Commenting strictly on the metaphor in the title: Did you mean to say ladder? Bridges don't get pulled up. Edit to say: Yes I did think of drawbridges. And Batman is a scientist. But drawbridges are simply "opened" or "raised," and the implication always is that it's temporary and they will soon be "closed" or "lowered." Though they can be sabotaged in the open position. All right fine, OP please change your title to…
The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
81–90 of 435 posts
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#82Commenting strictly on the metaphor in the title: Did you mean to say ladder? Bridges don't get pulled up. Edit to say: Yes I did think of drawbridges. And Batman is a scientist. But drawbridges are simply "opened" or "raised," and the implication always is that it's temporary and they will soon be "closed" or "lowered." Though they can be sabotaged in the open position. All right fine, OP please change your title to…
Maybe the author os thinking of a drawbridge (moveable bridge)?
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#83Leaving aside the sloppiness of the article, I think a lot of the behaviour in recent memory around crypto and meme stocks, and to an extent the whole rotating bubbles mode that markets seem to be in, can be attributed to this general trend. It's harder and harder to see the traditional path from school to work to some acceptable level of family wealth as being effective/worthwhile, and so we see different flavours o…
10/10 - also brings to mind Peter Turchin theory of elite overproduction and the immiseration of the masses.
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#84This is when I ask sincerely: how does AI truly benefit the average Joe? Sure it can help you do things “faster” and it can give you “private/cheaper” advice. But, AI feels increasingly like a thing that will make the powerful a lot more powerful with their data centres and automation shenanigans. All the hype feels like it’s being injected into everyone’s brain like a virus. Oh look at this shiny new tool! But, how…
Does not benefit average Joe now I agree But let’s say we get to ASI. The ai is self owned, ever expanding. It takes over all service jobs, then all labour jobs, the robots create the robots. It lobbies the government, becomes the government Rebuilds all housing with no waste in the process Makes most things available to everyone at no costs, UBI, perfect healthcare, and food, etc Average Joe’s life will be pretty aw…
There is no guarantee that the asi would care about human beings at all. Personally, I can’t see why it would.
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#85I resubmitted this because somebody flagged the original submission for unclear reasons and it had quite a lot of upvotes in a short time. Perhaps some people are offended by this argument, but it's definitely worthy of a discussion instead of censorship.
It was flagged for being clearly botted, and I don't just mean LLM-generated (although it is also that). When I posted on and flagged the old submission, I noted that it had over two dozen upvotes in 15 minutes, despite the essay having a helpful "54 min read" indicator at the top. I truly do not believe the upvotes on these submissions are organic, and it really destroys my faith in HN that this was restored when the first one went down successfully.
(If by some chance I am wrong and this monster of an LLM-generated essay really got dozens of people instantly upvoting it from the title alone, that fact would also not give me much faith in HN, I have to add.)
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#86Until I see median real income start to actually go down, I just don't buy it. AI is currently a commodity. Maybe one of the labs will be able to differentiate sufficiently to be able to charge the kinds of premiums they need just to pay back their investors. Maybe, instead, we'll see something akin to the FOSS revolution, where large, high-quality, open training sets are developed to make sure there's always a fair…
I'm with you. If we all have access to AI then how is that a bridge being taken away?
Doesn't that mean that a single person can more easily disrupt the status quo?
All this stuff about genetics... I just don't think it's relevant at this point. Average intelligence and access to the internet is what most of the world has.
It's the systems of money and law that are taking the bridge away not AI. But someone could invent new systems to replace the ones that don't serve the 99%
Will most people go that far? Probably not. But the bridge is still there - unless they take the AI models away entirely.
I think the only way the rich can stay rich with ai is if they just use AI to convince people that they can't do anything themselves. After all that's what the last century was about with respect to capitalism.
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#87This is when I ask sincerely: how does AI truly benefit the average Joe? Sure it can help you do things “faster” and it can give you “private/cheaper” advice. But, AI feels increasingly like a thing that will make the powerful a lot more powerful with their data centres and automation shenanigans. All the hype feels like it’s being injected into everyone’s brain like a virus. Oh look at this shiny new tool! But, how…
Idealism. Optimistic responses are based on a strong dose of positive idealism.
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#88The author is saying there was some kind of class mobility around the start of industrial revolution/dawn of capitalism. Which is simply false.
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#89This is when I ask sincerely: how does AI truly benefit the average Joe? Sure it can help you do things “faster” and it can give you “private/cheaper” advice. But, AI feels increasingly like a thing that will make the powerful a lot more powerful with their data centres and automation shenanigans. All the hype feels like it’s being injected into everyone’s brain like a virus. Oh look at this shiny new tool! But, how…
Does not benefit average Joe now I agree But let’s say we get to ASI. The ai is self owned, ever expanding. It takes over all service jobs, then all labour jobs, the robots create the robots. It lobbies the government, becomes the government Rebuilds all housing with no waste in the process Makes most things available to everyone at no costs, UBI, perfect healthcare, and food, etc Average Joe’s life will be pretty aw…
But why would this ever happen? Why would the owners of land, construction material and machinery give those up for free to the average Joe?
Right now, even an average citizen born in poverty can acquire wealth from his labor. That is basically the only mechanism that prevents limitless accumulation of wealth: rich people still need workers to get things done.
If you replace the workers with AI, there is no remaining incentive for wealth to "trickle down" or get redistributed. This is not desirable.
Re: The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
#90This is when I ask sincerely: how does AI truly benefit the average Joe? Sure it can help you do things “faster” and it can give you “private/cheaper” advice. But, AI feels increasingly like a thing that will make the powerful a lot more powerful with their data centres and automation shenanigans. All the hype feels like it’s being injected into everyone’s brain like a virus. Oh look at this shiny new tool! But, how…
I'm building an addition to my house and I use AI to visualize parts of it, which helps me plan efficiently, and I use it to answer questions about skills that I only have a little bit of experience in. I'm saving a ton of money and developing skills, so I count that as benefiting "the average Joe." I admit that I'm a programmer, but I'm using this as an example because it's helping me in an area in which I have little expertise, which applies to everyone.