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The Software Revolution

blog.samaltman.com

41–50 of 397 posts

Re: The Software Revolution

#41
> A number of things that used to take the resources of nations—building a rocket, for example—are now doable by companies, at least partially enabled by software.

This is nothing new. Organized humans have always been able to cause outsized amounts of harm to other humans, they hardly needed software to do this. And in far greater orders of magnitude than a rocket. The effective answer to new, software-enabled threats is the same as it is to mercenaries, industrial polluters, rampant loggers and strip miners, arms manufacturers, human traffickers. Organization at a bigger scale to combat it. Pull the rug out from under them economically, understand their place sociologically, raise awareness culturally.

Re: The Software Revolution

#42
The correlation between software and large scale loss of jobs is far from proven. The US unemployment rate fluctuates wildly based on many factors [0], but ~30 years or so into the software revolution it isn't too much higher than it has been historically. Parkinson's Law may be the answer to the threat of large scale job loss. There's a long list of startups who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding because "money is cheap right now" and proceeded to hire offices full of people with a wide variety of titles. If the leaders of the tech industry are willing to hire for the sake of hiring, the overall economy is probably safe for just a little while longer. The prevailing wisdom is that rational actors won't spend money to hire people that aren't essential to their business, and they'll opt to use software instead of people if the software is cheaper. In practice these so called rational actors often use any savings from software to hire more people, whether they are essential or not. Part of it is because there's always something that could be done, and another part is that having a lot of employees makes people feel good about themselves. Whatever the motivation, mass unemployment is most likely a problem that will take care of itself.

In the context of this essay the term "concentration of power" seems to mean the ability of a small group to have an outsized (and harmful) influence. This seems like a much larger problem than unemployment, but it isn't limited to technology. A network of a few hundred terrorists or just five guys in france can bring cities to a halt and affect the psyche of entire countries. It's just something that we're going through right now as a global culture, and I don't see any quick fixes. It is clear that the threat of malevolent AI is greatly overhyped, and I can't wait until the zeitgeist moves on to another flavor of the month criss du jour. There are very real threats facing the world right now and we shouldn't spend too much time worrying about something that might or might not happen, that we couldn't stop even if wanted to. Synthetic biology probably falls into the same category, though the ability to manufacture deadly viruses is based much more firmly in fact.

Guns, bombs, computers and the basic building blocks of life cannot be made illegal and confiscated en masse. One of the best ways to solve the threats posed by technology is to take the idea of income inequality, mentioned in this essay, very seriously. We've created a culture where people measure their self worth by the value of the companies they found. When I talk to people about technology, I don't hear about the large and small advances that make our lives a little bit better every day. I hear, "Isn't it crazy that Instagram was worth $XX billion dollars? I want to start a company and make that much too!". This is poison and it has to stop. If we place all the emphasis on who made what, we create a world where a lot of people get left out and forgotten. Then they spend their time in dark basements, watching extremist videos and working carelessly with dangerous tools. We need to turn technology into something that has benefits for everyone, in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones from some of its most dire consequences.

[0] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html

Re: The Software Revolution

#43
post #31

One thing I often see repeated is that every new industrial technology initially destroyed some jobs but eventually created a lot of new ones: the cotton gin, the steam engine, the car, etc. That's because these things only did one thing, and by doing that one thing really well they opened a lot of side-niches. It took a lot of time to invent and scale out new machines, so for long periods of time these side-niches w…

Agree that earlier advancements created a lot of new ones. But do you think that lack of globalization in previous instances had a very significant part to play? Especially where and how the cost savings achieved through automation were invested back? (honest question)

Re: The Software Revolution

#44
If you have the time, it's worth listening to Mc Kenna's talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PucjQXO2k0

McKenna is very dense and goes into immense detail about how we got here, and more importantly where we are going. I need not say more, except that Mc Kenna compares technological revolution as being similar to a birth of a child ― bloody and traumatic, but at the same time wonderful and awe inspiring.

Re: The Software Revolution

#45
post #18

> The new existential threats won’t require the resources of nations to produce. The continued openness of the Internet relies on the Government, no? Is it wrong to think that AI relies on that as well? > The fact that we don’t have serious efforts underway to combat threats from synthetic biology and AI development is astonishing. Isn't this what government is for?

Think "NSA develops AI cyberwarfare capabilities", with the kind of infra access that it has.

Re: The Software Revolution

#46
post #15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income. People may scoff, but this is one of the extremely rare ideas that can draw significant support from both sides of the isle in the US. There are pockets of strong opposition to the idea on both the right and the left, but I can only hope that the far left's opposition to basic income continues. That opposition in and off itself makes most politicians in this country take a serious look at the idea.

Two questions: 1. How will this help with wealth that's already accumulated? I get how this will slow further accumulation. 2. How about capital flight? If the US enacts a policy like this, what stops the super rich from moving to other countries?

1.

You're assuming redistribution wouldn't happen through heavy taxation of existing capital and property, like France's wealth tax[1], where you pay when your worldwide net worth is above 1,300,000€.

2.

The US taxes citizens regardless of where they live[1], and in the case of renouncing the US citizenship it is required you pay an exit tax[2] equivalent to the capital gains of selling all your property when above $680,000.

[1]: http://www.french-property.com/guides/france/finance-taxatio... [2]: http://hodgen.com/does-the-united-states-stand-alone/ [3]: http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Expat...

Re: The Software Revolution

#47
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income. People may scoff, but this is one of the extremely rare ideas that can draw significant support from both sides of the isle in the US. There are pockets of strong opposition to the idea on both the right and the left, but I can only hope that the far left's opposition to basic income continues. That opposition in and off itself makes most politicians in this country take a serious look at the idea.

Which part of the right supports basic income?

Some Libertarians have kicked around the idea. Basic income would replace all of the welfare bureaucracies.

EDIT: rcfox beat me to it by a few minutes.

Re: The Software Revolution

#49
> because it takes huge amounts of energy to enrich Uranium. One effectively needs the resources of nations to do it.

False. The electricity to enrich a bomb's worth of material costs about $60,000. The plant itself is cheaper than the Tesla gigafactory, and it'll yield 1,000 times the energy it takes to run making regular reactor fuel (gigafactory will be lucky to break even). Laser enrichment is even cheaper, of course.

Re: The Software Revolution

#50
post #22

> In human history, there have been three great technological revolutions and many smaller ones. The three great ones are the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the one we are now in the middle of—the software revolution. Arguably the control of fire was a great revolution as well.

And the wheel, that was revolutionary.

I would guess the wheel was part of the agricultural revolution? Maybe that's wrong.

edit: yes, it seems I was wrong, the wheel was discovered much after the agricultural revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#History Given that though, I wonder if its impact was smaller than the other great revolutions.

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