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AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

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Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#501

Post by xp84 »

WarmWash wrote: post #334
rayiner wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much actual money do you think the “people with billions of dollars” have in comparison to the needs of the population as a whole? I think you’re very confused about where the actual income in the economy goes.

The wealthiest group in the US is the 70-95%, they have over double the wealth of "the billionaires". But we can't talk about this because it includes a large tract of the white collar everyday man workforce. This is why the focus is so heavy on billionaires, so heavy on increasing minimum wage, so heavy on protecting immigrants. Those are all virtuous values that also bolster the value of the 70-95%, while piling al…

Exactly. This is why I don’t support all the current wave of Democrats’ “wealth tax” policy ideas. There isn’t anywhere near enough money in billionaires pockets to keep the promises they’re making - especially once you account for them simply fleeing overseas, and also for even if you “catch” them, the downward pressure on their assets’ value that forced liquidation would have.

Once the Democrats who are elected on the fantasy of making Musk and Bezos pay for everyone’s past and future college/student loans, Medicare for all, UBI, high speed rail, while simultaneously closing every fossil fuel plant and subsidizing clean energy to replace it at the same cost — once they’ve failed to raise enough to pay for 1/10 of those promises, they’ll be coming for everyone more “wealthy” than $100k net worth.

You can just look how successful the USSR was, or China before they sold out their own Communist ideals. Most people were just subsistence farmers, or factory workers living in crowded minimalist apartments if they were lucky.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#502

Post by xp84 »

losteric wrote: post #387
WarmWash wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wealthiest group in the US is the 70-95%, they have over double the wealth of "the billionaires". But we can't talk about this because it includes a large tract of the white collar everyday man workforce. This is why the focus is so heavy on billionaires, so heavy on increasing minimum wage, so heavy on protecting immigrants. Those are all virtuous values that also bolster the value of the 70-95%, while piling al…

The top 1% own 31% and the top 10% own 68% of household wealth. The group you’re talking about, 70-95 percentile, are often people that just own a house near a big city or a farm/small business.

Yeah, and those people will be forced to liquidate their holdings (aka sell their houses in a market where most of the houses are for sale) to pay their share of the “wealth tax 2.0” after the “Billionaires” version fails to bring in enough money to pay for all the things promised.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#505

Post by senbrow »

free-dreamer-9 wrote: post #424

I was running the other day, and I was thinking how can this AI thing be used to something good instead of ending up in violence. Needed to get it out of my chest, sorry if this is too much (down vote is ok :). The big problem I find with AI is really rent-seeking behavior and big tech in my mind. I also think something like what I propose could solve the issue that AI is standing on the shoulders of free OSS, and th…

I've been thinking along similar lines as you and really appreciate you posting this comment.

I, too, think it's important to put dreams out there even if they have holes in their implementation or are easily torn apart by naysayers. We can and should collectively dream of a better future if we want something worthwhile to aim at.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#506

Post by Supermancho »

plomme wrote: post #145
mindok wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m convinced that 70% of the workforce of some large organisations is just white collar welfare / adult day care already. Maybe that goes to 80+% as a result of “AI” but doesn’t fundamentally change the model.

I never understood this take. Why do you think an employer would waste resources like that? I’m not saying that bullshit jobs don’t exist but I think you are off by an order of magnitude, and even that mostly applies to white collar workplaces with > 100 employees. Good luck doing nothing of value in a restaurant with 20 employees.

The more money I've made in tech, the less I've worked. Granted, I have learned a lot and am far more efficient than in the 90s, but the amount of work has decreased substantially.

2011 Tigerlogic in Irvine, CA and 2018 JPMC in Seattle, WA, I would do NOTHING for days while collecting rather nice paychecks by today's standards. The fact I then chose to QUIT these jobs for a rather unknown working situation (and slightly more pay) astounded my friends.

At my current position, I make a great living and do very little. Maybe once every two weeks I work all day. Most of the time it's gaming metrics by picking (or creating) issues that are unknown, such that I'm writing the docs and specializing in code corners nobody else wants to. Numbers of developers are tight, so we don't see the redundancy from previous years. That's great for me.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#507

Post by jplusequalt »

jfengel wrote: post #500
azinman2 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why welfare is the answer. To me it seems we’ve super failed if that’s the case — just brings everyone down except a few ultra rich people.

UBI is not welfare. It is just a livable minimum wage, for everyone who works. For those who cannot work, it replaces welfare, but that is not it's primary purpose. As a welfare replacement, it is much more efficient, since there is no effort spent determining who qualifies. People can spent their money however they want, rather than the patchwork of separate programs we have now. It doesn't need to bring anyone down…

A UBI is basically impossible to implement on a large scale without there being significant downsides. In what world does increasing the budget by a trillion dollars or more work out well?

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#508

Post by falcor84 »

rossjudson wrote: post #469
falcor84 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of any period in time where it was so easy to go into business yourself and to generally have access to the same "means of production" as the biggest companies have. If you want to use LLMs, you can either use cloud resources at what I think are really reasonable per-token prices compared to the value, or to set up your own server with an open-weights model at a comparable level of quality (though gener…

Seems like you've just agreed with "concentrated in the hands of a few" -- it's just a different "few" than before AI.

Well, yes, the number of entrepreneurs in America (~30M) is a different "few" than the number of frontier labs (~3).

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#509

Post by generj »

BobbyJo wrote: post #165
tokioyoyo wrote: post #72

A bit tangent, but is there anyone working on something for “what if AI pans out?” world? I’m not sure how to explain it, but if in the next 5 years a lot of jobs get displaced because of AI, obviously we’ll have big problems. Is there anyone working on analysis, outcomes, strategies and etc.? I think about it a lot, and would be cool to help and contribute.

Yes, the totality of the private sector. Literally every company in US with more than 100 employees is trying to position itself effectively. The government is as well, to a much smaller degree, but the fact remains that there is too many unknowns right now to do anything concrete with any great level of confidence. We tried UBI-lite™ during COVID and inflation exploded, so unless the economy has already changed sign…

Tbf UBI-lite during COVID was paired with 2 things:

1) massive handouts to business owners through forgiven “loans.” Predictably this had massive fraud, some of which was prosecuted but not much.

2) massively constrained supply chains which caused higher prices.

I suspect 2 at least would have caused inflation regardless of the stimulus checks.

It’s unclear to what extent UBI causes persistent inflation. Proponents claim the backdrop of a minimal income will enable more risky innovative projects which could increase GDP growth enough to counteract some level of increased inflation.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#510

Post by LadyCailin »

jplusequalt wrote: post #463
DroneBetter wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well inflation is equivalent to a flat wealth tax that doesn't consider insoluble assets, and is entirely in the hands of the government that imposes the UBI. "cause increased prices for consumer/essential goods" is what you meant (since buying power is moved to people who are reliant on buying them), but this is a one-time transition to a new equilibrium (so is mitigable by increasing the UBI to account for it), not…

True, but again, the other points are more damning. We're talking about an increased federal budget in the hundreds of billions/trillions to support such a UBI. That will cause a massive increase in taxation on the people who can still find jobs. To make matters worst, the government in 10-15 years will likely be spending ~25% of it's budget on interest payments alone. Hiking the federal budget up even more sounds li…

I’m not saying it would be revenue neutral, but a UBI would (or should) eliminate a bunch of various other entitlements. Even social security should be relatively non controversial to get rid of.
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