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Global Intelligence Crisis

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Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#51

Post by Ancalagon »

vmg12 wrote: post #35
krackers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you going to choose to buy your protein bar online from mysteryBargainBar[.]com for a $1 savings, or just pick it up as part of your local grocery trip? > I still remember when people were scared to buy things on the internet People still /are/ scared to buy things from Amazon for things that go on or in their body.

> mysteryBargainBar[.]com for a $1 savings The AI could also research which stores are reputable. > People still /are/ scared to buy things from Amazon for things that go on or in their body. Sure, there are also people scared of flying in airplanes, those must be a dud too going by your logic.

Yes from all those reputable AI reviews

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#52

Post by xenophon »

Well-written; seems like an expanded and more detailed version of the Twitter essay that made the rounds a couple weeks ago.

One thing this piece doesn't contemplate is deflation. Competition will still exist in this world; if friction decreases and renders switching costs lower for a wider variety of industries, while AI efficiencies improve margins, prices in those markets will be competed down to a substantially lower marginal cost floor.

In other words, people may make less money, but goods in industries which benefit from AI should become cheaper in a growing set of competitive markets. The magnitude of the impact on prices should correlate with the magnitude of the employment impact; the better AI is at taking our jobs, the cheaper prices should get for an ever wider basket of goods.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#53

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

keithwhor wrote: post #46

My guess is that intelligence gets commodified to the point where LLMs and diffusion models are sold on chips and we seamlessly integrate them into the HW + SW stack. Then they’re just another abstraction; we talk to our computers to get things built. At essentially zero cost, truly too cheap to meter. In parallel there’s an explosion of creative output; Marvel movies turn around in 1 year instead of 4, solely blocke…

> I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically.

You may be right. OTOH, one could say the last decade had the best conditions ever to create the best movies, and yet for some reason I feel that the newer the movie is, the less soul it has.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#54

Post by jstummbillig »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #50
jstummbillig wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who actually stands to benefit from the massive devaluation of services in an economy that is buoyed by service-based roles? Everyone, if it comes with productivity gains. We will need good tools to distribute the gains.

You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly. The last 50 years have clearly shown that this is certainly not the case unless there is political intervention. The elites and the political class attached to them will assign whatever meanger rations they can to avoid revolution but not much else. Not to mention: the grand majority of the US's GDP is wrapped up into service…

> You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly

No, I am assuming the opposite. I agree: We do need political intervention.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#55

Post by jstummbillig »

formerly_proven wrote: post #41
jstummbillig wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one price matches for protein bars because it's a commodity item with minimal price differences Everyone will prize match all the time – for protein bars and absolutely everything else, when AI can do it for them for ~free, and the ai-meta-shopping experience is the best that you can get anywhere. Thinking about this task from todays perspective misses the point: You simply won't be considering it. AI will. It's…

The current AI-meta-shopping-research experience (using e.g. ChatGPT Deep Research) is largely garbage, especially for goods where the infosphere is dominated by the manufacturers and they're also using SKU-spraying, e.g. white goods. DR is of course fairly decent (if rather slow) at comparing hard-facts, but that's often easy for most goods anyway ("find me a motherboard with features X, Y, Z" goes _way_ quicker usi…

How much, as a % of your total wealth, would you be willing to bet on the believe, that this experience will not be radically transformed within the coming 2 years and then also allow for ~frictionless agentic price matching?

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#56

Post by keithwhor »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #53
keithwhor wrote: post #46

My guess is that intelligence gets commodified to the point where LLMs and diffusion models are sold on chips and we seamlessly integrate them into the HW + SW stack. Then they’re just another abstraction; we talk to our computers to get things built. At essentially zero cost, truly too cheap to meter. In parallel there’s an explosion of creative output; Marvel movies turn around in 1 year instead of 4, solely blocke…

> I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically. You may be right. OTOH, one could say the last decade had the best conditions ever to create the best movies, and yet for some reason I feel that the newer the movie is, the less soul it has.

The economics of production cost, investment and distribution have created a lopsided industry where only guaranteed hits get funded. Less soul = pandering to more people.

With new tools we can reduce the production costs of great movies considerably. More budget, if it exists, can go to marketing and distribution. I expect this will lead to more experimental films and a lot more "soul." There will be a TON of slop, too, but that's fine! It's all part of experimentation with a new medium.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#57

Post by stego-tech »

7777777phil wrote: post #36

If I understand this correctly, the whole chain depends on Phase 1 being right, that agentic coding makes SaaS replicable in weeks. We got a live test of that in February when Claude Cowork plugins wiped ~$2T off enterprise software. As I see it the market made a category error though, pricing Salesforce and ServiceNow the same when systems of record and systems of engagement have very different exposure: https://phi…

> but historical evidence

Okay, I get that. Nobody is disputing historical evidence.

What we're asking is, does the current pattern also fit historical evidence? The answer a growing number of us seemingly reach is, no it does not, because generalized artificial intelligence is by definition able to replace general labor, and that includes future roles as well as current and prior ones.

That's what I'm shaking, screaming, and (metaphorically) punching people over: these companies are openly stating their intent to replace all human labor with AI, and yet people still cling to "yeah but history says" as a liferaft in a hurricane. They're not ambiguous about the goal, and we need to take them seriously if we want to avoid a gargantuan collapse of societal order as a result of their myopic, narcissistic, misanthropic bullshit.

I mean, just think of the absurdity of your own statement: technology designed to replace all human labor (not some human labor, but all human labor) will also still create more jobs for human labor than it displaces by replacing human labor.

Like, f'real? That's your entire position, and your sole defense is "historical evidence"?

Come on, already.

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#58

Post by Ancalagon »

rndphs wrote: post #38

The situation is clear. There is a great risk to the livelihoods and bargaining power of workers everywhere. This risk is driven by a race dynamic that is accelerating. In tech we can see this earlier than others because we are close to the technology at the heart of this. This is quickly becoming one of the largests threats to the public in history and the concentration of power of this trajectory threatens democrac…

Good thing LLMs don’t have guns, yet

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#59

Post by rrr_oh_man »

jstummbillig wrote: post #55
formerly_proven wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current AI-meta-shopping-research experience (using e.g. ChatGPT Deep Research) is largely garbage, especially for goods where the infosphere is dominated by the manufacturers and they're also using SKU-spraying, e.g. white goods. DR is of course fairly decent (if rather slow) at comparing hard-facts, but that's often easy for most goods anyway ("find me a motherboard with features X, Y, Z" goes _way_ quicker usi…

How much, as a % of your total wealth, would you be willing to bet on the believe, that this experience will not be radically transformed within the coming 2 years and then also allow for ~frictionless agentic price matching?

How much would you bet it will not be enshittified 2 years later?

Re: Global Intelligence Crisis

#60

Post by SirensOfTitan »

jstummbillig wrote: post #54
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly. The last 50 years have clearly shown that this is certainly not the case unless there is political intervention. The elites and the political class attached to them will assign whatever meanger rations they can to avoid revolution but not much else. Not to mention: the grand majority of the US's GDP is wrapped up into service…

> You're assuming that the gains from productivity improvements distribute themselves broadly No, I am assuming the opposite. I agree: We do need political intervention.

Right. So then when is the best time for labor to act to ensure those mechanisms are put in place? Before or after AI has eliminated its leverage?

Like I totally realize we're agreed in some sense, but some form of socialism now in the US seems politically untenable, and as soon as AI actually starts making service labor obsolete, we lose our leverage. How do we do something about it?

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