Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 199 posts

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

#101

Post by spwa4 »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #98
spwa4 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is nothing stopping you from moving to a smaller community, and in the west there's tons of them around. And if you're willing to take the (very low) wages that go with that, you can live there for the rest of your life easily.

Hell, I know people who've done this. Several actually. Well, only one that's still alive (they retired there, wanted to grow old and die there ... and did), but still.

But ... why bother anyone about it? You want others to do this but would never accept doing so yourself?

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

#102

Post by vouaobrasil »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #99
vouaobrasil wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

True, but it's also mainly because we have a society that is based on technological innovation with rapid transportation/communication. I was only responding to the other reply that seemed to imply that there was an alternative restructuring that puts less capital at the top.

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

#103

Post by danaris »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #95
energy123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I would say that the causality is the reverse.

Late-stage capitalism is enabled by the 4+ decades of the very wealthy taking all the gains from increased efficiency, which gives them the power to turn it into a feedback loop.

Our current situation is not an inevitable and natural outgrowth of the improved productivity of the late 20th century: it is specifically caused by policy changes (starting) under Reagan that allowed for more consolidation, less care for the common good, and more focus on personal self-aggrandizement.

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

#104

Post by vouaobrasil »

spwa4 wrote: post #101
vouaobrasil wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There is nothing stopping you from moving to a smaller community, and in the west there's tons of them around. And if you're willing to take the (very low) wages that go with that, you can live there for the rest of your life easily. Hell, I know people who've done this. Several actually. Well, only one that's still alive (they retired there, wanted to grow old and die there ... and did), but still. But ... why bothe…

> But ... why bother anyone about it? You want others to do this but would never accept doing so yourself?

Well, first I already have, so I don't know where you got "never accept doing so yourself", which is something you made up. Secondly, why bother: because the current world system is destroying nature, which in my opinion is on the same level as actively targeting people. So I do want that to stop.

If nature was not being destroyed and it was just people messing up their own little world, then that would be different.

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

#105

Post by ambientenv »

zoechi wrote: post #81

Only energy consumption will explode

And this is the predicament that people seem to either not understand or completely (wilfully?) ignore. As is said, problems have solutions; predicaments have outcomes. I think this [0] is worth a read (among many other similar analyses)

[0] https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-ene...

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

#106

Post by vouaobrasil »

ashoeafoot wrote: post #96
vouaobrasil wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ts empty appartments, games, drugs and loneliness on UBI, that would be the outcome.

Alright then, if that's really the foregone conclusion, then what's the point of existence? Should we not try and make things better by any means necessary?

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

#107

Post by msgodel »

Tyrubias wrote: post #5

I think a more important question is not whether AI will make economic growth explode but rather who that economic growth will benefit and in general how those benefits will be distributed.

It will likely work the same way industrialization did: first capital owners and then things get crazy cheap and everyone benefits.

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

#108

Post by vouaobrasil »

danaris wrote: post #103
vouaobrasil wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I would say that the causality is the reverse. Late-stage capitalism is enabled by the 4+ decades of the very wealthy taking all the gains from increased efficiency, which gives them the power to turn it into a feedback loop. Our current situation is not an inevitable and natural outgrowth of the improved productivity of the late 20th century: it is specifically caused by policy changes (starting) under Rea…

Well, you definitely have a point there. The causality is less clear than I implied for sure with regard to the connection between late-stage capitalism and efficiency.

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

#109

Post by Balgair »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #86
Balgair wrote: post #84

I'll issue just one counterpoint to the comments here: Biology I'm not a CS person, but much more of a 'hacker' in the old MIT sense. I work for a biotech company and with a lot of bio people. I've taken big-boy CS classes before, but just as a fling really. I'm mostly a self taught 'programmer', and barely that. Look, LLMs and vibe coding are going to increase the research rate of biology and biomedical research at…

My first reaction was, "But what if the AI generates incorrect code, and the bio people don't realize it?" But then, without the AI, what if the bio people generate incorrect code and don't realize it? Can the AI be more accurate than a non-programmer? Probably; in fact arguably they already are. So I think I buy the parent's point. In fact, I think it's wider than biology. I bet there are a bunch of other fields wit…

Yeah, just the stats got so bad in the less hard sciences that they released statcheck to help automatically combat it:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7540394/

Byand large, since bio people just do not like programming, they were commonly generating outright bad code and then spending just months/years trying to figure it all out, hopefully before publication. But not always.

LLMs have democratized passable code. I think it'll be before 2030 that they'll have democratized good code.

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

#110

Post by zanfr »

karim79 wrote: post #34
Tyrubias wrote: post #5

I think a more important question is not whether AI will make economic growth explode but rather who that economic growth will benefit and in general how those benefits will be distributed.

I suppose, if a huge proportion of workers get replaced by AI software, leading to mass unemployment, there will be impetus for governments to step in and force corporations to contribute to some sort of UBI or social wealth fund. If AI grabs everything and few consumers are left then it is zero-sum. I'm looking forward to seeing how this might play out. Pessimistically, it seems very bubblish.

I don't see UBI happening any time soon, although increasingly obvious it would be a good thing overall. because the oligarchs are on a powertrip and prefer to shed the workforce, have "unusuable" people fall by the wayside (through poor health, poor social status, economy); the oligarchs will be the consumers; they are sort of moving towards a world of them + robots only. you could say "then if robots do everything we all can live the same way" in theory yes, in practice, it is tricky because of the way the system is built.
Post reply on HN