Marx, Keynes, and AI
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Marx, Keynes, and AI
1–10 of 104 posts
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#2[dead]
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#3i'm sure it's meant in some kind of technical sense that is precisely defined in the field of economics, but this use of the word "rational" is irritating:
> This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal.
you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time. the rational thing for these rational competitors to do would be to agree to slow their deployment of ai, because the cost savings will be more than lost to demand destruction down the line. so if they won't or can't do that, they aren't rational. on the flip side, if it is actually impossible to slow ai deployment, then the firms are rational and the situation they find themselves in isn't actually sub-optimal.
it's irritating to me because i often see persuit of self-interest even to one's eventual detriment held up as "rationality", which may be true in some technical sense within the field of economics (i really couldn't say), but is certainly not true for, like, actual rationality. myopic selfishness is never rational.
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#4Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy seem to be written by people who are pretty removed from technology or the actual businesses in which AI is allegedly replacing people.
Their theses on AI are not as much a criticism of AI as much as a desire to frame capitalism itself within their own system of ethics and advocate for some form of reform; which is to say I feel that were AI as we know it to be inexistent, they would still find themselves arguing against technology in general, or more precisely against efficiency, with a presupposed socialist-adjacent premise that capitalism only incentivizes greed.
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#5i'm sure it's meant in some kind of technical sense that is precisely defined in the field of economics, but this use of the word "rational" is irritating: > This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time. the rational thing for these rational competit…
> you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time
Yes you can that’s what tragedy of the commons is. Rational means you take the choice that provides the most value for yourself. Without a cartel (hard) or government regulation this situation happens all the time.
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#6Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy seem to be written by people who are pretty removed from technology or the actual businesses in which AI is allegedly replacing people. Their theses on AI are not as much a criticism of AI as much as a desire to frame capitalism itself within their own system of ethics and advocate for some form of reform;…
Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy ... are from pro-ai boosters trying to create hype around AI.
They are not criticism of ai, they are openly stated goals and aspirations.
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#7U.S. unemployment rate is steady at ~4% and we are now almost 4 years after the release of ChatGPT. The Jobs Apocalypse seems to be always on the horizon. UBI is being pushed by college educated workers burnt out of white collar work (understandably), but when you suggest to them working construction, teaching school, or working in a hospital, they deflect and go quiet.
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#8Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy seem to be written by people who are pretty removed from technology or the actual businesses in which AI is allegedly replacing people. Their theses on AI are not as much a criticism of AI as much as a desire to frame capitalism itself within their own system of ethics and advocate for some form of reform;…
Most of the alarmist writing I see about AI displacing workers or suddenly and drastically changing the economy ... are from pro-ai boosters trying to create hype around AI. They are not criticism of ai, they are openly stated goals and aspirations.
There's a lot of that type of slop on LinkedIn (with accompanying slop comments) but they're not taken anywhere as seriously as the more thoughtful blog posts like this
Also in technical circles, we're pretty aware of the marketing/self-promotional nuance of the "our AI accidentally hacked X company" type of press releases, which perhaps the general public may not take with as large a grain of salt
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#9i'm sure it's meant in some kind of technical sense that is precisely defined in the field of economics, but this use of the word "rational" is irritating: > This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time. the rational thing for these rational competit…
The term you are looking for is what Douglas Hofstadter called "superrationality" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality].
Re: Marx, Keynes, and AI
#10i'm sure it's meant in some kind of technical sense that is precisely defined in the field of economics, but this use of the word "rational" is irritating: > This demand externality traps rational firms in an automation arms race, displacing workers well beyond what is collectively optimal. you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time. the rational thing for these rational competit…
> you can't be trapped in a sub-optimal situation and be rational at the same time.
In order for this statement to be true, you must also have perfect knowledge: something that is unachievable in most circumstances. Getting trapped in a local-optimal solution is perfectly possible if you are blindly following stochastic decent along a gradient: as it is too with life... getting trapped like this looks like being in the situation where there is no rational action (only irrational ones) that (eventually) lead to anything other that that status quo. a local optimum is where you have to do increasingly (in proportion to the level of optimization) non-positive actions to escape (likely to another local-optimal).