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What will our economic future look like?

anthropic.com

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Re: What will our economic future look like?

#281

Post by kian »

dgellow wrote: post #100
api wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not nearly enough mention in these discussions of the real villain behind most of the negative cultural, social, and cognitive effects of things like social media: addiction engineering. AI will be a net positive unless companies start optimizing it for "time in app" or "time on site" or other "engagement" (addiction) metrics . Every time that's been done, the result has been a nightmare for everything but th…

I assumed it was a given in such discussions that companies will optimizing for the worst outcomes for their users. It’s a fairly straightforward incentive from our capitalist system, which is why capitalism needs regulation to re-align the incentives with humans needs

if you think companies optimize for the worst outcome still acceptable for their users to please shareholders, why don't you think governments don't opt for the same with their citizens to please special interests? voting with your wallet is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than with your feet...

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#282

Post by kian »

brailsafe wrote: post #194
timacles wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class war started about 15 years ago post 2007 financial crisis. The banks and those who control them all knew where we are headed, so they got a little head start destabilizing democracy. Once us working class get a grasp of the actual situation, we are going to be so deep in the hole, fighting back is going to be quite difficult when the "asset owners" own and control the majority of the worlds resources, all media…

They might own it, but at a certain point it only matters whether the concept of ownership means anything to the people who don't "own" it. Ownership only works for those with assets because they have police working for them to protect the concept of ownership to begin with, but that only works at a certain scale of disenfranchisement and lack of upheaval. There isn't that much in-practice stopping a sufficiently ang…

hence the robotics industry, and their robot enforcers. and drones

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#283

Post by nozzlegear »

panarky wrote: post #216
engeljohnb wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is just an example, but I'm going to say this every time the subject comes up: since human lives are the cost of making the wrong decisions, AI can't be allowed to be a decision maker of any kind in healthcare. If my blood pressure crashes because my nurse is caring for 15 patients at once and didn't notice that the AI decided to pause my norepinephrine, I won't consider "the AI did it" to be any acceptab…

> human lives are the cost of making the wrong decisions ... True. > ... AI can't be allowed to be a decision maker Non sequitur. Part 2 only follows from the Part 1 if you can demonstrate that AI makes more errors, or more severe errors, than humans in the identical situation. And for those situations, I agree with you. But there are already many situations where the AI is making fewer errors than humans, and for th…

Better error rates are an argument for AI into the process, but that doesn't justify making it the decision maker. Ethics concerns more than just the error rate, it also concerns the accountability, ability to appeal, due process, explainability, distribution of harm, and so on.

Ethically, we can easily justify refusing to delegate responsibility and accountability to a system that has no responsibility or accountability.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#284

Post by moregrist »

Squarex wrote: post #26
oxqbldpxo wrote: post #11

It's been 4 years. Nothing meaningful.

Has your job not be completely changed? Have you not noticed a worse job market?

My job hasn’t completely changed. It’s changed, but fundamentally I solve problems. Sometimes LLMs help me do that now.

The job market sucks, but there are so many confounding factors: pandemic over hiring, the loss of ZIRP, an economy that would be recession if it weren’t for data center investment, and may be in recession soon even with it.

This industry has been in down cycles before. It’s just been a while. So far it feels like a down cycle, not the sky falling.

It’s not clear what the future will hold, but I’m 100% sure it won’t evolve the way Anthropic predicts. Both because they have strong biases and because there's just no way to predict how this technology will play out. Humans are, if anything, remarkably adaptable.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#285

Post by WalterBright »

psadauskas wrote: post #176
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>great, now we can run the same operation with fewer nurses" And outside of industries with government enforced perversions of simple "supply and demand" forces (we're not talking Nth level effects here) this means more access to the service or lower prices or both. Edit: Which is to say you won't see any benefit in healthcare but you will in a ton of other industries.

During the industrial revolution, people thought that all these new machines and factories and electricity meant that everyone would only have to work 4 hours a week since it made everyone so much more productive. That's not what happened, though. Everyone worked the same amount for the same pay, just in more miserable repetitive working conditions, while the factory owners kept all profits from the gains in producti…

Nope. The working week reduced hours.

Those factories were not producing luxury goods. They produced everyday items for the masses. Things like knives, spoons, tools, textiles, ketchup bottles, shoes, furniture, nails, bicycles, etc.

Standard Oil, for example, improved efficiency and reduced the consumer price of kerosene 70%.

There's no evidence of outsized profits.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#286

Post by snovymgodym »

Gud wrote: post #180
JacobiX wrote: post #20

> As the nurse incorporates AI into her job, the nurse is able to oversee and accomplish more. She can spend more time talking with patients and helping them understand diagnoses. Productivity increases. This feels economically naïve.. If AI lets one nurse do the work that previously required two, the default pressure in a cost-driven system is not "great, now nurses can spend twice as long with patients" It is "grea…

It will bring down the prices for nursing and allow more people who previously couldn't afford health care to afford it, theoretically.

> theoretically

In case you haven't noticed, all that our current system is able to do with increased efficiency is cutting staff and/or increasing the percentage of money that gets siphoned up to capital holders.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#287

Post by WalterBright »

leonidasrup wrote: post #203
psadauskas wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the industrial revolution, people thought that all these new machines and factories and electricity meant that everyone would only have to work 4 hours a week since it made everyone so much more productive. That's not what happened, though. Everyone worked the same amount for the same pay, just in more miserable repetitive working conditions, while the factory owners kept all profits from the gains in producti…

" The central argument of Capital is that the motivating force of capitalism is in the exploitation of labour, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value and profit. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital

Old soviet joke:

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, it's the other way around!

Myself, I always exploited my employers by extracting money from them.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#288

Post by WalterBright »

d3dd wrote: post #199
psadauskas wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the industrial revolution, people thought that all these new machines and factories and electricity meant that everyone would only have to work 4 hours a week since it made everyone so much more productive. That's not what happened, though. Everyone worked the same amount for the same pay, just in more miserable repetitive working conditions, while the factory owners kept all profits from the gains in producti…

"while the factory owners kept all profits from the gains in productivity." Because this is what drives continual risk-capital.. very few countries are willing to upset this. Get over it man - I hate hardended capitalists but stop crying. This is the system we have. Wanna beat it? Go ahead and start a firm. Then you'll find out how tough it is. The thing I cant get over is enough software engineering folks collective…

> I will find out for myself how much of a backbone software engineers etc have when I employ them.

You're in for a rude awakening.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#289

Post by WalterBright »

dgellow wrote: post #111
lbreakjai wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a market with perfect competition, perhaps. Healthcare is far closer to a monopoly. Since people can't decide not to be sick, it means you can pocket the cost-saving.

Healthcare is indeed the poster child for inelastic demand

Not true. For every medical condition, there are a very large number of treatment options, with a wide variety of efficacy, pain, and cost.

For example, I bet you could enumerate plenty of weight loss options off the top of your head.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#290

Post by pessimizer »

trhway wrote: post #269
tengbretson wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI can't be allowed to be a decision maker of any kind in healthcare. It will, except it will be snuck in through the back door. It won't be some kind of robo-doctor making care decisions, it will come in the form of insurance eligibility steering the approved care plans, which absolutely will be decided by AI. The doctors will remain to act as liability sinks, but functionally they will probably join the ranks of…

I see that already in veterinary medicine with the non-DVM office/practice managers (or whatever title that guy lurking around in the office may have) - in the vet practices belonging to large networks the DVMs and nurses constantly looking at those managers for approval.

Vets fret as private equity snaps up clinics, pet care companies

https://stateline.org/2024/03/29/vets-fret-as-private-equity...

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