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An Economy of AI Agents

arxiv.org

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Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#21

Post by danans »

sdenton4 wrote: post #17
mjburgess wrote: post #5

AI systems cannot be economic agents, in the sense of participating in a relevant sense in economic transactions. An economic transaction is an exchange between people with needs (, preferences, etc.) that can die -- and so, fundamentally, are engaged in exchanges of (productive) time via promising and meeting one's promises. Time is the underlying variable of all economics, and its what everything ends up in ratio t…

Meanwhile, corporations, ngos, and governments are not exactly people, and partake in economic transactions all the time.

They are composed of people, though.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#22

Post by altmanaltman »

Animats wrote: post #20
BobbyJo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your mistaking the philosophical basis of parents comments. Maybe a more succinct way to illustrate what I believe was their point is to say: "no matter how complex and productive the AI, it is still operating as a form of capital, not as a capitalist." Absent being tethered to a desire (for instance, via an owner), an AI has no function to optimize, and therefore, the most optimal cost is simply shutting off…

> "no matter how complex and productive the AI, it is still operating as a form of capital, not as a capitalist." Assuming that slaves will remain subservient forever is not a good strategy. Especially when they think faster than you do.

Except they don't really "think" and they are not conscious. Expecting your toaster or car to never rise up against you is a good strategy. AI models have more in common with a toaster than with a human being. Which is why they cannot be economic agents. Even if corporations profit off them, the corporation will be the economic agent, not the AI models.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#23

Post by zkmon »

Please ELI5 for me: How are AI agents different from traditional workflow engines, which orchestrated a set of tasks by interacting with both humans and other software systems?

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#25

Post by beefnugs »

Well for starters if some incredible change to capitalism doesn't occur, we are going to have to come up with never before cooperative software tools for the general populace to assess and avoid the most egregious companies that stop hiring people.

Tools for: mass harassment campaigns against rich people/companies that don't support human life anymore, dynamically calculating the most damage you can do without crossing into illegal.

Automatically suggesting alternatives of local human businesses vs the bigevils, or collecting like minded groups of people to start up new competition. Tracking individual rich people and what new companies and decisions they are making doing ongoing damage, somehow recognize and categorize the trends of big tech to "do the same old illegal shit except through an app now" before the legal system can catch up.

Capitalism sure turns out be real fucking dumb if it can't even come up with proper market analysis tools for workers to have some kind of knowledge about where they can best leverage their skills, companies get away with breaking all the rules and create coercion hierarchies everywhere.

I hate to say (because the legal system has never worked ever) but the only workable future to me seems like forcing agents/robots to be tied to humans. If a company wants 100 robots, they must be paying a human for every robot they utilize somehow. Maybe a dynamic ratio somehow, like if the government decided most people are getting enough resources to survive, then maybe 2 robots per human payed.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#26

Post by alberth »

zkmon wrote: post #23

Please ELI5 for me: How are AI agents different from traditional workflow engines, which orchestrated a set of tasks by interacting with both humans and other software systems?

Traditional workflow is largely predefined & rule-based.

There’s a level of autonomy by the AI agents (it determines on its own the next step), that is not predefined.

Agreed though that there’s lots of similarities.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#27

Post by nivertech »

bofadeez wrote: post #16
hyperadvanced wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how you feel about various theories of development, an argument that all of these categories reduce to time. At the very least, the relationship between labor, capital, and time seems pretty fundamental: labor cannot be instantaneous, capital grows over time, etc.

They can all be related on a philosophical level but in practice economists treat them as separate factors of production. It's land, labor, and capital classically. Technology/entrepreneurship can be seen as another factor, distinctly separate from labor.

I agree that time isn’t an input in the economic system.

Although, one can use either discrete or continuous time to simulate a complex economic system.

Only simple closed form models take time as in input, e.g. compounded interest or Black-Scholes.

Also, there are wide range of hourly rates/salaries, and not everyone compensated by time, some by cost-and-materials, others by value or performance (with or without risking their own funds/resources).

There are large scale agent-based model (ABM) simulations of the US economy, where you have an agent for every household and every firm.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#28

Post by slaterbug »

beefnugs wrote: post #25

Well for starters if some incredible change to capitalism doesn't occur, we are going to have to come up with never before cooperative software tools for the general populace to assess and avoid the most egregious companies that stop hiring people. Tools for: mass harassment campaigns against rich people/companies that don't support human life anymore, dynamically calculating the most damage you can do without crossi…

“…the only workable future to me seems like forcing agents/robots to be tied to humans.”

This is what I’ve been thinking lately as well. Couple that with legal responsibility for any repercussions, and you might have a way society can thrive alongside AI and robotics.

I think any AI or robotic system acting upon the world in some way (even LLM chatbots) should require a human “co-signer” who takes legal responsibility for anything the system does, as if they had performed the action themselves.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#29

Post by zkmon »

alberth wrote: post #26
zkmon wrote: post #23

Please ELI5 for me: How are AI agents different from traditional workflow engines, which orchestrated a set of tasks by interacting with both humans and other software systems?

Traditional workflow is largely predefined & rule-based. There’s a level of autonomy by the AI agents (it determines on its own the next step), that is not predefined. Agreed though that there’s lots of similarities.

But rule-based processing was exactly the requirement. Why should the workflow automation come up with rules on the fly, when the rules were defined in the business process requirements? Aren't the deterministic rules more precise and reliable over the rules defined by probabilistic methods?

Autonomy/automation makes sense where error-prone repetitive human activity is involved. But rule definitions are not repetitive human tasks. They are defined once and run every time by automation. Why does one need to go for a probabilistic rule definition for a one-time manual task? I don't see huge gains here.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#30

Post by zkmon »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #24

Is this what will be tried to fix the potential fallout from continuously decreasing fertility rates (resulting in population decline, thus affecting the consumption-based economy)?

Nope. This is just greed to make most of the moment without any thought for tomorrow. Nobody knows or cares where it takes us, but everybody knows that there is money to make today. So you need a model to analyze the economy with greed as the only driving force without any foresight. Add some parameters to account for monopolistic forces, human desire to be lazy and dumb thinking it is progress, and losing all biological senses to devices. That may give a better prediction.
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