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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?

#351

Post by inerte »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #308
ozgung wrote: post #44

Finding 4 is a must-read: > Finding 4: Labor vs. capital share: The pie will grow, but a larger share might go to capital > Today, of each dollar the economy produces, about 60¢ goes to workers and 40¢ go to capital. Modest scenario: 40.6% to capital in 2030 (labor share down 0.6 points) Substantial scenario: 43.9% to capital in 2030 (labor share down 3.9 points) Extreme scenario: 54.8% to capital in 2030 (labor shar…

How do we fight that ? I'm thinking on this topic a lot lately - how do we change the system so that the bigger the company, the harder it becomes ? It's more of a political / societal issue. Similarly to housing - I believe it should be cheap to buy your first home, more expensive to buy a second one, and very expensive afterwards.

We can definitively punish bigger companies. The issue is the geopolitical positioning, and basically agreeing that we accept smaller companies in our country / society while another country might develop bigger companies, and in theory have more power. Maybe more actual military power.

So unless it's a worldwide agreement, really hard to make this happen.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#352

Post by senordevnyc »

npilk wrote: post #250

I think (hope?) the fundamental fallacy in arguments like these is assuming that individual task-level productivity improvement will ladder up to economy-wide transformation. IMO knowledge work productivity has gone up a massive amount since 1990, and companies could in fact fire most of their knowledge workers while still getting their most critical work done. (These are the bullshit jobs/email jobs.) But companies…

IMO knowledge work productivity has gone up a massive amount since 1990, and companies could in fact fire most of their knowledge workers while still getting their most critical work done. (These are the bullshit jobs/email jobs.) But companies mostly haven't done this, which implies other reasons for employing so many knowledge workers.

Or it might imply that this theory is just wrong?

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#353

Post by pezezin »

beachy wrote: post #345
pezezin wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When I watch medical professionals at work, a lot of the time they are writing or typing, reading or shuffling through notes, talking to others or waiting for results from some lab down the hall. Or any number of things that to me look like crappy admin tasks. I'm sure they aren't all, but friends who work in the hospital tell tales of woeful inefficiencies and pointless beauracracy. Of course YMMV and this is a publ…

This was also a public health system (Spain), but I guess it might depend on the country.

Now that you mentions labs, he spent the last 10 years of his career (maybe more, I don't remember clearly) working at a food analysis lab and there was a lot of waiting for results there, but it is what it is, microorganisms take their time to grow and no LLM in the world can make them go faster.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#354

Post by npilk »

senordevnyc wrote: post #352
npilk wrote: post #250

I think (hope?) the fundamental fallacy in arguments like these is assuming that individual task-level productivity improvement will ladder up to economy-wide transformation. IMO knowledge work productivity has gone up a massive amount since 1990, and companies could in fact fire most of their knowledge workers while still getting their most critical work done. (These are the bullshit jobs/email jobs.) But companies…

IMO knowledge work productivity has gone up a massive amount since 1990, and companies could in fact fire most of their knowledge workers while still getting their most critical work done. (These are the bullshit jobs/email jobs.) But companies mostly haven't done this, which implies other reasons for employing so many knowledge workers. Or it might imply that this theory is just wrong?

Yes, certainly it could be wrong, it's just my personal (very vibes-based) opinion. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#355

Post by noisy_boy »

pezezin wrote: post #353
beachy wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I watch medical professionals at work, a lot of the time they are writing or typing, reading or shuffling through notes, talking to others or waiting for results from some lab down the hall. Or any number of things that to me look like crappy admin tasks. I'm sure they aren't all, but friends who work in the hospital tell tales of woeful inefficiencies and pointless beauracracy. Of course YMMV and this is a publ…

This was also a public health system (Spain), but I guess it might depend on the country. Now that you mentions labs, he spent the last 10 years of his career (maybe more, I don't remember clearly) working at a food analysis lab and there was a lot of waiting for results there, but it is what it is, microorganisms take their time to grow and no LLM in the world can make them go faster.

> microorganisms take their time to grow and no LLM in the world can make them go faster

Rate limited by biology. Love that.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#356

Post by fhejfnenjdcn »

NickHirras wrote: post #339
fg137 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mass automation will be disastrous for GDP in service economies. Service economies exist to provide services to other people who also provide services. If the services themselves get automated, you don't need that massive inefficient system to support service-providing workers anymore. GDP goes to zero.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#357

Post by busyant »

pezezin wrote: post #353
beachy wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I watch medical professionals at work, a lot of the time they are writing or typing, reading or shuffling through notes, talking to others or waiting for results from some lab down the hall. Or any number of things that to me look like crappy admin tasks. I'm sure they aren't all, but friends who work in the hospital tell tales of woeful inefficiencies and pointless beauracracy. Of course YMMV and this is a publ…

This was also a public health system (Spain), but I guess it might depend on the country. Now that you mentions labs, he spent the last 10 years of his career (maybe more, I don't remember clearly) working at a food analysis lab and there was a lot of waiting for results there, but it is what it is, microorganisms take their time to grow and no LLM in the world can make them go faster.

> no LLM in the world can make them go faster

You mean the microbes have to double n-times (to get sufficient numbers of microbes) before tests can be run on them.

But maybe the LLMs figure out a way to run those tests on microbes that have only doubled 0.1(n-times).

You could then think of the LLMs as being a more honest version of Elizabeth Holmes.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#358

Post by munificent »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #308
ozgung wrote: post #44

Finding 4 is a must-read: > Finding 4: Labor vs. capital share: The pie will grow, but a larger share might go to capital > Today, of each dollar the economy produces, about 60¢ goes to workers and 40¢ go to capital. Modest scenario: 40.6% to capital in 2030 (labor share down 0.6 points) Substantial scenario: 43.9% to capital in 2030 (labor share down 3.9 points) Extreme scenario: 54.8% to capital in 2030 (labor shar…

How do we fight that ? I'm thinking on this topic a lot lately - how do we change the system so that the bigger the company, the harder it becomes ? It's more of a political / societal issue. Similarly to housing - I believe it should be cheap to buy your first home, more expensive to buy a second one, and very expensive afterwards.

If you're in the US, two days ago was your annual reminder of exactly the answer to that question.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#359

Post by osigurdson »

I like how the nurse gets to check if the AI is doing the right thing as one of her new tasks. AI is going to have to get to the point where it can do things on its own or it will only transform problem domains where verification is fast and inexpensive. Otherwise something is getting traded and people will notice, eventually.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#360

Post by krapp »

bdangubic wrote: post #347
krapp wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -…

how will this manifest itself!? like you envision a future where there will be say a hospital, ran by anthropic which is AI powered fully, no company behind it, just plain Claude running everything from the moment you walk in till you walk out? I am having a hard time imagining a future where “AI” isn’t just a tool that a given establishment decided to use much like anything else they use

> you envision a future where there will be say a hospital, ran by anthropic which is AI powered fully, no company behind it, just plain Claude running everything from the moment you walk in till you walk out

Everything as much as possible, yes, and the company behind it will be an AI driven autonomous corporation as well. Although I suspect that by then there will be some industry specific AI model being used by hospitals, not just plain Claude.

AI will handle patient data, diagnostics, prescriptions, everything that doesn't absolutely require a human and can't yet be done by a robot.

Somewhere, some human will be making money but they will be far from any legal liability, probably safely ensconced in a bunker on a private island when the gravy train really hits the fan.

>I am having a hard time imagining a future where “AI” isn’t just a tool that a given establishment decided to use much like anything else they use

The people making the decisions, investing the money and writing the laws imagine so much more, though. You assume the future of AI is governed by rational people making rational decisions but it isn't, it's governed by Musk and Thiel and sociopaths and grifters and cultists who want to immanentize the eschaton so they can stand at the right hand of God.

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