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Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

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Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#151

Post by bluefirebrand »

MostlyStable wrote: post #136
tobr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a strong opinion on the topic, but bluefirebrand did not claim that wages only go up because of worker uprisings.

In the long term, the only thing that _can_ increase wages on average and in general is productivity. Productivity increases mean the pie is bigger, and without that, there is no where for increased wages to come _from_. So by saying that producity only results in increased wages in the case of the worker uprising, that is equivalent to saying that wages can only rise from a worker uprising. The only way this isn't t…

> there is no where for increased wages to come _from

The pie doesn't have to grow when the pie is already massive, but only 1% of people are taking 90% of the pie

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#152

Post by willis936 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #146
willis936 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to see how AI innovation falls into the "automate creation of material goods" camp and not the "stratification of wealth" camp.

This is a spurious argument at best: There isnt a line of unemployed draftsmen out there begging for change cause we invented Autocad: https://azon.com/2023/02/16/rare-historical-photos/ What happened to all the switchboard operators. How about the computers, the people who used to do math, at desks, with slide rules, before we replaced them with machines. These are all white colar jobs that we replaced with "automat…

I'm saying that AI isn't in the class of "inventions that automate useful work".

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#153

Post by amazingman »

sbierwagen wrote: post #143
kbos87 wrote: post #19

Companies like Nvidia and OpenAI base their answers to any questions on economic risk on their own best interests and a pretty short view of history. They are fighting like hell to make sure they are among a small set of winners while waving away the risk or claiming that there's some better future for the majority of people on the other side of all this. To claim that all of the benefit isn't going to naturally accr…

>Who gets the nice car and the vacation home? AI will crash the price of manufactured goods. Since all prices are relative, the price of rivalrous goods will rise. A car will be cheap. A lakeside cabin will be cheap. A cottage in the Hamptons will be expensive. Superbowl tickets will be a billion dollars each. >meager universal basic income allotment What does a middle class family spend its money on? You don't need…

The main flaw in your framing is that physical resources are still scarce. All prices are not relative in the sense you're building your projections on.

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#154

Post by hollerith »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #151
MostlyStable wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long term, the only thing that _can_ increase wages on average and in general is productivity. Productivity increases mean the pie is bigger, and without that, there is no where for increased wages to come _from_. So by saying that producity only results in increased wages in the case of the worker uprising, that is equivalent to saying that wages can only rise from a worker uprising. The only way this isn't t…

> there is no where for increased wages to come _from The pie doesn't have to grow when the pie is already massive, but only 1% of people are taking 90% of the pie

20-22% of the pie in the US.

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#155

Post by bluefirebrand »

MostlyStable wrote: post #137
bluefirebrand wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You claimed that wages only ever go up with a worker uprising. I'm not sure you really understood my original post. I never said or meant to imply that wages never grow ever I was talking about how increases in productivity do not lead to proportionally increased wages Look, here's an example. Let's say I'm a worker producing Widgets for $20/hour by hand, and I can produce 10 widgets an hour. The company sells widg…

I never claimed that workers get 100% of the increase in productivity. I said that increased productivity leads to increased wages. Increased productivity is in fact a _requirement_ for wages to go up (note that I am _not_ claiming that in increase in productivity _must_ result in increase wages. It is necessary, but not always sufficient), or else there is no where for those increases to come from. So when you claim…

> Increased productivity is in fact a _requirement_ for wages to go up

No it isn't. This is an extremely naive understanding of how any of this works

You even say it yourself, with the silly graph you keep posting

That graph doesn't show productivity it just shows "real inflation adjusted wages", like you keep harping on about.

But in general a person is not increasing their productivity year over year. So why would their wage go up to match inflation if, as you say, wages only go up when productivity increases? That doesn't make sense

The reality is that people already provide their employers with vastly more productivity than they are paid for. Their employers are capturing the majority of the value from that productivity. If someone's wage goes up to match inflation, their productivity hasn't increased, inflation has increase the value of their current productivity

You seriously don't seem to understand how any of this works

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#156

Post by bluefirebrand »

hollerith wrote: post #154
bluefirebrand wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no where for increased wages to come _from The pie doesn't have to grow when the pie is already massive, but only 1% of people are taking 90% of the pie

20-22% of the pie in the US.

Sure, whatever.

The point was not in the exact number

The point is that there is an answer to "Where could increased wages come from if we don't increase productivity"

We don't have to increase productivity to pay some of the population less and other parts of the population more

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#157

Post by MostlyStable »

WithinReason wrote: post #138
MostlyStable wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. What worker uprising occurred in the US in 1995? I (and basically every economist) disagree with your interpretation of historical events. https://x.com/LettieriDC/status/1922704140834099370

I raise you this chart: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Change 1979q4–2025q1: Productivity +86.0% Hourly pay +32.0% Productivity has grown 2.7x as much as pay

Luckily for me, I didn't claim (nor do I believe) that workers/wages capture 100% of productivity.

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#158

Post by MostlyStable »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #151
MostlyStable wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long term, the only thing that _can_ increase wages on average and in general is productivity. Productivity increases mean the pie is bigger, and without that, there is no where for increased wages to come _from_. So by saying that producity only results in increased wages in the case of the worker uprising, that is equivalent to saying that wages can only rise from a worker uprising. The only way this isn't t…

> there is no where for increased wages to come _from The pie doesn't have to grow when the pie is already massive, but only 1% of people are taking 90% of the pie

You can get short term or one time increases by taking from somewhere else, but without productivity gains, it's an inherently limited, zero sum game.

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#159

Post by MostlyStable »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #155
MostlyStable wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never claimed that workers get 100% of the increase in productivity. I said that increased productivity leads to increased wages. Increased productivity is in fact a _requirement_ for wages to go up (note that I am _not_ claiming that in increase in productivity _must_ result in increase wages. It is necessary, but not always sufficient), or else there is no where for those increases to come from. So when you claim…

> Increased productivity is in fact a _requirement_ for wages to go up No it isn't. This is an extremely naive understanding of how any of this works You even say it yourself, with the silly graph you keep posting That graph doesn't show productivity it just shows "real inflation adjusted wages", like you keep harping on about. But in general a person is not increasing their productivity year over year. So why would…

Given that economists almost universally agree with me, I'm going to have to suggest that it is in fact you who don't know know how any of this works.

You keep shifting the goal posts, you keep talking about unrelated things, and you keep not addressing the core claims, and you keep not responding to the main refutation of your own original claim. I'm done beating my head against this wall. I hope you have a nice day.

Re: Nvidia CEO criticizes Anthropic boss over his statements on AI

#160

Post by bigbadfeline »

sbierwagen wrote: post #143
kbos87 wrote: post #19

Companies like Nvidia and OpenAI base their answers to any questions on economic risk on their own best interests and a pretty short view of history. They are fighting like hell to make sure they are among a small set of winners while waving away the risk or claiming that there's some better future for the majority of people on the other side of all this. To claim that all of the benefit isn't going to naturally accr…

>Who gets the nice car and the vacation home? AI will crash the price of manufactured goods. Since all prices are relative, the price of rivalrous goods will rise. A car will be cheap. A lakeside cabin will be cheap. A cottage in the Hamptons will be expensive. Superbowl tickets will be a billion dollars each. >meager universal basic income allotment What does a middle class family spend its money on? You don't need…

> AI will crash the price of manufactured goods.

Quite the opposite, persistent inflation has been with us for a long time despite automation, it's not driven by labor cost (even mainstream econ knows it), it's driven by monopolization which corporate AI facilitates and shifts to overdrive.

> The point of AI isn't that it's going to blow up some of the social order, but that it's going to blow up the whole thing.

AI will blow up only what its controllers tell it to, that control is the crux of the problem. The AI-driven monopolization allows few controllers to keep the multitudes in their crosshairs and do whatever they want, with whomever they want, J. Huang will make sure they have the GPUs they need.

> You don't need a house within an easy commute of your job, because you won't have one.

Remote work has been a thing for quite some time but remote housing is still rare anyway - a house provides access not only to jobs and school but also to medical care, supply lines and social interaction. There are places in Montana and the Dakotas who see specialist doctors only once a week or month because they fly weekly from places as far away as Florida.

> You don't need a house in a good school district, because there's no point in going to school... and college won't exist either.

What you're describing isn't a house, it's a barn! Can you lactate? Because if you can't, nobody is going to provide you with a stall in the glorious AI barn.

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