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AI Won't Cause Unemployment

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Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#271

Post by dogcomplex »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #259
dmichulke wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he means that the Industrial Revolution made a lot of human work obsolete, yet here we are almost without unemployment. Same for the invention of the wheel. So how was that possible? Turns out people didn't want to work less, they wanted more stuff. (Bigger houses, more houses, better food, health care, ...) The same will happen again with AI. Thanks to infinite human wants.

We're only "without unemployment" because most of the population is spectacularly underpaid. This makes it cheaper - so far - to use human labour than machine labour. And we don't use human labour very efficiently. A lot of activities are pointless make-work or zero productivity wealth transfer. Which is almost the point of AI. It's not just about partial mechanisation or automation, which is what happened during the…

But the real question is: will we make good pets?

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#272

Post by frankreyes »

harvey9 wrote: post #250
frankreyes wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at the communities in some poorer parts of the UK, who were relying on coal, mining and steam locomotive(yes, for that many generations the effects of job losses are felt) In order to make money selling coal, someone has to buy that coal. They're selling something that nobody buys anymore. Try selling ice cubes in the North Pole. The purpose of those coal jobs was jobs creation, not problem solving. New g…

There were lots of buyers of coal at the time UK mines closed, but other sellers were able to supply at a lower price. There continue to be buyers of coal now, and indeed the UK recently approved a new mine https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63892381

Yes, basic Economics, price is determined at the margins.

Europe is learning the hard way that fossil fuels are the best energy supply to heat your homes. There's no sun shining in the UK and for some reason you want to run on solar power to heat your homes? Tell me about madness

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#273

Post by antihipocrat »

ChatGTP wrote: post #194
antihipocrat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that an AGI would theoretically be able to design a new version of itself that is more capable in every dimension. This could continue recursively. We don't consider it impossible that a human could come up with a grand unified theory of everything tomorrow. A recursively intelligent AGI may be able to do the same very quickly. If an AGI was able to deduce such a theory would we would be busy constructing…

What makes people think and super intelligence far beyond anything we can comprehend would have anything to do with our economy, jobs or people? I mean what makes some people think it would actually do anything we'd consider useful at all? I often pass animals in the wild all the time, I think they're awesome to look at and I just go on my way, apparently, I'm much more intelligent then they are, so I'm just not that…

You raise a great point that we don't seem to be questioning what an AGI would actually want to do (or even if it would want anything at all), in favor of just assuming it would have certain human traits.

These anthropomorphized traits tend to either be a selfless pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the universe, including a desire to share that knowledge with us. Or, are a darker, more selfish lust for power and control and a desire to deceive us.

I think proponents of the singularity make the assumption that an AGI would have the selfless set of human traits whether naturally or hard wired.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#274

Post by than3 »

_448 wrote: post #101

This claim that AI won't cause unemployment baffles me. I understand the argument being made that new types of jobs will be created, but what the people making that argument miss is the massive level of up-skilling/re-skilling that is required of the population whose jobs are replaced. This has not worked out well. Just look at the communities in some poorer parts of the UK, who were relying on coal, mining and steam…

Honestly, in my opinion, the claim is clickbait misinformation, it fails to address several common issues, and basically relies on the claim that because it hasn't happened in the past it won't happen. There's also a decent number of Chat-GPT like mistakes in the article, so probably a test for clickbait.

Also, credibility is important. I looked up the guy, and he's a hedge-fund guy, who's got a lot of money.

Don't you think if you are in the business of investing, that you've heard and understand intimately the phrase; "past performance does not predict future results".

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#275

Post by mockingbirdy »

dogcomplex wrote: post #181
jonathankoren wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get more production with less labor, so you on average need to do less labor to meet your cost of living. Citation Needed. This isn’t how it works out in practice though. If the predictions of the 1950s were to come true, we’d all be working 10 hours a week and bringing in the same wages. They weren’t wrong though. Efficiency did go up. It’s just that these efficiencies were never passed on to workers. Instead…

This is the most cynical take, but also sadly the most true to history and therefore probably the future. Sure, the future might have every one of us with the ability to boot up with a command a self-assembling automated factory that previously took a supply chain of thousands of workers to run, but due to the suddenly enormous cost of land and raw materials relative to our make-work wages, nobody can afford to build…

> There's a breaking point of widespread democratized (runnable by like 1-5 people, or a small community) technology where these companies don't have the same ability to absorb all these gains

That is actually a technological solution for a societal problem that I see as a way out:

A device that produces food, water, energy and does sanitation for a family of 4-5 people. This device would make it possible to give families higher leverage in any negotiation because they can not be forced to work for survival. We have the tech, only limiting factor is the size, but we will find a way.

- Solar Foods [1] (Protein production with CO2 and solar energy with a fermentation process)

- Omni Processor which recycles human waste [2]

- Tiger Toilet [3]

- Low cost waste water treatment [4]

- And potato production in a small vertical setup

[1]: https://solarfoods.com

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tdlqjGlN3A

[3]: http://www.easol.in/tiger-toilet-overivew

[4]: https://www.tbfenvironmental.in

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#276

Post by CM30 »

ChatGTP wrote: post #135
asah wrote: post #51

Sorry, but there's so many things wrong with this... - nobody cares about "unemployment" - they care about investing decades of their lives and losing their jobs and not being able to replace them quickly at the same level of income and quality of life, including a million photographers, models, makeup artists, etc. who are looking at diffusion model results and wondering who'd pay for their work next year, let alone…

Just a side note, I honestly think models, photography people and markup artists will still exist. People will still make clothes, whether that's AI assisted or not, and people are going to want to take real photos of the clothes, with models wearing them. No not in all cases, but as long as there are people there will be some demand for this. Same goes for fashion shows, they will still exist too. People will contin…

> While I know AI will replace some areas of our lives, I think people do forget that it's not always about the quality and quantity of something. Making perfect music, a song no one has ever heard before every time, is going to be less attractive to many people than a band your girlfriend really likes and you both like going to see live together.

This is very much worth keeping in mind when it comes to AI in any field, not just music. Not all products and services are equal, and not all fields are about what's cheap and cheerful (or some technical sense of build quality).

Oh sure, there are some like that (I like to say companies like Walmart, Amazon, McDonalds, etc are mostly successful for price and convenience reasons for example).

But art and media are not 'products' in the traditional sense, and people don't pick them because they're the cheapest or technically best. There's often a sense of sentimentality there, an appreciation of the work because of either the person/people that made it, or the fictional universe that it exists as a part of.

A good recent example might be Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Technically speaking, the games are a travesty. They're glitchy, look terrible, have serious performance issues, are lacking in content in many ways, etc.

In theory, many companies and indie teams could create a better game, at least tech wise. And in the future, an AI system probably could too.

But it doesn't matter. People like the Pokemon brand, and the games sold 20 million copies in a matter of months, with 10 million sold in the first three days.

So as far as established media and creators go, AI isn't really much of a threat or replacement. The brand matters more than the technical quality does.

It is a bit more of a threat to upcoming creators since the flood of AI works makes it harder to stand out... but again, the technical quality isn't the most important part of work or creator becoming successful anyway. Self promotion/marketing plays a bigger role, and luck is a huge factor too. If I was a creator looking to become big in a field dominated by AI, I wouldn't have to draw/write/sing/whatever better than a machine, I'd have to sell myself as better than a machine/those using a machine.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#277

Post by ChatGTP »

antihipocrat wrote: post #273
ChatGTP wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes people think and super intelligence far beyond anything we can comprehend would have anything to do with our economy, jobs or people? I mean what makes some people think it would actually do anything we'd consider useful at all? I often pass animals in the wild all the time, I think they're awesome to look at and I just go on my way, apparently, I'm much more intelligent then they are, so I'm just not that…

You raise a great point that we don't seem to be questioning what an AGI would actually want to do (or even if it would want anything at all), in favor of just assuming it would have certain human traits. These anthropomorphized traits tend to either be a selfless pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the universe, including a desire to share that knowledge with us. Or, are a darker, more selfish lust for power a…

That's because it's what many people finding AI hope for, especially those funding the efforts, they want a genie, contained in a box that just does things that suits them, so no one else needs to be invoked in profit making ?

But it seems incredibly naive a super intelligence would be that?

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#278

Post by naveen99 »

zarzavat wrote: post #127
_448 wrote: post #101

This claim that AI won't cause unemployment baffles me. I understand the argument being made that new types of jobs will be created, but what the people making that argument miss is the massive level of up-skilling/re-skilling that is required of the population whose jobs are replaced. This has not worked out well. Just look at the communities in some poorer parts of the UK, who were relying on coal, mining and steam…

Not up-skilling but down-skilling. AI is going to come for the mathematicians and radiologists first and work its way down to the pizza delivery boys. This is because robotics is a couple of decades behind. Anyone with a desk job as a knowledge worker is most at risk.

Exactly downskilling. So basically not at risk. There is always a shortage of the best. If the best lose their jobs they can take the next best job, or create a new job for themselves.

Re: AI Won't Cause Unemployment

#279

Post by naveen99 »

LeonB wrote: post #152
pythonaut_16 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the proliferation of screens capable of displaying information and graphics has been an absolute boon to education.

I’m not denying it, but the cost of educating 1 child - has that fallen or risen?

Most of that is just babysitting / baby jailing cost.
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