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An Economy of AI Agents

arxiv.org

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Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#91

Post by BobbyJo »

coffeecat wrote: post #65
BobbyJo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your mistaking the philosophical basis of parents comments. Maybe a more succinct way to illustrate what I believe was their point is to say: "no matter how complex and productive the AI, it is still operating as a form of capital, not as a capitalist." Absent being tethered to a desire (for instance, via an owner), an AI has no function to optimize, and therefore, the most optimal cost is simply shutting off…

Ehh, you really can't imagine any way that an AI system might escape human control and act autonomously? while crypto_balance > 0: generate_scam() send_out_emails() deposit_proceeds_into_crypto_wallet() pay_cloud_bill() spawn_new_instance()

And who is the owner of the crypto wallet in your example?

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#92

Post by Animats »

BobbyJo wrote: post #91
coffeecat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, you really can't imagine any way that an AI system might escape human control and act autonomously? while crypto_balance > 0: generate_scam() send_out_emails() deposit_proceeds_into_crypto_wallet() pay_cloud_bill() spawn_new_instance()

And who is the owner of the crypto wallet in your example?

Probably a LLC in Nevada owned by a corporation in Vanuatu or the Cook Islands, organized so that voting control is via a blockchain-managed asset.[1]

[1] https://www.311institute.com/ownerless-companies-on-the-rise...

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#93

Post by ineedasername »

vermilingua wrote: post #4

Hmm, where have I seen this before… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando

Isn’t that the one where corporate structures become intelligent self executing agents, cause a lot of problems? Yet here IRL, the current tech billionaires think it’s a roadmap to follow?

Talk about getting the wrong message. No one show those guys a copy of 1984! Wow, then…

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#94

Post by ineedasername »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #13
vermilingua wrote: post #4

Hmm, where have I seen this before… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando

One of the most interesting things about the book is how it skewers the idea of there being a singular AI. In Accelerando the VO are a species of trillions of AI beings that are sort of descended from us. They have a civilization of their own.

That description leaves off some of the flavor— changes the feel once you know the descendent were labeled the Vile Offspring by the main characters, that were still human-ish.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#95

Post by ineedasername »

DerArzt wrote: post #84
rf15 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not gonna happen like that, because all the paths leading to it cannot be financially exploited. Also what a shortsighted scifi book, yet techies readily invest in that particular fantasy because it's not your usual spaceship fare.

> Also what shortsighted scifi book It's art not oracle

Some people will call BS on books like that until every detail down to getting their own AIneko cat, and start again when the Wunch start eating their uploaded thought space via man-in-the-middle exploits that the protocol spec in the book was inaccurate

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#96

Post by ineedasername »

alberth wrote: post #26
zkmon wrote: post #23

Please ELI5 for me: How are AI agents different from traditional workflow engines, which orchestrated a set of tasks by interacting with both humans and other software systems?

Traditional workflow is largely predefined & rule-based. There’s a level of autonomy by the AI agents (it determines on its own the next step), that is not predefined. Agreed though that there’s lots of similarities.

I needed some data from a content API, had a few options:

1) Human agent, manual retrieval (included for completion

2) one-off script to get exactly the content I want

3) Traditional workflow, write & maintain

4) one off prompt to the agent to write the script in #1, sort and arrange content for grouping base on descriptions it receives (this is what I used, 3 hours later I had a years worth of journal abstracts of various subjects downloaded, sorted, indexed and summarized in a chromadb. I’d just asked for the content, but it’s python code it left for me included a parameterized CLI with assorted variables and some thoughtful presets for semantic search options.)

5) one off prompt to the agent to write the workflow in #3, run at-will or by agent

6) prompt an agent to write some prompts, one of which will be a prompt for this task, the others whatever they want: “write a series of prompts that will be given to agents for task X. Break task x down to these components…”

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#97

Post by BobbyJo »

Animats wrote: post #92
BobbyJo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who is the owner of the crypto wallet in your example?

Probably a LLC in Nevada owned by a corporation in Vanuatu or the Cook Islands, organized so that voting control is via a blockchain-managed asset.[1] [1] https://www.311institute.com/ownerless-companies-on-the-rise...

That's a lot of words to say "people".

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#98

Post by zackmorris »

g3f32r wrote: post #88
zackmorris wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another one: Manna - Two Views of Humanity’s Future, by Marshall Brain. It's a fairly light read, just 8 chapters: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 I think I've internalized these stories enough to comfortably say (without giving anything away) that AI is incompatible with capitalism and probably money itself. That's why I consider it to be the last problem in computer science, because once we've solved proble…

> take any meaningful action to implement UBI I hear this all the time, but to what end? If the input costs to produce most things ends up driving towards zero, then why would there be a need for UBI? Wouldn't UBI _be_ the performative economics mentioned?

I think of it like limits in math. The rate at which we'll be out of work is much higher than the rate at which prices will fall towards zero.

A performative/underemployment economy keeps everyone working not out of necessity, but to appease the sentiments of the wealthy. I'd argue that we passed the point at which wages were tied to productivity sometime around 1970, meaning that we're already decades into a second Gilded Age where wealth comes from inheritance, investment and connections (forms of luck) rather than hard work.

And honestly, to call UBI performative when billionaires are trying to become trillionaires as countless people die of starvation every day just doesn't make any sense.

Re: An Economy of AI Agents

#99

Post by coffeecat »

BobbyJo wrote: post #91
coffeecat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, you really can't imagine any way that an AI system might escape human control and act autonomously? while crypto_balance > 0: generate_scam() send_out_emails() deposit_proceeds_into_crypto_wallet() pay_cloud_bill() spawn_new_instance()

And who is the owner of the crypto wallet in your example?

It has no owner. It's controlled by a self-replicating (or at least self-propagating) AI-based system.
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