So basically workers are about to get screwed and it’s just a question of how badly
What will our economic future look like?
331–340 of 390 posts
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#332> 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…
The whole idea that AI will usher in this utopia where workers in healthcare are able to realign their primary job functions with obvious value creation by sweeping all the paperwork under the rug is just silly. It will just fester out of sight and out of mind: audit bots and compliance bots and malpractice bots and insurance bots will arms race creating such a mess it will become unfixable.
There's an optimistic future where Medicare becomes so much more efficient it becomes politically obvious to expand it because it's outperforming the mess that is private sector healthcare.
With AI I could actually see this being a possibility since it doesn't depend on a huge army of competent employees in a government office.
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#333> 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…
My dad is a retired nurse. Most of his work was giving shots, treating wounds, extracting blood, putting IV catheters, etc. In other words, physical tasks. How is an "AI agent" or LLM going to take care of that?
Obviously not an LLM, but AI models + robotics are likely to automate many healthcare tasks in the long term and are already beginning to automate tasks like blood draws.
The Aletta autonomously handles each step of the blood draw, while a trained phlebotomist initiates each session and remains available to respond to any issues throughout. The device guides the patient to position their arm, after which the patient or supervisor presses a button to start the blood draw. The Aletta then uses near-infrared light and Doppler ultrasound to locate a suitable vein and tell it apart from arteries. If no appropriate vein is found, the device will not attempt the procedure.
Once a vein is identified, the Aletta proceeds through the remaining steps on its own: applying a tourniquet, preparing the skin, inserting and disposing of the needle, changing collection tubes and placing a bandage. The supervising phlebotomist confirms that collection tubes are filled in the correct order and verifies that all tubes are adequately full following the procedure.
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#334Software company pens speculative narratives about impact of not-yet-realized features. This reminds me of the corny old copies of The Futurist magazine that my dad kept around. Fun, hopelessly naive, and not at all aligned with how reality unfolded. Nice that Anthropic can afford a team of economists somehow though.
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
" 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
Marx's labour theory of value is only a theory of where profits come from and is largely rejected. Return on captial investment is not restricted to factory owners. All workers get a share of the surplus value and have the option to increase that by investing.
Sounds like you found a new way to write...
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Altman, Amodei, Pinchai etc can get together and just put a self imposed ban on themselves and ask the us government to sanction any entity/state attempting to use/release a Recursive Self improving model until the risks are well understood. This does not mean they can't keep developing it. But it would mean they do not release them to the general public or the public domain. The US government can continue to use and…
Would also mean their labs most be fully airgapped and made safe from all known covert channels, no matter how ridiculously theoretical. In fact, their meat proxies, who may be brainwashed into acting on the AI's behalf, must also be kept in extreme isolation. And to make sure that nobody will get close we will need to figure out a way to warn people. Probably start out with a series of signs... This place is a messa…
For those unfamiliar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin...
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no doubt that AI will massively transform society. That cat is out of the bag. It took decades for electricity, and then computers to change society, but this is the first technology where the average person can simply describe the problem they're trying to solve and it will at least attempt to help them solve it. I very. much. doubt. that the trillions of dollars spent on AI will have a positive ROI for most…
Thats the big question, its doing a lot of good and a lot of harm in the same time. So, is it 2 steps ahead and 1 step back, or 1 step ahead and 2 steps back (or any numerical variant of those)? People with actual power in this are too involved and greedy to care about objective answer and TBH I don't trust them to put some higher good before their personal wealth and power and ego trip, capitalism ain't built on lon…
> capitalism ain't built on long term responsibility towards greater topics like future and wellbeing of mankind.
I think in those aspects, only monarchy is better than capitalism. Specifically its more unhinged form, where the monarch is a Lord’s anointed or something.
> Plus we know from WWII atomic bomb development how utterly clueless, naive and out of touch with reality geeks doing something powerful can be
Or maybe they just have very strong incentives to appear more clueless than they actually were.
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess if you're dead, then it ultimately doesn't matter if someone can be held accountable, although it might matter to your next-of-kin. But, yea, in general, it would take a huge (1000X or 10,000X) difference in expected outcome for me to trust something that is unaccountable . If the AI company was actually held accountable for its AI's mistakes, I'd definitely change my statement.
AI is a tool just like any other tool. Holding “AI” accountable is like holding JetBrains accountable for the bugs I wrote with their tool than endangered lives of people
There is simply too much money and too many interests vested in the narrative (which many people already believe) that LLMs are thinking, feeling, sapient beings already beyond the threshold of AGI that deserve some status of legal personhood and liability. It is impossible to create the future that these people want to create - one in which AI comprises the new legal class of nobility in an age of technofeudalism - if AI remains just a tool.
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#339> 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…
I didn't read the article but headed straight to comments because I cannot trust a single word Anthropic says about economy. They have an incentive to play dumb and talk as if AI is net positive for the world.
One of the sections is:
A profound economic transformation
In the extreme scenario, AI is more productive than humans at the vast majority of knowledge-work tasks. It does nearly all of them autonomously, and it creates essentially no new knowledge tasks for people. This scenario would likely require recursively self-improving AI, adopted quickly for knowledge work.
As AI diffuses, annual GDP growth rates reach 15% a year, leading the economy to double in size every 4.5 years. As a society, we’re far richer than we’ve ever been, but many fewer workers have jobs in knowledge work, and unemployment has risen beyond typical recessionary levels.
Re: What will our economic future look like?
#340> Only humans can do some tasks > For instance, AI can’t bathe a patient. Until there are robots. Or the AI gets creative in an attempt to find a solution to this "problem" and orders a fatal dose of morphine for the patient. > And new tasks will appear > Historically, new technologies have also created new tasks for workers. For a nurse, that might be checking how well an AI triages patients, or reviewing an AI-prop…
You really ought to study recent developments in the service industry. Olive Garden added a tablet to every table so that customers can place their orders without talking to or waiting for a waiter. The goal was faster, more accurate service, since now the waiter did not need to remember your extremely detailed order. And yet most people prefer talking to a waiter. There are other restaurants that have tried similar…
> ...and people would almost always deal with people rather than a robot.
Here's the thing: they don't give a rat's you-know-what about what you prefer. And it's not just due to arrogance (maximizing profit) it's due to the harsh economic realities of running a service business in the US.
I'm an American who has lived in Asia for many, many years. It's very common in many Asian countries for restaurants and the like to be virtually overstaffed, and many businesses (especially cafes) are open ridiculously long hours. Mostly because labor is cheap and many of these businesses are family-owned, so family members (sometimes including children/teens) perform the labor. And also because the costs of starting a small business and keeping it running are much lower.
Whenever I visit the US, I have to prepare myself for woefully understaffed businesses...that charge 2-3x what a meal, coffee, etc. costs in much of Asia. And many are open for 5 hours a day because they can't stay open longer and make money.
Beggars can't be choosers. The economics of American life, and the expectations that have been bred, have led to a situation in which paying more for less is the norm and it's only going to get worse. Unless you're willing to pay $20 and wait 30 minutes for a cappuccino, expect fewer humans to be serving you.