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The fear isn’t about now, it’s about trajectory. Everyone’s existential dread would evaporate if this is where it stops. The dread is: where does this stop? Ri

by HEmanZ 23d ago

The fear isn’t about now, it’s about trajectory. Everyone’s existential dread would evaporate if this is where it stops. The dread is: where does this stop? Right now, with ai I can fly. But when does ai no longer need me? Just as an extreme example: a this pace, how far are we from “AI agent, here’s our assets, make money”? If every year 50% of the job disappears, how long until there is no human-ai team, just ai. Idk, this conversation is endlessly frustrating, because people seem to have so much certainty one way or another about the future. Fear comes from not knowing more than anything.

dmantis 23d ago
If there is no jobs, there is no modern economy in today's sense and "money" costs nothing. That will trigger very interesting consequences.
- HEmanZ 23d ago
  Why would no jobs mean no money?
  - dmantis 22d ago
    We use money to exchange resources (actual or promised) in form of credit to each other. If most of the population doesn't participate in the exchange, money is worthless. You can make numbers, but those are meaningless without the underlying exchange. It's effectively a disruption of a modern society.
    - HEmanZ 22d ago
      Why would no one have underlying resources if there were very few jobs? There are many millions of people in the USA who don’t work but own things. Some don’t work and own a lot of things
      - dmantis 22d ago
        There is no way of redistributing those resources but violence if there is no economy. Say, you have 98 people who have literally nothing and no established way to obtain basic needs, and 2 people who has something based on whatever. Say, these 2 people can close their needs by asking a magic machine to do something for them, or even exchange some goods between each other, but there is no economic sense to hire anybody. Those 98 left aren't going to sit and die, watching.
        HEmanZ 22d ago
        No but what if those 2 hand out bread and circuses, use the super-intelligence they can afford (using super intelligence smarter than anyone alive) to keep the masses controlled, and are protected by all of the wonderful new machines of war (like ai controlled autonomous drones). Also what if it’s not 2 vs 98, but something more like 10 vs 90, or 30 vs 70? Or 50 vs 50? And this kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over a generation, or at least a few decades. Anyway, the point isn’t this will happen, the point is that really bad outcomes that are almost impossible to walk back from are completely within the realm of possibility. And we have no real way to predict where we’re headed. So people are rightly very afraid.
- Seattle3503 23d ago
  There is a sort of conceit here that tech is everything. There doesn't need to be "no jobs", it could just (or mostly) be the tech sector that is impacted and jobs are displaced. In the history of concentrated sector losses, the US public hasn't been kind to those displaced. The world marches on, no matter how important we think we are.
  - dmantis 22d ago
    You are right, my answer was meant for parent's "“AI agent, here’s our assets, make money”" and "If every year 50% of the job disappears, how long until there is no human-ai team, just ai.". I mean it in a broader sense than just IT workers. The world will be fine without us if that's where it all stops. If at some point most enterprises run as "agent, make me money" without any humans, then money is a dead concept.
    - HEmanZ 22d ago
      Does no one own the companies?
      - dmantis 22d ago
        Why does that matter? b2b sector doesn't make any sense if there is no "clients" at some end point. There is no money in the end of the chain if everybody is jobless. And if 99% of the population don't have magic numbers, the magic numbers concept just doesn't make sense. The whole modern society and capitalism exist on assumption of meritocracy: an entrepreneur takes the risks and provides the organization and gets the reward. If there is some perfect machine that always brings profits, there is no risk. Everybody can make such "organization" saying "/goal make me money". The current model also assumes that if you learn and work hard enough, then you get a success of some level. That assumption of the meritocracy also breaks. If there is no organizational work, nor risks, nor meritocracy, nor "fair reward for hard work" the whole model fades. There are might be different rational choices. One is probably to liquidate the owners of the companies; nationalize the model's output and distribute the profits, for example. Still many questions about everyday life for completely jobless society will arrive then. It might be something else, but people generally do what they see fair, and they also want to eat something. Ownership is a fragile idea, Russian Empire shows that pretty clearly. It exists only when most of the society agrees that the ownership is fair or when you have enough force to maintain it against those who don't, which is not the case when the majority is on the other side.
- deterministic 22d ago
  So far LLM’s have been really bad at creating the most important things in life. Like food, shelter, security, electricity, water, medical breakthroughs, better politics, better connection etc. etc. etc. So AI’s will have some impact on the economy but it’s debatable how much and how long it will take.
  - HEmanZ 22d ago
    We’ve had them for like 3 years. It feels a lot like saying “internet won’t do much” in 1996
Seattle3503 23d ago
Yeah, some people are is saying "Oh coding is solved, but we still need people to guide the architecture." But coding was "solved" by self-play against "small" problems. Is there any reason training couldn't be scaled up to even longer horizon tasks like evolving an architecture in a growing business? The increasing load from a growing business, both in terms of usage and product accretion, can be entirely simulated in a data-center, and therefore trained against.
Cyan488 23d ago
The imagery is vivid. Am I flying? Or being carried away by some kind of bird? How hard will I hit the ground if it drops me?

by HEmanZ 23d ago

dmantis 23d ago

If there is no jobs, there is no modern economy in today's sense and "money" costs nothing. That will trigger very interesting consequences.

HEmanZ 23d ago
Why would no jobs mean no money?
- dmantis 22d ago
  We use money to exchange resources (actual or promised) in form of credit to each other. If most of the population doesn't participate in the exchange, money is worthless. You can make numbers, but those are meaningless without the underlying exchange. It's effectively a disruption of a modern society.
  - HEmanZ 22d ago
    Why would no one have underlying resources if there were very few jobs? There are many millions of people in the USA who don’t work but own things. Some don’t work and own a lot of things
    - dmantis 22d ago
      There is no way of redistributing those resources but violence if there is no economy. Say, you have 98 people who have literally nothing and no established way to obtain basic needs, and 2 people who has something based on whatever. Say, these 2 people can close their needs by asking a magic machine to do something for them, or even exchange some goods between each other, but there is no economic sense to hire anybody. Those 98 left aren't going to sit and die, watching.
      - HEmanZ 22d ago
        No but what if those 2 hand out bread and circuses, use the super-intelligence they can afford (using super intelligence smarter than anyone alive) to keep the masses controlled, and are protected by all of the wonderful new machines of war (like ai controlled autonomous drones). Also what if it’s not 2 vs 98, but something more like 10 vs 90, or 30 vs 70? Or 50 vs 50? And this kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over a generation, or at least a few decades. Anyway, the point isn’t this will happen, the point is that really bad outcomes that are almost impossible to walk back from are completely within the realm of possibility. And we have no real way to predict where we’re headed. So people are rightly very afraid.
Seattle3503 23d ago
There is a sort of conceit here that tech is everything. There doesn't need to be "no jobs", it could just (or mostly) be the tech sector that is impacted and jobs are displaced. In the history of concentrated sector losses, the US public hasn't been kind to those displaced. The world marches on, no matter how important we think we are.
- dmantis 22d ago
  You are right, my answer was meant for parent's "“AI agent, here’s our assets, make money”" and "If every year 50% of the job disappears, how long until there is no human-ai team, just ai.". I mean it in a broader sense than just IT workers. The world will be fine without us if that's where it all stops. If at some point most enterprises run as "agent, make me money" without any humans, then money is a dead concept.
  - HEmanZ 22d ago
    Does no one own the companies?
    - dmantis 22d ago
      Why does that matter? b2b sector doesn't make any sense if there is no "clients" at some end point. There is no money in the end of the chain if everybody is jobless. And if 99% of the population don't have magic numbers, the magic numbers concept just doesn't make sense. The whole modern society and capitalism exist on assumption of meritocracy: an entrepreneur takes the risks and provides the organization and gets the reward. If there is some perfect machine that always brings profits, there is no risk. Everybody can make such "organization" saying "/goal make me money". The current model also assumes that if you learn and work hard enough, then you get a success of some level. That assumption of the meritocracy also breaks. If there is no organizational work, nor risks, nor meritocracy, nor "fair reward for hard work" the whole model fades. There are might be different rational choices. One is probably to liquidate the owners of the companies; nationalize the model's output and distribute the profits, for example. Still many questions about everyday life for completely jobless society will arrive then. It might be something else, but people generally do what they see fair, and they also want to eat something. Ownership is a fragile idea, Russian Empire shows that pretty clearly. It exists only when most of the society agrees that the ownership is fair or when you have enough force to maintain it against those who don't, which is not the case when the majority is on the other side.
deterministic 22d ago
So far LLM’s have been really bad at creating the most important things in life. Like food, shelter, security, electricity, water, medical breakthroughs, better politics, better connection etc. etc. etc. So AI’s will have some impact on the economy but it’s debatable how much and how long it will take.
- HEmanZ 22d ago
  We’ve had them for like 3 years. It feels a lot like saying “internet won’t do much” in 1996

Seattle3503 23d ago

Yeah, some people are is saying "Oh coding is solved, but we still need people to guide the architecture." But coding was "solved" by self-play against "small" problems. Is there any reason training couldn't be scaled up to even longer horizon tasks like evolving an architecture in a growing business? The increasing load from a growing business, both in terms of usage and product accretion, can be entirely simulated in a data-center, and therefore trained against.

Cyan488 23d ago

The imagery is vivid. Am I flying? Or being carried away by some kind of bird? How hard will I hit the ground if it drops me?