There is nothing original in this article. This could’ve been written by an AI just scraping one month of posts to hacker news. This article is a critique of autonomously repackaging existing ideas by autonomously repackaging existing ideas. The irony is not lost on me.
The dead economy theory
691–700 of 1001 posts
Re: The dead economy theory
#692When cars got better people just drove faster.
Don’t be the last buggy whip maker.
AI can’t take payment in cash or barter.
Re: The dead economy theory
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't doubt that they were a bit overstaffed, but it doesn't seem unreasonable when you consider that "Messenger" is an umbrella that includes video calling, payments, games, integrations with business chatbots, Uber/Lyft integrations etc, across web/iOS/Android/Quest, internationally. If you took every feature Messenger has and multiplied it by even ~3 engineers for each one you could fill a few floors pretty quic…
messenger is an absurdly popular app that keeps users in the platform and also increases the intensity of their usage, ultimately leading to more eyeballs, ads and revenue. If you look at it that way, relatively small features, and by association, improvements to the effectiveness of those features by a couple of SWEs each, gets you tons of business impact.
> that keeps users in the platform
Alright but if it'd just let me open a damn web link without smashing the link four times just to open an in-app browser frame I'd really appreciate it.
Re: The dead economy theory
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is this time different? If it was just programming being automated, then whatever. Lots of professions have been automated and society adapts. The underlying worry here is that current AI provides a partial automation of intelligence. The endgame for the investors and the corporations using AI is complete automation of intelligence (and manual labor, too). They want a $25,000 robot that works around the clock,…
> They want a $25,000 robot that works around the clock Don't you? For the cost of less than a new car, I can have a live-in butler/maid? I'd sell my car and downgrade to afford one at $25k if it actually worked . I can't afford to and don't want to hire a human to live in my house and do all my chores for me, 24/7, plus the overhead and the headache and liability, but a robot for $25k is pretty tempting. Never have…
> Never have to fold laundry or the dishes again?
If you're folding the dishes, I agree that you should probably get someone else, perhaps a robot, to replace you there. ;)
But overall I absolutely agree. I don't want (and can't afford) a household employee; if I could buy a $25k appliance that would reliably take care of all my household chores, I wouldn't even need to think about it.
Re: The dead economy theory
#695> except that software has near-zero marginal cost
Yes, but not AI. This is where AI differs from other software: marginal cost is not zero, in fact it doesn't go down much, if at all, for each generated token (after accounting for the depreciation of hardware), and could even go up if trying to find an extra MWh gets more and more difficult and therefore more and more expensive.
Economies of scale don't work well in AI.
Re: The dead economy theory
#696Old theory - I feel like that Simpsons meme, "say the words Bart," but, Marx write about this:
> The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.
The fact that companies seek profite by cutting labor costs, but in cutting labor costs can inadvertently reduce the spending power of their customers in aggregate, is one of the inherent contradictions of capitalism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch15.htm
Re: The dead economy theory
#697I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…
I don't doubt that they were a bit overstaffed, but it doesn't seem unreasonable when you consider that "Messenger" is an umbrella that includes video calling, payments, games, integrations with business chatbots, Uber/Lyft integrations etc, across web/iOS/Android/Quest, internationally. If you took every feature Messenger has and multiplied it by even ~3 engineers for each one you could fill a few floors pretty quic…
And if it's anything like Whatsapp, they'd need to keep up support for otherwise unsupported platforms like ancient Android versions, cause .01% doesn't sound like a lot until you realize your install base is in the hundreds of millions.
Re: The dead economy theory
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They want a $25,000 robot that works around the clock Don't you? For the cost of less than a new car, I can have a live-in butler/maid? I'd sell my car and downgrade to afford one at $25k if it actually worked . I can't afford to and don't want to hire a human to live in my house and do all my chores for me, 24/7, plus the overhead and the headache and liability, but a robot for $25k is pretty tempting. Never have…
Uhm, no? What if it has a glitch or bug or gets hacked and wants to hurt me or someone else? I'd rather do all of that myself than own a movable bot that could crush my head like a melon for any reason while I'm sleeping, no thank you
This is just a function of the overton window. A couple decades ago most people probably thought a robot vacuum (with a camera on it!) was creepy, but now they're fairly commonplace, or at least well-accepted[0].
The bot safety issues are certainly real, but that's a trust/confidence hump to get over, and robotics companies will get there eventually.
[0] Even considering we know employees of the manufacturers have abused the camera access!
Re: The dead economy theory
#699> It is also a proposal in which he gets to be the one doing the distributing. Feudalism with better branding.
It's worse than feudalism. Feudalism is essentially a contract, an unfair one yes, but both parties need something from the other. The Lord needs the peasants (or vassals) to provide labor and soldiers for conflicts. But in this hypothetical world, the elite no longer need anything from the workers, the workers are completely dependent on the altruism of those who control all the resources, and that is not a stable place to be.
Of course that assumes that AI produces massive productivity gains. But if it doesn't, then we'll see a different kind of economic collapse when the bubble bursts. So we lose either way.
Re: The dead economy theory
#700The 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?
> 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. The retired people who you know are happy love it. The retirement-age people who didn't love it went back into the workforce. Or they didn't stop working in the first place. And c'mon, the "retired person struggling to find purpose" is basically a societal trope at this point. >…
My life has no purpose and that makes me sad, but I really don't see what I could possibly do.