10ten 4mo ago
  > But do you know all the communication your laptop is doing? Do you really claim it is all for you, or all for your benefit? Or is it just something the laptop does that isn't really for anyone in particular? Hmm, why would anyone add comms to a laptop if there wasn’t some benefactor in some way? The way I see it is that it’s either benefiting me or benefiting the company which ends up benefiting some individuals (and sometimes me again).
- alnwlsn 4mo ago
  Since my laptop has a screen and keyboard, I probably would claim that.