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In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

reason.com

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#31
Mindblowingly poor argumentation.

a) No disentanglement of growth factors. Economic growth tied to expansion of consumer base is slowing for demographic reasons and more crucially, key markets in the knowledge economy are demand saturated - attention economy for example is not growing - it peaked in the pandemic and outside of policy intervention, there’s very limited growth potential.

b) Failure to spell out the transformer as machine that prints machines. The transformer extracts the rules of creation from the corpus of human created labor results and automatically produces the replication function. The technology may be in its infancy, but it will only improve.

c) Historically adjustment for new job creation has operated on a multi decade timescale, complimentary to the often massive infrastructure needs (wires, power plants, distribution infrastructure) but this technology does not have those requirements. The app stores, fiber lines, machines, API platforms all exist. Adopting products can happen in months. The loop from science to product is months (see vision transformer)

d) Do I spot trickle down economics? Are we gonna invoke this boomer level of delusional narrative for the next 20 years again despite the iron clad metrics showing it’s wishful thinking to appeal to certain ideological positions rather than grounded in any kind of reality. The gains from operational efficiency will become stock buybacks, yachts, macadamia chewing cows and vanity dildos flying to space.

Appealing to history is all fine and dandy, but one has to spell out the divergent core conditions to have a serious conversation - this article feels like faith, not well reasoned forecasting or even science fiction

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#33

This is a really poorly argued article, not sure even where to start dismantling the author's arguments. (Almost feels like ChatGPT wrote this article). But let's start with this "If H&R Block could replace 90 percent of its seasonal employees with AI, it would see its profits skyrocket, given that labor is its biggest expense. Those profits would be reallocated elsewhere, that would increase the potential for even m…

> H&R block, if any, will allocate more to share buy backs

Okay, but then whomever owned the share previously and accepted the profit in exchange for giving the share back now holds the profit instead. What are they going to do with it?

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#34
post #10

Isn't zero-precent unemployment the exact opposite of the star trek utopia we were promised?

To be unemployed means that you want to do work for others, but cannot find anyone who wants you to work for them. In what way does Star Trek paint not being able to get what you want as utopia?

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to “extract wealth from others” is to put them to work.

exactly, the only reason to hire someone is because you’re making money off their work.

Well at big companies, managers sometimes hire just for the sake of padding their orgs

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#37
post #16

This is a really poorly argued article, not sure even where to start dismantling the author's arguments. (Almost feels like ChatGPT wrote this article). But let's start with this "If H&R Block could replace 90 percent of its seasonal employees with AI, it would see its profits skyrocket, given that labor is its biggest expense. Those profits would be reallocated elsewhere, that would increase the potential for even m…

I feel like the author has missed the concept of “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”.

Yes, it's not guarantee, but it is one good data source for predicting the future.

See Rule 5 in https://hbr.org/2007/07/six-rules-for-effective-forecasting

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Rich people tend to horde their wealth and seek more. When they have an opportunity to extract wealth from others they do so. The increase in economic growth from this extraction is minimal in comparison to the amount extracted.

The only way to “extract wealth from others” is to put them to work.

This is not correct. Look up rent seeking. If a company has regulatory capture it can seek the maximum profit and remain static (until it loses its capture). Generally it attains its maximum by exercising its pricing power. Exercising pricing power does not lead to more employees by the company.

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#39

This is a really poorly argued article, not sure even where to start dismantling the author's arguments. (Almost feels like ChatGPT wrote this article). But let's start with this "If H&R Block could replace 90 percent of its seasonal employees with AI, it would see its profits skyrocket, given that labor is its biggest expense. Those profits would be reallocated elsewhere, that would increase the potential for even m…

> H&R block, if any, will allocate more to share buy backs Okay, but then whomever owned the share previously and accepted the profit in exchange for giving the share back now holds the profit instead. What are they going to do with it?

Hoard it

Re: In the AI Economy, There Will Be Zero Percent Unemployment

#40

This is a really poorly argued article, not sure even where to start dismantling the author's arguments. (Almost feels like ChatGPT wrote this article). But let's start with this "If H&R Block could replace 90 percent of its seasonal employees with AI, it would see its profits skyrocket, given that labor is its biggest expense. Those profits would be reallocated elsewhere, that would increase the potential for even m…

Does anyone have a single example of a well reasoned good Reason.com article? This seems to be a no worse than average example from them. There's some ridiculous slant serving some glaringly biased agenda, with terrible argumentation. Sources like Reason getting submitted & discussed as though their normal submissions is usually an incredibly silly time. I don't think the site should do it, but on Bluesky there's mod…

What biased agenda do you see in this article?
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