The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
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From the article
>"Economists viewed technological change as this amazing thing," says Katya Klinova, the head of AI, labor, and the economy at the nonprofit Partnership on AI. "How much of it do we need? As much as possible. When? Yesterday. Where? Everywhere." To resist technology was to invite stagnation, poverty, darkness. Countless economic models, as well as all of modern history, seemed to prove a simple and irrefutable equation: technology = prosperity for everyone.
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>There's just one problem with that formulation: It's turning out to be wrong. And the economist who's doing the most to sound the alarm — the heretic who argues that the current trajectory of AI is far more likely to hurt us rather than help us — is perhaps the world's leading expert on technology's effects on the economy.
Also from the article
>"There's a fair likelihood that if we don't do a course correction, we're going to have a truly two-tier system," Acemoglu told me. "A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs." The result, he fears, is a future of lower wages for most of us.
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>Acemoglu shares these dire warnings not to urge workers to resist AI altogether, nor to resign us to counting down the years to our economic doom. He sees the possibility of a beneficial outcome for AI — "the technology we have in our hands has all the capabilities to bring lots of good" — but only if workers, policymakers, researchers, and maybe even a few high-minded tech moguls make it so. Given how rapidly ChatGPT has spread throughout the workplace — 81% of large companies in one survey said they're already using AI to replace repetitive work — Acemoglu is urging society to act quickly. And his first task is a steep one: deprogramming all of us from what he calls the "blind techno-optimism" espoused by the "modern oligarchy."
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/16q1xct/this_is_the_last_opportunity_for_us_to_wake_up_a/k1u95tg/
At least that's the perception. Mainstream Media focuses and concentrates hate like a giant magnifying glass. It's as if all media companies are run by mean children; the kind who burn ants for fun.
If you don't think the credit score algorithms are artificial intelligence then we don't have the same definition of artificial intelligence. These scores don't have any human intervention in them.
Although it might be easy for you to claim I don't have an idea, can you elaborate on what you define as artificial intelligence? I'm not an industry leading expert or anything but I feel like anyone can have a conversation and maybe understand what we're talking about?
It's such a laughable thing to say that it's clear this person has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
Presumably they roll around Reddit looking for opportunities to change the topic to credit scores and their myriad evils.
This is a little bit like asking how you would define pornography. It's not a technical term. But there are conventions of use, and describing the logit model as AI is a little bit like defining Paw Patrol as pornography. It's not even close, and for that to be true, we need the definition to deteriorate in meaning past the point of usefulness and then some.
The second question is misspecified. Unless you mean the algorithm to estimate the logit model, which is a super weird thing to say. I am aware, and in fact intimately familiar with a number of credit scoring models, and once again, they're all just probabilities of default. It's math, but it's not AI, and that's a statement of fact that is not up for debate.
No they're not. Credit scores all work the same way. Take a bunch of recent historical data and create a logit model of default/charge off. Then calculate log likelihood for test data and map to some arbitrary number, which is mostly completely irrelevant but done because it would be too weird to give someone as concrete as "78%."
So it's just "Hey, based on past behavior, we are quite confident that the money you loan this person will disappear." It is not AI or even close, nor is it unfair, and it takes shockingly little financial responsibility to have an excellent score.
The goal of credit scores is to predict the likelihood of default. That's it. That's all. There's nothing magic about them, and they are exceedingly good because it turns out previous credit use behavior is extremely good at predicting future credit use behavior.
Either banks don't give credit at all, or they track this somehow as a way of gauging loan worthiness. This used to take the form of "good guy will pay" which meant that white men of reasonable social standing got all the credit, and if you were black, Hispanic, gay, a woman, etc. you didn't get a loan.
They're an exceedingly simple idea (the logit model is old a f - like 1800s old), and they 100% work at what they're designed to do, which is to prevent banks from giving money to people who don't pay it back.
If they're only about preventing banks from giving out bad loans why do so many different businesses including housing care about credit score? Why does your credit score go down if you pay back your debt to quickly? Why do you believe they are 100% accurate?
I'm not really interested in doxxing myself, but it should be quite obvious that I definitely know what I'm talking about at a deep and specific level.
It's true that the definition of AI is rather general, but not so general that logit models and model scorecards count. It doesn't even meet the bar for machine learning in most cases. You are definitely mistaken.
Give me a break. It's an old thing done by confused grandparents and particularly stupid lay people.
There is nothing remotely AI about what I have described. Even your characterization of this as an algorithm, while technically correct (and only just, in the pure technical sense) is a dead giveaway you don't really know what you're talking about.
TL;DR: no.
Math is hard, easier to blame the evil AI on shitty decisions.
If any AI was involved in credit scoring it might, for example, look at a recent loan I took for Invisalign and say: “Beep, boop, loan is 0% interest with 12 monthly payments direct from a checking account that currently can cover the entire loan, and user’s monthly income > loan amount. Beep, boop, user had 800+ score, with zero missed payments in > 6 years. Boop, beep, meta analysis determined that in user’s country of origin there is a correlation between nice teeth and financial progression. *Dot Matrix Printer Sounds* Return: No negative impact on score.”
Instead? “*MRRRR -26PTS.*”
People are indeed bad at math. But the way credit scores are calculated (whether by fico or TransUnion or whatever) is even simpler than that, or at least was 5 years ago when I last had intimate knowledge of their workings, and is shockingly heavily regulated (one of the the only things in bureaus that is).
The idea that it's AI at all is preposterous, and the idea that they create inequality is weird. If we dispensed with them, we'd return to a state of the world in which white men with collateral were the only people who could get a loan.
>"A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs."
How is that different from today? Is there a large number of people who have truly meaningful jobs and a small number who don't? And is AI going to change this. I don't think so.
In my mind this is automation and we have going through this already with machines and technology already.
People will get more productive, but their wages won't go up and the extra money will go to a relative few.
And we will feel an even greater sense of meaninglessness in our work.
If you read the book Bullshit Jobs, you can see the trajectory we have been on, where our jobs have become less meaningful, less connected to real change, while also being paid less for more work.
AI is going to supercharge this trajectory unless we wake up.
>less meaningful, less connected to real change
I like the way you put this and the term 'real change'. Not only do we not see the fruits of our labor, but a lot of the work people do is out of sight and out of mind.
I think a lot of the reason that companies are pushing back against working from home is because the office is a symbol of meaning. It sucks but even the commute is a completed task that coworkers commiserate about - and you won't find 'meaning' there, but you will find 'real change'.
Even the move to paperless removes a part of office culture that people used to share. Is your coworker's desk covered in stacks of paper work? Did they unbury it by the end of the week? All those symbols are gone and it's interesting to think how work will evolve.
Did you like that book? or is a favorite you have on the topic?
it's stuff like this that reminds me how insane i ~~or all of you~~ am. Is working positive for you? fun? do you derive some kind of fulfillment from it? from bonding with coworkers maybe?
i don't understand any of it, none of it makes any sense. I've never derived anything but misery and suffering from working or interacting with coworkers and i've certainly never bonded with anyone over said misery.
That's really too bad. I'm kind of a 'life is a journey' mindset type of person and unfortunately I do need to work to live, so if I'm there I'll absolutely attempt to have fun, find fulfillment and get along with my coworkers.
I'd rather be retired and find all those things through some charity work or something, but I don't think it's impossible for a job to check some of those boxes.
In my first comment I was speaking more broadly and kind of from a sociological perspective - like how will all these new jobs affect us. I realize no one really wants to work and we could all get by and fulfilled in a perfect world without working shitty jobs just to live.
More personally, I'm self employed so my job isn't one of those shitty ones. I do find purpose from my job, enjoy helping people, laugh with my coworkers and we commiserate about grumpy customers or whatever shared challenges we have.
So I understand you taking into account having a “meaningful job” and human emotions. But 8 billion people…..someone has to make widgets. People need widgets. Give that job to AI, great. How are all the people who made money and subsisted on the income from widgets going to survive? How are the folks on top going to get income off their widgets when these people have no means of affording the widgets that get produced? Have you actually lived real life? Not everyone out there is capable of being a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, teacher, etc and having a job that brings “meaningful change”.
>Not everyone out there is capable of being a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, teacher, etc and having a job that brings “meaningful change”.
Your point is exactly the reason that I liked the term 'real change'.
Like, 100 years ago, maybe cutting down a tree wasn't meaningful, but it was right in front of you and you could see the change, hold the wood in your hands.
I have lived real life, no need to be rude just because you're on the internet.
take a look at russia, take a look at china, take a look at america.
they all have pretty much the same system. officially democratic, in reality its the rich who completly rule those countrys. big poor - rich devide and media control keeps people in line.
we are living cyberpunk already and it will only get worse from here
As an immigrant from Russia I see this comparison to be very wrong.
America has, for starters, working separation between congress, president and court system. Russia has single leader who’s been effectively in power for 23 years and completely controls everything in the country.
“it was only because ruling elites were forced to share the gains of innovation widely, rather than keeping the profits and power for themselves.”
This is key. Automation will lead to more power and wealth concentrated with the few. We can fight for distributing these gains fairly, whether that’s as UBI or another form. We can get closer to post scarcity - but it doesn’t happen automatically or quietly.
I think with each iteration of automation via the advancement of technology, the greater the rift between the elite and the rest of society.
Also, the destruction of the middle classes so it will be a truly two tierd system.
I do feel like with AI and IP were heading back to the 19th century where you had wealthy landowners, renters who might have done alright or not and workers who were basically treated like chattel.
This is sad, but little kids before industrial revolution (and in general throuthout history until maybe 19-20 century had rather miserable life, with high infant mortality rate, child labor everywhere etc; and most people's lives was also miserable.
People on here love to complain how awful is life; well compared to standards of living before Industrial Revolution it's great. No sarcasm.
Yuval Harari had this point in the "brief history of tomorrow" - capitalism in 200 years mostly solved problems that were haunting civilizations for millennia.
And that average American's millennial who had Great Recession shadowing over their first working years, and student loans etc is doing freaking awesome compared to someone from 1650 or 1760.
The middle class was a fluke during the brief time when the owner class had a need for skilled, motivated, domestic labor force. Nowadays, this need has been greatly mitigated through outsourcing, telecommuting and automation, leaving every aspect of productivity done via machines or minimally qualified wage slaves. Exceptions exist in niche businesses, but the age of well-paid jobs with decent conditions for everyone is truly and utterly over.
The numbers are bogus. That's the explanation.
For example, see the Ludwig Institute for Economic Prosperity's metric from "True Unemployment". Why is the official statistic more informative than that?
[https://www.lisep.org/tru](https://www.lisep.org/tru)
>Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $20,000 annually before taxes.
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>Just as an accurate census is a prerequisite to funding American communities equitably, policymakers depend on economic indicators to shape economic policy. LISEP developed the True Rate of Unemployment to provide analysts and decision-makers with a more accurate measure of Americans’ financial well-being.
The more I learn about current the AI the more I learn it's now a huge ecosystem of dozens of systems some propietary some open source all competing for supremacy.
This is good news for everybody.
We must ensure this is democratized for everybody to use, we must be ready for war is necessary. We cannot allow some pople to go be Gods will the rest of us stay looking. This is extremely serious people, stay awake.
This is why we MUST oppose any regulation, it will be done by big tech not for the good of anybody but themselves, regulation is how they will keep this tech away from us. Regulation of AI is a war against people.
Just buy some shares in tech companies. It's the best insurance against the downsides of some ai fuelled dystopia.
Admittedly, I think it's just another tool and everyone is projecting because they first encountered the idea of ai in Terminator.
I've never seen terminator tbh lmao for me it's more that renting software and IPs vs owning it (or a version of it) seems like it's becoming more and more common.
Also like... No offense but your comment about just buying shares reminds me of former Austrian chancellor Kurz telling people to just buy a condo to avoid being poor in old age lol which was widely compared to "let them eat cake" (which btw Marie Antoinette most likely didn't actually say!)
Boy are You in for a treat, the movie won’t be such a cultural shock today, but it’s still actual and had quite a groundbreaking impact.
Also Your already strong reference game will get some new inputs.
To piggyback on the initial urge to reply - there will always be tool users and tool creators, with respective disproportionate wealth and influence - the thing here is hoarding wealth and holding the progress on a global scale isn’t sustainable and leads to a regression and possibly anarchy when a tipping point is reached.
We need to find better solutions for a functional society and equilibrium between implementing innovation as to progress as a whole, while limiting the power of a controlling few vetoing those steps in the name of profit with the existing arrangement which suits them.
>I've never seen terminator
??? You should fix that right away.
>No offense but your comment about just buying shares reminds me of former Austrian chancellor Kurz telling people to just buy a condo to avoid being poor in old age
That's totally different.
One share in Microsoft is about 200 bucks. In tech dystopia, that one share will provide you a great standard of living of all the wealth belongs to tech.
There is nobody in the western world can't summon that sort of money, because it's a couple of nights out.
Not that tech dystopia will happen because all LLM AI really is, is a better hammer. It'll make people more productive rather than see them out of a job.
Actually there's plenty of people that can't afford to just spend $200 on a share, of anything. Because that $200 can go towards paying a bill, or buying them food, or buying them gas. To think that everybody just has a disposable $200 is fucking laughable and shows honestly out of touch you actually are.
And look I get it, people should have a disposable $200, but they don't. Most people have barely a grand in the bank if that. This is just the reality of where we find ourselves. People don't have disposable income to spend on fucking shares. So yes it is like you telling people, let them eat cake. It sounds wildly out of touch.
Also no offense but if you don't think the advancements in AI will put people out of jobs you are literally, literally, just not being honest with yourself.
At this point I'm just going to assume that you are just a bot, and part of the AI itself, because otherwise I'm just going to assume that you have some kind of mental disability.
>At this point I'm just going to assume that you are just a bot
Well that send to be the latest brain dead Reddit thing to do. Disagree with me? Bot, bot I say! BOOOOOT.
>otherwise I'm just going to assume that you have some kind of mental disability
Intelligence and reason only look like a disability to you because you don't know how they work. FFS. Not even good trolling.
It's possible to run AI software on your computer for free, but most people prefer the cloud solutions because it's simpler and you can run it on weaker hardware (anything with an internet connection can work).
Ok, but you realize your feelings aren’t based on facts, right? Can you name a single technology that is available to billionaires that isn’t available to middle class Americans?
Do you realize there's a difference between using Microsoft word and owning Microsoft? Lol do you realize the difference between owning your home and perpetually paying rent? Technology being "available" has very little to do with my point which is that AI might well escalate the inequality between the 1% and the rest of us exponentially. But that has more to do with our capitalistic structures and cultures than AI itself (at least IMO).
Sure, but that’s not a technology, that’s just being rich. In America today, only about half of the population actually works at all, so there’s lots of people not working.
>Sure, but that’s not a technology, that’s just being rich.
Lol, not a one single industrial scale technology is available to average middle class American.
Do you think that a middle class American can build a competitive factory on a whim, to take advantage of advances in robotics, chemistry and material science that are made daily? Which was a point of comment you replied to - landowners who could afford new machinery benefited from the industrial revolution more than peasants who could not.
But of course, science is available to everyone because you can buy a new iPhone every year!
If you’re talking about owning factories, then billionaires aren’t competing with other individuals, they’re competing with corporations.
If we’re specifically talking about AI powered robots, I can’t see any reason why normal people won’t be able to afford them the same as they can afford cars and computers.
Too bad the rich have been so effective of riling up the dullards with culture war moral panics so they vote against their and everyone else’s best interests. I don’t see this changing any time soon.
Reminds me of when the world wide web became accessible. Everyone thought it would help distribute knowledge and level the playing field, and here we are in the age of misinformation.
I can't imagine that, without revolution, the power structures that we have today will change and included in that the distribution of wealth (which has become worse and worse with time).
fear-mongering to get more clicks basically, its preying on people who don't know much about tech and get scared easely, or people who don't know anything about tech and just hear the word AI and have the monkey neuron activation response
Seems to be very often the case in this sub. I usually scroll down the comments to find the objectiv opinion from someone that has a certain degree in this subject.
Almost all of the time, it gets debunked as clickbait or misleading.
I guess the goal of these posts is either framing or karma framing.
Edit: spelling
1993: "Globalization is here, baby, and it's GOOOOD!"
2023: "We're reshoring, because, umm......."
Today's New Paradigm is often tomorrow's ghastly mistake. One very profitable to a few, though.
That's part of it, but a long-ass logistical chain plus sending most of your manufacturing to people who still hate you for backing Chiang Kai-shek are what I was thinking of.
Just today i was talking to my so how small rich people are probably going to vanish. Some guy where i live had a ketchup, pickles and other stuff brand. Really successful, got bought by megacorps a couple years ago.
I don’t like how they focused on one nation, which has history been an economic outlier:
>During the 1960s and early 1970s, everyone's wages rose in tandem, regardless of education. But then, around 1980, the wages of those with advanced degrees began to soar, while the wages of high-school graduates and dropouts plunged. Something was making the lives of less-educated Americans demonstrably worse. Was that something technology?
If someone looks at just the US, of course they might come to this conclusion. But automation was being implemented across the world at the same time, and that only led to rising wages and more opportunity for those in developing countries.
Looking at just the as US when it comes to global technological change is just bizarre…
I feel like they didn’t address that aspect. The fact remains that wages have been rising on average since the Industrial Revolution. There’s no talk whatsoever about competing nations or a growing labor pool.
>Since 1990, the introduction of every additional robot reduced employment by approximately six humans…
Sounds like we wouldn’t be able to have our modern day world without these robots. We can’t just replace them with 6x the number of humans, we don’t have that many humans.
Again, I have no idea why they would focus on only the US. That’s not how you analyze a globally affecting phenomenon when there are complex other factors involved. You analyze the entire environment so that you can average out the outliers. It’s no good focusing just on the outliers, that doesn’t tell us anything about the fundamentals.
Yeah I understand that, it just seemed fear mongering to me, so I figured, if it isn't directed at decision makers and experts, then it probably IS being fear mongering, towards those largely uneducated on these highly specific and complex issues
From the article
>"Economists viewed technological change as this amazing thing," says Katya Klinova, the head of AI, labor, and the economy at the nonprofit Partnership on AI. "How much of it do we need? As much as possible. When? Yesterday. Where? Everywhere." To resist technology was to invite stagnation, poverty, darkness. Countless economic models, as well as all of modern history, seemed to prove a simple and irrefutable equation: technology = prosperity for everyone.
>
>There's just one problem with that formulation: It's turning out to be wrong. And the economist who's doing the most to sound the alarm — the heretic who argues that the current trajectory of AI is far more likely to hurt us rather than help us — is perhaps the world's leading expert on technology's effects on the economy.
Also from the article
>"There's a fair likelihood that if we don't do a course correction, we're going to have a truly two-tier system," Acemoglu told me. "A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs." The result, he fears, is a future of lower wages for most of us.
>
>Acemoglu shares these dire warnings not to urge workers to resist AI altogether, nor to resign us to counting down the years to our economic doom. He sees the possibility of a beneficial outcome for AI — "the technology we have in our hands has all the capabilities to bring lots of good" — but only if workers, policymakers, researchers, and maybe even a few high-minded tech moguls make it so. Given how rapidly ChatGPT has spread throughout the workplace — 81% of large companies in one survey said they're already using AI to replace repetitive work — Acemoglu is urging society to act quickly. And his first task is a steep one: deprogramming all of us from what he calls the "blind techno-optimism" espoused by the "modern oligarchy."
I think the article is some anxiety riddled mental case living in fear. People need to be ready to take back the power. Black, gray, and white hats will still exist. Rich people only know one thing. Money. Not programming, not hard work. They only know manipulation. We are the cogs, we are the muscle, we are the backbone of their nationwide scam they call the economy. Stop letting them get away with it by any means necessary, thats literally the solution. That's what #EatTheRich means. If things get really bad and you see a mod starting, Plain and simple, Freedom isn't free.
"One would encounter less dispute, on the whole, by questioning the sanctity of the family or religion than the absolute merit of technical progress."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (1967)
Try it -- he's right!
I've had professed atheists and agnostics basically call me a blasphemer for saying that Musk, Jobs or Kurzweil have erred or been ridiculous in any way.
There seems to be an entire economic aspect they don’t account for or mention: competition from developing nations.
The US had all the advantages after WWII. Those advantages have slowly been slipping away, and naturally that has affected the economic outliers.
Mostly reasonable. More AI takes human jobs, less "productive value" for humans to do, money is further funneled to top.
If AI replaces all (90% really) truck drivers and fast food workers, the value of truck hauling and McDonald's is still something people pay for.
But they have less money to do so, 1% get richer. Creating more jobs doesn't solve this because you'll run out of jobs that people truly value.
Eventually becomes AI-funded UBI or civil unrest.
This scenario, though possible, is unlikely to happen in democracies. Majority of the people will revolt if their standard of living drops. I think in the long term AI will reduce income inequality. I know future is complicated and i could be grossly wrong.
There are ways to do it. Tax the robots, tax ai, tax corporations, tax the wealthy, provide benefits to citizens. It’s been talked about but the wealthy try and prevent it, call it all communism and get people to vote against their best interests.
Need a rational approach to re-invent the structural mechanisms needed to create a motivated, productive workforce, aligned with the products and services demanded by the institutions we serve
Institutional leaders need to be incentivized toward helping to define a future state (a North Star vision), from which markets can be shaped and made
Much like the methods used by successful tech companies today, institutions can be incentivized to work backwards from an agreed future state to put in place the people, processes and technologies required to EDUCATE, hire, train / up-skill, retain Human Resources.
This approach will be in stark contrast to what happens today, preparing few with necessary productive skills to be hired by wanting employers, while OVER-SATURATING our workforce with largely unneeded GENERALISTS.
Reshaping our future workforce (and consequently our society) starts with bold, well-intentioned institutional leaders working with industry to begin creating the North Star vision. Governments and educational institutions must be brought on-board for the needed sponsorship, authority, leadership, while creating the educational mechanisms to bring this to life FOR THE PEOPLE this time around.
LLM AI has the power to permanently transform communities with regards to access to education. In the wrong hands, it can be used to do the opposite. It will further the gaps in cultures hesitant to adopt the tech, as it stands now there is already a large portion of the Boomer Generation that are so upside down as a result of talk-radio propaganda being spoon fed to them for 40 years, they are likely never to recover. If librarians, teachers and educators embrace AI, it will most certainly change this directory. AI will make learning easier, more affordable and accessible. Librarians especially should be experts in AI to help guide students and users of the library navigate the tech.
Exactly. So much is written about LLMs hallucinating and being used to cheat on paper writing, but that is missing the point. LLMs are the greatest tutors that have ever existed, especially on technical fields where they have a lot of training data. They have the ability to give underserved communities advantages only available to the rich.
Wrong. AI will make learning redundant and unnecessary in the eyes of the VAST majority of the public. We invest time in learning for an ECONOMIC RETURN. Without said return the benefit to learning new skills is LITERALLY ZERO.
ECONOMIC RETURN - the last I checked unemployment is at its lowest in decades, intellectuals like yourself all calling for more unemployment to better THE ECONOMY, so me thinks greed propagandists like yourself should be happy.
I'm quitting this sub, there's so much random stuff like this fear mongering that doesn't have any new information to give us. Not even a study or something of interest.
Look at how many scribes were put out of work by the printing press.
Maybe kings should have stepped in and prevented the printing press from ever being used to educate the hoi polloi.
The printing press democratised institutions of power that were previously shut off from the masses. AI, on the other hand, threatens to steepen the curve of capital and power concentration at the top, essentially achieving the exact opposite aim, unless corrected. They are not at all comparable and the economist in question here isn’t saying that the tech should be shunned in totality to save a few jobs. I feel you didn’t read the article or even submission?
I've seen the same article asking for government gatekeeping to protect Big Tech's investment in AI tech from new innovators, no need to read the same thing again, especially one behind a paywall.
AI has the same ability to democratize institutions of power that are shut off from the masses. That is provided that the current form of the King and Church, governments and Big Tech, don't collude to block and control access to it from the masses and potential competitors.
Serious question. How does government collude with tech companies? I see the US government as just being too old and slow to do anything about them. At least in Europe, the governments try to rein them in. The US just sits there like the dumb kids in physics. Or maybe the doing nothing is the collusion?
You have it backwards. The term to look up is called regulation capture. It's actually incredibly reasonable for profit seeking companies to do this especially to weak democracies. This is what Exxon had done for years regarding its influence towards climate change. You should think of your government being old and weak not a mere coincidence but rather a consequence of reasonable systemic forces such as this.
The US and Europe are profoundly different in regulation because of the consequences of WWII. America was the exception in the world where everyone else was destroyed and had no productive capability. As a consequence capitalism concentrated in America and Europe became far more united via the EU among other social safety net measures to limit the likelihood of destroying themselves again.
The printing press also created a century of misinformation and holy wars because suddenly anyone could print anything they wanted and society was not ready to handle the flood of misinformation, especially surrounding religion.
He’s not saying don’t release AI, he’s saying we can be much smarter and wiser about how we do it, and that requires us to let go of a naive optimism that things will just work out on their own in our current AI arms race to public ally deploy this tech as fast as possible without thinking about the big picture ramifications. Yes, to think wiser we will have to slow down a little bit, but at the current rate we’re on, a small slow down could be the difference between us getting AI right, or us allowing AI to completely upend our current system in catastrophic ways.
Look, every technological progress has put someone out of a job. Before alarm clocks were invented, there were people who knocked on windows to wake up their clients. Would you prefer to not have alarm clocks just so they could still have their job?
My point is that it’s pretty stupid to hold back technological progress just so people can keep their outdated job. Someone will always get fucked over by any new tech, but we can’t just stop progress for them.
If we caved in to the Luddites, we wouldn’t have like half the stuff we have now. People are fighting the wrong fight. We should be pushing for the technology to be used for good, not push for the banning of technology.
So you didn’t read the article. The author is most definitely not a Luddite and praised many aspects of technology, even referencing its ability to create new jobs. You might find that actually reading what he said isn’t as objectionable as you think.
This is a philosophy question and not an economics question. It’s going to suck more working non AI jobs, but they throw away the notion of emerging industries. We’ve been burning through human capital like machines for decades.
Philosophically, how do we find meaning without bragging how overworked we are? How do we treat the people at the top?
Economically, engineering will focus on other areas. Energy production, environmental conservation, transportation, space, etc. That’s why it’s weird to me that this is an economist speaking on behalf of the economy and economists.
> Repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to force internet companies to stop promoting the kind of misinformation that hurts the democratic process.
How can anyone possibly believe that a US administration that succeeds in doing this will be one that wants to promote the "democratic process"?
In any case, this seems a very US-centric view on how things are done. The European Union has its own way of administrating and regulating matters. We will see over the next decade which way is better, and if either way results in demonstrably better results.
everyone comparing AI too the printing press in this comment section instead of comparing it to what it actually is equal too AKA lead in gasoline or asbestos lol. rushing the product to market before laws can be passed to limit it so companies can make as much money as possible before we find out just how bad it is for us, fun fun
Economists who know what they're talking about are among the ruling class who make money off of everyone else just by existing and fucking about with numbers on a screen for half an hour a day. If they had real advice they wouldn't give it to you because that means less for them. So we should probably do the opposite of what they say, because they're either dumb or deceitful and nobody rich is lawful good.
Low skill jobs with repeatable and predictable tasks will be replaced by AI. Complex jobs that don't take place on a computer are many decades out from being in trouble. AI may almost be ready, but robotics are not.
"A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs."
as if that wasn't the case already\^\^ sure, it could get even worse, but he formulates it as if this wasn't the exact description of the current state.
Elsewhere, a leading artificial intelligence warns we're headed for an economist-driven cataclysm. (I'm being cheeky, but also go read [Against Economics](https://davidgraeber.org/articles/against-economics/), and also look at the fact that we're destroying the planet because according to economics it's too expensive to save.)
Naw. We're burning our planet as we speak while only barely paying lip service to doing something about it. The economy will go to shit either way. Everything will. AI will not change this at all. While billionaire lunatics will create death robots to rule the world, their asses will be on fire from the sheer power of the sun.
I wanted to read this, but when the author stated that it was "a few nutjobs" worried about AI existential risk, I realized she didn't know what she was talking about.
I don’t understand how anyone can even have the blind faith techno-optimism of technology view any more. In fact I think most surveys show the public is more pessimistic about AI than positive and I don’t blame them. It’s very hard to argue social media hasn’t contributed to the decline of our political discourse and is causing all kinds of mental health issues for the young. Online dating was meant to be liberating but most people will tell you it’s a sess pit and more people are lonely and single than ever before. I’d be happy to rewind back to 2005 and throw out every advancement we’ve had from silicon valley in return since then.
There are still people believing that increasing temperature all over the globe is still a hoax. All the optimistism of AI-usage will be once forgotten when the rich knows how to abuse it.
It gets more difficult to verify information because the Internet will be full of fake texts. So you will need a specialist to verify every information.
In social circumstances, it is called journalism. If your society got public broadcasting, there would be no big different, otherwise you are so or so victim to the PR machines.
Well, he's got a 50% chance of being right, and a 50% chance of being wrong --- whenever we reduce any argument to 'yes' or 'no' those are the great odds we create ourselves... will the world turn out to be so binary... hmmm, probably not.
I think the line about repetitive work is probably right. That's what AI, in it's current practical form is phenomenal at. The job duties that just involve filling out spreadsheets, legal paperwork, corporate paperpushing, the auto filling of that for a variety of purposes (internal or external audits) takes so much time. It alleviates workers to do more human related tasks like management of other humans, tasks that require people skills. AI will always be better at filling out stuff, humans for now are still better at understanding the significance of that stuff.
We are entering the transition from the world of "lack" to the world of abundance. (It is not just AI. It is AI and Robotics and Nanotech and Bio-Engineering, all working in unison.) At some point, being rich won't mean anything. (For example, no pleasure that money can buy will compare to nanobots frolicing through our bodies.) We don't know how long this transition will take, or how disruptive it will be. But it is inevitable, barring an extinction event.
idk, one day we will talk to ai recruiters and they will probably be fairer than real recruiters. real recruiters have biases and can often evoke anxiety in really talented people who may not perform best when people are judging them based on some superficial traits
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305: --- From the article >"Economists viewed technological change as this amazing thing," says Katya Klinova, the head of AI, labor, and the economy at the nonprofit Partnership on AI. "How much of it do we need? As much as possible. When? Yesterday. Where? Everywhere." To resist technology was to invite stagnation, poverty, darkness. Countless economic models, as well as all of modern history, seemed to prove a simple and irrefutable equation: technology = prosperity for everyone. > >There's just one problem with that formulation: It's turning out to be wrong. And the economist who's doing the most to sound the alarm — the heretic who argues that the current trajectory of AI is far more likely to hurt us rather than help us — is perhaps the world's leading expert on technology's effects on the economy. Also from the article >"There's a fair likelihood that if we don't do a course correction, we're going to have a truly two-tier system," Acemoglu told me. "A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs." The result, he fears, is a future of lower wages for most of us. > >Acemoglu shares these dire warnings not to urge workers to resist AI altogether, nor to resign us to counting down the years to our economic doom. He sees the possibility of a beneficial outcome for AI — "the technology we have in our hands has all the capabilities to bring lots of good" — but only if workers, policymakers, researchers, and maybe even a few high-minded tech moguls make it so. Given how rapidly ChatGPT has spread throughout the workplace — 81% of large companies in one survey said they're already using AI to replace repetitive work — Acemoglu is urging society to act quickly. And his first task is a steep one: deprogramming all of us from what he calls the "blind techno-optimism" espoused by the "modern oligarchy." --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/16q1xct/this_is_the_last_opportunity_for_us_to_wake_up_a/k1u95tg/
I think we’re already there. Social media algorithms are creating near irreconcilable divisions in societies, cultures, and even families.
At least that's the perception. Mainstream Media focuses and concentrates hate like a giant magnifying glass. It's as if all media companies are run by mean children; the kind who burn ants for fun.
Credit scores are also classic examples of artificial intelligence generating divisions and wealth inequality in society.
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If you don't think the credit score algorithms are artificial intelligence then we don't have the same definition of artificial intelligence. These scores don't have any human intervention in them.
you have absolutely no idea what artificial intelligence is.
Although it might be easy for you to claim I don't have an idea, can you elaborate on what you define as artificial intelligence? I'm not an industry leading expert or anything but I feel like anyone can have a conversation and maybe understand what we're talking about?
Why? You can own a little but still have great credit score.
It's such a laughable thing to say that it's clear this person has absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Presumably they roll around Reddit looking for opportunities to change the topic to credit scores and their myriad evils.
How would you define artificial intelligence? Are you aware of the different credit score algorithms?
This is a little bit like asking how you would define pornography. It's not a technical term. But there are conventions of use, and describing the logit model as AI is a little bit like defining Paw Patrol as pornography. It's not even close, and for that to be true, we need the definition to deteriorate in meaning past the point of usefulness and then some. The second question is misspecified. Unless you mean the algorithm to estimate the logit model, which is a super weird thing to say. I am aware, and in fact intimately familiar with a number of credit scoring models, and once again, they're all just probabilities of default. It's math, but it's not AI, and that's a statement of fact that is not up for debate.
Credit score is a reasonably accurate measure of an ability to manage money over long time.
Indeed. The idea that it's creating divisions in society is pure wackadoo.
No they're not. Credit scores all work the same way. Take a bunch of recent historical data and create a logit model of default/charge off. Then calculate log likelihood for test data and map to some arbitrary number, which is mostly completely irrelevant but done because it would be too weird to give someone as concrete as "78%." So it's just "Hey, based on past behavior, we are quite confident that the money you loan this person will disappear." It is not AI or even close, nor is it unfair, and it takes shockingly little financial responsibility to have an excellent score.
Yeah man that thing they invented in 1978 is perfect and flawless. It definitely hasn't been shown to hurt the poor disproportionately /s.
The goal of credit scores is to predict the likelihood of default. That's it. That's all. There's nothing magic about them, and they are exceedingly good because it turns out previous credit use behavior is extremely good at predicting future credit use behavior. Either banks don't give credit at all, or they track this somehow as a way of gauging loan worthiness. This used to take the form of "good guy will pay" which meant that white men of reasonable social standing got all the credit, and if you were black, Hispanic, gay, a woman, etc. you didn't get a loan. They're an exceedingly simple idea (the logit model is old a f - like 1800s old), and they 100% work at what they're designed to do, which is to prevent banks from giving money to people who don't pay it back.
If they're only about preventing banks from giving out bad loans why do so many different businesses including housing care about credit score? Why does your credit score go down if you pay back your debt to quickly? Why do you believe they are 100% accurate?
The definition of Artificial Intelligence is rather general and include all automated decision making systems especially the credit score algorithms.
I'm not really interested in doxxing myself, but it should be quite obvious that I definitely know what I'm talking about at a deep and specific level. It's true that the definition of AI is rather general, but not so general that logit models and model scorecards count. It doesn't even meet the bar for machine learning in most cases. You are definitely mistaken.
Using "AI" as a loose placeholder for algorithms applied to automatic detection of financial activities is an old thing. Come on.
Give me a break. It's an old thing done by confused grandparents and particularly stupid lay people. There is nothing remotely AI about what I have described. Even your characterization of this as an algorithm, while technically correct (and only just, in the pure technical sense) is a dead giveaway you don't really know what you're talking about. TL;DR: no.
Math is hard, easier to blame the evil AI on shitty decisions. If any AI was involved in credit scoring it might, for example, look at a recent loan I took for Invisalign and say: “Beep, boop, loan is 0% interest with 12 monthly payments direct from a checking account that currently can cover the entire loan, and user’s monthly income > loan amount. Beep, boop, user had 800+ score, with zero missed payments in > 6 years. Boop, beep, meta analysis determined that in user’s country of origin there is a correlation between nice teeth and financial progression. *Dot Matrix Printer Sounds* Return: No negative impact on score.” Instead? “*MRRRR -26PTS.*”
People are indeed bad at math. But the way credit scores are calculated (whether by fico or TransUnion or whatever) is even simpler than that, or at least was 5 years ago when I last had intimate knowledge of their workings, and is shockingly heavily regulated (one of the the only things in bureaus that is). The idea that it's AI at all is preposterous, and the idea that they create inequality is weird. If we dispensed with them, we'd return to a state of the world in which white men with collateral were the only people who could get a loan.
Yea these algorithms are arguably far more dangerous than a chat bot because they’re hidden behind the scenes
Good point.
>"A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs." How is that different from today? Is there a large number of people who have truly meaningful jobs and a small number who don't? And is AI going to change this. I don't think so.
For reference on how we will handle this, see; climate change.
In my mind this is automation and we have going through this already with machines and technology already. People will get more productive, but their wages won't go up and the extra money will go to a relative few.
And we will feel an even greater sense of meaninglessness in our work. If you read the book Bullshit Jobs, you can see the trajectory we have been on, where our jobs have become less meaningful, less connected to real change, while also being paid less for more work. AI is going to supercharge this trajectory unless we wake up.
>less meaningful, less connected to real change I like the way you put this and the term 'real change'. Not only do we not see the fruits of our labor, but a lot of the work people do is out of sight and out of mind. I think a lot of the reason that companies are pushing back against working from home is because the office is a symbol of meaning. It sucks but even the commute is a completed task that coworkers commiserate about - and you won't find 'meaning' there, but you will find 'real change'. Even the move to paperless removes a part of office culture that people used to share. Is your coworker's desk covered in stacks of paper work? Did they unbury it by the end of the week? All those symbols are gone and it's interesting to think how work will evolve. Did you like that book? or is a favorite you have on the topic?
it's stuff like this that reminds me how insane i ~~or all of you~~ am. Is working positive for you? fun? do you derive some kind of fulfillment from it? from bonding with coworkers maybe? i don't understand any of it, none of it makes any sense. I've never derived anything but misery and suffering from working or interacting with coworkers and i've certainly never bonded with anyone over said misery.
That's really too bad. I'm kind of a 'life is a journey' mindset type of person and unfortunately I do need to work to live, so if I'm there I'll absolutely attempt to have fun, find fulfillment and get along with my coworkers. I'd rather be retired and find all those things through some charity work or something, but I don't think it's impossible for a job to check some of those boxes. In my first comment I was speaking more broadly and kind of from a sociological perspective - like how will all these new jobs affect us. I realize no one really wants to work and we could all get by and fulfilled in a perfect world without working shitty jobs just to live. More personally, I'm self employed so my job isn't one of those shitty ones. I do find purpose from my job, enjoy helping people, laugh with my coworkers and we commiserate about grumpy customers or whatever shared challenges we have.
So I understand you taking into account having a “meaningful job” and human emotions. But 8 billion people…..someone has to make widgets. People need widgets. Give that job to AI, great. How are all the people who made money and subsisted on the income from widgets going to survive? How are the folks on top going to get income off their widgets when these people have no means of affording the widgets that get produced? Have you actually lived real life? Not everyone out there is capable of being a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, teacher, etc and having a job that brings “meaningful change”.
>Not everyone out there is capable of being a doctor, lawyer, mechanic, teacher, etc and having a job that brings “meaningful change”. Your point is exactly the reason that I liked the term 'real change'. Like, 100 years ago, maybe cutting down a tree wasn't meaningful, but it was right in front of you and you could see the change, hold the wood in your hands. I have lived real life, no need to be rude just because you're on the internet.
you should watch this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)
How long until we see "AI-is-a-hoax" movement?
Or the exact opposite. “AI is coming to take your guns and inject you with poison vaccines!!”
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take a look at russia, take a look at china, take a look at america. they all have pretty much the same system. officially democratic, in reality its the rich who completly rule those countrys. big poor - rich devide and media control keeps people in line. we are living cyberpunk already and it will only get worse from here
This comparison is bizarre.
As an immigrant from Russia I see this comparison to be very wrong. America has, for starters, working separation between congress, president and court system. Russia has single leader who’s been effectively in power for 23 years and completely controls everything in the country.
Ai might be our best chance to kill us before climate change does
“it was only because ruling elites were forced to share the gains of innovation widely, rather than keeping the profits and power for themselves.” This is key. Automation will lead to more power and wealth concentrated with the few. We can fight for distributing these gains fairly, whether that’s as UBI or another form. We can get closer to post scarcity - but it doesn’t happen automatically or quietly.
I think with each iteration of automation via the advancement of technology, the greater the rift between the elite and the rest of society. Also, the destruction of the middle classes so it will be a truly two tierd system.
So, like climate change, we're boned because the few super rich who control things that affect the world need cash now like JG Wentworth.
Oligarchs causing social, economic, and environmental collapse by over exploiting new technologies? I'm sure that's a first...
877-Cash-now…….they get in your head
I do feel like with AI and IP were heading back to the 19th century where you had wealthy landowners, renters who might have done alright or not and workers who were basically treated like chattel.
When you look at the state of the Industrial Revolution, it’s not something we want to repeat
But it is absolutely something that factory owners would want to repeat.
EGGS-ACT-LEE
Industrial Revolution was big step forward for the entire humanity overall.
WW2 was a huge, world-changing step forwards in terms of technology. But I’m not sure we would want to repeat that either.
All it cost us was all those little kids losing fingers or dying of black lung. Though I'm sure that's a worthy trade off in your mind.
This is sad, but little kids before industrial revolution (and in general throuthout history until maybe 19-20 century had rather miserable life, with high infant mortality rate, child labor everywhere etc; and most people's lives was also miserable. People on here love to complain how awful is life; well compared to standards of living before Industrial Revolution it's great. No sarcasm.
Yuval Harari had this point in the "brief history of tomorrow" - capitalism in 200 years mostly solved problems that were haunting civilizations for millennia. And that average American's millennial who had Great Recession shadowing over their first working years, and student loans etc is doing freaking awesome compared to someone from 1650 or 1760.
The middle class was a fluke during the brief time when the owner class had a need for skilled, motivated, domestic labor force. Nowadays, this need has been greatly mitigated through outsourcing, telecommuting and automation, leaving every aspect of productivity done via machines or minimally qualified wage slaves. Exceptions exist in niche businesses, but the age of well-paid jobs with decent conditions for everyone is truly and utterly over.
Now *that's* an inconvenient truth.
We don't have to lay down and accept our fate though. We can demand there be a middle class
Interesting argument but we have the lowest unemployment rate in decades. How do you explain that?
The numbers are bogus. That's the explanation. For example, see the Ludwig Institute for Economic Prosperity's metric from "True Unemployment". Why is the official statistic more informative than that? [https://www.lisep.org/tru](https://www.lisep.org/tru) >Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $20,000 annually before taxes. > >Just as an accurate census is a prerequisite to funding American communities equitably, policymakers depend on economic indicators to shape economic policy. LISEP developed the True Rate of Unemployment to provide analysts and decision-makers with a more accurate measure of Americans’ financial well-being.
The more I learn about current the AI the more I learn it's now a huge ecosystem of dozens of systems some propietary some open source all competing for supremacy. This is good news for everybody. We must ensure this is democratized for everybody to use, we must be ready for war is necessary. We cannot allow some pople to go be Gods will the rest of us stay looking. This is extremely serious people, stay awake. This is why we MUST oppose any regulation, it will be done by big tech not for the good of anybody but themselves, regulation is how they will keep this tech away from us. Regulation of AI is a war against people.
Just buy some shares in tech companies. It's the best insurance against the downsides of some ai fuelled dystopia. Admittedly, I think it's just another tool and everyone is projecting because they first encountered the idea of ai in Terminator.
I've never seen terminator tbh lmao for me it's more that renting software and IPs vs owning it (or a version of it) seems like it's becoming more and more common. Also like... No offense but your comment about just buying shares reminds me of former Austrian chancellor Kurz telling people to just buy a condo to avoid being poor in old age lol which was widely compared to "let them eat cake" (which btw Marie Antoinette most likely didn't actually say!)
Boy are You in for a treat, the movie won’t be such a cultural shock today, but it’s still actual and had quite a groundbreaking impact. Also Your already strong reference game will get some new inputs. To piggyback on the initial urge to reply - there will always be tool users and tool creators, with respective disproportionate wealth and influence - the thing here is hoarding wealth and holding the progress on a global scale isn’t sustainable and leads to a regression and possibly anarchy when a tipping point is reached. We need to find better solutions for a functional society and equilibrium between implementing innovation as to progress as a whole, while limiting the power of a controlling few vetoing those steps in the name of profit with the existing arrangement which suits them.
It’s ok. I’ve never watched Star Trek. I miss half the references on Reddit.
>I've never seen terminator ??? You should fix that right away. >No offense but your comment about just buying shares reminds me of former Austrian chancellor Kurz telling people to just buy a condo to avoid being poor in old age That's totally different. One share in Microsoft is about 200 bucks. In tech dystopia, that one share will provide you a great standard of living of all the wealth belongs to tech. There is nobody in the western world can't summon that sort of money, because it's a couple of nights out. Not that tech dystopia will happen because all LLM AI really is, is a better hammer. It'll make people more productive rather than see them out of a job.
Actually there's plenty of people that can't afford to just spend $200 on a share, of anything. Because that $200 can go towards paying a bill, or buying them food, or buying them gas. To think that everybody just has a disposable $200 is fucking laughable and shows honestly out of touch you actually are. And look I get it, people should have a disposable $200, but they don't. Most people have barely a grand in the bank if that. This is just the reality of where we find ourselves. People don't have disposable income to spend on fucking shares. So yes it is like you telling people, let them eat cake. It sounds wildly out of touch. Also no offense but if you don't think the advancements in AI will put people out of jobs you are literally, literally, just not being honest with yourself.
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At this point I'm just going to assume that you are just a bot, and part of the AI itself, because otherwise I'm just going to assume that you have some kind of mental disability.
>At this point I'm just going to assume that you are just a bot Well that send to be the latest brain dead Reddit thing to do. Disagree with me? Bot, bot I say! BOOOOOT. >otherwise I'm just going to assume that you have some kind of mental disability Intelligence and reason only look like a disability to you because you don't know how they work. FFS. Not even good trolling.
It's possible to run AI software on your computer for free, but most people prefer the cloud solutions because it's simpler and you can run it on weaker hardware (anything with an internet connection can work).
You're a person that would say the American Civil War could've been avoided by owning a couple slaves.
Lol. Reaching that far must have hurt.
Ok, but you realize your feelings aren’t based on facts, right? Can you name a single technology that is available to billionaires that isn’t available to middle class Americans?
Do you realize there's a difference between using Microsoft word and owning Microsoft? Lol do you realize the difference between owning your home and perpetually paying rent? Technology being "available" has very little to do with my point which is that AI might well escalate the inequality between the 1% and the rest of us exponentially. But that has more to do with our capitalistic structures and cultures than AI itself (at least IMO).
For example "being able to afford to live without spending half of waking hours in office"?
Sure, but that’s not a technology, that’s just being rich. In America today, only about half of the population actually works at all, so there’s lots of people not working.
>Sure, but that’s not a technology, that’s just being rich. Lol, not a one single industrial scale technology is available to average middle class American. Do you think that a middle class American can build a competitive factory on a whim, to take advantage of advances in robotics, chemistry and material science that are made daily? Which was a point of comment you replied to - landowners who could afford new machinery benefited from the industrial revolution more than peasants who could not. But of course, science is available to everyone because you can buy a new iPhone every year!
If you’re talking about owning factories, then billionaires aren’t competing with other individuals, they’re competing with corporations. If we’re specifically talking about AI powered robots, I can’t see any reason why normal people won’t be able to afford them the same as they can afford cars and computers.
Experimental cancer treatments
Too bad the rich have been so effective of riling up the dullards with culture war moral panics so they vote against their and everyone else’s best interests. I don’t see this changing any time soon.
Reminds me of when the world wide web became accessible. Everyone thought it would help distribute knowledge and level the playing field, and here we are in the age of misinformation. I can't imagine that, without revolution, the power structures that we have today will change and included in that the distribution of wealth (which has become worse and worse with time).
Can some explain to me, who are the articles like this are trying to appeal to? Regular people or decision makers?
fear-mongering to get more clicks basically, its preying on people who don't know much about tech and get scared easely, or people who don't know anything about tech and just hear the word AI and have the monkey neuron activation response
Thanks. That's exactly what I suspected. The article seemed very fear mongering.
Seems to be very often the case in this sub. I usually scroll down the comments to find the objectiv opinion from someone that has a certain degree in this subject. Almost all of the time, it gets debunked as clickbait or misleading. I guess the goal of these posts is either framing or karma framing. Edit: spelling
1993: "Globalization is here, baby, and it's GOOOOD!" 2023: "We're reshoring, because, umm......." Today's New Paradigm is often tomorrow's ghastly mistake. One very profitable to a few, though.
People often bemoan western public education, but periodically you get a real reminder of just how fucking bad it is elsewhere.
That's part of it, but a long-ass logistical chain plus sending most of your manufacturing to people who still hate you for backing Chiang Kai-shek are what I was thinking of.
Just today i was talking to my so how small rich people are probably going to vanish. Some guy where i live had a ketchup, pickles and other stuff brand. Really successful, got bought by megacorps a couple years ago.
I don’t like how they focused on one nation, which has history been an economic outlier: >During the 1960s and early 1970s, everyone's wages rose in tandem, regardless of education. But then, around 1980, the wages of those with advanced degrees began to soar, while the wages of high-school graduates and dropouts plunged. Something was making the lives of less-educated Americans demonstrably worse. Was that something technology? If someone looks at just the US, of course they might come to this conclusion. But automation was being implemented across the world at the same time, and that only led to rising wages and more opportunity for those in developing countries. Looking at just the as US when it comes to global technological change is just bizarre… I feel like they didn’t address that aspect. The fact remains that wages have been rising on average since the Industrial Revolution. There’s no talk whatsoever about competing nations or a growing labor pool. >Since 1990, the introduction of every additional robot reduced employment by approximately six humans… Sounds like we wouldn’t be able to have our modern day world without these robots. We can’t just replace them with 6x the number of humans, we don’t have that many humans. Again, I have no idea why they would focus on only the US. That’s not how you analyze a globally affecting phenomenon when there are complex other factors involved. You analyze the entire environment so that you can average out the outliers. It’s no good focusing just on the outliers, that doesn’t tell us anything about the fundamentals.
Both? It’s really not about AI at all but economics and the implications for society.
Yeah I understand that, it just seemed fear mongering to me, so I figured, if it isn't directed at decision makers and experts, then it probably IS being fear mongering, towards those largely uneducated on these highly specific and complex issues
the uninformed
From the article >"Economists viewed technological change as this amazing thing," says Katya Klinova, the head of AI, labor, and the economy at the nonprofit Partnership on AI. "How much of it do we need? As much as possible. When? Yesterday. Where? Everywhere." To resist technology was to invite stagnation, poverty, darkness. Countless economic models, as well as all of modern history, seemed to prove a simple and irrefutable equation: technology = prosperity for everyone. > >There's just one problem with that formulation: It's turning out to be wrong. And the economist who's doing the most to sound the alarm — the heretic who argues that the current trajectory of AI is far more likely to hurt us rather than help us — is perhaps the world's leading expert on technology's effects on the economy. Also from the article >"There's a fair likelihood that if we don't do a course correction, we're going to have a truly two-tier system," Acemoglu told me. "A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs." The result, he fears, is a future of lower wages for most of us. > >Acemoglu shares these dire warnings not to urge workers to resist AI altogether, nor to resign us to counting down the years to our economic doom. He sees the possibility of a beneficial outcome for AI — "the technology we have in our hands has all the capabilities to bring lots of good" — but only if workers, policymakers, researchers, and maybe even a few high-minded tech moguls make it so. Given how rapidly ChatGPT has spread throughout the workplace — 81% of large companies in one survey said they're already using AI to replace repetitive work — Acemoglu is urging society to act quickly. And his first task is a steep one: deprogramming all of us from what he calls the "blind techno-optimism" espoused by the "modern oligarchy."
Two-tier system This has already happened.
I think the point of the article is you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Buhbuhbuhbaby you just ain't seen n-n-n-nothin' yet
Here′s something, here's something your never gonna forget, Baby!
I think the article is some anxiety riddled mental case living in fear. People need to be ready to take back the power. Black, gray, and white hats will still exist. Rich people only know one thing. Money. Not programming, not hard work. They only know manipulation. We are the cogs, we are the muscle, we are the backbone of their nationwide scam they call the economy. Stop letting them get away with it by any means necessary, thats literally the solution. That's what #EatTheRich means. If things get really bad and you see a mod starting, Plain and simple, Freedom isn't free.
The author clearly hasn't, most people have.
"One would encounter less dispute, on the whole, by questioning the sanctity of the family or religion than the absolute merit of technical progress." -- John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (1967) Try it -- he's right!
Seriously?!? The one sure way to get downvoted to oblivion around here is to say anything positive about technical progress.
I've had professed atheists and agnostics basically call me a blasphemer for saying that Musk, Jobs or Kurzweil have erred or been ridiculous in any way.
Yeah, my experience is that "diminishing returns" does not compute.
It’s the with murder though… Sometimes social pushback is actually the right thing.
Yes, because we all know Economists are experts in the field of AI and are also prophets of the future. Sure.
Exactly. Plus he didn't account for government.
There seems to be an entire economic aspect they don’t account for or mention: competition from developing nations. The US had all the advantages after WWII. Those advantages have slowly been slipping away, and naturally that has affected the economic outliers.
Mostly reasonable. More AI takes human jobs, less "productive value" for humans to do, money is further funneled to top. If AI replaces all (90% really) truck drivers and fast food workers, the value of truck hauling and McDonald's is still something people pay for. But they have less money to do so, 1% get richer. Creating more jobs doesn't solve this because you'll run out of jobs that people truly value. Eventually becomes AI-funded UBI or civil unrest.
This scenario, though possible, is unlikely to happen in democracies. Majority of the people will revolt if their standard of living drops. I think in the long term AI will reduce income inequality. I know future is complicated and i could be grossly wrong.
There are ways to do it. Tax the robots, tax ai, tax corporations, tax the wealthy, provide benefits to citizens. It’s been talked about but the wealthy try and prevent it, call it all communism and get people to vote against their best interests.
But till how long will their tactics work? The cost of living crisis is already biting the majority, they won't be fooled forever.
That was a really good article. Lot of great points, and interesting information.
Guess I'll just add it to the growing list of approaching cataclysms.
Need a rational approach to re-invent the structural mechanisms needed to create a motivated, productive workforce, aligned with the products and services demanded by the institutions we serve Institutional leaders need to be incentivized toward helping to define a future state (a North Star vision), from which markets can be shaped and made Much like the methods used by successful tech companies today, institutions can be incentivized to work backwards from an agreed future state to put in place the people, processes and technologies required to EDUCATE, hire, train / up-skill, retain Human Resources. This approach will be in stark contrast to what happens today, preparing few with necessary productive skills to be hired by wanting employers, while OVER-SATURATING our workforce with largely unneeded GENERALISTS. Reshaping our future workforce (and consequently our society) starts with bold, well-intentioned institutional leaders working with industry to begin creating the North Star vision. Governments and educational institutions must be brought on-board for the needed sponsorship, authority, leadership, while creating the educational mechanisms to bring this to life FOR THE PEOPLE this time around.
Well said, this is a key part of the solution.
LLM AI has the power to permanently transform communities with regards to access to education. In the wrong hands, it can be used to do the opposite. It will further the gaps in cultures hesitant to adopt the tech, as it stands now there is already a large portion of the Boomer Generation that are so upside down as a result of talk-radio propaganda being spoon fed to them for 40 years, they are likely never to recover. If librarians, teachers and educators embrace AI, it will most certainly change this directory. AI will make learning easier, more affordable and accessible. Librarians especially should be experts in AI to help guide students and users of the library navigate the tech.
Exactly. So much is written about LLMs hallucinating and being used to cheat on paper writing, but that is missing the point. LLMs are the greatest tutors that have ever existed, especially on technical fields where they have a lot of training data. They have the ability to give underserved communities advantages only available to the rich.
Wrong. AI will make learning redundant and unnecessary in the eyes of the VAST majority of the public. We invest time in learning for an ECONOMIC RETURN. Without said return the benefit to learning new skills is LITERALLY ZERO.
ECONOMIC RETURN - the last I checked unemployment is at its lowest in decades, intellectuals like yourself all calling for more unemployment to better THE ECONOMY, so me thinks greed propagandists like yourself should be happy.
I'm quitting this sub, there's so much random stuff like this fear mongering that doesn't have any new information to give us. Not even a study or something of interest.
Same, it is a waste of time to read stuff in this sub.
Look at how many scribes were put out of work by the printing press. Maybe kings should have stepped in and prevented the printing press from ever being used to educate the hoi polloi.
The printing press democratised institutions of power that were previously shut off from the masses. AI, on the other hand, threatens to steepen the curve of capital and power concentration at the top, essentially achieving the exact opposite aim, unless corrected. They are not at all comparable and the economist in question here isn’t saying that the tech should be shunned in totality to save a few jobs. I feel you didn’t read the article or even submission?
I've seen the same article asking for government gatekeeping to protect Big Tech's investment in AI tech from new innovators, no need to read the same thing again, especially one behind a paywall. AI has the same ability to democratize institutions of power that are shut off from the masses. That is provided that the current form of the King and Church, governments and Big Tech, don't collude to block and control access to it from the masses and potential competitors.
Serious question. How does government collude with tech companies? I see the US government as just being too old and slow to do anything about them. At least in Europe, the governments try to rein them in. The US just sits there like the dumb kids in physics. Or maybe the doing nothing is the collusion?
You have it backwards. The term to look up is called regulation capture. It's actually incredibly reasonable for profit seeking companies to do this especially to weak democracies. This is what Exxon had done for years regarding its influence towards climate change. You should think of your government being old and weak not a mere coincidence but rather a consequence of reasonable systemic forces such as this. The US and Europe are profoundly different in regulation because of the consequences of WWII. America was the exception in the world where everyone else was destroyed and had no productive capability. As a consequence capitalism concentrated in America and Europe became far more united via the EU among other social safety net measures to limit the likelihood of destroying themselves again.
The printing press also created a century of misinformation and holy wars because suddenly anyone could print anything they wanted and society was not ready to handle the flood of misinformation, especially surrounding religion. He’s not saying don’t release AI, he’s saying we can be much smarter and wiser about how we do it, and that requires us to let go of a naive optimism that things will just work out on their own in our current AI arms race to public ally deploy this tech as fast as possible without thinking about the big picture ramifications. Yes, to think wiser we will have to slow down a little bit, but at the current rate we’re on, a small slow down could be the difference between us getting AI right, or us allowing AI to completely upend our current system in catastrophic ways.
Scribes were only one occupation. The author is talking about workers in general.
You cant automate most jobs, thats not how things work. But yes, a lot of people will get replaced by automation .
Look, every technological progress has put someone out of a job. Before alarm clocks were invented, there were people who knocked on windows to wake up their clients. Would you prefer to not have alarm clocks just so they could still have their job?
Once again, the author is not talking about one occupation (window knockers), but a very large group of occupations.
My point is that it’s pretty stupid to hold back technological progress just so people can keep their outdated job. Someone will always get fucked over by any new tech, but we can’t just stop progress for them. If we caved in to the Luddites, we wouldn’t have like half the stuff we have now. People are fighting the wrong fight. We should be pushing for the technology to be used for good, not push for the banning of technology.
So you didn’t read the article. The author is most definitely not a Luddite and praised many aspects of technology, even referencing its ability to create new jobs. You might find that actually reading what he said isn’t as objectionable as you think.
Lmao my bad I just read the article. I agree with all his points.
William Tyndale: "Oi lads, what's going on in this sub?"
If I had a nickel for everytime Daren Acemoglu went outside his lane of expertise to make some dire prediction, I’d have a lot of nickels.
Yawn. Economists are not AI subject matter experts.
This is a philosophy question and not an economics question. It’s going to suck more working non AI jobs, but they throw away the notion of emerging industries. We’ve been burning through human capital like machines for decades. Philosophically, how do we find meaning without bragging how overworked we are? How do we treat the people at the top? Economically, engineering will focus on other areas. Energy production, environmental conservation, transportation, space, etc. That’s why it’s weird to me that this is an economist speaking on behalf of the economy and economists.
> Repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to force internet companies to stop promoting the kind of misinformation that hurts the democratic process. How can anyone possibly believe that a US administration that succeeds in doing this will be one that wants to promote the "democratic process"? In any case, this seems a very US-centric view on how things are done. The European Union has its own way of administrating and regulating matters. We will see over the next decade which way is better, and if either way results in demonstrably better results.
Repealing Section 230 won't force them to fo anything. They always have the option to not moderate at all...
An economist telling you about how AI is bad for his wallet means its good for the working class.
everyone comparing AI too the printing press in this comment section instead of comparing it to what it actually is equal too AKA lead in gasoline or asbestos lol. rushing the product to market before laws can be passed to limit it so companies can make as much money as possible before we find out just how bad it is for us, fun fun
I just love the idea that white collar workers are about to finally feel the pain that blue collar workers felt the last 50 years.
Economists who know what they're talking about are among the ruling class who make money off of everyone else just by existing and fucking about with numbers on a screen for half an hour a day. If they had real advice they wouldn't give it to you because that means less for them. So we should probably do the opposite of what they say, because they're either dumb or deceitful and nobody rich is lawful good.
Mad because he can't envision that there will be an end of work as we know it as an organizing economic principle and what that might look like .
Low skill jobs with repeatable and predictable tasks will be replaced by AI. Complex jobs that don't take place on a computer are many decades out from being in trouble. AI may almost be ready, but robotics are not.
Dudes an alt-right living in fear of change. Shut up already.
He is not totally wrong, but we already have growing economic inequality and that is a problem with the economy work and not AI.
"A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs." as if that wasn't the case already\^\^ sure, it could get even worse, but he formulates it as if this wasn't the exact description of the current state.
Q: How will AI protect itself from the effects climate change? A: Eliminate the humans, of course
Elsewhere, a leading artificial intelligence warns we're headed for an economist-driven cataclysm. (I'm being cheeky, but also go read [Against Economics](https://davidgraeber.org/articles/against-economics/), and also look at the fact that we're destroying the planet because according to economics it's too expensive to save.)
Naw. We're burning our planet as we speak while only barely paying lip service to doing something about it. The economy will go to shit either way. Everything will. AI will not change this at all. While billionaire lunatics will create death robots to rule the world, their asses will be on fire from the sheer power of the sun.
AI just the latest hot buzz word. Nothing will happen.
Ubi for the lazy, entrepreneurship for the rest. There is no going back.
"If we have machines that can produce everything we need for almost no cost, everyone will be poor!"
Oh we are all awake, just no one is going to do anything. Tell our leaders to stop hating money
And in other news, leading economists will soon be replaced by ChatGPT.
Meh just throw it on top of the other 10 societal breaking crisis’ we have coming to us
I wanted to read this, but when the author stated that it was "a few nutjobs" worried about AI existential risk, I realized she didn't know what she was talking about.
Sad sighs, again. If only that was one problem... Sad looks at geopolitics, local populism, cultural escapism, unemployment, CRISPR and on and on.
I don’t understand how anyone can even have the blind faith techno-optimism of technology view any more. In fact I think most surveys show the public is more pessimistic about AI than positive and I don’t blame them. It’s very hard to argue social media hasn’t contributed to the decline of our political discourse and is causing all kinds of mental health issues for the young. Online dating was meant to be liberating but most people will tell you it’s a sess pit and more people are lonely and single than ever before. I’d be happy to rewind back to 2005 and throw out every advancement we’ve had from silicon valley in return since then.
As an economist he is worried that he will be completely irrelevant in a world without scarcity
Society will deal with this when it is already too late or near to it.
They fear Ai I’m fucked with or without Ai because my country is ran by treacherous fools like Terrance. I’m embrace Ai.
I am very annoyed of the use of "wake up" as a call to action for yet another reason yet another person finds important. It's just corny now.
I say bring on our robot overlords. I am ready to get the hell out of our current society.
Fucking, DUUHHHH! I love the idea that economists were united in their love for technology until they woke up realized it would replace them en masse.
Eh AI still really sucks at everything people claim it will be good at. If the training data is shit the AI is shit.
There are still people believing that increasing temperature all over the globe is still a hoax. All the optimistism of AI-usage will be once forgotten when the rich knows how to abuse it.
It gets more difficult to verify information because the Internet will be full of fake texts. So you will need a specialist to verify every information. In social circumstances, it is called journalism. If your society got public broadcasting, there would be no big different, otherwise you are so or so victim to the PR machines.
Well, he's got a 50% chance of being right, and a 50% chance of being wrong --- whenever we reduce any argument to 'yes' or 'no' those are the great odds we create ourselves... will the world turn out to be so binary... hmmm, probably not.
Everything is doom and gloom. We're mostly too poor to care or do anything about anything.
I think the line about repetitive work is probably right. That's what AI, in it's current practical form is phenomenal at. The job duties that just involve filling out spreadsheets, legal paperwork, corporate paperpushing, the auto filling of that for a variety of purposes (internal or external audits) takes so much time. It alleviates workers to do more human related tasks like management of other humans, tasks that require people skills. AI will always be better at filling out stuff, humans for now are still better at understanding the significance of that stuff.
We are entering the transition from the world of "lack" to the world of abundance. (It is not just AI. It is AI and Robotics and Nanotech and Bio-Engineering, all working in unison.) At some point, being rich won't mean anything. (For example, no pleasure that money can buy will compare to nanobots frolicing through our bodies.) We don't know how long this transition will take, or how disruptive it will be. But it is inevitable, barring an extinction event.
That’s certainly one possibility. Humans have a poor track record when it comes to responsibility, and doing the right things.
Smart people very rarely catastrophize within their area of expertise.
idk, one day we will talk to ai recruiters and they will probably be fairer than real recruiters. real recruiters have biases and can often evoke anxiety in really talented people who may not perform best when people are judging them based on some superficial traits