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AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

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Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#31

Post by hackerlight »

mmkos wrote: post #5

Cynical view: without new regulation in the area of AI, it will reduce the value of labor in many domains and completely eliminate the need for it in many others. Profits will go to companies like OpenAI, unemployment will rise and people will be left to fend for themselves, and it's exactly what's going to happen.

It depends on how good AI gets.

If we have slow takeoff, AI will be like any other automation. It will increase economic productivity. Capital owners will benefit the most, but everyone else will also benefit, because it's not zero-sum. People will lose their jobs but new jobs will be created and everyone will get richer.

If we get ASI, then that's a paradigm shift and all bets are off.

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#32

Post by jillesvangurp »

diggan wrote: post #17
jillesvangurp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistic view: Unemployment is actually at an all time low despite centuries of industrialization, automation, etc. AI technology is becoming a commodity at a rapid rate. OpenAI has some nice data moat but their tech is being copied left right and center and much of what they do has been replicated successfully by others; including some open source projects. I don't see OpenAI end up with all the profit here. AI is…

> much of what they do has been replicated successfully by others; including some open source projects This is true, except for GPT4 which no one has been able to even come close to in actual usage. As long as OpenAI maintains the lead by making the very best model available via a consumer-friendly interfaces, and via API, I'd wager they remain in the lead.

That could be a temporary thing and is mostly just a side effect of them having a lot of money and infrastructure. I don't think most of the world is ready to just defer to them and give them all their data. There's a lot of incentive to come up with alternative solutions. The more OpenAI earns, the bigger the incentive to work around them.

As for the UI and UX. Chat GPT looks a bit like a rush job. Midjourney and others figured out that discourse wasn't half bad as a UI and it kind of snow balled from there. Chat GPT basically took that and did not add very much to it. It's very middle of the road as a chat UI actually. Completely unremarkable. Without knowing what they did exactly, it looks to me like someone spun up some javascript project, found some chat related libraries and components and knocked together a prototype in a few weeks. I've been there and done that actually on a project a few years ago. It's not that hard and a very sensible thing to do for them.

The value of chat gpt is of course in the quality of the conversation, not the UX. I expect a lot of innovation around this topic during this year and it might not be OpenAI that leads that. UX is so far not their core strength. I know they are hiring pretty aggressively to fix that. But it's not a given that throwing money at the problem will ensure an easy victory here. World + dog is focusing on outdoing them on this front. They'll have a lot of competition and investment.

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#33

Post by marsRoverDev »

andirk wrote: post #26

If what I do as a seasoned software engineer becomes redundant because of "artificial intelligence", so be it. Then I'll need to learn more, which I am! I'm not in the business of stiffening technology like an oil baron. I do understand that IP, for example using an actor's likeness via CGI+AI, is a very real issue that needs to be addressed.

A propos the likeness point, a question to get people's opinions. What is the difference between your skills today which lead to earning potential and an actor's likeness which gives the actor more rights to a continued income stream?

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#34

Post by bsenftner »

hedgew wrote: post #28
andirk wrote: post #26

If what I do as a seasoned software engineer becomes redundant because of "artificial intelligence", so be it. Then I'll need to learn more, which I am! I'm not in the business of stiffening technology like an oil baron. I do understand that IP, for example using an actor's likeness via CGI+AI, is a very real issue that needs to be addressed.

What exactly do you think you can learn at that point, that'd give you market value?

Seriously: it's time to get an MBA if you've ever considered it. Why? Because an MBA teaches one how organizations operate, from non-profits, to government agencies, to startups, and all the transitions to a major conglomerate. As AI proposes to change how all this is done, those of us that understand the essentials of designing, implementing, and maintaining dynamic automated systems that incorporate AI to operate organizations are in the positions to change how business is done for a very long time. It's an extreme power seat, if and only if you also have the professional communications to convince, create collations, and manage the confusion that is sure to arise as AI changes fundamental methods of running organizations.

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#35

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

neilwilson wrote: post #13
mmkos wrote: post #5

Cynical view: without new regulation in the area of AI, it will reduce the value of labor in many domains and completely eliminate the need for it in many others. Profits will go to companies like OpenAI, unemployment will rise and people will be left to fend for themselves, and it's exactly what's going to happen.

How can there be profits without wage income to buy the output? The paradox of productivity will kick in and prices will plummet.

Well, there's other kinds of income, like dividends. They just get paid to shareholders, rather than laborers.

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#36

Post by valine »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #21

AI runs on electricity, which we can produce a joule directly of for much cheaper than we can produce a joule of food to feed a human on. This is a fundamental consequence of thermodynamics. It will eventually require us to ask ourselves whether we are willing to arbitrarily prioritize our own species over the cheaper to run alternative. We human beings, however, have both the first mover advantage and a natural inst…

Ask ourselves? Who is us? Your comment doesn’t apply if everyone has access to their own local AGI.

Right now training is expensive and inference is cheap. There’s no reason to believe that inference cost will suddenly balloon when we cross the line to general intelligence.

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#38

Post by valine »

UberFly wrote: post #2

AI will benefit the few that are agile enough to implement it. The rest of us will get what we get and like it. Pretty much the same as always.

It’ll come down to who invents AGI. If it were me I’d open source it. I’m sure a lot of people would do the same.

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#39

Post by bsenftner »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #14
mmkos wrote: post #5

Cynical view: without new regulation in the area of AI, it will reduce the value of labor in many domains and completely eliminate the need for it in many others. Profits will go to companies like OpenAI, unemployment will rise and people will be left to fend for themselves, and it's exactly what's going to happen.

Realistic view: Unemployment is actually at an all time low despite centuries of industrialization, automation, etc. AI technology is becoming a commodity at a rapid rate. OpenAI has some nice data moat but their tech is being copied left right and center and much of what they do has been replicated successfully by others; including some open source projects. I don't see OpenAI end up with all the profit here. AI is…

That 'unemployment is at an all time low' statistic is disingenious, one needs to include the sibling statistics that 'under employment is currently at the highest it has ever been." People are working crap jobs that merely maintain, they are not in their careers of education, they are in those "bullshit jobs" that abuse them.

Re: AI Will Transform the Global Economy. Let's Make Sure It Benefits Humanity

#40

Post by bitcharmer »

mmkos wrote: post #5

Cynical view: without new regulation in the area of AI, it will reduce the value of labor in many domains and completely eliminate the need for it in many others. Profits will go to companies like OpenAI, unemployment will rise and people will be left to fend for themselves, and it's exactly what's going to happen.

This is not cynical; it's realistic. The billionaires will reap the rewards at everyone else's expense, as it always has been.
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