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Rethinking the Luddites

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Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#281

Post by visarga »

Gigachad wrote: post #178
robbintt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely reduced the amount and complexity of work there is to do. So, in a static market, it reduced the number of workers. It's hard to see in tech which is an expanding market.

There is no such thing as a static market though. There is no fixed demand of tech or really anything else. People will consume as much tech as they can afford. And if the product gets cheaper, the market just consumes more of it. Notice how the iphone never gets cheaper, it just becomes more capable. You can in theory buy a bottom tier smartphone for $50 which is more capable than the original iphone, but this isn't…

I believe AI will be amazing at driving job creation - it can be applied to almost all fields and it never works well on its own, it always suffers from limited autonomy.

Say your model makes 99% correct predictions, in 20-30 time steps that error rate drops to 73%, that is just not ok for automation. But real accuracy rates per time step are much lower.

Compounding errors even when they are small lead a system astray. I think there is no form of AI that achieves autonomy in any field. We're at minutes of autonomy, or seconds. Nobody can go on vacation and leave AI do their job.

On the other hand AI will open up new opportunities and markets. Demand will scale up to meet the new productivity level. We can always desire more, it's not a fixed sum game.

More fundamentally, LLMs are interpolating between and combining known skills. They don't do radically new discovery. Why? They train on human text instead of human text + world feedback. In order to surpass human experts AI needs labs, experiments or the ability to create its own experience.

I can only name AlphaZero, AlphaTensor and AlphaFold as superhuman AIs, and they have been trained on massive experimental feedback, not just text.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#282

Post by ms2718 »

danuker wrote: post #135
w_for_wumbo wrote: post #3

There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans. By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. We have a mandate for us…

> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. I see many problems with this statement: - Is a new robot-only company fairer than firing humans at an old company? - Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed? - Should there be a robot tax? What is a robot? Is…

[dead]

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#283

Post by eru »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #273
eru wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People find things to do.

> People find things to do It seems to be a lot of zealotry, buttery and violence. Learning to be good with all that free time will take work.

Maybe. But compared to eg 18th century people almost all our time today is spent on frivolities.

Of course, we often pay each other for these frivolities. So people don't treat them as free time.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#284

Post by hnfong »

firen777 wrote: post #257
Nursie wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed seeing a meme the other day (rare for me to enjoy!) that summed it up as something like - "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind". And I think that sums up the feeling quite well. I do agree that automation in general has not paid off in the way the utopians would predict - instead of freeing humanity from the need to work, we h…

>"Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind" Thank you for this quote! This speaks out the reason for my innate disgust toward the current "creative" AI which I couldn't quite articulate before.

And this kind of highlights the kind of hypocrisy implied by the original comment.

"Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the _______ paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind"

For the less fortunate people struggling to make ends meet, it may not matter that much whether it's robots or the aristocracy, or the upper middle class doing the poetry writing.

Until the last couple decades, 99% of humanity was always doing doing manual labor to make ends meet. It's just that the literate class throughout history always identified with the 1% rather than the 99%. We're conditioned to think that creative endeavors are always more "noble" than manual labor because that's what nobles did.

Ironically the fact that we pay "knowledge workers" more than manual laborers might have contributed to this outcome. If toilet janitors commanded a $500k salary maybe more R&D budget would go to inventing robots that are good at cleaning toilets, instead of AI systems that are good at solving leetcode.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#285

Post by bfung »

danuker wrote: post #135
w_for_wumbo wrote: post #3

There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans. By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. We have a mandate for us…

> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. I see many problems with this statement: - Is a new robot-only company fairer than firing humans at an old company? - Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed? - Should there be a robot tax? What is a robot? Is…

> Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit?

Should an AI created to make paper clips consider other values than making paper clips?

https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/squiggle-maximizer-formerly-pa...

Diving all the way down ad absurdum: What's the point of maximizing profit if there are no humans to utilize those profits?

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#286

Post by hnfong »

creer wrote: post #241
lolinder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a dollar store moves into an area, it provides most products for cheaper than an independent grocer possibly can, inevitably putting the local grocer out of business. It's sad for the grocer, but surely it's for the benefit of the community as a whole, right? Everything is cheaper! Except that the dollar store doesn't sell produce, and it just put the store that did out of business. I see a similar trend with au…

I don't think that reasonning is correct. There is nothing inevitable about the dollar store putting the grocer out of business. The grocer doesn't have to insist and try to sell the same things the dollar store does. There are many other things that need retailing, and there are many other services that need providing. For example everywhere I look, farmers markets are doing great - while surrounded by megamarts. Fo…

> There is nothing inevitable about the dollar store putting the grocer out of business.

I recently came across this, and I think it does a good job explaining the problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#287

Post by WalterBright »

defrost wrote: post #277
WalterBright wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway sits on an ocean of oil that they use to prop up their economy. > socialism is bad, let's go for the polar opposite and make the poor poorer and the rich richer The US free market moved scores of millions of dirt poor immigrants into the middle class and beyond.

Well, if that's your idea of success: Based on Pew's income band classification, China's middle class has been among the fastest growing in the world, swelling from 39.1 million people (3.1 percent of the population) in 2000 to roughly 707 million (50.8 percent of the population) in 2018. https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class

China switched to free markets. They also had the advantage of technology that didn't exist in the 1800s.

Before China switched to free markets, they had an equal distribution of all income economy. You might want to check it out.

So, too, the USSR, Cambodia, Vietnam, Jamestown, Plymouth, etc.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#288

Post by galaxyLogic »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #151
danuker wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. I see many problems with this statement: - Is a new robot-only company fairer than firing humans at an old company? - Should we as a society forego the benefits of automation, because it makes some people unemployed? - Should there be a robot tax? What is a robot? Is…

> Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit? Yes! Very much yes! Adam Smith himself noted that a capitalist enterprise, if not run according to good values (which to him meant Christian values, but it need not be that for everyone), would be a horrible thing. That hasn't really changed since. A business needs to have some values behind it other than pure profit-seeking, or else it beco…

> Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit?

Enterprises don't consider anything, enterprises cannot think. Only people do. Enterprise is made of people. Should people consider other values than profit?

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#289

Post by antupis »

Nursie wrote: post #197
harerazer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I don’t think its so much about white collar jobs being under threat as it is about creative jobs being under threat. Many creative pursuits are viewed as an outlet of human expression in a way that other jobs never were, and I think this is what is driving the new wave of the Resistance^TM

I enjoyed seeing a meme the other day (rare for me to enjoy!) that summed it up as something like - "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind". And I think that sums up the feeling quite well. I do agree that automation in general has not paid off in the way the utopians would predict - instead of freeing humanity from the need to work, we h…

I have visited several art exhibitions this year and generally would say that stuff at front page of /r/StableDiffusion/ is just more original and better than some random art exhibition.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#290

Post by galaxyLogic »

SoftTalker wrote: post #172
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should an enterprise created for profit consider other values than profit? Yes! Very much yes! Adam Smith himself noted that a capitalist enterprise, if not run according to good values (which to him meant Christian values, but it need not be that for everyone), would be a horrible thing. That hasn't really changed since. A business needs to have some values behind it other than pure profit-seeking, or else it beco…

He wasn't the only one. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. -- John Adams

I think Adams is wrong. Constitution was made (I believe) to deter immoral people who would like to get rid of the constitution, who would love to establish a dictatorship, who would love to force a specific religion on all of us.

Moral people don't really need laws, laws exist to deter crime.

Frankly I don't get what John Adams was trying say? Can someone explain?

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