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You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

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Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#221

Post by johnnyanmac »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #119
Llamamoe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the input that continuously reconstitutes itself around whatever remains scarce, valuable and socially demanded as productivity rises. Even if, AI is going to tank the bargaining power of the working class even harder than it already is. It's already the reality for many that they're working for minimum wage, in toxic environments, with no benefits, and more overtime than legal in places that regulate it sole…

You think that these ridiculously high wages that companies like Mercor are paying for data generation are "tanking" bargaining power? Its the complete opposite: there is now a massive sector of highly skilled, specialized labor that produces the very data which trains these models, a task that will not end as long as there is demand for newer and better and more specially trained models. That is a massive amount of…

>You think that these ridiculously high wages that companies like Mercor are paying for data generation are "tanking" bargaining power? I

Yes. Especially when those "high wages" are for 2nd/3rd rate countries. Aka below the minumim standards of first world countries.

>that will not end as long as there is demand for newer and better and more specially trained models

So it will in a few decades after models become capable of themselves? Aka GAI? Seems like a bad bet to hedge on the grand scale of history.

>It would take far more severe shocks to the system to kill the possibility of revolution

A surveillance state and a few hundred drones will do it.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#222

Post by johnnyanmac »

derangedHorse wrote: post #184
Llamamoe wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculously high wages for jobs whose explicit purpose is to make human workers(including those partaking in those jobs) obsolete. THE reason why they pay so high is because their end-goal is not having to pay anyone anymore ever again. (or at least, only pay a comparatively tiny amount of people for producing the data)

> Ridiculously high wages for jobs whose explicit purpose is to make human workers(including those partaking in those jobs) obsolete I would say they are making the current cost of one's labor "obsolete". Most jobs are like this. If you work for yourself, you're trying to make the cost of your labor obsolete in place of cheaper work. If you work for a company, the company will be trying to make the cost of your labor…

>I would say they are making the current cost of one's labor "obsolete".

That's how it builds to making a market cost obsolete. Especially when the explicit goal is near 100% removal of human labor.

It's like fishing, do it slowly enough (like the dozens of millenia of humanity before the industrial revolution) and fish will repopulate just fine. Do it too fast and you drive fish to extinction. They want to make labor extinct.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#223

Post by johnnyanmac »

derangedHorse wrote: post #198
WithinReason wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say a truck driver's job gets fully automated by self-driving trucks. How will his labor reconstiture itself into something new? #learntocode? How about SW developers? What if the most capable model you need to use to stay competitive costs $10k a month so you're locked out?

> How will his labor reconstiture itself into something new? That's for the job market to decide. It'll be whatever people still find valuable to do. > What if the most capable model you need to use to stay competitive costs $10k a month so you're locked out? What if a capable computer needed to stay competitive costs $10k? Or if all SW jobs turned remote and electricity costs for computers cost $10k? I think the pro…

>It'll be whatever people still find valuable to do.

So you never considered

1. Some are simply permanently displaced and homeless

2. What the market wants is an arguable set back to overall society?

If all white collar work is obselete and you can't retrain, you're back to working on the fields or being sent to die in wars. If you have a bad leg or arm or eye, you're discarded by society. Is that a future to strive for?

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#224

Post by dpc050505 »

WithinReason wrote: post #132
mmaunder wrote: post #19

The premise is economically incoherent because labor is not a single task category that technology can delete. It is the input that continuously reconstitutes itself around whatever remains scarce, valuable and socially demanded as productivity rises. This is the lump of labor fallacy- the belief that there’s a fixed amount of economically valuable work that technology and capital can eliminate through automation or…

Let's say a truck driver's job gets fully automated by self-driving trucks. How will his labor reconstiture itself into something new? #learntocode? How about SW developers? What if the most capable model you need to use to stay competitive costs $10k a month so you're locked out?

Then you sell your labour to a capitalist who owns the model. Most people are already doing something like that.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#225

Post by johnnyanmac »

teiferer wrote: post #216
hnlmorg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of the above was possible just 20 years ago. Most of those things were actually possible. In many cases they weren’t as convenient, but as a child of the 80s I can tell you that life wasn’t like the dark ages before we all got smart phones. In any case, I don’t think anyone here is arguing against technological progress. What we’re saying is that big tech has been too powerful, and too unregulated, for far too…

I agree that big tech is and has been too powerful and too unregulated. But it's not "making everybody miserable". The world is not just black and white and HN is too much of an intellectually honest forum to just throw around such blanket statements. Which is why I called it out. I also didn't say the 80s were dark ages. I was also around back then and life was fun. But none of what I wrote was easy or possible 20 y…

>But it's not "making everybody miserable". The world is not just black and white and HN is too much of an intellectually honest forum to just throw around such blanket statements.

It's not making everybody miserable "yet". But the current rate of change suggest that is the goal, and that's where the alarm comes from. We had the term "embrace, extend, extinguish" used to describe their business last decade and they clearly want to extend that philosphy to the consumers over time too. Some parts of tech are already arguably at the "extinguish" stage as we speak.

>You can try to nitpick but the point stands.

I feel inclined to nitpick a nitpicker who rejects a statement "there making everyone miserable" with "yes, but not everything is miserable".

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#226

Post by johnnyanmac »

hnlmorg wrote: post #205
flowerthoughts wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a child of the 80s, who lived 20 miles away from a city, I can tell you that my life was pretty much dark ages before I understood that driving was not just something parents did; I could also do that. And that there were people with similar interests as me at the end of that drive! Took 18 years.

Where did you grow up? You lived closer to a city than I did but the UK doesn’t have insane zoning laws like the US so there was still plenty to do even in my small town.

Probably a similar environment to me. Around the peak of stranger danger + inefficient means of public transportation. So the world can feel extremely small.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#227

Post by johnnyanmac »

saidnooneever wrote: post #51
HotGarbage wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech is making everyone's life miserable: social media, advertising, surveillance. By working for them you are enabling this.

[flagged]

Cover my rent and I'll happily do that. Otherwise, I'm not going to just build a log cabin in the woods.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#228

Post by scoofy »

HotGarbage wrote: post #21
vaughands wrote: post #8

This post seems to be haphazardly proposing that big tech will inevitably make everyone's lives miserable. And by working for them, you are enabling this. It offers no constructive alternative and the author (yes, I know who he is) seems to have no issue with Google hosting their email. It's hard to take this too seriously (even if there is some legitimate worry here)

Big tech is making everyone's life miserable: social media, advertising, surveillance. By working for them you are enabling this.

>> Big tech is making everyone's life miserable

> Sent from my iPhone.

But seriously, this is a political problem, not a technological problem. The harms of technology are like the harms of the food industry or the gambling industry. Those of us who care, know these things can be bad for society, and we regulate them. Our society doesn’t care, we literally just legalized sports gambling, and the leagues have embraced it, forgetting the clear history of what happened last time.

Hating technology is like hating metal because you don’t like gun deaths. The problem is that our electorate has stopped caring about society.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#229

Post by johnnyanmac »

vaughands wrote: post #26
kaliqt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It posits that the tools at their disposal will be far more powerful and wide reaching than just Gmail or even modern social networks. The good ol' AGI and then ASI singularity everyone likes to talk about. To be fair, it is possible.

It's vogue on HN to sometimes criticize critically so I want to try and be as constructive as possible: I work for one of these companies. I also have pay bills to pay. I'd like to understand what a real, good alternative is. Frontier labs such as Google DeepMind are not just going to shutter their doors because 10% of the peons dropped their jobs. I believe, at least, that we should be demanding political accountabi…

As is it, nothing is "real". But I'll offer options

1. Unionize

2. Work to form a general strike. Even an industry wide strike would be highly effective

3. Work your civic duties to push for stronger labor rights in the United States. It can include anywhere from 4 day work weeks to raising minimum wage to preventing abuse of the H1b Visa. There's dozens of initiatives to push for.

4. Similarly work to properly regulate Ai before the genie is out the bottle.

5. In the abscense of the ability to do 1-4 for whatever reason, research efforts out there and use capitalism to support them financially. Anonymously if need be.

Quittog your job without. Collective bargaining is a drop of water on a clear sunny day. You need to make it rain, and we can only do that together. Or have enough money to lobby he government to do your bidding. Too bad people at that level only seem to resort to authoritarian efforts.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#230

Post by johnnyanmac »

duskdozer wrote: post #43
vaughands wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's vogue on HN to sometimes criticize critically so I want to try and be as constructive as possible: I work for one of these companies. I also have pay bills to pay. I'd like to understand what a real, good alternative is. Frontier labs such as Google DeepMind are not just going to shutter their doors because 10% of the peons dropped their jobs. I believe, at least, that we should be demanding political accountabi…

>Frontier labs such as Google DeepMind are not just going to shutter their doors because 10% of the peons dropped their jobs. What about 20%? 50%? 90%? 100%?

I also argue it depends on which 10%. 20% of all key talent may stall the project for years, so it would be a similar form of collective bargaining. But those at the top tend to be more complicit.
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