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The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

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Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#361

Post by VitaliyKorbut »

cortesoft wrote: post #221
Aurornis wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The easiest way would be a straight tax on AI usage, and using that tax to pay a universal basic income Every call for UBI should be qualified with two estimates: 1) How much money you think UBI will pay out 2) How much money you think the tax will generate Creating a UBI program with AI taxes sounds like a clean solution to something until you do any math. If we estimate today’s AI revenues across all the big prov…

This is based on the assumption that AI is going to take all our jobs. If this is true, than as more jobs are absorbed by AI the revenue would increase.

As more jobs are absorbed by AI the revenue would increase, but not dramatically. As AI competition will lower the prices to the cost of serving tokens, which is close to zero. We’ll get more stuff done and the world would be better off. Even if we don’t invent new jobs we can compete for existing jobs harder, for example we can have 3 times more of X (for example restaurants) at 1/3 the client base on average. It doesn’t mean that everyone will be of a higher social status than average, which is what people actually want, and which is mathematically impossible.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#362

Post by bwhiting2356 »

ori_b wrote: post #290
bwhiting2356 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can have 2 out of 3: * artisanal, handmade products * affordable products, not just for the rich * well-paid workers This was true of clothing, agriculture, and will also be true of SaaS. I choose affordable products and well-paid workers, but that requires embracing automation.

Are you claiming that software is unaffordable? I get the sense that it was so cheap people were unhappy with how much was shoved into places where it was unwanted.

custom software has traditionally been out of reach for everyone but large enterprises who can afford to pay 7-8 figure checks

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#363

Post by flashgordon »

troosevelt wrote: post #60
cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

If you lost your $60,000 a year job due to this, do you really believe a basic income funded by it will make up that loss? It won't. Basic income in the US is usually proposed at $12k per year, which would add another $3 trillion to the budget. Do you think you can even get that just taxing these companies? I don't. People who bring up basic income need to get serious about the numbers involved because I never see it…

Not to mention inflation. Whats not clear is whether UBI is cash or does it include access to "basic" facilities like health, education and housing?

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#364

Post by beej71 »

simianwords wrote: post #332
beej71 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use LLMs and I think they should be nuked from orbit. [Speaking figuratively, NSA.] Helpful, sure. Would humanity be better off without generative AI? Definitely.

> I think they should be nuked from orbit This kind of hyperbloic stance amongst the broad public is sad concerning

It should definitely be concerning to the makers of genAI!

Like I was telling someone else, what we've made here is the ultimate double-edged sword. Use it right and there's great glory. Use it wrong and you're a lifeless, empty husk. In this case, though, people get the far greater dopamine hit from using it wrong.

Algorithmic social media is like this and we already see people rotting out on the infinite scroll. And genAI makes social media look like 70s weed. The question is: on the whole, which side of that double-edged blade is going to be doing the slicing?

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#365

Post by YZF »

rvz wrote: post #327
YZF wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto sucks energy and creates no value. It's complete and utter speculative garbage that also destroys the planet. AI has real value. We can argue about whether the cost is worth the value, whether we're on an exponential improvement curve or not, whether it ends up creating jobs or destroying jobs, but AI is mind blowing science fiction that nobody would have believed you will exist 10 years ago.

> Crypto sucks energy and creates no value. It's complete and utter speculative garbage that also destroys the planet. All of what you said is false. Stablecoins are not speculative and have value, and you can send money at a low fee, low cost, worldwide to wallets on the same day, right now with far less energy than today's "AI". > AI has real value. What do you mean by "AI" specifically? LLMs in data centers? The v…

How much market cap is in stablecoins vs. proof of work crypto? Has Bitcoin gone down and disappeared due to the avabilability of stablecoin?

Bitcoin uses 200TWh (per year) probably pretty similar to all the AI usage today give or take. Certainly if we look at the area under the curve Bitcoin still by far has used more energy (~1000TWh) than AI/LLMs. For what is essentially a scam/pyramid scheme. And this is just Bitcoin. But yes, LLMs are using more and more energy (but also potentially with a larger % of renewable sources).

I mean AI in the colloquial sense. Large language models. It's ridiculous to compare the value produce by Bitcoin (negative- crime, money laundering, funding terrorist regimes, tax evasion etc.) to the value of LLMs.

LLMs enable people who couldn't produce software applications before to do so. This enables new business that didn't exist before. Those business hire people directly (including eventually software engineers) and create indirect jobs. This is no different than the steam engine or the Internet. You're arguing that the Internet took away the jobs of the people working in the post office because letters could now be sent electronically. I don't have a crystal ball but the historical experience teaches us that new jobs do get created and the economy is not a zero sum game. Maybe this will be different and maybe it won't.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#366

Post by joquarky »

troosevelt wrote: post #60
cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

If you lost your $60,000 a year job due to this, do you really believe a basic income funded by it will make up that loss? It won't. Basic income in the US is usually proposed at $12k per year, which would add another $3 trillion to the budget. Do you think you can even get that just taxing these companies? I don't. People who bring up basic income need to get serious about the numbers involved because I never see it…

Also, UBI will inevitably become just as convoluted and corrupted as our current tax laws.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#367

Post by joquarky »

hettygreen wrote: post #345
xboxnolifes wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the machine in this context is 3x as productive as you?

Then it replaces 3 people's jobs, requiring paying 3 UBI's in this thought experiment.

What un-corrupted person or system is going to perform this assessment?

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#368

Post by joquarky »

zenethian wrote: post #348
cortesoft wrote: post #44

I feel like their are (at least) three main critiques of AI, and I wish we could debate them separately, because I think they each have different resolutions. The first is the fear of job loss, and I feel like this is the most straightforward to deal with. Personally, I think the solution should be to share the productivity of AI with society at large, in particular since AI owes most of its abilities to training on…

You forgot the part where they stole literally everyone’s copyrighted works and trained on it and have not been sanctioned at all for it.

Did they not make backups?

Perhaps we should force companies to return each and every byte of stolen data to their owners.

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#369

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fluoridation wrote: post #315
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Creating busywork doesn't strike me as a particularly worthwhile endeavor Make work isn’t the same as busywork. As another comment mentioned, the Hoover Dam isn’t useless busywork.

And as I mentioned, the Hoover dam is also not the typical example of the kinds of projects guaranteed job programs generate.

> the Hoover dam is also not the typical example of the kinds of projects guaranteed job programs generate

NASA arguably ran its post-Apollo pre-Artemis period as a jobs program. Again, there will be waste. But there will also be waste with UBI. My suspicion is peoples’ tendency towards purposelessness will exceed bureaucrats’ tendency towards uselessness. That’s a loose hypothesis. But in its balance lies which system is more competitive (and satisfying).

Re: The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

#370

Post by [deleted] »

cortesoft wrote: post #138
retired wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Needing less offices, less people driving to those offices, less A/C and heating for those offices and less resources building those offices could offset the energy usage of AI.

The people still need to be somewhere, so while commuting could be reduced I am not sure about heating/cooling usage.

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