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Moore's Law for Everything

moores.samaltman.com

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Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#301

Post by ncallaway »

bnralt wrote: post #261
darawk wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there's two distinct ideas being discussed. Can people be unemployed because of structural, societal, or political reasons? Sure, and I think most people would agree. We have plenty of example of that happening - depressions, recessions, mass refugees, etc. > But can people be unemployed because we run out of things for humans to do? That's what the video is arguing, but it won't be the case unless we've fu…

Well, there's slight of hand here on CGP Grays part (and sleight of hand in other parts of the video as well), since horses are not doing work out of their own volition and to meet their own needs. Correct for that, and the same will be true for horses - they're not going to run out of work to do until they've fulfilled their desires. Now, I'm talking about typical desires as they stand now. Obviously you can have pe…

This works right up until the inputs for Widget X and Widget Y require capital.

Let's say Person A builds Widget X, and needs Input 1 to produce a Widget X. Person B builds Widget Y and needs Input 2 to produce Widget Y.

Person A uses their capital from their job to purchase Input 1 and produces Widget X. Person B uses their capital Input 2 and produces Y. Person A and B trade widgets and are happy.

But now, as before, automation takes the jobs of Person A and Person B. They lose their jobs, but retain their desire for the opposite widget.

Person A no longer has the resources to acquire Input 1, and Person B can no longer acquire Input 2. Neither X nor Y get produced, and both have their needs but are unsatisfied.

There is no guarantee that new automation will continue to fulfill all the desires that were fulfilled previously.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#302

Post by rebelos »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #257
joe_the_user wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the "new jobs are generated automatically" claim isn't supported by any good argument. But the horse analogy isn't good way to show this imo. I hate to be "specie-ist" but human beings have a remarkable ability to learn new skills and attain new abilities. Horses don't. The human consumption of human's time, attention and so-forth is at the center of the economy. Human consumption of horse time isn't all…

Yes, intuitively, over the last 50 years, the world population increased substantially, meanwhile, global poverty decreased manifold (90%?) over the last 50 years, and the vast majority of humanity is employed doing 'something'. Even with the greatly increased productivity of automation in farming and manufacturing, humans are creating new industries that build on what's been developed in the past. What are the trend…

> What are the trends that will lead to mass unemployment, even decades hence?

Visit a slum in Mumbai or a village in the Congo. Better yet, visit a trailer park in the Rust Belt. I really don't get why people don't understand how the future for most people - who don't manage to accrue capital prior to the substantial advent of AI and automation - is already out there for us to observe.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#303

Post by anchpop »

iMuzz wrote: post #24

Great read. > “We could do something called the American Equity Fund. The American Equity Fund would be capitalized by taxing companies above a certain valuation 2.5% of their market value each year, payable in shares transferred to the fund..” I could be in favor of something like this. However, I’d be curious to hear Sam’s thoughts on what kind of vehicle do we use to ensure that this equity actually reaches end-us…

I feel like unless the words "as checks" are doing a lot of work, the implication of your last sentence is not true. A sibling comment posted a link to a wikipedia article which says:

> The bill's economic-relief provisions are overwhelmingly geared toward low-income and middle-class Americans, who will benefit from (among other provisions) the direct payments, the bill's expansion of low-income tax credits, child-care subsidies, expanded health-insurance access, extension of expanded unemployment benefits, food stamps, and rental assistance programs.

Here's [0] a more direct breakdown of there the 1.9T went. A large chunk of the money was spent on the $1400 checks, extending unemployment insurance (which come as checks/direct deposit), and the child tax credit (which really will just be realized as another check). The majority of the rest goes to state governments (who will probably redistribute some of it), K-12 schools, and "energy and commerce" which supposedly includes contact tracing efforts and vaccines. Doesn't seem like a big misallocation of resources to me.

[0]: https://files.taxfoundation.org/20210312120937/American-Resc...

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#304

Post by jonmc12 »

I think the foundation of the argument about the application and utility of AI needs to go deeper. A good starting point might be to address the arguments that Arvind Narayanan brings up in "How to recognize AI snake oil"[1]. ie:

  - "Much of what’s being sold as 'AI' today is snake oil — it does not and cannot work."
  - "AI excels at some tasks, but can’t predict social outcomes."
The way that AI "joins the workplace" matters a lot to discuss the reciprocal policy. AI progress in certain domains has been amazing, while other domains may require a philosophically different approach to leverage computation and intelligence for true productivity gains.

[1] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI-snake...

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#305

Post by rebelos »

joe_the_user wrote: post #244
joe_the_user wrote: post #78

In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice. Aside from the other points, taking "AI" as it exists in it's present form (deep neural networks and related) as specifically the bringer of unlimited wealth certainly puffs up the various "AI companies" notably OpenAI (It should be noted that OpenAI's most famous product, GPT-3, can generate strings that sound…

One other thing I'd like to add. The scenario of AI mostly replacing people like doctors and lawyers involves bizarre paradoxes beyond whether deep learning "AI" works as advertised. Suppose you can train an "AI" to read legal papers or diagnose patients based on X-rays. That training is done from the data of real life lawyers and doctors actions. Suppose, best case scenario (very unrealistic imo btw), you have a com…

The only way you could be beguiled by this framing is if you don't understand just how inept most doctors and lawyers really are.

A future configuration will probably look something like: far fewer highly talented doctors and lawyers remain employable while the rest are replaced by AI that's shown to be vastly more capable, and that is continually enhanced by the encoded expertise of said highly talented remaining specialists.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#306

Post by Threeve303 »

nindalf wrote: post #123

> We will discover new jobs–we always do after a technological revolution CGP grey put this well > Imagine a pair of horses in the early 1900s talking about technology. One worries all these new mechanical muscles (cars etc) will make horses unnecessary. The other horse reminds him that everything so far has made their lives easier - remember all that farm work? Remember running coast-to-coast delivering mail? Rememb…

This graph shows how much of an impact cars had over time between 1850-2007 on the U.S. horse population. - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/United-States-Farm-based...

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#307

Post by rebelos »

I really fail to see how parts of the tech community continue to be beguiled by utopianist notions wrt AI and automation, unless what's really happening is that the already successful techno-capitalists are trying to lay a disingenuous groundwork for them to innovate ever closer towards AGI, unimpeded.

We know what will happen in a future world with more AI and automation that renders more people obsolete: the world at large will increasingly approximate what we already see in the poorest parts of it. Specifically, those with capital and who can access AI and automation will be in charge and have most of the wealth and the rest will look not very different from villagers in Africa or slum dwellers in Mumbai. People who think capitalism is the problem fail to see that there is no alternative to it that is both compatible with human nature and that would also yield a substantially better outcome.

The future is a world in which the masses are pacified by the provision of a minimally-viable lifestyle that keeps them just satisfied enough to nullify the threat of violence. And even that bar will be lowered when policing and military force become fully automated.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#308

Post by cbozeman »

cschep wrote: post #260
sudosysgen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get myself to agree with this. Indeed, it's true, horses don't create demand, but neither do unemployed humans. Our economy isn't centred around humans, it's centred around capital. Unemployable humans are as useless to it as horses, as they can't exchange their labour with capital owners (or become capital owners themselves). Unemployable people might want more, but will they get more? No, they won't.

A horse can't change their circumstances the way humans can. A horse can't learn to provide different value. It can only be a horse.

Well if you look at almost all people, they can't either.

Job retraining has an abysmal success rate. I don't think it's even 10%, last time I looked into it.

That's why all the "Learn 2 Code" shit that Huff Post and Vox and etc. so forth were spouting off to rural West Virginian coal miners was so stupid... if you can write, or can even learn to write, complex C++ code, why the fuck would you keep mining coal to begin with? Strangely, I didn't see much "#learntocode" when those 47 Huff Post workers got fired, many of whom had been there for 9-10 years.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#309

Post by natch »

kart23 wrote: post #231
joe_the_user wrote: post #78

In the next five years, computer programs that can think will read legal documents and give medical advice. Aside from the other points, taking "AI" as it exists in it's present form (deep neural networks and related) as specifically the bringer of unlimited wealth certainly puffs up the various "AI companies" notably OpenAI (It should be noted that OpenAI's most famous product, GPT-3, can generate strings that sound…

In 1995, a self driving car drove 98% of the way across the country. Think what these same people predicting AI today would have predicted in 1995. They would probably believe we were 10 years away from self driving cars in every household. We still dont have a mass produced level 3 system in 2021. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_self-driving_cars

On the other hand, the rate of change itself has a rate of change.

Re: Moore's Law for Everything

#310

Post by eggsmediumrare »

mlac wrote: post #234
birdsbirdsbirds wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should there be a limit? If you can command robots to build anything you can ever imagine, who doesn't want his own Versailles - with impressive towers like the Burj Khalifa? Who doesn't want to fly their jet or space rocket just for fun to the moon and back? And humans will be humans. There will be new games, like drone wars on distant planets, where any production capacity and energy will be used. And since eve…

I don’t. There is the consideration that more money comes with more problems. You can say that more money would fix those problems, but at the end of the day, you still had to spend energy thinking about it. You can quickly approach a situation where time is the limiting factor. In this case I think that the private jet or extremely fast transportation allows you to get some time back. Beyond that you might have one…

I agree. All I want is peace. Time with my family and friends, a garden, time to read, that kind of thing. Why anyone bothers with loud cars or big houses with huge lawns is beyond me.
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