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Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

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Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#491

Post by _DeadFred_ »

rayiner wrote: post #490
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, we are in agreement. It is happening, to the tune of billions of dollars, and we both are fine with it being taxed. 1-2% of 100 million is 1-2 million dollars a year untaxed benefit (44x median income). That is substantial benefit for someone to receive. They are benefiting from buy, borrow, die. You asked for proof, I gave you proof that it is happening and is providing a substantial unfunded lifestyle (44x m…

> Great, we are in agreement. It is happening, to the tune of billions of dollars, and we both are fine with it being taxed. Yes, but that’s not the topic. The topic is the labor share of income over time. Your link proves that these loans don’t have a meaningful effect on analyzing the division of income between capital and labor over time. They amount to 0.1% of total income. I don’t understand why people bring thi…

One thing at a time. I think we both agree borrowing is happening and you are ok with it being taxed, so further discussion isn't really needed. But I specifically only addressed your interjection of:

>Similarly, what percentage of wealthy people take loans against their assets to fund their lifestyle? You should be able to quantify this if it’s happening at scale.

That is the topic being addressed, proof was shown, and you replied "I’d be fine taxing that money at the top marginal rate". To your 'but what about other loopholes' please show me 24 loopholes (dozens) providing individuals such high multiples of median income tax free?

>I don’t understand why people bring this up so often

You just agreed it is happening and you are fine with taxing it in your last message, so it really doesn't matter people bring it up or not, does it? And kind of makes further discussion moot. You agree it's fine to address/tax.

>I’d be fine taxing that money at the top marginal rate or whatever you want to do.

The mortgage interest deduction is not a loophole, it is government policy intelligently reached. A loophole would be when rich people abused the deduction by designating their yatch as a second home and deducting that. And that loophole was closed. The average person having to pay taxes on the old dresser that they bought with already taxed money and report the sale as paypal income earnings would be another loophole but in the other direction..

I look forward to your 24 stated existing examples of greater magnitude actual loopholes (and not intentional policy doing what it was intended, the opposite of an exploited loophole that is taking loans instead of selling stocks to avoid taxes but benefit from realized/current stock value). We can move to the next level but again you agreed you are fine taxing this behavior so kinda no further point.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#492

Post by rayiner »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #491
rayiner wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great, we are in agreement. It is happening, to the tune of billions of dollars, and we both are fine with it being taxed. Yes, but that’s not the topic. The topic is the labor share of income over time. Your link proves that these loans don’t have a meaningful effect on analyzing the division of income between capital and labor over time. They amount to 0.1% of total income. I don’t understand why people bring thi…

One thing at a time. I think we both agree borrowing is happening and you are ok with it being taxed, so further discussion isn't really needed. But I specifically only addressed your interjection of: >Similarly, what percentage of wealthy people take loans against their assets to fund their lifestyle? You should be able to quantify this if it’s happening at scale. That is the topic being addressed, proof was shown,…

Please read @foltik's post upthread to understand the context of my statement. @foltik commented that the data on labor versus capital income share could be misleading, because it "ignores realized capital gains and loans against them, which is how the ultra-wealthy actually fund their lifestyles tax-free."

I asked whether that "meaningfully change[s] the picture"--i.e. the picture on the labor/capital income split. And I asked whether that practice is "happening at scale." I wasn't asking whether it was happening at all, but rather at sufficient scale that it would meaningfully skew the numbers on labor/capital income split.

Your data proved my point: loans against assets account for only 1-2% of unrealized gains, so even if you counted that as income, it would be a rounding error in the evaluation of the labor versus capital share of income.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#493

Post by _DeadFred_ »

rayiner wrote: post #492
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing at a time. I think we both agree borrowing is happening and you are ok with it being taxed, so further discussion isn't really needed. But I specifically only addressed your interjection of: >Similarly, what percentage of wealthy people take loans against their assets to fund their lifestyle? You should be able to quantify this if it’s happening at scale. That is the topic being addressed, proof was shown,…

Please read @foltik's post upthread to understand the context of my statement. @foltik commented that the data on labor versus capital income share could be misleading, because it "ignores realized capital gains and loans against them, which is how the ultra-wealthy actually fund their lifestyles tax-free." I asked whether that "meaningfully change[s] the picture"-- i.e. the picture on the labor/capital income split.…

That data is purely from self reports so isn't necessarily definitive, but is proof that it is occurring. I don't think we have public banking records that list all loans so not sure how we can get an accurate number, but if we could they would have used in that analysis, so I don't think we can definitively know the scale just what people choose to self report.

But we don't need to dig deeper. We are all in agreement and don't need further discussion. Tax it.

>I’d be fine taxing that money at the top marginal rate or whatever you want to do.

Thank you for engaging. We can try going deeper but OP might be better for that. I just had that report with at least some information and wanted to interject so we could talk to something (even though I knew their thesis counters my position, it's worth us all knowing about, and I think it's showing it does occur at least some is useful for my position). Anecdotally in another life I knew some of these people/people in their circles and they very much use these loans and were crazy excited when they learned of the strategies of them.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#494

Post by lorecore »

esikich wrote: post #459
lorecore wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a sliding scale. I love a well cooked meal and would never eat McDonalds, but I could see how someone who does eat at McDonalds wouldn't want to live off Soylent. Maybe a better way to put it is that Katy Perry is on the right side of the uncanny valley.

Yeah but it's a sliding scale where average food is a 5 out of 10, McDonald's is a 1, and soylent is 0.5. It's nonsensical.

I think it makes sense. Think of McDonald's or Katy Perry as the bare minimum quality a human will accept. To go even slightly less is to become unacceptable (hence, uncanny valley). There's lots of room for things to be better though, so 20X improvement is possible but 0.5X reduction in quality means it's completely worthless.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#495

Post by bastardoperator »

ben_w wrote: post #288
singpolyma3 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean. From a financial PoV that's exactly what happened

Did they, though? Intel, IBM, DEC and Honeywell were big names, but they're not FAANG. Other than Nintendo, how many games companies today were around back then?

Nintendo, Capcom, Activision, Konami, Sega, Bandai Namco, EA, Sunsoft, Atari, Taito, Bethesda, Tecmo and Naughty dog

All found in the 80's or earlier and still pretty well known today. It could be argued these are different companies today, but they exist.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#496

Post by gortok »

kypro wrote: post #238
gortok wrote: post #29

When I use a computer to do work I want the computer to be right. I want to be able to trust the computer. With the inherit non-determinism and probabilistic nature of generative-AI, that fundamental reason why I engage a computer is lost. If the spreadsheet is wrong, it’s because the math is wrong, it’s because I made a mistake. It’s not because all of a sudden the computer decided the nature of algebra should be di…

> there are plenty of places where machine learning algorithms make sense, but customer service is not one of them. You're optimising for quality, where as companies optimise for some balance of quality and cost. AI might not be quite as good as a skilled human, but it's often good enough and a lot cheaper, so companies use it. I actually think customer service is one of the few places it makes sense to use AI – at l…

> You're optimising for quality, where as companies optimise for some balance of quality and cost.

To be clear; in our current stage of capitalism, companies are largely optimizing for how much quality they can sacrifice before they lose too many customers to justify the sacrifice in quality.

Companies are optimizing for cost, and part of the backlash against AI is the backlash against the overt quality sacrifices made by companies.

This trend will hopefully continue.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#497

Post by ray_v »

fusslo wrote: post #89
silisili wrote: post #10

Because the writing is on the wall already. Who hasn't been annoyed with "AI customer service", we already read about AI in the military, then you have the envisioned huge loss of jobs. People generally seem to like using it as a chatbot, or answer questions, on their own terms. But anywhere it's been forced against the user asking for it has been a disaster.

I had an AI agent lie to me I called siriusxm to get them to turn off their stupid advertising on my in-car infotainment I had called like 3 months ago to do the same thing. The human agent confirmed she turned it off on my account I called again recently and asked the AI to turn off in-car ads and weather alerts. The ai INSISTED this was my car's manufacturer responsibility. I kept yelling and swearing until it fina…

I had an Amazon agent tell me that I should go and take my misdelivered packages off my neighbor's porch. I told it that that may look bad and I didn't want to get shot or have the police called on me.

The AI agent and I went back and forth for like 5 minutes before I got a person (I think!). When the human agent got on the chat I pretended that I had traumatic brain injury from slipping and falling trying to retrieve my misdelivered items.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#498

Post by RadHazard »

bheadmaster wrote: post #489
RadHazard wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common misconception.

Care to elaborate?

The probabilities in quantum mechanics don't mean there is no determinism. The "answer" to determinism is dependent on your interpretation of quantum mechanics. Even then, take the popular many worlds interpretation. Some see it as supporting determinism and some see it as not supporting it. I wish I could find the pbs spacetime video that talks about it much more eloquently than I can. Somewhat tangential but if you're interested take a look at the relational interpretation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_quantum_mechanics . It doesn't get discussed much and it made me think differently about the topic.

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#499

Post by ben_w »

bastardoperator wrote: post #495
ben_w wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they, though? Intel, IBM, DEC and Honeywell were big names, but they're not FAANG. Other than Nintendo, how many games companies today were around back then?

Nintendo, Capcom, Activision, Konami, Sega, Bandai Namco, EA, Sunsoft, Atari, Taito, Bethesda, Tecmo and Naughty dog All found in the 80's or earlier and still pretty well known today. It could be argued these are different companies today, but they exist.

I'm replying to someone replying to "1960", not "the 80s".

Half the ones I recognise from that list seem to be somewhat older than I realised though.

But everything between and including Bethesda and Atari is more recent than the decade I was replying to. Strictly speaking everything more recent than Saga is more recent, but I did misread it initially as "the 1960s" not "1960".

Re: Only 16 Percent of Americans Think AI Will Have a Positive Impact on Society

#500

Post by watwut »

jimbokun wrote: post #405
watwut wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that CEOs of those companies are ethically challenged people, narcissists and sociopaths. They are not evil and there is no evil emerging in big systems. It is that in the above have advantage in winner takes all economy and use that advantage to gain more advantages. So they end up on top. And once they are high enough, law dont apply to them. Which makes them go even higher.

The vast majority of people suddenly become ethically challenged narcissists and sociopaths if given too much power.

You dont become narcissists nor sociopath by getting power. Narcissists and sociopaths are more likely to seek power. And in current society, they are more likely to actually get it. But, they were like that from the start. Look at current CEOs - you can see those traits in them their whole known career.

Likewise with ethically challenged. They are more likely to become rich.

If you are not narcissists nor sociopath and gain power, you will be out of touch, you may become arrogant due to having less pushback in life. But, you wont become sociopath nor narcissist, if you cared about other people you will still have that in you.

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