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AI optimism is a class privilege

joshcollinsworth.com

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Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#141

Post by caconym_ »

elzbardico wrote: post #140
caconym_ wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to assume this is meant as a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043601 but my answer is the same: why (in this hypothetical scenario) are you assuming the AI owners aren't members of all three of these classes?

The guys who run the AI are the scientists and the programmers, not Sam Altman, neither Dario.

So what? I haven't named any names. You can imagine whoever you like having control of it. If you think that control will be wrestled from the execs in some kind of internal power struggle, that just puts new people in the position to make the same decisions.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#142

Post by tgv »

tim333 wrote: post #136
tgv wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's of course a quote of a handful of words from a 5000 word article. Not to be snarky, but did you read it?

I did read and I'll give you my comment wasn't that in line with the article. I'm not that convinced by the optimism being a class privilege thing though.

I don't think class is supposed to correlate 100% to current socio-economic class. It's more like tech-oriented entrepreneurs and some of their high-level staff are a class, or rather, the class that stands to win when LLMs get adopted at a large scale, while for current higher classes, and possibly manual labor classes, not much will change, and the middle and lower white collar classes will lose.

Wrt to manual labor: when a large part of the population loses significant income, there will be much less demand for builders, decorators, plumbers, roof thatchers, gardeners, hair dressers, etc., so they will likely be affected too.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#143

Post by hyperadvanced »

scarmig wrote: post #84
tptacek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story only matters if it produces an industry-wide displacement in jobs. Failed billion-dollar IT projects are not a new thing, and don't disrupt the entire labor market. To be clear: I'm not claiming that AI rollouts won't be billion-dollar failed IT projects! They very well could be. But if that's the case, they aren't going to disrupt the labor market. Again: you have to pick a lane with the pessimism. Both la…

There's a coherent story that straddles both lanes, by assuming that the human economy is in some weird place where the vast majority of humans don't create real economic value and mostly get employment through inertia and custom, and that AI, despite being worthless, provides an excuse for employers to break through taboos and traditions and eliminate all those jobs. Quite a stretch, but it's coherent at least.

I agree. There will be some companies that cannot effectively use AI to slash headcount and become more efficient. There will be those who cut too deep and are burned by it. There will be those who spend millions on AI consultants who don’t move the needle, custom LLM pet projects that get pursued, companies that crash and burn due to vibe coding, companies with 5 employees that are only possible because of vibe coding, etc.

Expecting there to be one result from a new technology is incredibly naïve. There are scores of still existing companies today who fumbled the internet, cloud computing, social media, smartphones, etc. even though all of those technologies have proven to be transformative in the aggregate.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#144

Post by Wilder7977 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #50
Wilder7977 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes every decision-maker is a rational actor. Just today an executive was rambling about "quantum-empowered AI". These are the people who take decisions about firing workers. It is entirely possible that AI will replace many jobs while being useless (at achieving what those workers do). At least in the short-medium period. We would live in a post-scarcity utopia if big economic decisions were taken based on…

Seems to be what is happening in a lot of the places it's encroaching. AI journalism is strictly worse than having a human research and write the text, but it's also orders of magnitude much cheaper. You see prompt fragments and other blatant AI artifacts in news articles almost every day. So we get newspapers that have the same shape as they used to, but that don't fulfill their purpose. That's a development that wa…

The journalism one is really a great example I did not think about.

I understand there is an argument to be made about what is the "value" of things, but for me it's quite clear that journalism has the inherent value of providing information, similar to how many other activities have values beyond "generating money for their owners". AI allows to "mock" many activities resulting in the social value of that activity being lost, while possibly maintaining the economic value. A trajectory that is not new but also not good to accelerate on.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#145

Post by EdwardDiego »

simianwords wrote: post #104
EdwardDiego wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's refine terms - internal combustion engine driven automobiles have lead to lead poisoning, air pollution, and CO2 emissions.

I would like to get actual numbers. 1. how many people died because of lead poisoning, air pollution? 2. how many people were saved and had qualitatively better lives because of automobiles?

1. Is a very hard question to answer, airborne lead pollution isn't fatal, but it does impact cognition. Perhaps ask yourself how many people lead lower quality lives because of it, and the flow-on effects from that lower cognition.

The people who did Freakonomics claimed that the drop in violent crime in the US in the 90s could be correlated to the phasing out of leaded fuel, but I'm not a statistician so can't speak to the accuracy of that correlation.

2. How would you even measure that? How would you define a better life thanks to a vehicle?

I feel like you're ice skating uphill a little given the deleterious effects of leaded fuels are well studied, but the question you're asking isn't.

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