Either indoctrination or a detachment from reality. Can’t tell which. Wonder when the last time he spoke to someone who isn’t a reflection of himself was.
AI Won't Cause Unemployment
21–30 of 362 posts
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#22I am sorry to agree with his conclusion because I really look forward to an abundance world where the marginal cost of production asymtotes to nil and unemployment is universal (pretty sure I won't live long enough to see this).
(He should have stopped his essay after the first couple of paragraphs).
However we'll need more sophisticated intelligence than what most of today's "AI" work is leading towards.
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#23That argument is extremely underwhelming and repeatedly makes assertions that are flat out wrong. Somehow high inflation areas like "college textbooks" are more heavily regulated than low inflation areas like "new cars". Meanwhile, the article completely ignores how much labor costs make up the prices in those different sectors. It does this in an article explicitly about fears that AI will be used to drive down labor costs and cause unemployment.
I have dramatically less respect for Marc Andresson after reading an example of such poor reasoning.
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#24Remember this is the same guy that pitched Crypto as a good investment...
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#25I have an extremely low opinion of Marc Andreesen (because of all the web3 scamming), and I actually thought that was a good article. It's almost a reframing of David Graeber's bullshit jobs in a sense, so much of what's tied up in these sectors (the ones that keep getting more expensive) is bullshit anyway, it could have been automated or just removed long before some new take on "AI" but it hasn't been, and a lifelike chatbot or whatever people think makes this time different isn't going to change that.
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#26I can't help but think Andreesen's gone off the deep end a bit, especially after he started gushing over Adam Neumann's second run at a real estate company (“We think it is natural that for his first venture since WeWork, Adam returns to the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes.”). > AI is simply already illegal ac…
Yeah, his whole post is thinly veiled anti-regulations blather. I suppose it’s a nice break from his web3 nonsense and his deranged anti-“woke” posting.
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Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#27I can't help but think Andreesen's gone off the deep end a bit, especially after he started gushing over Adam Neumann's second run at a real estate company (“We think it is natural that for his first venture since WeWork, Adam returns to the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes.”). > AI is simply already illegal ac…
Something snapped in him when crypto shit the bed. His new obsession with AI is him working some stuff out.
These guys will pitch whatever sells to the gullible.
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#28It was interesting in the beginning, but ended with “and then I found 5 dollars”.
The term “illegal” is not explained, and the graph (which is the basis) doesn't have an “AI-services” line, so overall the dots are not connected to prove that conclusion.
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#29You could also argue that the "red" categories align more closely with "needs" people have little to no choice but to pay, and are ripe for predatory pricing. It's true there are monopoly problems here, but the answer isn't to remove regulation it's to strengthen it. A return to real anti-trust in particular. The blue items lean more towards luxury items and discretionary spending, so pricing can't be so exploitative…
I don’t know if this is the best way to frame it, but at least it’s not disconnected from reality like the article.
Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment
#30Honest question (willing to be consider new info): I always thought that housing, health care, and college are more expensive than TVs and cell phones because those things can't be OUTSOURCED to another country.
- If an American/Westerner wants a TV or a cell phone, Samsung or Apple can manufacture it overseas and have someone ship it here cheaply.
- If an American wants a house, they generally have to hire local labor, and pay local prices for land.
- If an American wants health care, for practical reasons, they must be treated by doctors and nurses who live here, and who are generally educated here.
- If an American wants to send his or her children to college, they often pay a huge premium for a campus in this country, with educators who also live in this country.
i.e. these are the industries where "remote work" is less appealing for inherent logistical reasons.
Andressen says that prices have increased because of regulation, but he doesn't provide evidence for these claims:
Why? The sectors in red are heavily regulated and controlled and bottlenecked by the government and by those industries themselves. Those industries are monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels, with extensive formal government regulation as well as regulatory capture, price fixing, Soviet style price setting, occupational licensing, and every other barrier to improvement and change you can possibly imagine. Technological innovation in those sectors is virtually forbidden now
Sure, there are little mini-cartels in all those industries. But wasn't that also the case 50 years ago? (I remember watching a documentary about the Mafia in the 20th century in NYC, and even then it was common for real estate builders to have to pay the mafia for labor. The mafia controlled some union leaders.)
So how much of the tremendous price increase is due to regulation, vs. labor costs? And there are obviously more than 2 possibilities.
Anyone have real evidence to cite?