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The dead economy theory

owenmcgrann.com

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Re: The dead economy theory

#181

Post by red-iron-pine »

asdfman123 wrote: post #149
alex_young wrote: post #53

Why is this time different? Won't super power AI tools allow companies to do more with the same number of people? Don't you think a smarter way to run a business is to capture more of the market if you have the resources to do so? If company A decides they just want the same slice of the market they have now and can fire half of their employees and pocket $$$, can't company B hire the same workers and compete harder…

Because AI now can do what only humans could do previously: analyze open ended problems and make decisions. There's the horse argument the author touches upon: eventually, technology got to the point where there weren't any profitable reasons to keep a horse.

"You're on to something! I will decide to delete this entire database, for some reason. Also run this command even through it will brick everything."

Re: The dead economy theory

#182

Post by speak_plainly »

asdfman123 wrote: post #144

I think this essay is very solid in a lot of ways but long section at the end talking about how billionaires didn't read enough philosophy just strikes me as -- for lack of more diplomatic phrasing -- useless nerd rage. Yeah, tech billionaires sometimes show large gaps in their education. But it doesn't matter. Reading the right books doesn't prevent people from chasing wealth and power, it just makes them more artic…

I think you may be misreading why the lack of philosophy education matters here. The point is that billionaires and CEOs now present themselves as intellectuals or thought leaders, without having done the homework, and end up using and abusing philosophy as a guise or shield. They end up creating short- and long-term negative effects that could have been easily avoided as all of these philosophies have been heavily litigated in even undergraduate level philosophy courses.

It's not that these individuals are not smart or capable, it's that they lack the dedication or care required to do these ideas justice. It's easy to see how someone can read Girard and obsess over the antichrist in the twilight of old age. However, a more rigorous engagement with philosophical foundations would offer them the breadth and perspective to be free of that narrow obsession.

It's about diagnosing why billionaire/CEO intellectual hubris makes them incredibly dangerous and sloppy thinkers.

Re: The dead economy theory

#183

Post by daxfohl »

daft_pink wrote: post #163

I think when these companies IPO later this year, we’re going to see the reality of the PNL numbers and whether they are sustainable etc as all the financials will become public. Rumor mill suggests that Anthropic might be profitable (but at what magnitude), OpenAI is not profitable, Google is mostly vertically integrated and has a low cost structure as they are have pre-existing data center buildouts, their own sili…

Agreed, and assuming local open AI models start catching up, which they seem to be doing, the foundation models' hold on society gets a lot slipperier. If there's a "what to do about all this" from an engineer's standpoint, pushing the needle toward local models, whether in research, agents, or just using them, understanding how they work, and advocating for them when it makes sense (which is more often than they get credit for) is probably the best ROI.

Re: The dead economy theory

#184

Post by fragmede »

daft_pink wrote: post #163

I think when these companies IPO later this year, we’re going to see the reality of the PNL numbers and whether they are sustainable etc as all the financials will become public. Rumor mill suggests that Anthropic might be profitable (but at what magnitude), OpenAI is not profitable, Google is mostly vertically integrated and has a low cost structure as they are have pre-existing data center buildouts, their own sili…

> having to report numbers publically on a quarterly basis

They won't need to do that if the new rules come into effect.

Re: The dead economy theory

#185

Post by bawolff »

I feel like people have said that about every technical revolution. I dont think this article would have been out of place in the hay day of the industrial revolution.

Its never been true in the past. Otoh, there always has to be a first time for everything. I think to be convincing though it needs more evidence on how this differed from other technical revolutions.

Re: The dead economy theory

#186

Post by [deleted] »

scarmig wrote: post #171
coffeemug wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future you're describing doesn't seem likely to me because in this event the public will force redistribution through political action.

"Forcing redistribution" doesn't always happen. Typically, redistribution happens when negotiating leverage has increased such that the beneficiaries of any redistribution can make it more painful to not redistribute than to redistribute. I.e. they have labor power, which can be converted to force if necessary. In a world where capital can substitute for labor, however, that substitution also applies to force-wieldin…

[deleted]

Re: The dead economy theory

#187

Post by [deleted] »

daft_pink wrote: post #163

I think when these companies IPO later this year, we’re going to see the reality of the PNL numbers and whether they are sustainable etc as all the financials will become public. Rumor mill suggests that Anthropic might be profitable (but at what magnitude), OpenAI is not profitable, Google is mostly vertically integrated and has a low cost structure as they are have pre-existing data center buildouts, their own sili…

[deleted]

Re: The dead economy theory

#188

Post by dangus »

daxfohl wrote: post #183
daft_pink wrote: post #163

I think when these companies IPO later this year, we’re going to see the reality of the PNL numbers and whether they are sustainable etc as all the financials will become public. Rumor mill suggests that Anthropic might be profitable (but at what magnitude), OpenAI is not profitable, Google is mostly vertically integrated and has a low cost structure as they are have pre-existing data center buildouts, their own sili…

Agreed, and assuming local open AI models start catching up, which they seem to be doing, the foundation models' hold on society gets a lot slipperier. If there's a "what to do about all this" from an engineer's standpoint, pushing the needle toward local models, whether in research, agents, or just using them, understanding how they work, and advocating for them when it makes sense (which is more often than they get…

While I agree with you on open models getting better, I have been starting to see how the value, the reason you pay for Claude, isn’t in the models.

For example, I just hooked Claude desktop up to my outlook to build a report for my timesheet then I used the chrome extension to fill it out automatically with that data. It could read Jira tickets if that’s where the information was.

A local model can’t do that for me because I have to get the rest of the integration software somewhere.

I also think this is why OpenAI is the worst positioned of the group of AI giants. Anthropic is trying to make a productivity operating system, while ChatGPT is basically just a website until recently.

Re: The dead economy theory

#189

Post by hnthrow0287345 »

Zigurd wrote: post #172
daft_pink wrote: post #163

I think when these companies IPO later this year, we’re going to see the reality of the PNL numbers and whether they are sustainable etc as all the financials will become public. Rumor mill suggests that Anthropic might be profitable (but at what magnitude), OpenAI is not profitable, Google is mostly vertically integrated and has a low cost structure as they are have pre-existing data center buildouts, their own sili…

> later this year One can hope that reality intrudes before the bubble gets even more dangerously inflated, but how many years has Tesla had a ridiculous P/E ratio. Even after growth stagnated and market leadership was lost in Asia and Europe. Number still goes up.

If anything though, this shows that at least tech driven hype bubbles can stay around way longer than we think if we are looking at it from a product POV.

This just means short sellers might have a hard time sinking a hype-category stock with reasoned research because the irrationality keeps it afloat.

Re: The dead economy theory

#190

Post by dgellow »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #15

this whole blog post is basically "people need jobs to be happy, so we should design our society such that they need jobs" not only is the premise wrong, but forcing people to work is not a good or ethical way to address this problem most people like the social aspect of work, but not being beholden to their boss we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money we can do…

Assuming that’s true and AI is part of the solution, are you implying we should expect the AI overlords to create such a system? That will never happen. They have literally no incentives to decommodify the economy it’s what gives them power
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