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The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

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Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#11

Post by gruez »

meken wrote: post #9

> If you can make $30 an hour as a digital freelance marketer (a job that did not exist a generation ago), then you won’t accept less than that from working in food service. And if you can make $150 an hour installing HVAC for data centers, you’re not going to accept less from doing home AC service. Plenty of people work jobs for less money because they enjoy the work more. I’m not sure if it’s worth reading what fol…

That might be true but that doesn't mean the effect is false in the aggregate. The classic example given in Baumol's paper was a violinist[1]. Sure, playing a violin might be more enjoyable than working in HVAC or churning out enterprise CRUD apps, and some people might even accept a paycut[2] to be a violinist, but that doesn't mean the effect isn't real. Despite zero productivity growth in being a concert violinist, wages for it has still risen, thanks to productivity growth elsewhere. People might be willing to take a pay cut to be a violinist, but not a arbitrarily large paycut.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential

Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#12

Post by lkey »

lkey wrote: post #5

I don't think any 'interesting thought' that serves as a conclusion to an article should begin like so: | 'With radiologists, I’m totally speculating and I have no idea what the actual workflow of a radiologist involves...' Speculation from a place of ignorance is suitable for bar-side musings, not an article that wants us to take it seriously.

Also as noted in the prior dupe, the article also misunderstands it's own topic, as explained in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox):

In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological advancements make a resource more efficient *to use*; however, as the cost of *using the resource drops*, if demand is highly price elastic [PED], this results in overall demand [for the resource] increasing.

The cost to use tokens is already zero or deeply negative, depending on your accounting. And the author is mistaking the cost of 'creating/extracting the resource' (token generation economics) with cost of 'using the resource' (calling an API). I don't think we'll understand the true cost of, and demand for AI services for quite some time.

Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#14

Post by biophysboy »

>If you live in the United States today, and you accidentally knock a hole in your wall, it’s probably cheaper to buy a flatscreen TV and stick it in front of the hole, compared to hiring a handyman to fix your drywall.

Is it cheaper than buying a TV, and then having someone come install it on your wall? More meaningless drivel from Marc Andreesen.

Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#15

Post by RationPhantoms »

nocoiner wrote: post #10
TekMol wrote: post #4

you accidentally knock a hole in your wall, it’s probably cheaper to buy a flatscreen TV and stick it in front of the hole What I recently did is that I 3D-printed an object with PLA that exactly fit the whole and just glued that in with assembly glue. What does the HN panel say? Is it a solution? Or does it have any downside?

I commend you for your imagination. Can I ask how you crafted the object to match the dimensions? I’m brand new to 3D printing and currently climbing the learning curve of printing itself but will want to start learning about doing my own modeling soon. The only criticism I’d make is that patching drywall is dead simple and cheap and so your solution seems possibly a bit overengineered (and, while I’m at it, that And…

I've personally used the Lidar sensors on my iPhone with an app like Polycam to some degree of success. I was doing a scan of a massive oak tree in my backyard to plan out the treehouse tab location and associated treehouse for my kids but fell flat after the model was created (Sketchup is truly enshittified). I'd imagine a similar process for creating the "fill" for the void in the wall.

Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#16

Post by parpfish »

that example of the radiologist review cases touches on one worry i have about automation with human-in-the-loop for safety. specifically that a human in the loop wont work as a safeguard unless they are meaningfully engaged beyond being a simple reviewer.

how do you sustain attention and thoughtfully review radiological scans when 99% of the time you agree with the automated assessment? i'm pretty sure that no matter how well trained the doctor is they will end up just spamming "LGTM" after a while.

Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#17

Post by wonnage »

It’s not like people are piling into AI at the expense of other jobs, tech hiring and wages on general seem down relative to a couple of years ago. Hard to see the link between either effect and AI

Also weird that Dutch disease wasn’t mentioned at all, it actually seems more relevant.

Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#18

Post by CuriouslyC »

parpfish wrote: post #16

that example of the radiologist review cases touches on one worry i have about automation with human-in-the-loop for safety. specifically that a human in the loop wont work as a safeguard unless they are meaningfully engaged beyond being a simple reviewer. how do you sustain attention and thoughtfully review radiological scans when 99% of the time you agree with the automated assessment? i'm pretty sure that no matte…

The likelihood is that models will "box" questionable stuff for radiologist review, and the boxing threshold will probably be set low enough that radiologists stay sharp (though we probably won't do this at first and skills may atrophy for a bit).

This is also a free source training data over time so market incentives are there.

Re: The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related

#20

Post by estearum »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #18
parpfish wrote: post #16

that example of the radiologist review cases touches on one worry i have about automation with human-in-the-loop for safety. specifically that a human in the loop wont work as a safeguard unless they are meaningfully engaged beyond being a simple reviewer. how do you sustain attention and thoughtfully review radiological scans when 99% of the time you agree with the automated assessment? i'm pretty sure that no matte…

The likelihood is that models will "box" questionable stuff for radiologist review, and the boxing threshold will probably be set low enough that radiologists stay sharp (though we probably won't do this at first and skills may atrophy for a bit). This is also a free source training data over time so market incentives are there.

Far more likely to be the reverse: people care about this right now and after 99% model-agreement rate the obvious thing to do will be to save money and change the threshold.
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