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The dead economy theory

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Re: The dead economy theory

#601

Post by idopmstuff »

treis wrote: post #108
idopmstuff wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this time different? That depends if AI gets to the point where it can fully replace workers, as opposed to just augmenting them. I heard Alex Imas on a podcast recently talking about how a SWE can be running 10 agents to be 10x as productive, then that SWE is more valuable so firms should want to hire more SWEs and pay them more. That works for a while, but what if AI gets to the point where it can manage t…

>The construction worker it replaces isn't going to start managing a team of robots construction robots Some of them will. You've slashed construction labor cost to 5% of what it was before. With that and a similar reduction throughout the supply chain means we're going to start building a lot more stuff.

Even if we start building a lot more stuff, you still don't need those construction workers. You have a GC to manage the whole project, aided by an AI who's handling scheduling/operations/logistics. You have a detailed plan to build against.

So why do you need former construction workers to manage the robots? Why can't the GC and management AI run the whole thing?

Maybe there's some scenario where you still need something like one licensed person from each skilled trade to be responsible for the robots employing those trades. But there's no way you need everyone who worked on building sites managing robots, no matter how much construction you're doing.

Re: The dead economy theory

#602

Post by hunterpayne »

yyyk wrote: post #63
3fff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ultimately, we'll reach an economy which objectively does not need humans and everyone will know it. He needs to face that reality and overcome it, and not hide behind temporary and dubious estimates." Who are you projecting your views with such force on others? What have you achieved? I bet you are nobody of substance.

We can all read the news and see AI constantly improving at a very quick pace. What's the barrier AI can't improve beyond? One that would last a lifetime? By all means (since you're such an accomplished person), explain yourself.

We can? All I see is marketing departments quoting questionable research. I also see independent research which says exactly the opposite. Remember, LLMs are mostly trained on Reddit. Would you trust the average Reddit poster with running a large business? I seriously doubt it. That's the level of decision making LLMs have.

Re: The dead economy theory

#603

Post by ticulatedspline »

hughw wrote: post #592

The assumption is that if you send people checks, they’ll find meaning in hobbies and community. They’ll paint. They’ll garden. They’ll finally write that novel. The author suggests it will fail because we'll all use drugs and booze and commit suicide. But it works for retired people. They love it. Is this why we all have to work 9 to 5 drudge jobs? Because we can't handle the freedom?

Good bit of survivor bias in the retired population. If you can put in 30-40 years of full time work and then afford to retire you probably don't have a propensity for substance abuse.

Re: The dead economy theory

#604

Post by matrix87 »

wcfrobert wrote: post #299

> Turn three: the company that fired its workers to save money discovers that its customers were, in aggregate, other companies’ workers. Revenue growth stalls. The AI subscription that was supposed to be an investment in efficiency turns out to be a contribution to the destruction of its own market. If we take it to the extreme, the final solution to this problem is secessionism: a fully non-human AI economy where t…

Nick Land already predicted this

Re: The dead economy theory

#605

Post by idopmstuff »

zozbot234 wrote: post #104
idopmstuff wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is this time different? That depends if AI gets to the point where it can fully replace workers, as opposed to just augmenting them. I heard Alex Imas on a podcast recently talking about how a SWE can be running 10 agents to be 10x as productive, then that SWE is more valuable so firms should want to hire more SWEs and pay them more. That works for a while, but what if AI gets to the point where it can manage t…

Someone will always have to prompt the AI, it can't just do that on its own. Or rather, maybe it can (you can just prompt it to "kindly do the needful" in a completely unspecific way) but the results won't be any good.

Sure, but the question is at what layer of abstraction do you have to prompt the AI?

You used to have to prompt the AI by starting to write the actual line of code you want, which it could autocomplete. Then you had to prompt it to write simple scripts or functions. The amount of scope you can prompt keeps getting bigger and bigger. Eventually, you have a PM or a CEO just telling it what features you need. Maybe it's a PM and a designer and a CEO and a CTO, but it will eventually get to the point where the number of people you need to do the prompting shrinks orders of magnitude from company sizes today. Maybe you just give the AI some money, prompt it to start a money-making business, and it goes out and does the same research and analysis that a seasoned entrepreneur would do to find an opportunity then builds out the business from there.

> the results won't be any good

Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on that. The trend over time has been that the results from prompting AI to do things have gotten better. I used to prompt it to build me dashboards and it would fail spectacularly. Now it one-shots them. Maybe the code is terrible (though doesn't matter for me, I'm the only one using it and I can verify the dashboard content is correct), but if the trend continues, it'll get better. Maybe the trend won't continue, but I've yet to come across a good explanation of why AI capabilities will just top out and cease improving forever.

Re: The dead economy theory

#606

Post by confidantlake »

empath75 wrote: post #451
alex_young wrote: post #53

Why is this time different? Won't super power AI tools allow companies to do more with the same number of people? Don't you think a smarter way to run a business is to capture more of the market if you have the resources to do so? If company A decides they just want the same slice of the market they have now and can fire half of their employees and pocket $$$, can't company B hire the same workers and compete harder…

> Won't super power AI tools allow companies to do more with the same number of people? I think this is directionally right, but I think there might be a scaling/organization problem for companies, and that the more likely outcome is that _small companies_ are going to start punching way over their weight class.

I suspect the opposite. Products don't win because they are better. They win because monopolies control the sales/regulators. Bit occasionally the big companies fucked up the actual product development so badly an upstart could emerge. With ai they will quickly just copy any success and all the other big orgs will just buy the AI ripoff version.

Re: The dead economy theory

#607

Post by hunterpayne »

stego-tech wrote: post #227
cjs_ac wrote: post #79

This is a great article, but it under-emphasises the fact that it’s middle-class jobs under threat. The studies that are summarised show what happens when working-class people are kicked out of the economy, but the historical record shows that when middle-class people are kicked out of the economy, they use their education to form and lead revolutions. Unless the bubble pops and destroys all these companies, I don’t…

Not sure why you're downvoted for citing historical fact, but I guess some folks are quite scared at the implication that they're the baddies . You don't even have to go that far back. The New Deal that everyone fawns over was in large part the compromise of the wealthy with the workers to form the Middle Class, in lieu of being murdered in their own homes like had been going on for decades prior. The rise of Communi…

"The New Deal that everyone fawns over was in large part the compromise of the wealthy with the workers to form the Middle Class,"

The middle class was formed 100 years before that, originally in an entire another country and was formed because of the industrial revolution. And what put the the communists in the US on the back foot was the Cold War and the nuclear spying.

Re: The dead economy theory

#608

Post by confidantlake »

iliaxj wrote: post #457

The article doesn't seem to take his train of thought quite far enough. If AI suddenly makes it possible for a law firm to be run with a skeleton crew, then what's stopping all those people you fired from starting new law companies, where AI also does most of the work, and competing with you for the same market? And ultimately, if AI gets to be so good that it can competently do a lawyer's job, what reason do big law…

Law firms are useful because they have connections to the prosecution and judges. You can't just open up a law firm without that.

Re: The dead economy theory

#609

Post by Zigurd »

hunterpayne wrote: post #375
Zigurd wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DEC filled The Mill in Maynard and multiple huge office buildings along 495. How many people did it take to write code for the next version of VAX VMS?

An Operating System is far larger and more complex than Messenger.

A typical configuration was 2 to 4 MB of RAM. Just how much OS complexity can you stuff into that?

Re: The dead economy theory

#610

Post by confidantlake »

philipkglass wrote: post #264
asdff wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money I think people get hung up on "job bad" and forget what the job is actually doing, functionally. We are animals, on earth, attempting to survive. We have evolved where we actually really suck at doing it alone, but we do really well if we delegate the various needs of survival. Now, how do we make it so if you chopped woo…

Pregnancy and childbirth are physically taxing for women. Most people of reproductive age want sexual relationships. Many people want children. Very few women want to give birth to 12+ kids. Even the wives of billionaires don't have that many children, despite having more than enough material resources to support them. (Elon Musk's 12+ children required several women.)

I am not sure most do.
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