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Global Intelligence Crisis

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Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#101

Post by threethirtytwo »

krackers wrote: post #62
threethirtytwo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an aspect of the truth. Tons of people don’t price match and tons of people do. Whats nuts about humans is the quickness of judgement and extremity of statements. Think about this, the man who said that is not actually nuts. And you calling him “nuts” is actually the more ludicrously unrealistic statement.

I also did err by making a blanket statement "no one price matches for protein bars", so GP was right to call it out. I do understand and see that there are cases in which one's time preference could be such that it is sensible or necessary to price-match at that granularity even when buying a single unit. However even then there's still other constraints such as cost of transportation & reputation of vendor. Even to…

>I also did err by making a blanket statement "no one price matches for protein bars", so GP was right to call it out.

This was clearly an error. GP is right to call it out, but not right to characterize it as nuts. It's obvious what you meant.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#102

Post by bdangubic »

lijok wrote: post #89
suddenlybananas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of someone returning groceries (unless it turned out to be moldy or something). Definitely not because they were cheaper elsewhere. Surely there would be food safety issues with accepting such returns.

Perishables don’t get reshelved, they get binned

amazing reading this thread and realizing just how much HN is disconnected from the reality of majority of people in America. returning food and hitting multiple stores is like a daily thing for several people I know

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#103

Post by apical_dendrite »

> Coding agents had collapsed the barrier to entry for launching a delivery app. A competent developer could deploy a functional competitor in weeks, and dozens did, enticing drivers away from DoorDash and Uber Eats by passing 90-95% of the delivery fee through to the driver. Multi-app dashboards let gig workers track incoming jobs from twenty or thirty platforms at once, eliminating the lock-in that the incumbents depended on. The market fragmented overnight and margins compressed to nearly nothing.

This doesn't make a ton of sense to me. The barrier to entry isn't the app, it's the network of drivers and restaurants, and all the money that apps like DoorDash poured into marketing. Just having a functioning app doesn't really do very much.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#104

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

I am thinking more and more that the current capitalist economic system we have right now will turn out just to be a blip in history and something else will evolve. It seems pretty clear that not too far in the future machines will do pretty much anything better than humans which then makes the current system of trading our time against money obsolete.

It may lead to a very positive future or to a very dark future for most people. Not sure what it will be.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#105

Post by riku_iki »

krackers wrote: post #32
vmg12 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I hand my shopping list to AI, why wouldn't I tell it to price match everything ? People will start doing this sooner than you think. I still remember when people were scared to buy things on the internet, this will be faster.

Are you going to choose to buy your protein bar online from mysteryBargainBar[.]com for a $1 savings, or just pick it up as part of your local grocery trip? > I still remember when people were scared to buy things on the internet People still /are/ scared to buy things from Amazon for things that go on or in their body.

> Are you going to choose to buy your protein bar online from mysteryBargainBar[.]com for a $1 savings, or just pick it up as part of your local grocery trip?

1. I buy in bulk.

2. I check amazon vs walmart usually.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#106

Post by stego-tech »

largbae wrote: post #95
stego-tech wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but historical evidence Okay, I get that. Nobody is disputing historical evidence . What we're asking is, does the current pattern also fit historical evidence ? The answer a growing number of us seemingly reach is, no it does not, because generalized artificial intelligence is by definition able to replace general labor, and that includes future roles as well as current and prior ones . That's what I'm shaking, sc…

I still think Jevons Paradox has a role to play here. It was not obvious at all during the industrial revolution that the middle class would end up processing information, and to the displaced middle class, their prospects must have felt exactly like the article and your statement here. If we accept that information processing and process automation are about to become ludicrously cheap compared to now, what previous…

And all of that sounds great on paper, until - again - you remember that what's being pitched and sold is not the cotton gin, or industrial automation, or robotic assembly lines, but generalized artificial intelligence. The sales pitch is the eventual replacement for all human labor in a consumption-driven society.

Who is going to buy flying vehicles when there's no jobs, and said vehicles are manufactured in dark factories like current Chinese EVs are? Certainly not the swaths of the unemployed.

Who is going to pay for MMORPGs curated by human GMs (again), their compute infrastructure, their content, their maintenance? Not the unemployed, not absent profound societal and policy changes!

The fact you're falling all the way back to basic resource extraction as potential outlets for labor is just...I don't even have the words to describe how profoundly out of touch you are with the effort involved, the harms caused (mining is one of the single most dangerous professions a human can possibly do, and your pitch is to send more humans into the mines? Or onto asteroids? Have you ever talked to a miner?), and the pittance of pay doled out to these humans as-is, nevermind in a post-AI society where labor availability far outstrips available roles.

The problem was never "what will humans do when they don't have to work", but "how will humans survive when they can't find work in a society predicated upon it for survival", and wow, you've done nothing to address that question beyond "send 'em to the mines".

Jevon's Paradox falls to pieces in the fact of a proposed tool that can replace human labor wholesale, and ya'll know it. Stop trying to wallpaper over this with historical context alone and actually sit, think critically, and address the core question at hand:

If human labor is no longer required due to generalized artificial intelligence and robotics rendering humans obsolete, how do we prepare for such a potentiality ahead of time without risking the collapse of society due to sudden and mass displacement of labor?

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#107

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

jstummbillig wrote: post #44
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #40

I think the clear point of this piece is that we have the space and opportunity now to ask ourselves as a group: what are we doing? Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? There has been so little thought to the multi-order effects of the future we're pushing toward, and even if AI fails to deliver on its lofty promises, it will like…

> Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? Everyone, if it comes with productivity gains. We will need good tools to distribute the gains.

“ We will need good tools to distribute the gains.”

As of now there are basically no such tools. Everything is geared towards letting owners accumulate more and more. We would probably need highly progressive taxes to get some level of distribution

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#109

Post by jackie293746 »

lm28469 wrote: post #84
jstummbillig wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? Everyone, if it comes with productivity gains. We will need good tools to distribute the gains.

None of the productivity increase of the last 50 years have benefited the workers, there is absolutely no reason for that to change Is everyone on this website 20 years old? They pulled the same shit with automation, with computers, with internet, with cryptos, and now with ai,... And people keep falling for the same bs over and over again. "the three day workweek", "we'll retire at 45", &c. https://www.epi.org/produ…

[dead]

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#110

Post by jmye »

krackers wrote: post #8

Fun read but >Humans don’t really have the time to price-match across five competing platforms before buying a box of protein bars No one [^1] price matches for protein bars because it's a commodity item with minimal price differences (and people often have a preferred brand anyway), but they probably do for $2k laptop. >once AI agents equipped with MLS access The data is the moat here, I'm sure even today individual…

I’m not clear what you think AI changes in healthcare, or which middlemen you mean? Is it the thousands of start-ups pretending you can use AI for better care? Or are you suggesting the middle men are the doctors?
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