AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain • Hacker News Board

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#61

Post by lucian1900 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #48

lucian1900 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USSR was unaffected by the Great Depression, unlike all capitalist countries. It’s because it used planning for use instead of markets for profit.

The USSR didn't have the great depression, but they did have the HoloDomor or terror famine of Ukraine between 1932 and 1933 and the wider Soviet Famine of that period. The history of the famine later went on to inspire the book Animal Farm and were a pure artifact of the central planning economy forcing the export of the very food required to feed millions of people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://e…

It’s worth looking at primary sources for “Holodomor”, a depressing amount are from Ukrainian fascists.

The consensus among historians is that there was indeed a famine, one of the periodic environmental ones in the region. Planning was indeed slow to react to the famine and the sabotage by landlords, so food aid arrived late.

It was also the last famine in the region. The landlords that destroyed food were expropriated, land was collectivised and agriculture was industrialised. Talk to any older Ukrainians and they’ll tell you there was plenty of food throughout their lifetimes until the 90s after the USSR was defeated.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#62

Post by cherryturnover » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

lucian1900 wrote: post #44

slibhb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are dozens of reasons. Free markets have deduplication of labour, concepts like patents and IP that are inefficient are necessary, there are economic crises that wreck compound growth in the long term, there are issues of inequality, humans may be lazy and not attempt to allocate their capital in the most appropriate way (see index funds), socially useful endeavors may not be profitable, etc... There's no rea…

The USSR was unaffected by the Great Depression, unlike all capitalist countries. It’s because it used planning for use instead of markets for profit.

Doesn't it have more to do with the fact that they didn't even recover yet from the 1st World War? Also don't forget Holodomor. It literally happened after the Great Depression yet unlike Western Nations, 3.5 million people died from disease or starvation. Unlike in said Western countries that just had an economic collapse.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#63

Post by whatshisface » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

dundarious wrote: post #47

It's interesting to note that central planning has been highly effective for small nation state sized corporations such as Walmart[0] presumably long before any adoption of AI, and that attempts at pervasive internal markets at Sears[1] arguably rapidly accelerated its downfall. That's absolutely not to say that Walmart is a direct exemplar of successful Soviet-style "state capitalism" or socialism, nor that Sears is…

Centralized control works out OK in retail because if an evil madman seizes power over Walmart everyone can go to Target instead.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#64

Post by Animats » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

If the USSR had been into bar codes, that might have been more useful. The central planning system cycled too slowly, with monthly data and an annual plan. Compare WalMart, which had daily data and a weekly plan.

WalMart is very centrally planned. More than the USSR was at peak. By the 1980s, WalMart required UPC bar codes on everything, and a different bar code on cartons and cases. Headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas did purchasing and distribution control for the entire WalMart economy. They had central planning at a level Gosplan could only dream of.

Amazon, of course, has taken that even further.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#65

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #63

dundarious wrote: post #47

It's interesting to note that central planning has been highly effective for small nation state sized corporations such as Walmart[0] presumably long before any adoption of AI, and that attempts at pervasive internal markets at Sears[1] arguably rapidly accelerated its downfall. That's absolutely not to say that Walmart is a direct exemplar of successful Soviet-style "state capitalism" or socialism, nor that Sears is…

Centralized control works out OK in retail because if an evil madman seizes power over Walmart everyone can go to Target instead.

[deleted]

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#66

Post by lumost » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #55

lumost wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A central planning economy requires calculating desired outputs and required inputs through multiple layers of a supply chain. The resultant outputs through each layer of the economy, exports, and imports have a direct value that was in fact measured in the soviet currency of Ruble's - these Ruble's could be exchanged for dollars and provide a useful GDP figure in any desired currency. The basket of goods a given amo…

This is not in fact true. The basket of goods didn't have any fixed ruble price, as much of it was free. Much of production was never given a full price in rubles, as a large part of it was by direct resource allocation. You can indeed estimate it using a basket of goods and their equivalent values, but not with income and import/export + exchange rates because you're then removing all natural wealth. It's a very dif…

Something being free simply means the government paid for it on behalf of the worker. Direct resource allocation likewise just implies the government paid for it albeit without consideration for margin or potentially the ability of the resource allocator to remain solvent.

Direct resource allocation implies that valuable resources were taken from one activity and allocated to another, the workers who produce the resource still get paid (hopefully!) and the equipment still undergoes wear and tear or upgrade requirements. The production's value can still be estimated either by the equivalent market rate of the good or by the cost of making it.

When the government pays people to build housing that they give away for free there is still "production". When the government orders a mine to ship steel to another location the workers are still paid.

When the government orders a mine to produce for no input and doesn't bother to maintain equipment they effectively take a loan against the capital equipment in the mine. Eventually the mines productivity falls to zero as the mine fails to remain solvent requiring more capital infusion.

If the government can order workers to work without pay then the estimation has to account for similar economics to slave states, which unfortunately is also well trodden ground owing to economies such as the US's prior to 1865.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#67

Post by betwixthewires » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #63

dundarious wrote: post #47

It's interesting to note that central planning has been highly effective for small nation state sized corporations such as Walmart[0] presumably long before any adoption of AI, and that attempts at pervasive internal markets at Sears[1] arguably rapidly accelerated its downfall. That's absolutely not to say that Walmart is a direct exemplar of successful Soviet-style "state capitalism" or socialism, nor that Sears is…

Centralized control works out OK in retail because if an evil madman seizes power over Walmart everyone can go to Target instead.

Yup, this is a very important point to be made. Central planning works very well when there is free association, that is, there is a market for people to pick organizations to associate with. A failure by planners leads to people quitting working there, downsizing, less business, all things that cannot happen in an organization where there's no alternative for people, such as a nation state. There is no low friction feedback mechanism for a state that enables it to reorganize as needed, mainly because we don't get to decide what state we are a citizen of.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#68

Post by betwixthewires » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

ankalagon wrote: post #2

Would the communist central price-fixing have benefited from AI? I mean, could the fixing of consumer prices have been automated by an AI system? Maybe using machine learning?

I've actually done some deep thinking on this topic, and I've come to a conclusion on the topic of the efficiency of central economies vs decentralized (market) economies, that is, a market is a network where the task of resource allocation is distributed dynamically to nodes best suited to make those decisions, the network is constantly reorganized to maintain low latency information channels, and the computational load is also spread to all the nodes, whereas a central economy has latency to the computational node(s) (government agencies and bureaucracies) and also reduced computational power (people making financial decisions with their minds). As a result, market economies will always result in more efficient and therefore more prosperous societies than centrally planned economies.

AI can change this, if it is sufficiently powerful enough to perform the computations needed for resource allocation, has the necessary information input (it can never have all of it but there's probably some place where it gets close enough), has low latency feeds for that information, and has very efficient distribution algorithms. That would basically need to create a system redundant to the economy itself, and redundant to a system that there's no worry about disappearing unless the humans for which resources are being managed disappear, so it seems pointless anyway. Also there's the problem of turning humanity into a cold machine and taking agency from every individual.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#69

Post by betwixthewires » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #57

lumost wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the famine an issue of erroneous data does a disservice to the victims. Millions of people don't starve while having their food confiscated at gun point due to an accounting error.

It's the proximate cause. As we all know it had horrible effects. Had the USSR been able to accurately measure food production it wouldn't have happened, so it is indeed the proximal cause.

The interesting thing about market economies is that the economy itself measures the food and distributes it in a maximally efficient manner when left unmolested, no central planner needed.

Distributed economies will always be more efficient than planned economies, because everyone on a distributed economy participates in the cognitive load of measuring and distributing resources, so the network has more processing power and less latency than a centrally planned economy.

Re: AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain

#70

Post by betwixthewires » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #60

Proven wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not AI yet but it shows how the economy could be centrally planned using technology. Nonsense. Hayek explained why that can't work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Conceit Of course, it can be planned - Lenin and Stalin showed that. Just make an AI that emulates those two geniuses. But the results would be equally great like they were in Soviet Russia or Mao's China. Why would anyone in a centrally planned…

Hayek did not, actually. His argument for it can't work but it can work using markets assumes P=NP and that humans are capable of running algorithms that computers can't, but only when they act as perfectly self interested rational actors.

It does not assume P=NP as far as I can tell, unless you understand something I've missed? I'd be very interested in an explanation for how a market assumes P=NP, if I got one I'd basically be done with the concept of markets because I do not believe P=NP.

A market economy is a distributed network, a self healing network and a self organizing network that optimizes itself for resource distribution, an emergent property of human populations with asymmetric distribution. The network itself runs algorithms much more efficiently than a centrally planned economy which does not have these traits. A sufficiently powerful AI could perform as well as a market economy, but it would be redundant and have other effects, such as taking agency from the benefactors of the economy. I don't know that it could outperform a market economy, it's possible that it could but so far I'm not sure.