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A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

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Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#21

Post by bob_theslob646 »

aristidb wrote: post #20
heisenbit wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that part made me cringe. The fact that the majority of the profits are accumulating at a few players is actually a sign of a late stage market after consolidation with monopoly profits. Productivity gains only drive profits if they provide a sustainable competitive advantage. There is a reason Buffet stays from IT - we improve productivity all the time but he can't figure out where the moat is. Apple (iOS/Hard…

Fun fact: Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett's company) now has a huge stake in Apple. So it's not really true anymore that he avoids IT.

It's not because of the IT dominance per say, it this: "Apple's mound of cash and cash equivalents continued to scrape the cloudline this quarter, coming in at $268.9 billion in the company's quarterly earnings report." (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/02/how-much-cash-does-apple-hav...)

He is betting that in some shape or form, they will put that cash to work or issue a nice dividend.

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#22

Post by mamon »

garmaine wrote: post #17
eggie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we are breaking off small pieces of a bigger thing. If that thing is AI, does it already have a form and an older name in the world? Would agree that in this article AI is a stand-in for what used to be called Math, Statistics, and Computer Science? Our scientific output is an artifice, and it is "intelligent" in its ability to guide our action. To me it isn't then strange to think of the sciences as the "general…

As soon as you solve a problem in AI, people start labeling that problem as “just” math, statistics, or computer science. It is no longer considered AI. Shifting goal posts mean “real AI” is always in the future.

People are trained by Hollywood to envision AI as robots. When presented an actual AI algorithm/model they see it as boring math, totaly unlike C-3PO, or Terminator, or whatever your favourite movie robot is.

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#23

Post by [deleted] »

Wildgoose wrote: post #9

"A third of the rise in the S&P 500 stock market index this year is attributable to Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp." And yet don't those companies directly employ only around 150,000 workers in total? Yes, Apple off-shores employment to Foxconn but they are open about their plans to automate their factories and replace all the workers. This isn't a matter of…

[deleted]

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#24

Post by hateduser2 »

heisenbergs wrote: post #18
hliyan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really not the author's point. I think this quote illustrates his point better: "Online shopping came along in the 1990s but retailers struggled to adapt business processes to the internet. They needed to build complementary infrastructure such as fulfillment centers, and, the authors note, customers had to adapt their habits, as well." The lag between commercialization and widespread adoption is wider than we…

Lag is probably the wrong word. It's a misconception that adoption should be instant. It took a good 50 years for the electric motor to supplant the steam engine, despite it being superior in virtually every way. Tech adoption takes time, given that many things need to be re-learnt/engineered. It's why i'm positive that there won't be swathes of unemployeed people due to tech. It will happen gradually, as it has alwa…

I don’t think “it’s always happened this way so it probably will continue “ (although you explain this further) is a very sophisticated or for that matter accurate analysis. There’s the status quo and then there are major events that upend it. If anything could ever upend the status who like this, it’s tech. It’s like business cycles.. usually things are fine but they aren’t always fine.

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#25

Post by lucidguppy »

hliyan wrote: post #13
Wildgoose wrote: post #9

"A third of the rise in the S&P 500 stock market index this year is attributable to Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp." And yet don't those companies directly employ only around 150,000 workers in total? Yes, Apple off-shores employment to Foxconn but they are open about their plans to automate their factories and replace all the workers. This isn't a matter of…

That's really not the author's point. I think this quote illustrates his point better: "Online shopping came along in the 1990s but retailers struggled to adapt business processes to the internet. They needed to build complementary infrastructure such as fulfillment centers, and, the authors note, customers had to adapt their habits, as well." The lag between commercialization and widespread adoption is wider than we…

If Sears and Service Merchandise had simply held out for a couple of years and put up a web store front - the Dow would look a little different today.

Customers had adapted in the late 80's to something like Amazon (only problem was waiting for a few minutes after checkout) - but then they adapted to big box stores (made possible by big banks and supply chain software) - which ended up being a huge diversion of resources in the late 90's early 00's. The empty husks of retail are a testament to that.

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#26

Post by Eridrus »

inciampati wrote: post #8

I have frequently wondered if the lag in productivity is partly due to the distracting power of the internet and social media. This isn't really paralleled by the other technical advances that the authors of the study this piece summarizes were examining. Also, AI? We don't have anything even approaching AI in play now nor on the immediate horizon. The energy costs it would have are still enormous, even if we really…

"Productivity" as economists defines it is purely GDP/hours worked, it is only loosely correlated to what a lay person would consider productivity. It doesn't consider the value of consumer surplus or whether prices for goods have fallen due to foreign competition or anything else, it is purely productivity in the sense of our ability to generate dollars for every hour that someone is working.

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#27

Post by starlust2 »

heisenbergs wrote: post #18
hliyan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really not the author's point. I think this quote illustrates his point better: "Online shopping came along in the 1990s but retailers struggled to adapt business processes to the internet. They needed to build complementary infrastructure such as fulfillment centers, and, the authors note, customers had to adapt their habits, as well." The lag between commercialization and widespread adoption is wider than we…

Lag is probably the wrong word. It's a misconception that adoption should be instant. It took a good 50 years for the electric motor to supplant the steam engine, despite it being superior in virtually every way. Tech adoption takes time, given that many things need to be re-learnt/engineered. It's why i'm positive that there won't be swathes of unemployeed people due to tech. It will happen gradually, as it has alwa…

Converting a user operated machine from a steam engine to electric engine doesn't remove the user. Converting to a computer operated or assisted machine does.

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#28

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #11
Wildgoose wrote: post #9

"A third of the rise in the S&P 500 stock market index this year is attributable to Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp." And yet don't those companies directly employ only around 150,000 workers in total? Yes, Apple off-shores employment to Foxconn but they are open about their plans to automate their factories and replace all the workers. This isn't a matter of…

that's not the argument the article was making - they note that tech and media (the fastest growing sectors, which not coincidentally employ most intensively IT workers) are just 5% of economy. the argument is that when the rest of the economy employs IT at the same level of intensity, the remaining 95% will have similar productivity growth and hence see gains of wealth creation. we then have to work out how to distr…

The limits are human - psychological, emotional, political - not technological.

So yes - today's limits probably are the best we can do, in this society at least.

Also, just because it's "obvious" that it's possible to re-engineer a company's code base, that doesn't mean it's as easy as it looks.

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#29

Post by [deleted] »

mamon wrote: post #22
garmaine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as you solve a problem in AI, people start labeling that problem as “just” math, statistics, or computer science. It is no longer considered AI. Shifting goal posts mean “real AI” is always in the future.

People are trained by Hollywood to envision AI as robots. When presented an actual AI algorithm/model they see it as boring math, totaly unlike C-3PO, or Terminator, or whatever your favourite movie robot is.

[deleted]

Re: A Tech-Driven Boom Is Coming; Please Be Patient

#30

Post by icebraining »

starlust2 wrote: post #27
heisenbergs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lag is probably the wrong word. It's a misconception that adoption should be instant. It took a good 50 years for the electric motor to supplant the steam engine, despite it being superior in virtually every way. Tech adoption takes time, given that many things need to be re-learnt/engineered. It's why i'm positive that there won't be swathes of unemployeed people due to tech. It will happen gradually, as it has alwa…

Converting a user operated machine from a steam engine to electric engine doesn't remove the user. Converting to a computer operated or assisted machine does.

If the electric engine can produce the same things ten times faster, you've just removed nine-tenths of the users. Sure, someone is still around, but then again, automatic factories still have some people supervising them - just much fewer.
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