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Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

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Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#221

Post by FrustratedMonky »

seydor wrote: post #76

- If AI and robots are as good as Bill suggests , one can infer that AI will signal the end of cities, at least the end of megacities. If the home robot can clean and cook and also do my taxes, hair, and diagnose my health , one is more likely to escape unemployment by moving to a small town where he can find land and resources, and use robots to exploit them, just like humans have always done when economy was based…

Humans like cities.

It brings people together for mating.

It wasn't only industrialization.

Even today, before AI, once you find a mate, THEN, you move to the suburbs.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#223

Post by krapp »

bogzz wrote: post #220
dostick wrote: post #13

> We have to think now about how to reduce job losses so that everyone can share in the prosperity that AI creates. And I thought he is a smart man. This is so last century thinking. We need to prepare that there will definitely be no jobs for everyone and that will be falling all the time, it’s not a one-time event you should “prepare for”. There’s nothing to prepare, we already have funds and productivity to feed a…

I don't understand why people always spring for UBI. I don't want free money; I want to earn my living. I want to work. Why do we not push for labor reform, as we did a century ago? Depending on the actual productivity gains from AI broadly, set a new standard of 4-hour workdays. Or 3-day work weeks.

Cool. You can work three days a week and earn a fraction of what you make now - far less than a living wage - because the market value of your labor has been reduced to nil by AI. You aren't going to be paid more because you're more productive, that isn't how it has ever worked.

The rest of us want to be able to eat once capitalism decides we aren't worth the cost to keep alive.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#224

Post by Obscurity4340 »

sophrosyne42 wrote: post #167
GPerson wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Sounds great, except it ignores the fact that capital interests have controlled the levers of our faux democracies for decades, with no end in sight.” This is not election denialism. This is almost just a fact except they also subjectively declare that we have a faux democracy (which also seems accurate to me).

Yes it is. If you insist that the result of a democratic election does not reflect the will of the people, that , and nothing else, is election denialism.

At most the American people have a recurring dilemma. There really isnt choice in the meaningful sense of the word

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#226

Post by keeda »

ViktorRay wrote: post #214
keeda wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even his talk of taxing AI tokens and robots would ultimately benefit Microsoft and other Big tech companies and hurt open source. I'm curious, how? He proposes taxing bots in lieu of taxing humans, because they will be doing most of the work... but we already tax humans, and it hasn't hurt open source.

Because it will make it more expensive for people or groups of people to run open source models to do work on their own hardware. You would be taxing people or groups of people to run a program on the computers they own. This is contrary to the principles of the free and open source software movements.

This is what he says:

> I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots. Right now, if you’re an employer and you hire someone, you pay payroll taxes on their earnings. But if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense. The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.

A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net. It would need to be targeted so it does not slow down the purely beneficial uses of AI, like making medicine and education cheaper.

Note the part about it being targeted. Clearly this is in the context of moderating the displacement of human labor by employers rather than a flat "TAX ALL THE TOKENS!" approach.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#227

Post by keeda »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #225

He should be talking to Satya, not spitting in the wind. He used to run MS, he still has sway.

I'm pretty sure he is. If you look at all the Big Tech CEOs, Satya is the only one who's been saying mostly human-aligned things.

We don't even need to assume this is out of the goodness of their hearts. Consider that Microsoft is one of the few Big Tech businesses whose business model is primarily making its enterprise customers more productive. If agents replace all knowledge work, half of Microsoft's business disappears.

In that sense Microsoft is more aligned with us humans than the other AI companies.

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#228

Post by toomuchtodo »

YackerLose wrote: post #21
dostick wrote: post #13

> We have to think now about how to reduce job losses so that everyone can share in the prosperity that AI creates. And I thought he is a smart man. This is so last century thinking. We need to prepare that there will definitely be no jobs for everyone and that will be falling all the time, it’s not a one-time event you should “prepare for”. There’s nothing to prepare, we already have funds and productivity to feed a…

Somehow, I don't think the people with all the money, gunmen and (soon) robots will be OK with the world you envision.

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” —- John Maynard Keynes

What does the data and observations tell us so far, in this context?

Re: Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here

#229

Post by reasonableklout »

dostick wrote: post #13

> We have to think now about how to reduce job losses so that everyone can share in the prosperity that AI creates. And I thought he is a smart man. This is so last century thinking. We need to prepare that there will definitely be no jobs for everyone and that will be falling all the time, it’s not a one-time event you should “prepare for”. There’s nothing to prepare, we already have funds and productivity to feed a…

My interpretation of his point was that people get a ton of meaning out of their work in our current capitalist system, and regardless of whether or not we change our system in the long term, if we don't do something about jobs in the short term, there will be a civil crisis:

> In a capitalist society, employment is the way most people get the money they need to pay for the basics of life as well as being a key source of dignity and social connection.

> When a community has high unemployment, the ripple effects can be pervasive. Research suggests that in some parts of the United States, factory closures contribute to a rise in deaths from opioid overdoses. Now imagine similar pressures on both white-collar and blue-collar workers nationwide.

> Waiting until people are already displaced or underemployed will be too late. AI is a structural challenge to the way our economy is organized, and it requires thinking and action now.

----

I agree he should've addressed UBI directly. When he was asked about it in an AMA a decade ago he basically said he's optimistic it can happen eventually but not yet [1]. And in that same AMA he said he wished to see "computers that can read and understand information like humans do" within his lifetime [2]. Now that the latter has happened I wish we could see how his thoughts have changed on the former.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/comment/dea7v1...

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/comment/dea5fl...

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