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No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

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Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#71

Post by Nevermark »

oceanplexian wrote: post #10

Yeah, who am I going to trust, a few thousand years of history, or yet another blogger claiming that no, this time is different, a populist uprising would definitely not fail the 800th time because computers or something and we will all be pets for the AI overlord? I don’t follow this train of logic. AI will go no differently than the Industrial Revolution. Some people will profit immensely, and society as a whole wi…

> AI will go no differently than the Industrial Revolution.

So it is different this time is it?

"We" are different?

Unlike the 99.9% of species that went extinct, and continue to go extinct, we can't be supplanted? Obsoleted? Out competed? [0]

A few thousand years at the top of the food chain, and suddenly that few thousand years is "what can never change".

Technological change already drives machine cognitive progress forward faster than any human who has ever lived. That factor alone makes competence/capability obsolescence unavoidable, outside of technological collapse.

This is an unprecedented rate of real-time change, outside of instant disasters like volcanic eruptions or comet impacts, in direct competition with human capabilities.

SciFi has been broadcasting the potential and risk of AI for a couple centuries. This is a spectacular moment in the universe's history, assuming we don't blow ourselves up. Not just another day for humankind.

There must be a word for the inability to see the import of change. It seems to be a common disability.

This seems to be a real effect: The faster things go, the less sensitive we are to the rate of change. Precisely because we can't imagine what the world will be like in a decade, our horizon shrinks, and we treat short intervals as if they were long intervals. Anything that isn't instant feels like it is barely moving.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#72

Post by klipklop »

chasil wrote: post #18

I am very lucky to be retiring in two months. I should have more faithfully heeded the advice from "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing" by John Bogle, but I was close enough with index funds to do far more than I need. I just today filed a request for permanent Mexican residency, uploaded the required documents, and scheduled my appointment next month. For $56us, why not? I am very lucky to make this transitio…

I am real jealous of the boomers and gen-x being able to bail on the tech job market right as it goes to shit. Could not make for better timing. Everyone else looking at somehow surviving for the next 20-30 years knows that it’s looking pretty bleak.

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#73

Post by klipklop »

bm3719 wrote: post #53

Here's a potential solution: We accelerate capitalism (which AI is becoming synonymous with). The process described here will occur (it's probably inevitable anyway, as the essay's author would agree), giving us an economy of global capital completely decoupled from the desires of mankind. Then, man and machine can part ways; indeed, we'll have no choice on our end but to do this, because the machine won't need us. A…

You assume the tech lords would allow us access to natural resources to do that. Hint: they won’t. They will own everything.

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#74

Post by jrflowers »

zetalyrae wrote: post #32
Morromist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. This guy didn't read hacker news a few weeks ago when that article about the Samuri came up. There are a lot of premises this article takes for granted besides that one too, but yeah, I get it, its fun to make up what the future is going to be like on a super-grand scale where everything is a simple absolute. People were doing the same thing 100 years ago.

If you mean: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/samurai-city/ Doesn't this prove my point? In feudal Japanese society, wealthy merchants were lower status than poor samurai, i.e., they rich could not buy political power. "The wealthy" and "the ruling class" are not always the same group of people.

Is your point that the AI industry would have wrecked Edo period Japan

Or that we live in a shogunate

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#76

Post by varjag »

When people hear 'underclass' there's that mental image of food stamps and homeless shelters. I suspect though the society will converge to something similar to current status quo. We'll end up having our usual comforts, leisure, air travel, entertainment for the rest of our meaningless lives like in a handicapped Culture story. It is the path of least resistance for the dynamics explored in the article.

As a consolation AI existence will be just as meaningless (not that it cares). It will not be our scheming overlord but a tool that threw their master into existential crisis.

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#77

Post by varjag »

Gud wrote: post #70
oceanplexian wrote: post #10

Yeah, who am I going to trust, a few thousand years of history, or yet another blogger claiming that no, this time is different, a populist uprising would definitely not fail the 800th time because computers or something and we will all be pets for the AI overlord? I don’t follow this train of logic. AI will go no differently than the Industrial Revolution. Some people will profit immensely, and society as a whole wi…

Strawman and ad hominem(“another blogger”). Sometimes, genius comes from the least expected places. I don’t believe the blog poster promotes a “popular uprising”, I only skimmed the article. The blog poster anyway don’t understand that the “overclass” in their understanding is wrong. The “c-level” are obviously much richer than the “underclass”(=the labour commodity), but they are not necessarily capital owners.

If you reduce a class to <10k people in the world the word loses its meaning.

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#78

Post by keiferski »

Nevermark wrote: post #71
oceanplexian wrote: post #10

Yeah, who am I going to trust, a few thousand years of history, or yet another blogger claiming that no, this time is different, a populist uprising would definitely not fail the 800th time because computers or something and we will all be pets for the AI overlord? I don’t follow this train of logic. AI will go no differently than the Industrial Revolution. Some people will profit immensely, and society as a whole wi…

> AI will go no differently than the Industrial Revolution. So it is different this time is it? "We" are different? Unlike the 99.9% of species that went extinct, and continue to go extinct, we can't be supplanted? Obsoleted? Out competed? [0] A few thousand years at the top of the food chain, and suddenly that few thousand years is "what can never change". Technological change already drives machine cognitive progre…

Sci-fi is science fiction. Fiction.

LLMs are a useful technology. They have no relation to AI terminator bots other than being called the same name out of marketing and laziness.

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#79

Post by varjag »

morkalork wrote: post #15
NordStreamYacht wrote: post #6

FTA: "And who will stop this? Sam Altman? How many divisions does he have? The state doesn’t let corporations own nuclear weapons or fighter jets, it won’t let them have access to autonomous AI weapons either." Elon Musk's SpaceX. He could land a large rocket wherever he wants, it's basically a missile.

Take the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin for example, he did in fact have his own mercenary army. Turning on his president did not end well for him.

He stopped at the point where Putin had already fled Moscow, and only because of the hostage situation with his family.

I'm not sure to which degree that would have deterred Elon.

Re: No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass

#80

Post by znpy »

zetalyrae wrote: post #24
xixixao wrote: post #13

> The government pays Raytheon for missiles, the money cascades down the economy through factories, aluminium smelters, mines, transport companies, all staffed by AIs buying and selling from each other. This seems too simplistic of a description of how money would work in such a world. Money is just a way to distribute your power to influence people. You never pay for machines or software. Think about buying anything…

A corporation that is fully staffed by AIs and only retains humans for legal reasons (as directors, for liability etc.) still needs money to coordinate. You need to pay for inputs, you need to pay to run the AIs, which consumes resources. Why would costs go to zero? The market is still a valuable tool for allocating resources even if no market actors are human.

> A corporation that is fully staffed by AIs and only retains humans for legal reasons (as directors, for liability etc.) still needs money to coordinate.

i see developer starting to develop apps from scratch using ai. they aren't really doing "ai-assisted coding", the LLMs are doing pretty much most of the work.

and the company is shedding people off (as in: voluntarily not not keeping up with the natural people turnover).

as a sysadmin/cloud/devops engineer this is weird because i see people that after a week of development have a decently complex app working... but they have no idea how it works. they're largely unable to troubleshoot it.

Why am I writing this?

Because i have a very strong feeling that people in other positions (directors, managers etc) are doing a very similar job, meaning they essentially have no idea what's going on at all.

How long can this go on? I don't know really, i think this is uncharted territory for humanity.

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