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The Software Revolution

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The Software Revolution

#141

Post by mordae »

tormeh wrote: post #96
gaius wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What useful work could a manual labourer do, if you automated his job away tomorrow? It sounds harsh but not everyone can be a Javascript developer or whatever the current fashionable thing is. And what's to stop that useful thing being automated away next?

The Free Market has been faced with this problem countless times, and each time the answer has been "the service sector". First we moved from agriculture to industry until agriculture, previously humanity's main occupation, became a small part of the economy. Now we move from manufacturing to services. It's not even a new phenomenon. It's been going on for a couple of decades now.

Not really, even the service sector is being heavily optimized these days. What are we going to do once we optimize away banks and real estate agents?

Re: The Software Revolution

#142

Post by tiler »

girmad wrote: post #2

> Technology provides leverage on ability and luck, and in the process concentrates wealth and drives inequality. I think that drastic wealth inequality is likely to be one of the biggest social problems of the next 20 years. [2] We can—and we will—redistribute wealth, but it still doesn’t solve the real problem of people needing something fulfilling to do. What's the best case realistic scenario for redistributing w…

Imagine a system which levied taxes not to fund government expenditure but to carefully control inflation. In this system there is no need for the government to collect taxes from citizen X to fund the needs of citizen Y. How is this possible? Study U.S. fiscal policy and you will learn about such a system. Given enough consideration you will eventually see that 'the redistribution of wealth' from citizen X to Y is an antiquated idea given how our monetary system actually works. A more accurate description of what occurs is: given the growth of the productivity of the population as a whole, we can 'distribute wealth' to those with less as long as this distribution doesn't cause the system to become unstable.

Re: The Software Revolution

#143

Post by jjoonathan »

tormeh wrote: post #96
gaius wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What useful work could a manual labourer do, if you automated his job away tomorrow? It sounds harsh but not everyone can be a Javascript developer or whatever the current fashionable thing is. And what's to stop that useful thing being automated away next?

The Free Market has been faced with this problem countless times, and each time the answer has been "the service sector". First we moved from agriculture to industry until agriculture, previously humanity's main occupation, became a small part of the economy. Now we move from manufacturing to services. It's not even a new phenomenon. It's been going on for a couple of decades now.

I would love to believe that the service sector will be able to absorb the displaced labor without creating insane, poisonous power dynamics that put large sections of the population into an unnecessarily horrible position. For the very reason that I would love to believe this, I am cautious. Do you know of any other reasons why I should let myself hold this belief? I don't find these very convincing:

* Faith

* Optimism

* Vague comparisons to historical events that differ in every detail imaginable

Re: The Software Revolution

#144

Post by innguest »

delinka wrote: post #11
gphil wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're asking sama about his opinion or if you want others to chime in. A popular answer among the HN crowd that I tend to agree with is to tax the wealthy and distribute the proceeds to the poor via a "basic income" scheme.

Why wait for a tax? If we're in the top %x of income earners, why aren't we taking it upon ourselves to give away our wealth? Form a charitable organization that takes care of people, donate your money. Edit: I'm with the others here replying with "reduced burdens on the middle class and small businesses" and "...teach a man to fish..." I keep seeing this basic income and wealth distribution topic on HN and I would g…

Because keynesians don't really want to help the poor, they want to be taxed which serves as flogging to atone for their guilt for the poor, which then makes them feel better about themselves.

If we wanted to help the poor we would be making things easier for small businesses, not harder.

You don't help people by giving them fish, you help them by teaching them how to fish. I can't believe I'm having to remind HNers about this.

Re: The Software Revolution

#145

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

stdbrouw wrote: post #61
peapicker wrote: post #58

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." I'm not sure I agree with this proposition. When I was in India, I noticed a large amount of roadwork was being done by men with shovels and other fairly low tech. I asked about it, and was told, to paraphrase, "Sure, we could do it better and faster with machines, but it is better for society to provide employment to those who would otherwise be u…

Surely having a job is not the only way to be or feel like a dignified human being? And how long will you continue to feel dignified in a job that exists for the sole purpose of making you feel dignified but could really just as well be done by machines?

“I have only twenty acres of land,” replied the Turk, “which my children and I cultivate. Our work keeps us free of three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.”

From Voltaire's Candide

Re: The Software Revolution

#146

Post by aceperry »

peapicker wrote: post #75
peapicker wrote: post #58

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." I'm not sure I agree with this proposition. When I was in India, I noticed a large amount of roadwork was being done by men with shovels and other fairly low tech. I asked about it, and was told, to paraphrase, "Sure, we could do it better and faster with machines, but it is better for society to provide employment to those who would otherwise be u…

I knew I would hear these objections... and I still stand by my assertion in general.

I wholeheartedly agree with your points and sentiment, but have one minor issue. It might actually be cheaper in that type of economy to have manual laborers than to use machinery which requires its own support infrastructure and much higher priced workers. That is one reason why many of the poorer countries don't have some of the more "efficent" and high volume machinery that are used in the industrialized countries.

Re: The Software Revolution

#147

Post by minthd »

fragsworth wrote: post #123

This might be a really unpopular thing to say around this site, but it honestly scares me that Sam Altman cares so much about this particular topic (the risks of AI). He stands to have a ton of influence over it in the coming years - enough to even lead the charge - and I can't imagine he is smart enough to do it right. If he fucks up, we are all fucked.

I don't know him by any means, But i don't think he has that much influence on the matter. He has a business to run, with certain incentives built in, and that probably requires choosing certain choices, whether he feels they are good or not in this context.And even if he, for example,chooses not to help a company that does bad, i'm sure there are plenty others who will help.

Re: The Software Revolution

#148

Post by temuze »

> I think the best strategy is to try to legislate sensible safeguards but work very hard to make sure the edge we get from technology on the good side is stronger than the edge that bad actors get.

Some suggestions would help. I mean, what are you suggesting here? That studies into AI should be banned? That it should be restricted in some way? That's hard to do.

If your problem is about the potential increase wealth disparity, then this period of history is not unique at all. If anything, it's better than the robber baron days.

The thing I worry about is this: the first person who can make a true AI that can iterate on itself, assuming all goes well, would have way too much power. They could beat everyone else in the financial markets. They could short the online ad industry and make a killing. With those resources, it's a short hop into the physical world and making robots that make other robots and expanding into any other area. Even if someone else develops AI six months after them, I'd worry it'd be too late for adequate competition to exist.

Or even worse - consider the alternative, that AI is freely accessible to everyone. That's terrifying, too! What's to stop someone from asking for something really crazy from a piece of AI that can build, well, anything?

We simply don't have enough data to know what's going to happen. I'd wait and see before blindly making legislation.

Re: The Software Revolution

#149

Post by agentultra »

pi-err wrote: post #57
vijayboyapati wrote: post #34

I think Sam is incorrect when he writes "The great technological revolutions have affected what most people do every day and how society is structured. The previous one, the industrial revolution, created lots of jobs because the new technology required huge numbers of humans to run it. But this is not the normal course of technology" Jobs were not created in the sense that people were previously doing nothing. Jobs…

> The industrial revolution was the same as other technological revolutions and not distinct from them in that it reduced the exertion and strain put on workers ... the condition of workers improved dramatically in the 19th century Industrialization, massification, standardization of production and moving to big cities have had tough consequences on worker's life. Charlie Chaplin shows just that. It was a tougher lif…

I agree.

Dickens wrote many social satires critical of injustices he perceived at the time like workhouses (basically sweatshops backed by organized crime) and Yorkshire boarding houses (pools of child labor). His descriptions of city life were not pleasant: pollution, crime, and unrest. It may have been quantitatively better for society in the long run but I think that the people stuck in those workhouses might have chosen nothing instead of the job they had been so graciously provided if they were given some other means of sustaining themselves.

Re: The Software Revolution

#150

Post by zenogais »

temuze wrote: post #148

> I think the best strategy is to try to legislate sensible safeguards but work very hard to make sure the edge we get from technology on the good side is stronger than the edge that bad actors get. Some suggestions would help. I mean, what are you suggesting here? That studies into AI should be banned? That it should be restricted in some way? That's hard to do. If your problem is about the potential increase wealth…

I don't see how legislation could ever be effective against such extreme concentrations of wealth and power. So I'd definitely like some clarification there as well.
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