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Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

observer.co.uk

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Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#41

Post by kurthr »

marcuskaz wrote: post #25
tobbe2064 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 to 10 years of 20% unemployment could be verydangerous in places like the us

You think? Here's the U.S. unemployment rate during the great depression 1929: 3.2% 1930: 8.7% 1931: 15.9% 1932: 23.6% 1933: 24.9% (Peak of the Great Depression) 1934: 21.7% 1935: 20.1% 1936: 16.9% 1937: 14.3% 1938: 19.0% (Economic recession during the Depression) 1939: 17.2% 1940: 14.6%

It's only a fraction of the effect (and of course there was also over financialization), but 20% of the US population was farm labor in the 20s, that fell substantially (and there was the dust bowl) up through the 40s as tractors replaced a significant fraction of all farm labor (perhaps 1% per year). Efficiency does not always drive consumption.

Sure seems to rhyme. Call it Jevon's Tractor Paradox.

Something else certainly happened in the rest of the world about that time too!

Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#42

Post by win311fwg »

mythrwy wrote: post #38
win311fwg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing they are already doing? Being a companion for someone who doesn't want to be alone. The human touch, if you will, is hard to replicate. Even where AI can convincingly act human, that often isn't enough to satisfy what people feel. Just look at the HN guidelines as a perfect example. "HN is for conversation between humans." If it were about the content then any suitable content would be welcome, regardl…

So the tendency to hire friends and "cool looking" people instead of smart talented people will get even worse?

Maybe, but the friend list is already exhausted and "cool looking" people tend to not like the idea of you hiring them just because they look cool. Hence diversity hiring: It became understood that attractive women would get the "ick" if you told them that you were hiring them only because they were attractive women, so there had to be cover for as to why they were suddenly getting hired where they previously weren't as we transitioned into a companion-based economy. Its hard to say if that can be replicated again now that we're all in on the ruse. Possible, but no guarantee. We may have already reached the peak.

Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#43

Post by esafak »

an0malous wrote: post #11
everdrive wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are places where 20% of society (or more) are unemployed. They're not nice places. They're run by gangs or warlords. They're the kind of place where teenagers sit on steps and just wait for the wrong person to walk past them.

Like where?

Lots of places in the ME and Africa:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemploym...

Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#44

Post by IncreasePosts »

everdrive wrote: post #7
alansaber wrote: post #6

I don't find the argument that advanced AI will leave 20% of society permanently unemployed particularly compelling

There are places where 20% of society (or more) are unemployed. They're not nice places. They're run by gangs or warlords. They're the kind of place where teenagers sit on steps and just wait for the wrong person to walk past them.

Do those places have gangs and warlords because they have 20%+ unemployment, or do they have 20%+ unemployment because they have gangs and warlords?

Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#45

Post by mrdependable »

amykhar wrote: post #19
_fat_santa wrote: post #10

I don't find the "AI will cause mass unemployment" argument compelling, in fact I see the opposite as being true. The reason we are talking so much about that now is that at the current level of productivity, we just don't need as many humans to do the work, as companies can use AI as leverage to not hire as many people. This i feel will be a short lived period where not everyone has adopted AI to the fullest and thu…

Even before AI, there was a serious hiring problem in the United States. Companies seem hell bent on not hiring full time employees at a livable wage. I don't blame the technology, but I do blame the greed of business owners and investors. While its easy to look at the big picture and long term and say everything will all work out, there are so many individuals who are being hurt because of layoffs, reduced hiring, e…

It's a globalization problem that countries have a hard time creating policy against. Countries don't have the enforcement power that they used to. The best we have come up with is using our own markets as leverage. In a hundred years I imagine wealth and income will look much more uniform across the world. Unfortunately, right now, we are stuck competing with people who can earn much less than people in the US. Now we have to worry about this AI disaster waiting to happen because countries have no real power to stop it. They say it looks like AI won't destroy jobs, but I think really we are just watching the various legs on a table be kicked out. It will still stand until it doesn't.

Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#47

Post by apercu »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #16
_fat_santa wrote: post #10

I don't find the "AI will cause mass unemployment" argument compelling, in fact I see the opposite as being true. The reason we are talking so much about that now is that at the current level of productivity, we just don't need as many humans to do the work, as companies can use AI as leverage to not hire as many people. This i feel will be a short lived period where not everyone has adopted AI to the fullest and thu…

The economics of AI investment don't make sense without the promise of vast displacement of labor. There's a ceiling on how much value can be created for a company simply by them using AI to crank out a higher throughput of TPS reports.

I've been saying "The economics of AI investment don't make sense" for 2 years but this audience in particular doesn't (on the whole) agree.

Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#48

Post by rahimnathwani »

alansaber wrote: post #6

I don't find the argument that advanced AI will leave 20% of society permanently unemployed particularly compelling

In the US, ~80% of the prime working age population is employed:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060

For every one person who is classified as unemployed, there are one or more others who are classified unable to work for some reason.

Re: Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else

#49

Post by DowsingSpoon »

Tade0 wrote: post #31
alansaber wrote: post #6

I don't find the argument that advanced AI will leave 20% of society permanently unemployed particularly compelling

Fortunately it's extremely unlikely. There was a change in the world, which went largely unnoticed - sometime in 2013-2017 the global number of infants peaked, never to recover. Those 20% would just figure that there's no need to have children when you can just focus on yourself and go largely extinct within a generation, replaced with some people from the higher tiers, but not nearly enough to make up for those who…

> Those 20% would just figure that there's no need to have children when you can just focus on yourself and go largely extinct within a generation, replaced with some people from the higher tiers, but not nearly enough to make up for those who weren't born.

A person being _unemployed_ is not a hereditary trait. Also, while it's already pretty wild to effectively claim that about 20% of humanity carries some kind _doomed to be made unemployable by AI_ gene, it's another giant leap beyond that to declaring this cohort will uniformly choose not to reproduce and therefore become extinct.

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