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I'm not worried about AI job loss

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Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#141

Post by gruez »

suzzer99 wrote: post #128
RevEng wrote: post #101

I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. We have heard that lie for over a century. The stream engine didn't do it, electricity didn't do it, computers didn't do it, the Internet didn't do it, and AI won't either. The truth is that as input costs drop, sales prices drop and demand increases - just like the parad…

As long as the owner class can leverage, "Hey, that {out group} is sitting around doing nothing and getting free money!" we'll never have anything close to UBI imo.

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#143

Post by smj-edison »

qgin wrote: post #40

You don't need AI to replace whole jobs 1:1 to have massive displacement. If AI can do 80% of your tasks but fails miserably on the remaining 20%, that doesn't mean your job is safe. It means that 80% of the people in your department can be fired and the remaining 20% handle the parts the AI can't do yet.

Wasn't that the point of mentioning Jevon's Paradox though? Like they said in the essay, these things are quite elastic. There's always more demand for software then what can be met, so bringing down the cost of software will dramatically increase the demand for it. (Now, if you don't think there's a ton of demand for custom software, try going to any small business and ask them about how they do bookkeeping. You'll learn quite quickly that custom software would run much better than sticky notes and excel, but they can't afford a full time software developer as a small business. There's literally hundreds of thousands of places like this.)

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#144

Post by 9dev »

jjmarr wrote: post #139
RevEng wrote: post #101

I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. We have heard that lie for over a century. The stream engine didn't do it, electricity didn't do it, computers didn't do it, the Internet didn't do it, and AI won't either. The truth is that as input costs drop, sales prices drop and demand increases - just like the parad…

If you want to live with no electricity, no running water, and a lack of refrigerated food, you could do so purely on welfare. In that sense, we already have the UBI that Marx predicted. However, most people want fruits and vegetables instead of getting rickets, goiter, and cholera from an 1800s diet. Many are even willing to work 80+ hours a week to do so.

Most non-banana republics across the world define the Minimum standard of living as having all of the things you listed, meaning welfare/social safety nets provide for that. As they should. We’re not animals.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#145

Post by Arainach »

gruez wrote: post #141
suzzer99 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the owner class can leverage, "Hey, that {out group} is sitting around doing nothing and getting free money!" we'll never have anything close to UBI imo.

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

There's been enormous pushback, pushes for privatizing (ruining) it, underfunding it from Congress, an absolute refusal to remove the criminally low income cap on contributions, etc.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#146

Post by hinkley »

gruez wrote: post #141
suzzer99 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the owner class can leverage, "Hey, that {out group} is sitting around doing nothing and getting free money!" we'll never have anything close to UBI imo.

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

I still like the idea of clawing back mineral and water rights and paying for basic services out of the money payed by industry for the right to dirty our air and water. As a citizen you're entitled to compensation for the smoke you're breathing.

People talk about how socially progressive Scandinavia is but they have a shitload of petroleum resources and that money goes into social programs.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#147

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

deet wrote: post #135
gordonhart wrote: post #23

Whenever I get worried about this I comb through our ticket tracker and see that ~0% of them can be implemented by AI as it exists today. Once somebody cracks the memory problem and ships an agent that progressively understands the business and the codebase, then I'll start worrying. But context limitation is fundamental to the technology in its current form and the value of SWEs is to turn the bigger picture into a…

Just keep in mind that there are many highly motivated people directly working on this problem. It's hard to predict how quickly it will be solved and by whom first, but this appears to be a software engineering problem solvable through effort and resources and time, not a fundamental physical law that must be circumvented like a physical sciences problem. Betting it won't be solved enough to have an impact on the wo…

The implication of your assertion is pretty much a digital singularity. You’re implying that there will be no need for humans to interact with the digital world at all, because any work in the digital world will be achievable by AI.

Wonder what that means for meatspace.

Edit: Would also disagree this isn’t a physics problem. Pretty sure power required scales according to problem complexity. At a certain level of problem complexity we’re pretty much required to put enough carbon in the atmosphere to cook everyone to a crisp.

Edit 2: illustrative example, an Epic in Jira: “Design fusion reactor”

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#148

Post by arctic-true »

delegate wrote: post #86

Bottlenecks. Yes. Company structures these days are not compatible with efficient use of these new AI models. Software engineers work on Jira tickets, created by product managers and several layers of middle managers. But the power of recent models is not in working on cogs, their true power is in working on the entire mechanism. When talking about a piece of software that a company produces, I'll use the analogy of…

This gives me a lot of hope for a decentralized future for all kinds of service industries. Why would you go to a big-name accounting firm where the small number of humans can only give you a sliver of attention, when you can go to a one-man shop and get much more of the one human’s attention? Especially if you know that the “work” will be done by the same tools? So many of the barriers to entry in various services - law, accounting, financial advising, etc. - is that you need a team to run even the smallest operation that can generate enough revenue to put food on your table. Perhaps that won’t be the case for long - and the folks that used to be that “team” can branch out and be the captains of their own ships, too.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#149

Post by smj-edison »

trilogic wrote: post #20

You are not worrried for one of the 2 reasons: 1 You are not affected somehow (you got savings, connections, not living paycheck to paycheck, and have food on the table). 2 You prefer to persue no troubles in matters of complexity. Time will tell, is showing it already.

I feel like that's a rather bad-faith take, so if you're going to make that kind of accusation you better back it up. People can legitimately believe that AI is not going to be the end of the world, and also not be privileged. And people can be privileged, and also be right. Not everything can be reduced down into a couple of labels, and how those labels "always" interact.

Re: I'm not worried about AI job loss

#150

Post by throw-qqqqq »

hinkley wrote: post #146
gruez wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

I still like the idea of clawing back mineral and water rights and paying for basic services out of the money payed by industry for the right to dirty our air and water. As a citizen you're entitled to compensation for the smoke you're breathing. People talk about how socially progressive Scandinavia is but they have a shitload of petroleum resources and that money goes into social programs.

> People talk about how socially progressive Scandinavia is but they have a shitload of petroleum resources and that money goes into social programs

Of all the Scandinavian countries, only Norway has any oil resources of significance.

The Scandinavian welfare model is primarily tax-funded.

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