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What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

economist.com

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Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#11

Post by pixl97 »

KineticLensman wrote: post #10

Really interesting to read about the history of the tractor, but the relevance to AI is a short almost throw-away para at the end of the article. One massive difference between tractors and AI - not addressed in TFA - is that unlike tractors, using AI doesn't impose a massive upfront cost on the adopters. Many of the major software platforms are rolling out AI without even being asked to. People using Photoshop, MS W…

Ya there are some parallels, but there are many things that don't.

For example these days we live in a borrow/lease economy. Back then the companies wanted to sell you a tractor, but today no one wants to sell you a LLM, they want to sell you a service they maintain. Also interest rates and risk was pretty high in those Years making borrowing more difficult.

Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#12

Post by CamperBob2 »

Loughla wrote: post #8
dghughes wrote: post #7

I can't read the entire article but I can guess its meaning. My grandfather (born in 1901) used to go out to western Canada each fall for the harvest. Tractors then because affordable and fewer people were needed until it was mainly all just tractors and a few people. With generative AI it's sort of a tractor that still needs people but not as many. The former farm workers will need to find other work as will people…

>The former farm workers will need to find other work as will people displaced. This sentence makes me concerned for the future. Most small towns that used to rely on agriculture (in my area of the US at least) are hollow. Poverty, drug abuse, and all the problems that accompany. So if that's the future with AI. . . . Uh oh.

(Shrug) Humans have better things to do than farm.

Have you found your real purpose? Is something stopping you from pursuing it? Yes? Well, AI researchers are trying to fix that. If they succeed, you won't have to spend the rest of your career doing a robot's job.

Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#13

Post by wwweston »

Loughla wrote: post #8
dghughes wrote: post #7

I can't read the entire article but I can guess its meaning. My grandfather (born in 1901) used to go out to western Canada each fall for the harvest. Tractors then because affordable and fewer people were needed until it was mainly all just tractors and a few people. With generative AI it's sort of a tractor that still needs people but not as many. The former farm workers will need to find other work as will people…

>The former farm workers will need to find other work as will people displaced. This sentence makes me concerned for the future. Most small towns that used to rely on agriculture (in my area of the US at least) are hollow. Poverty, drug abuse, and all the problems that accompany. So if that's the future with AI. . . . Uh oh.

Not only that, but industrialized agriculture is a brief experiment on the scale of human history. So along with the way it's made food less scarce and enabled socioeconomic transformation, it's not clear how healthy or sustainable it actually is.

Blithely approaching knowledge and creative work and trades and manual labor in the same way is probably going to have all kinds of unintended consequences that include employment but go well beyond it.

Especially if we start with the premise that while the model is valuable and deeply dependent on training data, we shouldn't make any attempt to structure the value derived so it finds its way back to the training data.

Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#14

Post by Loughla »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #12
Loughla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The former farm workers will need to find other work as will people displaced. This sentence makes me concerned for the future. Most small towns that used to rely on agriculture (in my area of the US at least) are hollow. Poverty, drug abuse, and all the problems that accompany. So if that's the future with AI. . . . Uh oh.

(Shrug) Humans have better things to do than farm. Have you found your real purpose? Is something stopping you from pursuing it? Yes? Well, AI researchers are trying to fix that. If they succeed, you won't have to spend the rest of your career doing a robot's job.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic.

But the one two punch of losing ag jobs to corporations and then losing white collar jobs to AI is just too much.

What else is there? I can't pursue my purpose if I can't afford to eat.

Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#15

Post by yetanother12345 »

The tractor as well as the horse are both capital equipment. Also, hardware. Material stuff. While the horse may to some degree represent a variable cost, the degree of variablility on the tractor amounts to basically fuel.

AI and LLM on the other hand are operating equipment and fully variable costs. Also software, and immaterial.

The only real similarities between a tractor and a LLM is that both at some point were new inventions, and that both makes some tasks easier to do at scale. That's all, as seen from an economic perspective. In all other respects they are almost incommensurate.

Why is it that people think that the mere notion of "AI" means that you can just argue nonsense and forget all previous knowledge? I don't get it.

I think economist.com needs to take an Economy 101 lesson.

Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#16

Post by [deleted] »

hugothefrog wrote: post #5

I’m just in the middle of re-reading Simon Wardley’s collected blog posts on Wardley Mapping (via the soft cover book). My recency bias aside, its uncanny how much his concepts infuse this Economist article. Almost every paragraph echoes a concept from Wardley’s writings; diffusion versus evolution, inertia, co-evolution of practices and capabilities, capital flows, initial innovation versus refinement of an idea, an…

[deleted]

Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#17

Post by hiredthoughtben »

waldothedog wrote: post #6
hugothefrog wrote: post #5

I’m just in the middle of re-reading Simon Wardley’s collected blog posts on Wardley Mapping (via the soft cover book). My recency bias aside, its uncanny how much his concepts infuse this Economist article. Almost every paragraph echoes a concept from Wardley’s writings; diffusion versus evolution, inertia, co-evolution of practices and capabilities, capital flows, initial innovation versus refinement of an idea, an…

Great re-read. Probably the best piece of content that Medium has brought into my life (though I think he had a Blogger for some time prior). Which version of the book are you enjoying? I believe the content is largely the same, but the formatting / treatment of images can vary.

Yep he still seems to post at https://blog.gardeviance.org

Re: What the tractor and the horse tell you about generative AI

#18

Post by hiredthoughtben »

hugothefrog wrote: post #5

I’m just in the middle of re-reading Simon Wardley’s collected blog posts on Wardley Mapping (via the soft cover book). My recency bias aside, its uncanny how much his concepts infuse this Economist article. Almost every paragraph echoes a concept from Wardley’s writings; diffusion versus evolution, inertia, co-evolution of practices and capabilities, capital flows, initial innovation versus refinement of an idea, an…

@hugothefrog Thanks for reading the softcover. If it's the inexpensive white one on Amazon, I hope it met your needs okay! Let me know if you notice anything that got in the way of your enjoyment.
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