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The AI backlash is only getting started

economist.com

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Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#261

Post by csomar »

spwa4 wrote: post #183
ndiddy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the Industrial Revolution was objectively a worse deal for the average worker. The average preindustrial peasant worked 8-12 hour days, but had Sundays off and at least 120 rest days and holidays. Depending on how good wages were at the time, they may have only had to work between 120 and 180 days per year. Compare that to the 70+ hour weeks workers were made to work all year in factories during the period immed…

No, it wasn't. And it wasn't because of government regulation. The land you require for preindustrial peasanting was, of course, tightly regulated and owned by ... well, not you. Read the whole "tragedy of the commons", especially the part about government deciding to just sell the whole thing to the highest bidder, which instead of fixing the problem, set off another wave of city migration. If you stayed on the land…

I think you both are walking around the point and not seeing it? It was about how much control the gov./authority can exert all along. During the feudal era, they had sword soldiers but the reach of these was limited because a peasant can fight and make a sword. It is much harder to make a tank or a gun (though drones might change that?), so after the industrial revolution a central auth. can have much control over the individual.

Now with the tech era, you can snoop into people businesses and control in a "softer" way. With AI, you might be able to bypass the knowledge workers who enjoyed a pleasurably life in the last 30 years or so. This is mostly because knowledge workers will sabotage your operation if not treated well.

Now this might not longer be the case as you'd no longer need them. The revolution can't happen if the people have no leverage: 1. either be able to defend against a professional army or 2. are an input in your supply chain and can stop your operations.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#262

Post by csomar »

yunwal wrote: post #231
dofm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is not cutting my hair anytime soon. This is an absolutely bizarre pitch for labour replacement for the very obvious reason that the rate at which the world's hair grows is not going to increase and nor are we going to suddenly discover a great need for new high maintenance hair styles to increase the work available. There are clearly at a first approximation enough barbers and hairdressers already to cut the wo…

Ok, are there enough doctors? seems really weird that you left out the other jobs I mentioned

Doctors are artificially constrained in the US to raise healthcare prices. In parts of the world where that's not the case, general healthcare is very accessible and cheap.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#263

Post by blululu »

tern wrote: post #169
blululu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be true, but I think it amounts to wishful thinking. The human empowerment phase of AI is transitory and brief. Once you get into RSI and AGI the human is increasingly left out and disenfranchised. The multiplier of your personal effectiveness directly proportional to how much the AI is doing relative to you. Being 2x more effective is great - AI does half the work. 5x, 10x, 100x? When the AI does 99% of t…

Yes, I agree, but the relevant debate isn't "pro vs anti-AI." That's a fight only one side can win. The relevant debate is: "human empowerment vs disempowerment". It's still a long-shot, but at least there's a specific target that a majority may be able to agree on. (Not saying you were specifically saying either.)

That’s a fair framing. I like the idea that the two debates could be separated. Personally I find it hard to believe that a super intelligence would not completely disempower humans over any reasonable time frame (50 years), but you are right that there is a chance. There are some optimistic scenarios either way but the odds are indeed long. You can approximate things reasonably well by framing the priority as whether you think P(take off can be stopped) is higher than P(survival post take off).

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#264

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"Data centres must contend with viral worries over water usage, a confected issue. (Modern ones drink up no more than other industries, and much less in total than America's golf courses.)"

There seems to be an assumption that people care about (a) the amount of water used by data centres and whether data centres use less, the same or more water than other industries, and/or (b) whether data centres use use less water than golf courses

If data centres use less then why would anyone care. They might care not about comparative water across industries but about a particular industry, e..g., "AI" data centres, for some other reason(s). Their opinion on that industry's water use, and any other behaviour, is based on their pre-formed opinion of the industry

For example,

If someone does not play golf, then any amount of water used by golf courses may be offensive. It doesn't matter how this amount compares with other industries

If someone does not use "AI" or does not like using "AI", then any amount of water used by "AI" data centres may be offensive. It doesn't matter how the amount compares to other industries

To counter the "viral worries", there are "viral assurances", a confected resolution

But are these assurances effective in addressing the underlying reality that some people don't use "AI" or dislike using "AI" and may have formed opinions about "AI" based on other criteria

The assurances seem "tone deaf" for lack of a better term

For example, the golf course development industry does not generate press releases and sponsor over-the-top PR that proclaims "everyone will play golf in the future", golf will replace human labor, nor is the golf course industry announcing multi-billion dollar transactions daily, ostensibly defeating candidates in local elections through PAC's, lobbying governments against regulation, etc., etc. (This is only a sample of a list of differences is much longer than the list of similarities. The inordinate amount of attention paid to the "AI" industry in the press, endless hype, is not comparable to the amount of attention paid to the golf course industry nor other comment agriculture industry examples)

The comparisons are nonsensical

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#265

Post by classified »

dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

> There is nothing cool about it either.

The "cool" thing about it is that LLM suppliers will own the workforce of the employers who switched so those employers will be at their mercy. Total power, untold profits.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#266

Post by wseqyrku »

WarmWash wrote: post #90
dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

>Who did not see this coming? The general vibe of the internet at least for the last 20 years has been "Work sucks, play is fun, give whatever technology minimizes my need to work and maximizes my wealth and free time" All these same guys have also talked about the need for UBI, so they basically have been promising the dream of the liberal internet: No work, free money, do whatever you want in your life. The viabili…

On UBI thing, I think it's is a word designed to make people calm down and to feel safe, if they can't find a pathway for the future in their internal dialogues they will go insane. So here, UBI. It's fine.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#267

Post by spwa4 »

charlie90 wrote: post #246
spwa4 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they aren't. There very much was a reason during the industrial revolution why people were driven to the cities and into the factories.

The reason was agricultural labor was automated, it had nothing to do with the preferences of the people at the time. If people preferred farming to factory work, tough luck.

See ndiddy's comment about the "enclosure movement".

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#268

Post by danaris »

baron816 wrote: post #54
vitorfblima wrote: post #19

The untold promise of IA is to replace labor. That's probably the only reason why some people are willing to spend trillions of dollars in pursuing this technology. Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. It's no surprise that people are getting angry, even though many are using AI in their everyday life.

This is just how productivity works. If people spend less time building a unit of output, then you have more output. People aren’t going to stop wanting stuff. Right now, the world can’t come close to making all the stuff people want. As long as there’s a desire for further consumption, there will be work for people to do.

> Right now, the world can’t come close to making all the stuff people want.

Right now, the world is making all the stuff people need and then some. Poverty and hunger, in the 21st century, are distribution problems. (And, inevitably, politics problems.)

Now, it's true that what people want exceeds what they need (almost by definition). But it doesn't exceed it by so many orders of magnitude that we're that far off from being able to produce it with what we have today.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#269

Post by bvcp »

dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

id rather live in the culture civilisation than the empire of azad

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#270

Post by dofm »

JBlue42 wrote: post #260
dofm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, this was good, wasn’t it; quite different from a lot of Ed’s more, er, brassy stuff.

Yes, I prefer the interviews over the monologues most of the time. The good thing about Ed is that it's not just hot air but he backs up arguments with sources and data. Personally, I prefer a little less anger with my coffee lol

Yes — though he can still be quite brassy if he is the interviewee, I think, depending on who is intervewing!

In this case, as two equals, something about Cal Newport's manner really anchored him and they got into some interesting stuff.

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