Live data from Hacker News

Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

vox.com

11–20 of 55 posts

Re: Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

#11

I've been thinking of this recently from the perspective of AI as the new mechanization. Not a brilliant idea, but the reason luddites destroyed the looms was because they saw themselves as mechanical beings. Most of the work done in society was mechanical. We made things. Very few people were responsible for thinking. Now, society is information based, and we see ourselves as the thinking machines. Just as the indus…

The luddites did not destroy the looms because they objected to the idea of mechanized looms, but because they objected to the politics and exploitation pushed by those introducing the looms: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/brian-merchant/bl...

Re: Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

#12

No. It will descend into scamming sweatshop bot offices in the dusty reaches of the world thinking they can make a faster buck by using fewer employees than when before ai (think along the lines of (peopleperhour, mechanical turk, call centres, help centres, it software support).

In a perfect world, consumers would not tolerate bad support/service now that anyone (literally anyone) can learn to provide good service with an AI. The bad companies would go out of business, and the few struggling with the consequences of incompetent support would learn that courts now define insufficient support as gross negligence.

Re: Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

#15

Not sure why everyone is saying no, the answer is obviously yes. Having infinitely patient and accurate brains that can spin up in a dime will be the greatest economic boon we have ever seen.

depends. The issue is that LLMs effectively “centralize” the functionality into a small set of models, which means if the costs of service drop too much compared to increase in demand, then GDP may perversely decrease. It all depends on whether AI actually increases net demand

Re: Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

#16

Not sure why everyone is saying no, the answer is obviously yes. Having infinitely patient and accurate brains that can spin up in a dime will be the greatest economic boon we have ever seen.

so take me for example.. A single father. how will AI make Me more money?

Re: Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

#17
The problem is, the AI needs to stop getting better (or only ever get slightly better) after a very specific point. It needs to be good enough to avoid getting tangled up in bureaucracy, but not be good enough to take over/wreck the current economic and political systems (at the least).

Re: Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

#19
post #10

I've been thinking of this recently from the perspective of AI as the new mechanization. Not a brilliant idea, but the reason luddites destroyed the looms was because they saw themselves as mechanical beings. Most of the work done in society was mechanical. We made things. Very few people were responsible for thinking. Now, society is information based, and we see ourselves as the thinking machines. Just as the indus…

You realize we are mechanical, thinking beings. What else is left for us to do?

Social engagement. There has always been a small segment of people able to make a life that way, but with the other two concerns out of the way it opens the floodgates.

Re: Will AI usher in an era of explosive economic growth?

#20
post #10

I've been thinking of this recently from the perspective of AI as the new mechanization. Not a brilliant idea, but the reason luddites destroyed the looms was because they saw themselves as mechanical beings. Most of the work done in society was mechanical. We made things. Very few people were responsible for thinking. Now, society is information based, and we see ourselves as the thinking machines. Just as the indus…

You realize we are mechanical, thinking beings. What else is left for us to do?

We can legally own things. Maybe in the future, our income is derived from farming our AI servers. Just hook them into a broader network and allow people to hire them out for AI tasks. We just focus on building our bot army.
Post reply on HN