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AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

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Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#51

Post by [deleted] »

bumby wrote: post #7
fny wrote: post #5

"air traffic controllers were paid a median annual salary of $132,250 in 2022, or nearly four times the $33,380 median annual pay of crossing guards" It's not quite "expertise" that justifies the wage gap, it's supply and demand. Almost anyone can be a crossing guard--not everyone can be an air traffic controller. If AI theoretically could make anyone an air traffic controller, one would expect the salary to collapse…

Likewise I think the author makes the same error elsewhere. TFA states: > The contemporary challenge is the high and rising price of essential services like healthcare, higher education and law, that are monopolized by guilds of highly educated experts. The rising cost of education and healthcare are not exactly going to the "guilds of highly educated experts" as much as they are ballooned by second-order effects fro…

[deleted]

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#53

Post by dmurray »

fny wrote: post #5

"air traffic controllers were paid a median annual salary of $132,250 in 2022, or nearly four times the $33,380 median annual pay of crossing guards" It's not quite "expertise" that justifies the wage gap, it's supply and demand. Almost anyone can be a crossing guard--not everyone can be an air traffic controller. If AI theoretically could make anyone an air traffic controller, one would expect the salary to collapse…

Well, we can also say that we expect air traffic controllers generate at least their $132k/ year in value. Crossing guards seem to have a similar role and in theory could be generating the same value, but at the margin they're probably not - you'd expect hiring another one would be worth some significant fraction of the $132k to railway companies, but they're not competing to hire more of them.

So if AI enables every unskilled worker to produce $132k of value instead of $33k, who gets the $99k surplus? Marxist economics teaches us that in a capitalist society, without additional state intervention, the employer gets all of it. Too bad for the worker.

The good news, though, is that most labour economists wouldn't go as far as Marx. In modern societies the working man seems to get at least some benefit from productivity gains that don't come directly from him working harder. And even if you do believe Marx, note the caveat about "without state intervention". The modern state has many tools to intervene and is not afraid to use them: taxes, minimum wage laws, mandating bullshit jobs. In this scenario, doubling minimum wage wouldn't hurt economic productivity - the workers are all producing $132k of value, so not a single one will be laid off if they need to be paid $66k each.

Of course, there are some coordination problems to solve...

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#54

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

Swizec wrote: post #24
fny wrote: post #5

"air traffic controllers were paid a median annual salary of $132,250 in 2022, or nearly four times the $33,380 median annual pay of crossing guards" It's not quite "expertise" that justifies the wage gap, it's supply and demand. Almost anyone can be a crossing guard--not everyone can be an air traffic controller. If AI theoretically could make anyone an air traffic controller, one would expect the salary to collapse…

> If AI levels the playing field so dramatically, the notion of middle class will entirely evaporate since everyone's purchasing power equalizes We can study this by looking at examples! Slovenia (where I'm from) has the 3rd lowest gini index in the world[1]. Meaning we are the 3rd most egalitarian country in the world with close to zero income inequality. You would think this is fantastic, but in practice it means e…

I'm very eager to understand this. If there are no rich people to tax, then who owns the unaffordable real estate?

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#55

Post by roughly »

Ted Chiang put it best - "most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism."

https://kottke.org/21/04/ted-chiang-fears-of-technology-are-...

So long as the dominant theology in this country is extractive capitalism, nothing that tilts the cost balance towards capital and away from labor will be good for the middle class or the average person.

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#56

Post by asdff »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #46
asdff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways to snap ones fingers and right the ship, very few ways to do it in practice. Imagine trying to get such a law passed, you'd have the entire worlds economy outadvertising and out lobbying you.

> We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Ursula K Le Guin [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-gu...

In practice, is there anything different between a king and someone who was born into a wealthy family? Not really. We might have severed the idea of divinity choosing who receives these resources (plenty of billionaires praise god of course for their success all that being said) but we have not done anything about the issue of a small chosen few accumulating the bulk of the gains of our productivity.

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#57

Post by mschuster91 »

fny wrote: post #5

"air traffic controllers were paid a median annual salary of $132,250 in 2022, or nearly four times the $33,380 median annual pay of crossing guards" It's not quite "expertise" that justifies the wage gap, it's supply and demand. Almost anyone can be a crossing guard--not everyone can be an air traffic controller. If AI theoretically could make anyone an air traffic controller, one would expect the salary to collapse…

> Additionally, the notion of a middle class relies on a wage differential. If AI levels the playing field so dramatically, the notion of middle class will entirely evaporate since everyone's purchasing power equalizes.

Yup, and that is going to be the defining problem of the next decade - IMHO even more than climate change and most other environmental issues.

The lower classes aren't going to be threatened by AI, not for a looong time until we get "I, Robot"/Star Trek TNG Data-like robots with precision dexterity comparable to a human. The jobs they do aren't automatable at all, have been automated long ago so it's not an issue any more (most of manufacturing, mining) or human labor will be cheaper than a robot replacing it (which is sad enough - shouldn't automation actually free the masses from toiling in hard and rewardless jobs?).

The higher classes (depending on definition, usually the 1-10 top % of wealth) aren't going to be threatened by AI either. Those who have the money have the power after all, and almost everyone with a fully paid off home and a second one to rent out should be set even for the worst cases.

But the wide masses? Realistically, as you said most of them will fall to lower classes in income and lifestyle, and a very few luckshotters (="AI prompt engineers") manage to raise up. We've seen in the last decade or so just how powerful and reactionary the search of these masses for a scapegoat for their externally-caused misfortune can be, and it can take on a lot of different forms: nationalism to far-right xenophobia, antisemitism, anti-muslim, anti-intellectual ("antivaxxers", a ton of "homeschoolers")... that's a lot to take on even for a stable society, and external influence (enemy nation propaganda, financially motivated propaganda such as the Macedonian troll farms hunting for ad placements, domestic media moguls) makes it even worse.

Honestly I have zero idea how the fuck humanity is supposed to continue to exist as a civilization longer than 10-20 years. Even the best of our democracies are falling apart not just at the fringes (you always had and will have loons) but in the center.

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#58

Post by Workaccount2 »

badrunaway wrote: post #36

One new job which I believe will be high paying and lot of people will be able to do, in the post-AI world => Content verification and moderation. With so many bots and fake content, I don't want to waste my time on low quality stuff. I want other humans to verify it, test it, validate it etc. and then only it should see my eyes. Those platforms which will employ this approach will have better content coming to timel…

>high paying and lot of people will be able to do

Generally speaking, this is an oxymoron.

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#59

Post by holoduke »

fny wrote: post #5

"air traffic controllers were paid a median annual salary of $132,250 in 2022, or nearly four times the $33,380 median annual pay of crossing guards" It's not quite "expertise" that justifies the wage gap, it's supply and demand. Almost anyone can be a crossing guard--not everyone can be an air traffic controller. If AI theoretically could make anyone an air traffic controller, one would expect the salary to collapse…

Yes. Most people will be seen as unneeded occupants by the rich elite. A world with only a few million is desired by them. Workers are no longer needed. Low and middle class people are waste.

Re: AI used well can restore middle class jobs [pdf]

#60

Post by asdff »

hiddencost wrote: post #10
asdff wrote: post #4

The problem with the concept of a middle class job (one where you can comfortably afford living, fun, saving, etc I think is most people's interpretations), is that it represents an unstable equilibrium state. Incentives of most businesses are the opposite of someone in the middle class. Businesses don't think in terms how they can take so little such as to perpetuate some idyllic lifestyle unimpinged, they think in…

There's a whole range of options. We can make the state stronger without going full planned economy. To pick a few things we could do: -> criminal liability for white collar crime -> muscular antitrust -> roll back citizen's united -> public option for health insurance -> taxes on real estate as investment I don't understand why people think this is all or nothing. Plenty of countries are doing much better than the U…

Can you cite some countries that haven't seen any wage stagnation and have actually seen wages grow linearly with productivity? I certainly can't think of any. Wage stagnation is endemic in the western world at least.
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