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Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

epoch.ai

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Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#151

Post by scarface_74 »

dragontamer wrote: post #142
mustyoshi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120 years ago 40% of Americans were farmers, today that number is under 2%. That technical progress resulted in a few companies and farm conglomerates becoming incredibly wealthy. But the benefits that we all received was we didn't have to toil in a field, and we get fresh beef on every corner. The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive.

> The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive. The wealth gap was growing since 1980. Is the median person better today when the median person cannot afford a college education or a house? Both of those were easily afforded in the 80s. Also remember: the average job didn't require a college education back then either. College has become a gatekeeper due to its rising costs…

Why is “affording a house” the marker of a success? I would say just the opposite. Owning a home decreases mobility and the ability to move to where the jobs are.

That being said, the home ownership rate in the US is 65% and almost anyone who wants to go to college can via loans and scholarships.

Only around 40% of people in the US have a college education. But that doesn’t mean that the other 60% are homeless and starving.

Then cultural, as we see now, there is very much an anti-intellectual anti college bias by a major user of people in the country.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#152

Post by mitjam »

It’s a matter of the relative value of types of production factors. Will AI increase or decrease the relative value of human labor compared to machinery, raw materials, and land? Beyond Adam Smith: What about Social, cultural, and Symbolic capital (Pierre Bourdieu). My gut feeling: median relative value of labor down, especially for knowlege worker, Other factors up, including social, symbolic, cultural capital. Being in an in-group protects, eg. in regulated professions. I expect regulations and group-thinking to go up as a protective measure.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#153

Post by techpineapple »

rchaud wrote: post #139
dogcomplex wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had a long history of technological improvements being widespread distributed to the people. There's not a particularly bleak reason to believe the latest AI automation won't be too. Look around your desk or your house and just count all the effort-saving devices that have made their way down to you. Look at the price of TVs cratering. Tech that can be recreated easily spreads far and wide. AI can too. It's dro…

I'm struggling to think of any technological advancement in the past 20 years that's saved me time. The only real change has been a shift to WFH, but that happened independently of technological change in that era. Even things like screen sharing and remote desktop were possible before that time. 25 years ago, sure: online shopping/banking, email and chat -- these are all things my Blackberry or Nokia could handle. T…

This is the core of my original beef, techno-optimism seems divorced from the exact things I think it’s ideologically trying to promote, and instead is just “AI will fix everything”.

And I basically agree about sort of time saving, we got smart phones, which I think was of questionable benefit compared to the invention of computers, the internet, and cell phones in the first place.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#154

Post by ctoth »

rchaud wrote: post #139
dogcomplex wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had a long history of technological improvements being widespread distributed to the people. There's not a particularly bleak reason to believe the latest AI automation won't be too. Look around your desk or your house and just count all the effort-saving devices that have made their way down to you. Look at the price of TVs cratering. Tech that can be recreated easily spreads far and wide. AI can too. It's dro…

I'm struggling to think of any technological advancement in the past 20 years that's saved me time. The only real change has been a shift to WFH, but that happened independently of technological change in that era. Even things like screen sharing and remote desktop were possible before that time. 25 years ago, sure: online shopping/banking, email and chat -- these are all things my Blackberry or Nokia could handle. T…

Tell me you never called for a taxi and waited two hours for it only not to show up without telling me.

Uber has saved me a remarkable amount of time.

More-generally:

https://gwern.net/improvement

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#155

Post by OJFord »

scarface_74 wrote: post #151
dragontamer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive. The wealth gap was growing since 1980. Is the median person better today when the median person cannot afford a college education or a house? Both of those were easily afforded in the 80s. Also remember: the average job didn't require a college education back then either. College has become a gatekeeper due to its rising costs…

Why is “affording a house” the marker of a success? I would say just the opposite. Owning a home decreases mobility and the ability to move to where the jobs are. That being said, the home ownership rate in the US is 65% and almost anyone who wants to go to college can via loans and scholarships. Only around 40% of people in the US have a college education. But that doesn’t mean that the other 60% are homeless and st…

Ok, 'having that much money (or credit worthiness to borrow it) regardless of what you do with it', then?

Many people don't want to be itinerant, they want a settled home to make their own and enjoy for a long time if not life. 'Forever home' is a phrase and a positive one because that is a goal people have.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#156

Post by deadbabe »

rqtwteye wrote: post #25
techpineapple wrote: post #2

Does anyone else find techno-optimism really depressing? I guess one for the more common reason that it’s displacing humanity with technology, but the second reason is just you can’t get excited about a hype that is unlikely to manifest. It feels very ungrounded from tangible benefits to society.

Technical progress would be fantastic if the benefits didn't go mainly to the top. I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology that you can live off the land somewhere with the help of some robots. Or have them do all your housework. In principle, this is great, but our society is not set up for a lot of people not working while the technology is progressed by a relatively small number o…

I can think of one technology that could easily solve this problem: an ability to “freeze” people into some kind of hibernation indefinitely until they are needed. Potentially, this could even mean going to sleep on Earth and then waking up on some distant planet colony where they need people. Jarring, but somehow people can find a good life this way I bet.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#157

Post by whattheheckheck »

hollerith wrote: post #146
pphysch wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

96 years ago we there was a massive financial crisis and depression that killed a lot of people and is directly related to the (lack of) national policies of the time. USA recovered remarkably well, but only because there was a big pivot away from crony capitalism and towards "socialism" under FDR. Big investments in The People, unions, education, infrastructure. We are going in the former direction right now.

Causal relationships can be hard to discern. Some say that FDR's policies extended the downturn to 10 years whereas recovery from previous downturns was much quicker. (Also, it is not clear to me how any of this is relevant to "The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive".)

I don't think your comment adds clarity to the line of questioning and reasoning.

I think it's damaging to clear thinking by muddying the waters.

I give you an example of returning the favor to you:

"Causual relationships can be hard to discern. Some say when people spout a spurious claim without evidence nor citations that falls in line with the entrenched structural power interests it simply shuts down critical thinking and causes people to not advocate for themselves and their own self interests which lets deep systemic issues fester and rot and leading to mass violence."

https://a.co/d/9rTmcYe https://a.co/d/5aIpwPC https://a.co/d/0ujVgWg https://a.co/d/0g5HHDh

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#158

Post by whatshisface »

rqtwteye wrote: post #148
hollerith wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Causal relationships can be hard to discern. Some say that FDR's policies extended the downturn to 10 years whereas recovery from previous downturns was much quicker. (Also, it is not clear to me how any of this is relevant to "The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive".)

These are probably the same people who say that environmental regulation is not necessary because companies would clean up pollution anyways.

"If the health benefits of pollution were so bad, insurers would pay plants to install scrubbers."

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#159

Post by ryandrake »

aiajsbdbdjxjx wrote: post #143
mustyoshi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120 years ago 40% of Americans were farmers, today that number is under 2%. That technical progress resulted in a few companies and farm conglomerates becoming incredibly wealthy. But the benefits that we all received was we didn't have to toil in a field, and we get fresh beef on every corner. The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive.

Nobody’s arguing things aren’t better in some ways than the past. But your argument amounts to what is essentially trickle down economics. The median American is getting a marginal improvement - the top .1% American has gotten an astronomical improvement. The wealth gap increasing is a moral failure of our billionaires. They should take pride in building a better tomorrow for their fellow countrymen. And what we have…

It's not just a moral failure of the billionaires. Many of us live in democracies, so we are choosing (through our elected officials) that creating a few billionaires is more important than building a better tomorrow. The sorry state of things could be undone in a single election if people didn't explicitly want and vote for the sorry state of things.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#160

Post by bennettnate5 »

teucris wrote: post #149
riehwvfbk wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do, however, have computer assisted plumbers, electricians, and other technicians. With nothing more than YouTube one can fix appliances and cars, or do some DIY home improvement, and the projects that are possible are much more involved than they were in the old days. It's very hard to pick up these skills from a book, but if there's a video to walk through the process - the projects become possible. AI-assisted…

I have four books that I got from my dad - one for construction and repairs, one for electrical, one for plumbing, and one for landscaping. They’re in simple English with excellent illustrations. Using those books, I’ve been able to fix/improve pretty much everything in my house for ten years.

Could you list the titles/author of these books? I'd actually really like to get more into DIY home improvement, and having a starting reference like this would be really valuable
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