571–580 of 725 posts
You don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn'…
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“Robots coming for your jobs” is a valid argument against robots even if they can do those jobs better and faster, under two assumptions: 1) humans benefit from having jobs and 2) human benefit is the end goal. Both are fairly uncontroversial: many humans not only benefit from jobs but in fact often depend on jobs for their livelihoods, and (2) should be self-evident. This can change if the socioeconomic system is qu…
This is valid only so far as "human benefit" is localized to the human doing the job. I'm a cancer researcher. Obviously. my job is of value to me because it pays my bills (and yes, I do get satisfaction from it in other ways). But if an AI can do cancer research better than me, then the human benefit (to every human except perhaps me) favors the AI over me. But a lot of jobs aren't like that. I doubt many people who…
I’ll note that I didn’t mention “AI”, I was addressing robots vs. jobs, but sure.
Let me straw man myself and say up front that it would be simplistic to say that if something hurts one person today then it is bad, even if it benefits a million tomorrow. However, does that mean if death of N people can cause N+1 people to be saved at some indefinite point in the future, we should jump on the opportunity?
Utilitarian math is not the answer. We don’t have to go far for examples of tragic loss of life and atrocities that were caused by people following utilitarian objectives, so I am much more wary of this logic than its inverse. We probably should neither let everybody starve while we are fighting cancer nor stop studying cancer, even if we could feed millions of people in dire need with that money.
With that in mind: feeling fulfilled and needed is important, being able to pay bills is important, etc., no matter who you are. It is probably unacceptable to reduce human life to “be the most efficient cog in the system or GTFO”.
> I doubt many people who work in, say, public relations, really think their job has value other than paying their bills.
Does your cancer research institution have no public relations department? Should there be no public relations departments in any of them? Would it help cancer research?
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Tangentially, the Wikipedia article on inflammation makes two claims: 1) inflammation can be caused by stress—I imagine via lack of sleep, bad habits, eating disorders, etc.—and 2) cancer is one of the non-immune diseases with causal origins in inflammatory processes. Now, there’s many things that could cause a person to stress, but I imagine losing your job and struggling to make ends meet, with a promise that it helps humanity at some point, is definitely high up there (especially if you have a family). I jest, but only in part.
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This sounds a lot like a sovereign wealth fund. The government obtains fractional ownership over large enterprises (this can happen through market mechanisms or populist strongarming — choose your own adventure) and pours the profits on these investments into the social safety net or even citizens' dividends. For this to work at scale domestically, the fund would need to be a double-digit percentage of the market cap…
> The government obtains fractional ownership over large enterprises (this can happen through market mechanisms or populist strongarming...) Isn't that what happened in the Soviet Union? Except it wasn't fractional. It ushered 50 years of misery.
- Maybe you just decide to invest some public money
- Maybe you have some natural resources that are collective-by-default (minerals wealth on public land)
- Maybe there's a bailout of an industry that is financially broken but has become too big to fail cough and the government presses its leverage
- Maybe a president just wakes up and decides that he wants the government to own 10% of Intel, and makes that deal happen on favorable terms.
Let’s take this to its logical limit: imagine that AI gets so good that it can replace a lot of jobs en masse. The most popular job in about half of the US is truck drivers, and in the states where it is teachers, truck drivers are number 2. Let’s say we do get to not only self-driving trucks but self-driving trucks loaded by robotic warehouse workers. Let’s postulate that this becomes the norm and let’s say that alo…
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Let’s take this to its logical limit: imagine that AI gets so good that it can replace a lot of jobs en masse. The most popular job in about half of the US is truck drivers, and in the states where it is teachers, truck drivers are number 2. Let’s say we do get to not only self-driving trucks but self-driving trucks loaded by robotic warehouse workers. Let’s postulate that this becomes the norm and let’s say that alo…
1. Massive population reduction (war is a very efficient way to achieve this)
2. Birth control, to slow down population growth to a stable rate near 0
3. Eugenics, to ensure only people with needed capabilities are born (brave new world)
In this scenario, 500,000 people (less ?) in charge of millions of robots and a minority of semi-enslaved humans would freely enjoy control over the world. The perfect mix between Asimov and Huxley.
All the agitation about "building a 1984-style world" is, at best, just a step toward this Asimov/Huxley model, and most likely, a deliberate decoy.
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I do wonder if somewhere like China might be better off - they might not have muh freedumb, but their government seems keen to look after the majority and fund things that corporations wouldn't.
I believe that if the elites in China didn't need the populace, they would dispense with them.
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You wrote: > Government no longer has the power or authority to constrain private enterprise; especially in highly technical sectors. Perhaps you meant only this: "Government no longer has the power ..."? It is clear government still has the authority based on the will of the people.
Conceptually, yes. But I'd argue the legal framework necessary to carry this out doesn't exist. The strength of private lobbists, keeps power in the hands of private enterprise.
Let’s take this to its logical limit: imagine that AI gets so good that it can replace a lot of jobs en masse. The most popular job in about half of the US is truck drivers, and in the states where it is teachers, truck drivers are number 2. Let’s say we do get to not only self-driving trucks but self-driving trucks loaded by robotic warehouse workers. Let’s postulate that this becomes the norm and let’s say that alo…
It won't if robots start driving trucks.
Henry Ford's philosophy was that if he paid his workers a higher wage, they would be able to afford the products they were producing, namely his Model T automobiles. This would, in turn, create a larger customer base for his company and help stimulate the economy by increasing consumer spending.
Sam Altman doesn’t own AI. His investors actually own most of the actual assets.
Eventually there is going to be pressure for open ai to deliver returns to investors. Given that the majority of the US economy is consumer spending, the incentive is going to be for open ai to increase consumer spending in some way.
That’s essentially what happened to Google during the 2000s. I know everyone is negative about social media right now. But one could envision an alternative reality where Google explicitly controls and sensors all information, took over roadways with their driving cars, completely merged with the government, etc. Basically a doomsday scenario.
What actually happened is Google was incentivized by capital to narrow the scope of their vision. Today, the company mainly sells ads to increase consumer spending.