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

economist.com

171–180 of 199 posts

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

#171
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This might happen one day, but for now, efficiency improvements get capitalized into the ponzi-esque stock market That's a seductive narrative, but not backed up by data. The share of GDP that goes to labor is has held relatively stable in the past few decades. It has admittedly fallen, but it's on the order of a few percentage points, whereas the GDP per capita more than tripled. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/…

How do you square these “growing wages” against the zeitgeist which says more and more people are living hand-to-mouth? At what point do these statistics get tossed out because they have little to no bearing on the lived experience of the great mass of people? At what point does one acknowledge that these statistics seem like they’re compiled simply to muddy the waters to make reality seem different than it is? Famou…

> How do you square these “growing wages” against the zeitgeist which says more and more people are living hand-to-mouth?

Both can be true if the distribution has changed, which seems to be the case:

"Over the last four decades, the income gap between more- and less-educated workers has grown significantly; the study finds that automation accounts for more than half of that increase."

https://news.mit.edu/2022/automation-drives-income-inequalit...

Additionally, necessities like food and fuel seem to have jumped in price, outpacing wage growth over the past few years, while other important goods and services (housing, health care, higher education) have outpaced inflation for decades.

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

#172
Hardly, given people being replaced.

Already happening to anything creative, where people would be contracted for doing images and sounds for indie stuff, flyers, translations,... and now companies generate them instead.

Computing, we're reducing team sizes now, first thanks to SaaS managed platforms, now taking yet another blow with AI based automations.

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

#173
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're asking "what caused the change?" the answer is "Ronald Reagan". If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible". Just to expand on that a bit, in case it isn't fully clear: There is a level of productivity per worker required to support everyone in the society. This level fluctuates some with the overall standard of liv…

>If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible". >[...] I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. [...] GDP per capita has been growing exponentially for centuries[1]. Is t…

The 4 day work week movement continues to move forward, and becomes more likely to succeed as workers gain more power as the prime working age population continues to shrink over decades due to structural demographics (total fertility rates below replacement in most of the world).

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep...

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

#174
It's a good thing, sure, but not that great. Personally, I don't see the possibility of it solving many fundamental human problems.

We could still have war, extreme poverty, starvation, and massive conflicts between different groups... Those stuff probably will continue as today. It could even be exacerbated if the conflicting parties just gain more power…

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

#175
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I looked for any comments that expressed this sentiment, and as of writing this, I only found one. It's like people don't know or remember history. I mean, look at the French Revolution—l…

> Leaving that kind of power in the hands of the wealthiest 1% means only one thing: over time, 100% of land and resources would end up controlled by that 1%, the new kings, making the rest of the society their slaves forever. Isn’t this exactly what has happened all through out history? I don’t really see the future playing out any differently.

I sadly think if the promise of AI happens this is the likely economic outcome. The last century or so was an anomaly from most of human history; a trend created by the "arms race" of needing educated workers. The prisoner's dilemma was if you trained your workers in more efficient tech you could out-compete and take all the profits from competitors which gave those educated workers the means to strike (i.e. leverage). Now it is the "arms race" of educated AI, rather than workers which could invalidate a lot of assumptions our current society takes for granted in its structure.

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

[deleted]

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

[deleted]

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

We achieve... something, to be sure. I maintain it's more 'control' than 'progress'.

Looking at the technological advancement from a human utility perspective... opting out as circumstance allows seems reasonable.

I still live like it's 2004. Computer room and everything. What's an AdTech? /s

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

#179
post #120
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…

>This might happen one day, but for now, efficiency improvements get capitalized into the ponzi-esque stock market That's a seductive narrative, but not backed up by data. The share of GDP that goes to labor is has held relatively stable in the past few decades. It has admittedly fallen, but it's on the order of a few percentage points, whereas the GDP per capita more than tripled. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/…

>That's a seductive narrative, but not backed up by data. The share of GDP that goes to labor is has held relatively stable in the past few decades

If you click that "max" button on your graph it does not show a stable share.

Appeal to status quo is seductive for those who are generally comfortable though, I get it.

>But inflation-adjusted wages isn't negative or even flat, it has grown?

Looks pretty flat to me:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/185369/median-hourly-ear...

If they weighted nondiscretionary housing, education and healthcare in the inflation basket properly and de-emphasized discretionary electronics and clothes I doubt it would even be flat.

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

#180

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…

I'm surprised that someone has pointed this out because it is 100% on point.

The moment your economy is productive enough that it is not necessary to hire every single person, employers start firing people rather than cut the working hours evenly across the population, because each employee represents a fixed cost. Hence you either work full time or you don't work at all.

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