Replies to comments on my "LLMs are eroding my career" post

I don't see facts in any of these arguments, that's really the point. Doomerism isn't particularly productive, but I'm tired of the complacency and the suggestions that everything will sort itself out. There is a chance it won't.

> we’re talking about state of the art stuff that can reliably be used to do serious work right

The enormous data centers are needed to train new models and deliver to hundreds of thousands of people. For us plebs, yes, the biggest models are out of reach. But a medium-sized business can readily buy the hardware needed to run the state-of-the-art locally if they have the weights. Inference is not so bad. That will be even more true in the future. So it's crazy to me to suggest that AI would just go away everywhere because it is too expensive. The problem is that the current arms race is wasteful and cares not for profitability.

> elite need the working class to enjoy their luxuries

I think this is an extremely critical misconception, and it's sending the world into an increasingly bad place. They really don't, and the assumptions that underpin this statement breaks down when the elite own all the critical assets. If you need proof of this, look at how the working class is being increasingly priced out of almost all luxuries right now. That's the norm. Almost all of human history has been that way. The formula could get a lot worse if there is even the remotest chance that robots or AI can take the place of the workers that might desperately be fighting for the scraps of the wealthy.

> It would be extremely fragile

Actually I think the current state of affairs is fragile. Could you explain this?

> grounded in sci fi instead of reality

More history than sci fi, but a fair criticism. Still, I don't believe there are any "factual" refutations of my concerns, and that should be worrying.

Yes. Why do you need to ask this? This is the K-shaped economy. Demand is dropping (especially in luxury handbags) as the middle class gets hollowed out. Maybe you're well-off enough that you can still pretend neoclassical economics is still holding up. Must be nice.

> they can't afford to buy a family home in a lot of markets but this has to do with generational wealth and a housing shortage in many parts of the USA.

Yes it has to do with generational wealth, that's my point. A shortage is true in some cases, but not all. That's mostly fueled from massive demand from the wealthy. Buying the family home is the most obvious asset that is becoming out of reach. This past year, many other assets have gone the same way. I think that will continue.

> nobody buys the mountain of goods the robots and AI are producing

I don't get why you're appealing to modern economic theory when the whole point of this scenario is that the standard economic relationship entirely breaks down. You can dismiss it as sci-fi, but people are thinking about this scenario. The wealthy no longer need a mass consumer market in this scenario to stay wealthy. They could simply trade proprietary algorithms, real estate, raw resources, and automated services exclusively among themselves. The global economy shrinks down to a private, self-contained club. Everyone else is locked out of the market. This should sound familiar if you're paying attention to the current markets. There would only need to be a few to maintain the status quo, and they remain inside the market in exchange.

The exit from this bleak future is societal unrest, which needs to occur sooner rather than later in order to succeed. That's the source of instability. Later on, not so much.

> Even during the industrial revolution, jobs moved from the farm to the factories.

Yes, but living standards seriously deteriorated for a long time. That's not too far from the exterminism in the above scenario, just not as dire since factories still need far more human labor to run them. If the labor itself becomes redundant, that's very bad.

I'm not saying this will happen. But dismissing it as sci-fi doesn't seem wise when we're seeing the signs of that future already.

Living standards should not be worse for younger generations than older generations. But more importantly, younger generations spend money on ridiculous "luxuries" because the situation for things people do need is actually much worse. The luxuries are the last straw, not the first thing to go.

> the elites would need to field their own robot army to challenge governments

Nationally, not through military power, through economic power and law. Since Citizens United, the elite own the government in the US, very clearly. They don't need to challenge anything, they don't need their own armies. They just need to maintain the status quo.

> the power of the sword is the only real power

Doesn't this sound familiar lately? Isn't this the post-Trump era headline?

it's just not going to be you or me who is going to be within that group of ordinary humans.