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What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

economist.com

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Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#91

Post by pydry »

whatshisface wrote: post #44
vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time, because one person working eight hours a day remains more efficient than two people each working four hours a day. The reasons behind this are communication and training overheads. If AI leads to a world where people don't really have to know anything to do their jobs - just provide high-level judgements that LLMs seem farther away from than they are from…

Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time because the capacity for the economy to create "bullshit work" (e.g. work which is engaged in zero sum "wealth defense") is unbounded.

For efficiency improvements to create more leisure time or even let the bottom 50% retire early, society would need to be radically restructured so that its locus of control is not capital. This would probably only happen with violence.

This might happen one day, but for now, efficiency improvements get capitalized into the ponzi-esque stock market while the efficiency gains which could be realized at the bottom of the pyramid get "burned off" via inflation targeting of 2%. A quirky side effect of this is that the vast efficiency improvements we have seen have not even been allowed to prevent a pensions crisis.

The Economist, serving in its capacity as a dutiful servant to neoliberal capital, frets equally about AI inevitably causing us to "run out of jobs" as it does a demographic crisis inevitably causing us to "run out of workers" (https://archive.ph/6hgYq).

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#92

Post by vouaobrasil »

ath3nd wrote: post #85
poisonborz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how capitalism measures efficiency. It all comes down to profits. Everything else is bureaucracy and marketing. There just aren't any incentives to drive these macroecononic efficiency goals you mention.

So...down with capitalism?

Not exactly. Capitalism is just the optimal solution for technology when the primary driver of growth is people. But AI is likely to change that and then capitalism will be modified and done away with but the destruction will remain.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#93

Post by vouaobrasil »

pydry wrote: post #91
whatshisface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time, because one person working eight hours a day remains more efficient than two people each working four hours a day. The reasons behind this are communication and training overheads. If AI leads to a world where people don't really have to know anything to do their jobs - just provide high-level judgements that LLMs seem farther away from than they are from…

Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time because the capacity for the economy to create "bullshit work" (e.g. work which is engaged in zero sum "wealth defense") is unbounded. For efficiency improvements to create more leisure time or even let the bottom 50% retire early, society would need to be radically restructured so that its locus of control is not capital. This would probably only happen wi…

> For efficiency improvements to create more leisure time or even more wealth (for the bottom 50%), society would need to be radically restructured so that its locus of control is not capital.

And even then, even a small percentage of bad actors who are selfish would likely restructure it back due to technology enabling them to do so! The fact is, the elite at the top is a steady state that is hard to leave if you worship efficiency. Only the Amish and some native tribes have realized that the only way out is not to play.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#94

Post by vouaobrasil »

senko wrote: post #62
vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

Oh that's easy, just move to any small Mediterranean island.

Not exactly easy, because first you have to make enough money to do so. And to do that, you'll likely be stuck in a grind of competing to be the most efficient. Adn even if you can do that in a short period of time, a sufficient number of people doing that will just fuel the system as usual.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#95

Post by vouaobrasil »

energy123 wrote: post #70
vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

I feel like this mixes up good things (efficiency improvements -> more prosperity) with bad things (late-stage capitalism stuff like gamified apps)

Even efficiency improvements only help up to a point. Just because making things more efficient increased propserity at one point, doesn't mean they will continue to do so. In fact, the very crossing of that point of diminishing returns is what fuels the late-stage capitalism you refer to.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#96

Post by ashoeafoot »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #58
moomoo11 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what? What’s there to do? By that logic we would all be playing pixelated Doom, carrying Walkman around, and smoking inside restaurants.

Go out and observe and enjoy nature, enjoy good food, the company of lots of friends, etc. I wouldn't mind a world where people had more time to do that, if it meant I had to carry around a Walkman or go to live concerts... Of course, not all innovation is bad. Banning smoking in restaurants does not require technology to restrict it...

Tons of people do not have anything on that list thanks to the social implants and if we are honest cant have it ever again in a world with 8 billion. So why not stop pretending that the idealizations of the past is a viable alternative. Its empty appartments, games, drugs and loneliness on UBI, that would be the outcome.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#97

Post by vouaobrasil »

bravetraveler wrote: post #30
vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

I'd rather just have a world where people move a little slower, care less about efficiency, appreciate the smaller things in life, and stop forcing endless upgrades of every kind on everyone with new phones, new apps, soulless art, and new ways of doing things. But that's just me.

... but trinkets! FOMO! Socially-acceptable welfare! This industry is so wasteful that I'm convinced productivity only matters when looking to fire someone. Otherwise, Animal Farm.

It is wasteful. But it only is wasteful if you look at it from the valuation of human utility. For technological advancement, the system is quite efficient. It's just that we're not the priority.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#98

Post by vouaobrasil »

spwa4 wrote: post #76
bakuninsbart wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Granted, you need to have the political structure in place that allows the growth to benefit everyone. Which is the scary part of the AI revolution. Devaluing labor always leads to increased inequality in the short-to-mid term until a new equilibrium is met. But what if we have machines that can do most jobs for 10-20k a year? Suddenly we have a hard ceiling for everyone below a certain "skill level", where skill i…

Really? The AI revolution is happening in the West, and mostly in the US. Just imagine it happened in a muslim country, or Russia, or China, or even India. Half of them would immediately use it to start a war. If you think labor is devalued here, it can be SO much worse. Also I don't understand the entire argument. The thread is about stopping economic growth. You say you don't receive enough of the current economic…

> so you want growth to reduce? That will make your life a lot worse, won't it?

Personally, I don't want growth to reduce, exactly. I'd prefer it if there were tighter restrictions on the direction of growth, and we spent more time finding creative ways to return to smaller communities where the efforts are spent less on pure money and more on people helping each other. And more time restoring nature. So growth, but not purely in an economic sense.

It only seems like a degrowth thing when you look at from a purely fiscal angle.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#99

Post by MichaelZuo »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #93
pydry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time because the capacity for the economy to create "bullshit work" (e.g. work which is engaged in zero sum "wealth defense") is unbounded. For efficiency improvements to create more leisure time or even let the bottom 50% retire early, society would need to be radically restructured so that its locus of control is not capital. This would probably only happen wi…

> For efficiency improvements to create more leisure time or even more wealth (for the bottom 50%), society would need to be radically restructured so that its locus of control is not capital. And even then, even a small percentage of bad actors who are selfish would likely restructure it back due to technology enabling them to do so! The fact is, the elite at the top is a steady state that is hard to leave if you wo…

This seems circular… capital has become such an important gatekeeper in society in the first place because most people aren’t that trustworthy, and will likely betray any trust or faith placed in them if put under enough pressure.

So society has to depend on something fully independent of any specific person or group and that cannot be changed without leaving behind a long papertrail.

In other words nobody dreams of becoming a banker/accountant/auditor/etc. at 5 year old. Probably even double entry bookkeeping would be superfluous if everyone were virtuous paragons.

Re: What if AI made the world’s economic growth explode?

#100

Post by coldtea »

whatshisface wrote: post #41
coldtea wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real growth has stalled for decades and is only propped up with rent-seeking and money printing credit - hence the results we see...

Here's a chart of real growth over the past few decades: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1

That's only "real" in that it's inflation adjusted. It's still the same balooney that GDP is inherently.

What this "growth" is based on is the same rent-seeking and money printing credit I mentioned. And of course even people getting paid to dig and then fill in holes would increase the GDP.

My "dismal results" refers to actual state of labor market and quality of jobs, actual purchasing power, actual production, actual innovation, actual infrastructure, actual quality of life changes, etc. Not GDP or stock market or how rich the 0.00001% gets.

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