I think missing from the turns is when companies do AI layoffs, then realize they aren't as productive as they thought and have to rehire 70% of the people they let go.
The dead economy theory
281–290 of 1001 posts
Re: The dead economy theory
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
The future you're describing doesn't seem likely to me because in this event the public will force redistribution through political action.
"Forcing redistribution" doesn't always happen. Typically, redistribution happens when negotiating leverage has increased such that the beneficiaries of any redistribution can make it more painful to not redistribute than to redistribute. I.e. they have labor power, which can be converted to force if necessary. In a world where capital can substitute for labor, however, that substitution also applies to force-wieldin…
I think your first equilibrium would be hard, for two reasons. First, empirically insurgencies are extremely difficult to exterminate; over the long run they tend to win. Second, in the U.S. at least, people tend to look at politics up close, and when you're myopic like that it appears that the government is a force onto itself. But zooming out, U.S. government actually mirrors the will of the people extremely well (with the exception of some issues on the margin). If there is overwhelming political support for redistribution it would be very difficult to resist.
The second equilibrium seems more likely-- the capitalist class grants the public a bare minimum to keep us from forcing political action. In the AI world "the minimum" is probably a much better standard of living than we have now, as the marginal cost of many products and services approaches zero. So we end up living much better material lives, but are still not free. Maybe this is stable, or maybe the ruling class loses dominance over time. At that point, who knows.
Re: The dead economy theory
#283Human economic systems tend to reward things that are easy to measure, own, scale, and control. That works pretty well for machines, markets, software, and bureaucracy, but it doesn’t work as well for living systems, which rely on diversity, backup systems, and local adaptation. So we end up with this pattern: we capture the useful order for ourselves, then push the mess, waste, heat, and instability onto the environ…
The answer to this is competent policy making, and unfortunately we have the extreme opposite of that across the political spectrum.
Re: The dead economy theory
#284this whole blog post is basically "people need jobs to be happy, so we should design our society such that they need jobs" not only is the premise wrong, but forcing people to work is not a good or ethical way to address this problem most people like the social aspect of work, but not being beholden to their boss we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money we can do…
Star Trek isn't real life, when human labor stops being valuable the humans who's labor was previously vital will be at best left to rot in squalor.
For some reason programmers start thinking that we'll transition away from a whole world of societies built around the concept of individual ownership, i.e. your landlord charging you rent, company owners owning the company and the resulting product and paying you what they deem the work you own is worth, and move towards something like communism, all because people working in IT or marketing departments are having a hard time.
I'm sorry but us programmers didn't invent capitalism, and it wasn't our consent under the condition of having a good run under it what kept it in place.
Re: The dead economy theory
#285You can have all the GPUs in the world, and all the AI datacenters in the world, but when we are barreling towards a global energy crisis (first Russia/Ukraine, then the Strait of Hormuz shutdown, and in a few decades we will run out of fossil fuels altogether), what are all of those GPUs and AI datacenters going to do without energy? Nothing. I say this because I think this will have a far larger effect on the economy than anything else this article is talking about (AI replacing labor, a possible AI bubble crash, etc.)
Re: The dead economy theory
#286I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…
If it's any consolation, this is also a mystery to non developers like me. And developers likewise wonder why a business needs so many managers and what they do all day.
Managers schedule meetings so that developers can’t get anything done. Then they hire more developers, which means even more meetings. Virtuous cycle!
Re: The dead economy theory
#287I have led AI integration in a university faculty. From this experience I can conclude that good work is only produced when humans are in the loop. It's not a technical barrier, but a categorical one. "Good" work is defined by humans and our judgment is irrational but rooted in our evolutionary survival needs. In other words, AI don't have human motivation by definition. Without human in the loop, the top most motiva…
Agree with this. Even in software, the point of using AI is to produce something that a human finds valuable. There are many ways to use AI to build things faster, but a human has to be in the loop to point things in the right direction.
Re: The dead economy theory
#288I'm telling you guys if you think the powerful are gonna let us all continuing living after our value becomes obsolete you have a big surprise coming.
Re: The dead economy theory
#289India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…
The industrial revolution was enabled by more efficient agriculture feeing labour to do other work.
The flipside is that there must be other work to be done or people starve to death.
Re: The dead economy theory
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't tik-tok. You don't have to use terms like "un-alive" here. Comments on HN aren't policed for maximum advertiser appeal. And yes, that's more or less the endgame.
I was being a little facetious with the "un-alive" term - seemed funnier than "massacre".
You can't spell 'slaughter' without 'laughter.'