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The dead economy theory

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Re: The dead economy theory

#851

Post by Falimonda »

My_Name wrote: post #784

Not many people see that the end result is that when ordinary people stop earning money, and stop buying products, all the money will be used purely for B2B transactions. Money will still exist, but people will not see hardly any of it. To break out of being just a person and start a business you will still need money, but be unable to get any. Thus, the endgame is revealed. You don't need to form a dictatorship, you…

> We see the start of it already, when just two individuals have a combined wealth on the order of a trillion dollars. That inequality is not going down, only upwards.

Isn't there an inconsistency here? You've set up this narrative of businesses as being the only entities with money (wealth?) but then singled out two individuals.

Also, how do calls for equality of wealth address the inequality in contribution of value and efficiency to society and the economy at large?

Re: The dead economy theory

#852

Post by abalashov »

logicchains wrote: post #263
spondelkryp wrote: post #91

>The US horse population grew from nine million in 1840 to twenty-one million by 1900, seemingly immune to technological change. Within sixty years of the internal combustion engine, the population collapsed by eighty-eight percent. I think this is a very interesting and chilling point, especially if you draw the parallel literally. For quite some time, I was pondering the question:"Who is buying though?". I.e if you…

In the early 1900s the majority of Americans were self-employed. The equilibrium will likely shift back towards this, because AIs cannot be business owners, cannot have a bank account, cannot be held liable for their mistakes. And AI are unlikely to be given economic rights any time in the near future, because doing so would facilitate an overwhelming amount of crime; an AI that can make hundreds of copies of its wei…

What about human actors as a thinly veiled, formal, and not especially people-intensive front-end to AI? Something like a skeleton crew?

Re: The dead economy theory

#853

Post by solatic »

The issue I have with these pieces is that AI will not affect the whole economy evenly. The disruptions come in bursts and fits: first digital artists were disrupted (e.g. Adobe Firefly), then junior engineering roles were disrupted, currently "measurer" roles (to quote Matthew Prince's piece on Cloudflare layoffs) are being disrupted, and it's rather foreseeable that occupations like lawyers and accountants are also at risk. But the key is that the disruption is not happening all at once. And that's a key fact because political disruption doesn't happen when a relative few people are laid off (like coal miners and factory workers were) but when a relative majority of people are hungry.

For such doomsdayer opinions to be correct, we'd see it in massive unemployment figures. US unemployment sitting at 4.3% does not bear that out. Finland and Spain are currently at >10+% unemployment. US youth unemployment may be at 9.5%, but British and Chinese youth unemployment are higher than 16%.

Is there some Finnish, Spanish, British, Chinese civil unrest that I'm not seeing in my media outlets?

Re: The dead economy theory

#854

Post by interstice »

forgetfulness wrote: post #526
interstice wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each time people found something else to do that someone would pay them for. This doesn't automatically mean there is an infinite supply of that - unless you believe in it as some kind of fundamental law.

I simply don't believe that there is an infinite demand for the kinds of things that can be done by generating text. How many insurance policies does anyone need to contract, how much legal advice does anyone need to hear, how many movies does anyone need to watch, and how much software does must support that demand, so that everyone can stay employed in an AI accelerated service sector? The new opportunities could w…

We already live in a world where supply would greatly outstrip demand if we weren't constantly being convinced (or convincing ourselves) to spend money on services we don't need. The only real lack of supply is around things like housing and food as far as I can tell, which is curious considering how long those problems have been around.

Re: The dead economy theory

#855

Post by neop1x »

leke wrote: post #708
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I 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…

Did WhatsApp spawn from Facebook Messenger? Perhaps this is what all those devs created.

Sadly they were allowed to acquire WhatsApp even though they already had their Messenger. Meta did it to devour their competition. Even today, lots of people still don't know that whatsapp is owned by Meta.

Re: The dead economy theory

#856

Post by patentatt »

freefaler wrote: post #765
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…

The price of their work will go down and it might not be economical to do it at all. Theirs skills (as also many IT skills) will not be needed at that scale. In the same way as typing on a typewriter was a skill that gave economic opportunity not so long time ago. Now everything is an email and part of it is speech to text. When something becomes a commodity, the skilled providers need to find something new to sell o…

Law firms are already limited by sales and marketing, and I believe the concept of ‘legal wizardry’ is misplaced. There’s almost nothing one law firm can do that another couldn’t do just as well. The only thing clients want are the ‘you don’t get fired for buying IBM’ factor and asking ‘how high’ when they say jump. The first is all based on cultivating an image and that’s just marketing and sales, and the second is just pure workaholic-fueled hustle.

Re: The dead economy theory

#857

Post by miki123211 »

> over half of new content on the internet was AI-generated

And this means nothing.

People really underestimate how fast computers are compared to humans and what this means for new content. I can have my computer generate a petabyte of text containing just the letter "a", no AI needed[1]. If I let people on the internet access that content, am I now one of the largest websites on the web? Am I now thousands of times larger than the English Wikipedia? That's obviously absurd, if I don't get views, all that content means nothing.

AI is just an extension of that problem. I can spend $100 and have a terrible model generate a hallucinated article on every single function in the Python stdlib. On one hand, this means "AI has written more Python documentation that the developers of Python themselves", on the other... does it matter if nobody ever reads it?

This misunderstanding also comes up with scams and frauds. If you own a physical store and 99% of your customers attempt to shoplift; there's something seriously wrong. If you own a website and 99% of orders are obvious frauds, ehh, a computer can send thousands of them per second, a human takes at least 5 minutes just to make one. If you can reliably identify them all, none of that matters. Somebody's probably card testing again.

[1] I don't actually need a petabyte of storage, as this is low-entropy content that compresses well. I suspect that a 1TB hard drive would have no problem storing it.

Re: The dead economy theory

#858

Post by patentatt »

noopprod wrote: post #819
kajaktum wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the limit of this is that the only people worth existing is the people with capital? > I foresee a wave of entrepreneurship coming. AI will empower more people to provide useful services directly to other people, with less middlemen and menial work, and more direct problem solving. Why do I need to buy products/services from this startups when I can just reverse engineer their product and use all my…

> only people worth existing is the people with capital? replying to this with my thoughts IMO The missing link is that, as long as humans still have political power, that is the basis of their economic power under the new system. The reason is that it is a continuation of the dynamic we see now in western decadence - politicians bribe the populace for votes. So on one side you have the market for political support,…

What exactly do you mean by “politicians bribe the populace for votes” ?

Re: The dead economy theory

#859

Post by patentatt »

itake wrote: post #796
My_Name wrote: post #784

Not many people see that the end result is that when ordinary people stop earning money, and stop buying products, all the money will be used purely for B2B transactions. Money will still exist, but people will not see hardly any of it. To break out of being just a person and start a business you will still need money, but be unable to get any. Thus, the endgame is revealed. You don't need to form a dictatorship, you…

> That inequality is not going down, only upwards. This was talked about 15+ years ago when I was a young student. I saw the writing on the wall and made it a priority to live below my means and aggressively invest. Unfortunately, many of my friends think I am crazy for not "enjoying life" more... We shall see what happens I guess.

And all it cost was 15+ years of life?

Re: The dead economy theory

#860

Post by wolttam »

Falimonda wrote: post #851
My_Name wrote: post #784

Not many people see that the end result is that when ordinary people stop earning money, and stop buying products, all the money will be used purely for B2B transactions. Money will still exist, but people will not see hardly any of it. To break out of being just a person and start a business you will still need money, but be unable to get any. Thus, the endgame is revealed. You don't need to form a dictatorship, you…

> We see the start of it already, when just two individuals have a combined wealth on the order of a trillion dollars. That inequality is not going down, only upwards. Isn't there an inconsistency here? You've set up this narrative of businesses as being the only entities with money (wealth?) but then singled out two individuals. Also, how do calls for equality of wealth address the inequality in contribution of valu…

Businesses will still be owned or at heavily influenced by individuals and it is those individuals that will be able to steer how those business’ capital is allocated (including towards themselves).
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