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I bet those poll respondents are worried about their jobs, not seeing some random AI art on a bus.

bluefirebrand 7d ago
Maybe they see the random AI art on the bus and they realize that meant a real human artist probably didn't get paid to make it so society is worse off. Maybe those poll respondents have empathy, in that they are worried about their jobs and feel bad for other people who have lost work to AI too
- orangecat 7d ago
  they realize that meant a real human artist probably didn't get paid to make it so society is worse off This is a form of the broken window fallacy. Society is not worse off when production requires less labor, any more than it's worse off when someone uses an open source library rather than paying someone to reimplement it.
  - bluefirebrand 7d ago
    > Society is not worse off when production requires less labor Society is definitely worse off when people who exchange their labor for capital have no opportunities to do so
  - Chance-Device 7d ago
    > This is a form of the broken window fallacy. I’m not sure I see it, can you elaborate?
    - orangecat 7d ago
      The broken window fallacy is the idea that it's good when your window gets broken because you have to pay someone to fix it and it increases their income. If that were true, then it would be bad if you could easily repair windows without spending time or money. It's false because we're better off if we can spend our resources on things we actually want rather than constantly maintaining our windows, even if that means some window repairmen need to find other jobs.
      - Chance-Device 7d ago
        Sure, but if we run AI all the way to its endpoint, it’s not just about window repairmen anymore. Our current notions about economics assume there’s always another job class for people to move to, here eventually there won’t be. So here you never have to pay anyone to fix your windows, because they fix themselves, but conversely nobody will give you money to fix their windows! And then you have to pay your self-fixing windows a rent in tokens without an income.
        rpdillon 7d ago
        > here eventually there won’t be. That's a pretty big leap.
        bluefirebrand 7d ago
        It is a stated goal of several prominent AI business leaders. Altman, Amodei, and Musk at the very least have had mask-off moments where they said as much.
        Chance-Device 7d ago
        I don’t think so, even if the whole “AI exponential” idea is wrong, that’s just the shape of the curve. There still is a curve. Even if these things take 50 years to happen instead of 5 (which would be better and which I doubt will be the case) it still happens eventually. I think the current capabilities of AI are enough of a heuristic for us to assume this is going to happen.
      - bluefirebrand 7d ago
        What do we do when former window repairman can't find other jobs? Just fuck em, right? The narrative we're seeing around AI and current automation isn't "we're going to automate one category of jobs". If it were then sure, we could be relatively confident that the excess labor from that industry would be absorbed by other segments But that's not what the future looks like to me. The future to me looks like "we want to automate a large majority of labor" So what then? If tons of labour is displaced then the Broken Window Fallacy doesn't really apply, because it is based on the assumption that there will always be something for displaced labour to do. Call it the Excess Labor Corollary. If there's no way to absorb excess labor in other segments, then what.
  - johnnyanmac 6d ago
    >Society is not worse off when production requires less labor, Not objectively in every situation. But that does seem to be the case and objective here.
afavour 7d ago
Why not both? I didn’t lose my job in 2008 but watching people all around me lose theirs made it clear that my own economic situation was not a safe one.

Maybe they see the random AI art on the bus and they realize that meant a real human artist probably didn't get paid to make it so society is worse off. Maybe those poll respondents have empathy, in that they are worried about their jobs and feel bad for other people who have lost work to AI too

orangecat 7d ago
they realize that meant a real human artist probably didn't get paid to make it so society is worse off This is a form of the broken window fallacy. Society is not worse off when production requires less labor, any more than it's worse off when someone uses an open source library rather than paying someone to reimplement it.
- bluefirebrand 7d ago
  > Society is not worse off when production requires less labor Society is definitely worse off when people who exchange their labor for capital have no opportunities to do so
- Chance-Device 7d ago
  > This is a form of the broken window fallacy. I’m not sure I see it, can you elaborate?
  - orangecat 7d ago
    The broken window fallacy is the idea that it's good when your window gets broken because you have to pay someone to fix it and it increases their income. If that were true, then it would be bad if you could easily repair windows without spending time or money. It's false because we're better off if we can spend our resources on things we actually want rather than constantly maintaining our windows, even if that means some window repairmen need to find other jobs.
    - Chance-Device 7d ago
      Sure, but if we run AI all the way to its endpoint, it’s not just about window repairmen anymore. Our current notions about economics assume there’s always another job class for people to move to, here eventually there won’t be. So here you never have to pay anyone to fix your windows, because they fix themselves, but conversely nobody will give you money to fix their windows! And then you have to pay your self-fixing windows a rent in tokens without an income.
      - rpdillon 7d ago
        > here eventually there won’t be. That's a pretty big leap.
        bluefirebrand 7d ago
        It is a stated goal of several prominent AI business leaders. Altman, Amodei, and Musk at the very least have had mask-off moments where they said as much.
        Chance-Device 7d ago
        I don’t think so, even if the whole “AI exponential” idea is wrong, that’s just the shape of the curve. There still is a curve. Even if these things take 50 years to happen instead of 5 (which would be better and which I doubt will be the case) it still happens eventually. I think the current capabilities of AI are enough of a heuristic for us to assume this is going to happen.
    - bluefirebrand 7d ago
      What do we do when former window repairman can't find other jobs? Just fuck em, right? The narrative we're seeing around AI and current automation isn't "we're going to automate one category of jobs". If it were then sure, we could be relatively confident that the excess labor from that industry would be absorbed by other segments But that's not what the future looks like to me. The future to me looks like "we want to automate a large majority of labor" So what then? If tons of labour is displaced then the Broken Window Fallacy doesn't really apply, because it is based on the assumption that there will always be something for displaced labour to do. Call it the Excess Labor Corollary. If there's no way to absorb excess labor in other segments, then what.
- johnnyanmac 6d ago
  >Society is not worse off when production requires less labor, Not objectively in every situation. But that does seem to be the case and objective here.

afavour 7d ago

Why not both? I didn’t lose my job in 2008 but watching people all around me lose theirs made it clear that my own economic situation was not a safe one.