31–40 of 107 posts
If AI displaces human workers faster than the economy can reabsorb them, it risks eroding the very consumer demand firms depend on. That is a huge "if" though. I am not sure either that the latter falls from this. When the US transitioned away from assembly lines or agriculture dominated, it's not as if consumer spending consequently collapsed.
The trick is bypassing the human consumer as well. Companies satisfy (human) consumer needs as a byproduct of profit maximization. But human consumers are inefficient. They have to sleep, require medical care, etc. A purely machine economy would be far more efficient. Therefore in the limit we should eliminate reliance on human labor and consumption to build a more perfect and efficient world.
The humans consume to fulfill needs, how do those needs get fulfilled in a post human economy?
neo-luddism dressed up in economic jargon. the authors suggest the only effective tool is to tax companies based on how much automation they achieve. Penalizing efficiency is a guaranteed recipe for stagnation and if we'd done this at any point in our past we would have not made it out of the dark ages
Your not looming at anything after the first order effects. The idea of work os that people participate in the economy, what does a post work economy look like? How do people have the cashflows necessary to participate in things like housing and food and stuff when their way of contributing to the economy was automated away?
If robotics progress starts to pick up, I'll take this more seriously. Right now, there's practically infinite demand for labor in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and many other industries. All kinds us good projects that could be happening, if you dig into why, labor intensive work is a factor. Why didn't the hydroponics project take off? Why is that still an empty lot instead of a new home? Why isn't there…
Let’s take AGI to its inevitable raw conclusion. Not by the definition (ab)used by clueless VCs screaming about abundance, but by what is already happening using the worst case: The abundance of mass layoffs and job displacement due to funding and building of AI systems is the true definition of AGI. We might as well get there faster instead of delaying it. You have already seen Oracle and Block attributing their lay…
The article is saying that the solution here isn’t to just throw up our hands and commit suicide as a nation, it’s to simply tax the AI, punishing the negative externality. Seems like the obvious answer to the prisoner’s dilemma problem where everyone wants to lay off their workforce, but expects that they’ll be the only ones to get this bright idea.
That "simply" is working overtime here.
If robotics progress starts to pick up, I'll take this more seriously. Right now, there's practically infinite demand for labor in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and many other industries. All kinds us good projects that could be happening, if you dig into why, labor intensive work is a factor. Why didn't the hydroponics project take off? Why is that still an empty lot instead of a new home? Why isn't there…
Infinite demand, maybe, but not at wages that most people are willing to accept. Of course, if there's literally no other work, then previously-middle-class people will take what's available and become homeless because the wage doesn't pay the bills (which are, in places, extremely inflated due to decades of jaw-droppingly bad housing and transport policies). Sounds like a highly desirable future.
The trick is bypassing the human consumer as well. Companies satisfy (human) consumer needs as a byproduct of profit maximization. But human consumers are inefficient. They have to sleep, require medical care, etc. A purely machine economy would be far more efficient. Therefore in the limit we should eliminate reliance on human labor and consumption to build a more perfect and efficient world.
The humans consume to fulfill needs, how do those needs get fulfilled in a post human economy?
What can possibly go wrong
Great paper. > If AI displaces human workers faster than the economy can reabsorb them Big if.
If robotics progress starts to pick up, I'll take this more seriously. Right now, there's practically infinite demand for labor in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and many other industries. All kinds us good projects that could be happening, if you dig into why, labor intensive work is a factor. Why didn't the hydroponics project take off? Why is that still an empty lot instead of a new home? Why isn't there…
If robotics progress starts to pick up, I'll take this more seriously. Right now, there's practically infinite demand for labor in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and many other industries. All kinds us good projects that could be happening, if you dig into why, labor intensive work is a factor. Why didn't the hydroponics project take off? Why is that still an empty lot instead of a new home? Why isn't there…
Infinite demand, maybe, but not at wages that most people are willing to accept. Of course, if there's literally no other work, then previously-middle-class people will take what's available and become homeless because the wage doesn't pay the bills (which are, in places, extremely inflated due to decades of jaw-droppingly bad housing and transport policies). Sounds like a highly desirable future.