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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

> mass inequality — which is getting worse

How can presumably smart people still keep saying this? Inequality is decreasing by all measures! And then I'm supposed to believe any other argument this person makes...

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Inequality is not decreasing by all measures, for example: "Income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past half century." [1]

While it is true that global inequality might be decreasing, localised levels are important, especially when existing in regions which might be considered "economic drivers"; because it has important implications for the stability of those regions, and this is highly likely to affect the continuation of the global trend for reduced inequality.

[1] http://www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm

With globalisation, inequality _within_ countries has increased but inequality _globally_ is falling as the poorer half of the world is catching up.

(Not nice for the unskilled Appalachian miner, but nice for the skilled Ukrainian coder or Indian engineer.)

Some people think the inequality has gone down significantly (I'm in that camp), but others point out to things like Bezos and a few others owning more assets than 80% of the world combined.

Regardless, AI is bound to increase inequality. Just yesterday we discussed this book [1] on probabilistic programming here on HN [2]. That book is, by all definitions, an advanced book about AI. How many people without a PhD can read that? How many people with a PhD can read it? Well, guess what, people who can and do read this book earn more than people who don't. That's AI driving inequality. Before AI will create the mythical HAL or other self-aware machines, it will enable humongous productivity for the top 0.01% most highly educated engineers.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.10756

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18109260

The inequality generated by better tech largely doesn't go to engineers. They're still just knowledge workers, a class that has existed for a long time. It goes to shareholders and executives by virtue of reducing costs and generating more profit.

Perhaps humankind needs a "Butlerian Jihad", as defined in the Dune novels, where all machines made in the image of a human brain are banned for all time.

Arguably we don't have machines that are made in the image of a human brain, so that wouldn't change things right now.

Just yesterday we discussed this book [1] on probabilistic programming here on HN [2]. That book is, by all definitions, an advanced book about AI. How many people without a PhD can read that? How many people with a PhD can read it?

From the abstract:

This document is designed to be a first-year graduate-level introduction to probabilistic programming. It not only provides a thorough background for anyone wishing to use a probabilistic programming system, but also introduces the techniques needed to design and build these systems. It is aimed at people who have an undergraduate-level understanding of either or, ideally, both probabilistic machine learning and programming languages.

Thanks to the Internet, how many people who have that prerequisite "undergraduate-level understanding of either or, ideally, both probabilistic machine learning and programming languages" now have access to this material, who otherwise might not have? And thanks to the Internet (Khan Academy, Coursera, OCW, Udacity, Fast.ai, 3blue1brown@youtube, etc.) how many people now have the ability to gain that prerequisite knowledge without investing tens of thousands of dollars in a university degree? Especially people who might not have been able to afford to take time off from working to attend University in the first place?

While in the end you may be right that AI specifically does wind up driving inequality, I think there are strong arguments that technology / the 'net in a general sense also serve to advance equality.

Looks like it's getting better in some places, worse in others. I can't see any obvious patterns but you can play with the data here:

http://bit.ly/2P5yNKy

Wish this allowed you to see the income proportion of the top 1% and 0.1% too, not just the top 10%.

What happened in the late 90's/early 2000's? I notice Canada and Germany have steep increases in that period.

it's still an exponential distribution isn't it ?

Distribution of assets or distribution of consumption? I would argue the former is a complete red herring and if one is to be concerned about any inequality, it's inequality of consumption.

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