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Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

epoch.ai

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Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#281

Post by myaccountonhn »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #114
lukevp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? 40 hr work weeks are a recent thing, many people in history worked 12 hr days 6 days a week. Technology and social progress definitely leads to fewer work hours.

I’m not so sure. Unions (social progress) brought us the 40 hour work week more so than technology. Factory workers could potentially work more hours than farmers who had very busy periods mixed with slower times. I suppose they exist, maybe you have seen them, but I’ve not seen a real study of the hours worked by subsistence farmers in history. Though technology brings many other benefits, it’s not clear to me how i…

Before the machines there were guilds of cloth-makers and weavers that would work less than five days a week and at less strict hours, but they lost their jobs to automation.

I can really recommend the book Blood in the machine if anyone is interested in how automation early on affected workers.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#282

Post by asdf6969 »

JustExAWS wrote: post #248
asdf6969 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mobility and the ability to move to where the jobs are. This is a sign of low class status and lack of success. Rich people change the world to fit their needs. Poor people change themselves to fit the world. Leaving your entire family and social network behind for work is extremely middle class behaviour

Yes, that’s why Musk still lives in South Africa..

Immigration is different. No individual can make a shitty country good

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#283

Post by reportgunner »

ozim wrote: post #165
techpineapple wrote: post #2

Does anyone else find techno-optimism really depressing? I guess one for the more common reason that it’s displacing humanity with technology, but the second reason is just you can’t get excited about a hype that is unlikely to manifest. It feels very ungrounded from tangible benefits to society.

In Europe we have less and less people. Automation is a must have because we will need those people in areas that cannot be automated. Transformation will be painful as it is hard to re-train people or get people to do stuff that is not really their forte.

> In Europe we have less and less people.

Sorry, what Europe are you talking about ? I don't think that's true.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#284

Post by reportgunner »

callamdelaney wrote: post #66

Obviously? The US pays $12,000,000,000,000~ in salaries per year the TAM of automation is, assuming that 10% of work can be automated, $1.2 trillion dollars.

Well yeah 10% of a big number is always going to be a big number, that's how math works.

You can take all the salaries of the world and assume you can automate a percentage of that and you will consistently arrive to a big number.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#285

Post by reportgunner »

falcor84 wrote: post #247
coldtea wrote: post #181

Most AI automation would automate useless bureucratic (public and private) bullshit jobs, not real productivity.

If you're able to define a clear metric to objectively differentiate between "bullshit jobs" and "real productivity", you'll probably nab a Nobel in Economics.

That's the easy part. The hard part is getting people to admit that the metric has been discovered already. Most problems with automation are organizational problems not technical ones.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#286

Post by milesrout »

rqtwteye wrote: post #255
hasmanean wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have YouTube plumbers. Has destroyed the industry? No. But it’s made plumbing accessible to a whole range of DIYers. Maybe AI will be just as productive. Seriously YouTube has been amazing for the world of self learning. AI could learn a lot from it.

True. I have a serious DIY porn addiction due to Youtube.

But do you actually do any DIY? And is it more than you would have done without watching hours of it on YouTube?

I have at times watched a lot of videos of people making stuff or doing DIY. I suspect like 99% of the audience of those videos, they are just entertainment.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#287

Post by milesrout »

dragontamer wrote: post #142
mustyoshi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120 years ago 40% of Americans were farmers, today that number is under 2%. That technical progress resulted in a few companies and farm conglomerates becoming incredibly wealthy. But the benefits that we all received was we didn't have to toil in a field, and we get fresh beef on every corner. The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive.

> The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive. The wealth gap was growing since 1980. Is the median person better today when the median person cannot afford a college education or a house? Both of those were easily afforded in the 80s. Also remember: the average job didn't require a college education back then either. College has become a gatekeeper due to its rising costs…

The average person didn't have a college education in the 1980s. Rates of educational attainment have skyrocketed. So obviously a lot more people spend a lot more money to be university-educated than did in the 1980s. Maybe people put more value on education today?

Students expect a lot more services from universities today. They expect regular formative assessments. They expect various support services. They expect warm, air conditioned buildings without draughts. They expect healthcare, mental health support, disability services, and expensive facilities for everything: projectors and screens and computers and everything.

Could that also be part of the drive of cost? The services definitely are, theyre a big driver of the increase in admin staff at universities.

The cost of education is pretty irrelevant anyway because nobody actually pays it. You get a loan. That is paid by someone else: you, later. But young men and women heading off to university don't have a moment where they have to give up the opportunity to go because they don't have the money.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#288

Post by oblio »

aksbfjdjsbabs wrote: post #198
oblio wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress is not guaranteed. Humanity has been around in basically the same form for 2 million years (and the same form for probably 200 000 years) yet life for the average person on the planet really started improving circa 1950.

2 million years is a long time. It’s quite a stretch to say life only started improving in the last 50. An asteroid could hit today and nearly all evidence of our existence would be gone in 10k years.

Life expectancy skyrocketed once we discovered and applied hygiene, plus improved sanitation, and also antibiotics. More or less, modern medicine.

The industrial era did a lot of things but it also made cities, famous for being horrible places to live in, even worse. It took the realization of that fact and action against pollution to improve that.

Worker's rights movement also had to spring up for 40 hour work weeks, 2 day weekends, sick leave, unemployment benefits, pensions, disability benefits.

Slavery was barely abolished 150 years ago, and it's still present in some places. Ditto for serfdom.

Hunter gatherers had healthier diets that settled populations thousands of years after the invention of agriculture.

MANY things were better for society and neutral or worst for the average person.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#289

Post by taneq »

hasmanean wrote: post #243
somenameforme wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple litmus test for these sort of nearish future dystopias - how long before you have an 'AI plumber' or an 'AI electrician'? I'm not just listing random skilled trades, but listing jobs that are extremely complex, 100% context sensitive in a way that just doesn't generalize well, requires a mixture of high dexterity and high strength, and a million other things. To say nothing of the numerous [oft extre…

We have YouTube plumbers. Has destroyed the industry? No. But it’s made plumbing accessible to a whole range of DIYers. Maybe AI will be just as productive. Seriously YouTube has been amazing for the world of self learning. AI could learn a lot from it.

The availability of (mostly) accurate, in depth information snout any rabbit hole you can think of has certainly impacted some industries. There’s an entire generation of doctors who are infuriated by “Doctor Google” And another generation of doctors who embrace the ability to quickly research topics and fact check suggestions online collaboratively with their patients.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#290

Post by danaris »

tkjef wrote: post #271
danaris wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, and most obviously, I'm pointing out that any individual without massive wealth attempting to tackle such a thing on their own is inevitably doomed to fail. But more importantly, I'm pointing out that suggesting personal solutions to systemic problems is not only inevitably doomed to fail, but is promulgating the wrongheaded thinking that has created and sustained the crisis that brought us to this point. "I d…

i’d say likely to fail, not doomed. if you want to have a better life for everyone then what is your solution? you do not provide one. my solution is if enough people with the right thinking also become neofeudal overlords then we can exercise the change you’re talking about. do you think some day everything is just going to magically snap into place and everyone will just be fair? it has been fought for and died ove…

The solution is to keep fighting, not give up and decide that we can only ever have corruption and despotism, with the only choice being whether we are the oppressed or the oppressors.

A better world is possible, whether you believe in it or not.

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