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The AI Layoff Trap

arxiv.org

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Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#51

Post by jay_kyburz »

samrus wrote: post #23
semiinfinitely wrote: post #8

neo-luddism dressed up in economic jargon. the authors suggest the only effective tool is to tax companies based on how much automation they achieve. Penalizing efficiency is a guaranteed recipe for stagnation and if we'd done this at any point in our past we would have not made it out of the dark ages

Your not looming at anything after the first order effects. The idea of work os that people participate in the economy, what does a post work economy look like? How do people have the cashflows necessary to participate in things like housing and food and stuff when their way of contributing to the economy was automated away?

I don't believe there will be a "post work" economy. Some people will turn to farming, others will turn to crime and mischief (hunter gatherers).

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#52

Post by efitz »

AI layoffs are very shortsighted IMO and should be viewed by investors as a sign of weakness in management or the business itself.

If everyone is going to increase productivity by some factor k per employee, then kx is the new norm of overall productivity of x employees.

If you lay off some percentage Y of your work force, then your expected gains will only be k(x(100-y)/100). In other words, you will not recognize the same productivity gains as your competitors that chose not to lay off.

Yes I realize it is more complex than that, because of reduced opex, but there are diminishing returns very quickly.

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#53

Post by giacomoforte »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #10

The trick is bypassing the human consumer as well. Companies satisfy (human) consumer needs as a byproduct of profit maximization. But human consumers are inefficient. They have to sleep, require medical care, etc. A purely machine economy would be far more efficient. Therefore in the limit we should eliminate reliance on human labor and consumption to build a more perfect and efficient world.

You jest, but isn't this the logical conclusion? A sufficiently smart AGI has no need for humanity, at all.

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#54

Post by leokennis »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #10

The trick is bypassing the human consumer as well. Companies satisfy (human) consumer needs as a byproduct of profit maximization. But human consumers are inefficient. They have to sleep, require medical care, etc. A purely machine economy would be far more efficient. Therefore in the limit we should eliminate reliance on human labor and consumption to build a more perfect and efficient world.

Idea! Maybe these now redundant humans can be turned into a kind of battery, so they serve as a source of energy for the machines?

Perhaps it's then smart to make the humans have a brain/computer interface, to make then dream/think they are living in a normal society so they don't revolt.

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#55

Post by gostsamo »

jaccola wrote: post #16
semiinfinitely wrote: post #8

neo-luddism dressed up in economic jargon. the authors suggest the only effective tool is to tax companies based on how much automation they achieve. Penalizing efficiency is a guaranteed recipe for stagnation and if we'd done this at any point in our past we would have not made it out of the dark ages

It’s funny, I think most people roll their eyes when Trump says things like “you’ll be tired of winning, you’ll say ‘please no more winning’”. But recommendations to tax efficiency are unironically that (just dressed in more serious language). “Please stop giving us what we want so efficiently, we want to work more for it!”

Those winning and those asking for this to stop are two different categories of people. The former are the capital holders and the latter are those with no source of capital in their future. If you can merge the two categories, we may talk again. Until then, you need to come up with something better than trickle down in a world where there is no trickling.

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#56

Post by palmotea »

jaccola wrote: post #16
semiinfinitely wrote: post #8

neo-luddism dressed up in economic jargon. the authors suggest the only effective tool is to tax companies based on how much automation they achieve. Penalizing efficiency is a guaranteed recipe for stagnation and if we'd done this at any point in our past we would have not made it out of the dark ages

It’s funny, I think most people roll their eyes when Trump says things like “you’ll be tired of winning, you’ll say ‘please no more winning’”. But recommendations to tax efficiency are unironically that (just dressed in more serious language). “Please stop giving us what we want so efficiently, we want to work more for it!”

> But recommendations to tax efficiency are unironically that (just dressed in more serious language). “Please stop giving us what we want so efficiently, we want to work more for it!”

You're trying to make it sound ridiculous, but most people aren't pure consumers. They're laborers and consumers. Policies that hurt while wearing the consumer hat may be more than justified by the benefits while wearing the labor hat.

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#57

Post by lukan »

xyzal wrote: post #22
lukan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The model (opus 4.6) just could not stop drawing conclusions from obsolete regulations in its training dataset" To be fair, humans are also often like this. If some rule/law/model was deeply ingrained into them, they often cannot stop thinking in terms of that rule, even if they are clearly in a new context (like a new country).

When the mandatory speed limit in my country was reduced from 60km/h to 50km/h in cities, 95 percent of people instantly adapted.

But that is pretty much the same rule, just the numbers slightly adjusted. What do you think would happen if they changed traffic from the right to the left lane?

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#58

Post by 542458 »

mullingitover wrote: post #7
rvz wrote: post #3

Let’s take AGI to its inevitable raw conclusion. Not by the definition (ab)used by clueless VCs screaming about abundance, but by what is already happening using the worst case: The abundance of mass layoffs and job displacement due to funding and building of AI systems is the true definition of AGI. We might as well get there faster instead of delaying it. You have already seen Oracle and Block attributing their lay…

The article is saying that the solution here isn’t to just throw up our hands and commit suicide as a nation, it’s to simply tax the AI, punishing the negative externality. Seems like the obvious answer to the prisoner’s dilemma problem where everyone wants to lay off their workforce, but expects that they’ll be the only ones to get this bright idea.

What’s a bit hard for me to rationalize here is why are market shifts considered a negative externality here? We didn’t tax moulding machines because they reduced the demand for sculptors.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the end goal of “Tax those who can pay for it to build a social safety net” is reasonable, I just don’t buy the “negative externalities” argument.

Re: The AI Layoff Trap

#60

Post by ithkuil »

isoprophlex wrote: post #21

So... the solution is basically "pay tax on the demand that you're destroying". We can all hate on the premise (ai is good enough to do this) and/or the solution presented (centrally enforced taxation), but you gotta admit: the messaging from SV's AI leaders about how "ai will take all your jobs" is confused as fuck, because if so, who will be on the consuming end of things?

If such tax would introduce an asymmetry that will favour human employment, then there should be enough buying power to create some demand
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