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Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

noahpinion.blog

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Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#31

Post by ganzuul »

HankB99 wrote: post #29
ganzuul wrote: post #24

> The dystopian outcome where a few people own everything and everyone else dies is always fun to trot out in Econ 101 classes, but in reality, societies seem not to allow this. Companies are granted rights by the state for their duty to employ people. No human employees, no need for special rights such as tax deductions.

How does regulatory capture factor into this? This article is primarily about historical wages but does touch on wealth: > If real per capita GDP goes to $10 million (in 2024 dollars), rich people aren’t going to think twice about shelling out $300 for a haircut or $2,000 for a doctor’s appointment. So wherever humans’ comparative advantage does happen to lie, it’s likely that in a society made super-rich by AI, it’l…

The trickle-down scenario is one where wealth inequality does not come into conflict with democracy.

In traditional societies a wealthy household which could afford a maid but did not have one was committing a social injustice.

A poor household can afford a robot maid. A wealthy household can afford a human maid.

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#32

Post by [deleted] »

_wqdq wrote: post #26
cousin_it wrote: post #14

Key point: > If you can create more compute by simply putting more energy into the process, it could make economic sense to starve human beings in order to generate more and more AI... most governments seem likely to limit AI’s ability to hog energy This is the most likely scenario, and indeed in that scenario saving humans from starvation requires government action. Some governments will do it, some won't. Those tha…

Could you provide some examples of what you think these hypothetical AI’s are going to give/grant/allow these hypothetical governments that warrants the usage of enough energy they’ll actually starve people to achieve? What “competition” are these governments going to be in to necessitate this? Comments like this are becoming far more common it seems amongst the tech community, to me anyway, that I really want an ans…

[deleted]

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#33

Post by frituur »

rvnx wrote: post #4
nabla9 wrote: post #2

TL;DR: Humans can be worse than robots in everything and still have well paying jobs due to comparative advantage. Comparative advantage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

The main advantage of humans for now is interaction with the physical world, once that it is solved (near end of the year will start with Tesla bot and similar), then it is going to make humans be less at an advantage. This way humans can fallback to their main activity: which is not art; because art has been taken by AI; but eating. At least eating is not something AI plans to do.

Clearly you haven't heard about EATR

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tac...

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#34

Post by petermcneeley »

thih9 wrote: post #21
petermcneeley wrote: post #17

Noah's post always remind me of this quote: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."

Is being seen as a fool that bad? Note that there is another saying, “He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”.

"Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#35

Post by [deleted] »

_wqdq wrote: post #26
cousin_it wrote: post #14

Key point: > If you can create more compute by simply putting more energy into the process, it could make economic sense to starve human beings in order to generate more and more AI... most governments seem likely to limit AI’s ability to hog energy This is the most likely scenario, and indeed in that scenario saving humans from starvation requires government action. Some governments will do it, some won't. Those tha…

Could you provide some examples of what you think these hypothetical AI’s are going to give/grant/allow these hypothetical governments that warrants the usage of enough energy they’ll actually starve people to achieve? What “competition” are these governments going to be in to necessitate this? Comments like this are becoming far more common it seems amongst the tech community, to me anyway, that I really want an ans…

[deleted]

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#36

Post by [deleted] »

_wqdq wrote: post #26
cousin_it wrote: post #14

Key point: > If you can create more compute by simply putting more energy into the process, it could make economic sense to starve human beings in order to generate more and more AI... most governments seem likely to limit AI’s ability to hog energy This is the most likely scenario, and indeed in that scenario saving humans from starvation requires government action. Some governments will do it, some won't. Those tha…

Could you provide some examples of what you think these hypothetical AI’s are going to give/grant/allow these hypothetical governments that warrants the usage of enough energy they’ll actually starve people to achieve? What “competition” are these governments going to be in to necessitate this? Comments like this are becoming far more common it seems amongst the tech community, to me anyway, that I really want an ans…

[deleted]

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#37

Post by Engineering-MD »

_wqdq wrote: post #26
cousin_it wrote: post #14

Key point: > If you can create more compute by simply putting more energy into the process, it could make economic sense to starve human beings in order to generate more and more AI... most governments seem likely to limit AI’s ability to hog energy This is the most likely scenario, and indeed in that scenario saving humans from starvation requires government action. Some governments will do it, some won't. Those tha…

Could you provide some examples of what you think these hypothetical AI’s are going to give/grant/allow these hypothetical governments that warrants the usage of enough energy they’ll actually starve people to achieve? What “competition” are these governments going to be in to necessitate this? Comments like this are becoming far more common it seems amongst the tech community, to me anyway, that I really want an ans…

It doesn’t really matter what it is so long as there is competition between entities and by not competing/winning you are in some way penalised. Competition is the driver that compels us towards total war or total economy. It is digital natural selection that will drive all to the maximum possible point of ruin.

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#38

Post by 1letterunixname »

JohnBrookz wrote: post #30

The author points out that plenty of societies have starved and killed their population en masse because cash crops were more valuable. Then he states that he doesn’t believe that societies will starve out their population en masse to bid up energy for AI because it’s never happened before. What.

It comes off as idealistic magical thinking. It is the norm for humans to be corrupt, selfish, and cowardly. When certain owners of capital are able to automate away jobs, they will keep the profits and fire workers. There isn't automatically some magical alternative or replacement work for them, only more competition for the few remaining scraps of labor elsewhere.

My conclusion is most societies will either tear themselves apart in civil war after too many people are reduced to penury without socioeconomic mobility for too long, or socialism will be expanded and billionaires will be taxed.

Since the ultra rich cede nothing without a fight, eventual civil war is the mostly likely choice they made because they captured the US political process and de facto direct for their continued enrichment at the expense of everyone else.

Remember: Social Security under the New Deal, unlike the Townsend Plan, was a class warfare compromise and half measure. Modern Medicare isn't good health insurance, involves for-profit insurance companies, is complicated, and is very expensive to customers and to the government. UBI and universal healthcare will be necessary in America, but are far off on the horizon because of political polarization and manufactured consent shifting views to far right authoritarianism.

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#39

Post by nabla9 »

amelius wrote: post #8
nabla9 wrote: post #2

TL;DR: Humans can be worse than robots in everything and still have well paying jobs due to comparative advantage. Comparative advantage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Yes, but this is an advantage that will become less and less true, very quickly. It's not like we will converge to some state where AI workers and human workers will coexist in some ratio.

From your response it looks like you don't know what comparative advantage is.

Comparative advantage does not mean that humans are better than AI at something. "Comparative advantage" != "Absolute Advantage"

Comparative advantages don't usually disappear just because one party gets better and better.

Re: Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI

#40

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

nabla9 wrote: post #2

TL;DR: Humans can be worse than robots in everything and still have well paying jobs due to comparative advantage. Comparative advantage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Yes, unfortunately, Noah's argument rests on at least two assumptions that do not hold:

1) That constraints on compute will mean that humans will have jobs to do that AIs are too busy to do, because they're fully maxed out on capacity doing more important jobs.

This doesn't hold up when the marginal cost of creating and running a new AI instance falls below the marginal cost of raising and feeding a human. Noah believes it will not because he assumes:

2) that the resources that AIs need (compute) are not in competition with the resources that humans need (food).

However, they are. We can repurpose farmland and irrigation water to datacenters, fabs, and cooling towers. Maybe that wouldn't matter if all the AI-created wealth meant that you didn't need to do valuable labor to feed yourself, but:

3) If vast wealth is created by AI, there will be enough for everybody, so there's no need to be rushing to accumulate capital now.

In his article, dismisses the people who are worried that the AI's owners will accumulate all the wealth and be the only ones who can afford food or housing. Comparative advantage provides no reassurance here; there's nothing in economics that prevents productivity gains from being outpaced by a growing wealth disparity that provides all the productivity gains to the top and then some. And it's exactly the outcome you'd expect without government redistribution.

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