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Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

At some level it’s tautological. Initially I had a similar negative reaction other commenters had, but I think I’m deciding I like the people framing. Obviously this is not an either-or. It’s not a question of AI vs people, it’s both AI+people. But only people are making the choices. People are building AI, people who can use AI will choose to use it, and people who run businesses will choose to allow it and/or incorporate it. Just like jobs lost to immigration and/or outsourcing, the jobs aren’t being stolen, they’re being intentionally given to cheaper alternatives, by business people, without much worry about the consequences. It’s healthy for us to think about the AI revolution as a social & economic choice, because that’s what it really is.

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Comparing to outsourcing or, even less fitting, immigration is a terrible analogy. Those jobs and their income go to other humans. Other humans who will consume goods and services, this is especially true for immigration. I'd also argue that offshoring is morally positive because it moves the work and associated income to where people need it more, that's why the labor is cheaper there

Both automation and global movement of goods and workers increase productivity which is highly desired. However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created. This leads to higher wealth concentration. I'm fine with some people being super rich, but I'm worried about there floor. IMO, we need something like UBI to raise the floor. Leaving AI assignment concerns aside, I'd be incredibly excited if the productivity gains from AI were to somehow be used to raise the floor for everyone on the planet. Instead I'm worried that we'll see more unemployment or more low-payed gig/service work on which, in the US, people might struggle to afford basic things like health care, housing and education for their children. Edit: This also carries a high risk of getting some form of violent revolution, or more push towards a too extreme solution like communism. After all communism was born as a response to the automation of the industrial revolution.

Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but from the perspective of a business owner, the choice is to put money into something expensive like local human labor, or something cheaper whether it’s remote labor or automation of some kind. Lots of tools have been accused of stealing jobs over the years, from factory machines to vehicles to computers. In that sense, I’m only borrowing an analogy with a long rich tradition.

The wealth concentration difference between labor and machines is one of the systemic outcomes, it’s one of the consequences that business owners don’t necessarily intend to cause, it’s just an emergent property of certain choices, right? This is precisely one of the reasons we need to recognize that this is a choice, because the consequences of the choice will matter.

Who's making the choice though? There's no one person or even one group of people in charge, short of political regulation.

If AI is less expensive than humans, then anyone who doesn't use AI will get outcompeted by those who do. That's the unfortunate reality of markets. Wealth always becomes more and more concentrated until a democratic initiative opposes it.

It’s a good & important question to ask who’s making the choices, and who’s subject to the consequences of the choices. That’s very much one of the reasons I think it’s healthy to view this as a choice. Not necessarily one you and I are making, but it is one being made by someone somewhere, and it will affect us.

In the context of “stealing jobs”, the choice is being made by the people who have jobs to offer, the business owners. In the context of building AI, the choice is in the hands of the researchers and engineers, and the businesses investing in AI. Some of the choice is being made by all of us, via interest in AI, discussion, clicks, Google searching, curiosity.

> If AI is less expensive than humans, then anyone who doesn’t use AI will get outcompeted by those who do. That’s the unfortunate reality of markets.

Generally true, I agree. Though we can and do exercise choices to prevent negative social and economic outcomes. Children, for example, are cheaper to employ than adults, but we don’t legally allow it. We can, similarly, choose whether and what AI we want to allow, if we’re sufficiently motivated, right? The choice in this case is in the hands of the populace and the government.

What do you mean when you say choice? Who is choosing?

No one asked me or you or most of the people, this is barely on anyone's political platform. Sanders talked about it a bit but he is not influential and even he has more important agenda than A.I. Deciding about this 5-10 years from now will be too little too late imo, something should have been done years ago. This tech is already everywhere, companies will be able to "offshore" expensive labor to A.I running in cheap countries. We can try taxing these things, or creating some kind of UBI but that's about it regarding "choice".

Why don't we first automate the jobs that need to be done, but nobody wants to do anymore? One example: sorting mixed garbage and filtering out recyclable plastics (of various types), cans, paper etc. would be a great application for AI, wouldn't take away anyone's job (at least not in developed countries), and would be good for the environment.

People do want to do them. That's why they do them.

They simply don't ask for more money than the AI would require yet. Once there's a sufficient margin in it, not exactly at the cut-off but perhaps at 150-200%, they're gone.

> People do want to do them. That's why they do them.

Incredibly naive. Very few people enjoy their jobs. I imagine job satisfaction of anything dealing with garbage is low. The only reason people stick to it is because it pays decently, plus maybe some sort of factor intrinsic to the job like not having to deal with people.

But generally, people do their job because they have to do them in order to put a roof over their head and food on the table.

I am not interested in convincing you that people do indeed choose their jobs so we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

In middle school (in 1981), my buddy and I took an elective called Custodial Services. We were helpers for the school janitor. That often meant picking up garbage and cleaning things. We like it a lot. We were almost always outside getting exercise, but it also gave us lots of time to think. We talked a lot about whether that was the right career for us.

I went on to get a degree in math and become a software engineer. That buddy is a high school janitor. We've often talked about who picked a better career. Mine has clearly been better financially. But, in terms of fulfillment, it's less clear and probably leans towards his choice.

When the movie Good Will Hunting came out, we were quite amused.

> Why don't we first automate the jobs that need to be done, but nobody wants to do anymore?

Why do you think nobody is working on automating that? And if nobody wants to do these jobs why is anyone doing these jobs right now?

> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created.

Owners of means of productions are typically american people with 401k or other pensions funds. There's nothing wrong to provide good returns for regular people.

You can't be serious. The vast majority of the "means of production" are owned by the top 1-5% of the country.

Sure, I have a 401k, I have 0.000001% of Amazon, that doesn't make me an owner.

You are very likely in the top 5% of earners.

Top 5% of Earners $342,987[1]

[1]https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...

No, I'm not. I'm not even in the top 10%.

Also, we can be concerned for people less fortunate than us. "You're probably wealthy so why do you care" is such a stupid argument.

I will add even more to this point. If anything, people who are more fortunate have an actual incentive to ensure some level of care for those less fortunate even if it is just for purely selfish reasons. Hungry people are angry people and the moment there is a lot of hungry, angry people, being top 10% is unlikely to keep you or your wealth safe. There are obviously non-pragmatic considerations, but I am trying to appeal to self-preservation instinct.

Sure. Some don't care, but I sometimes wonder if those people understand that living in society means some level of acceptable balance to all.

> Hungry people are angry people and the moment there is a lot of hungry, angry people, being top 10% is unlikely to keep you or your wealth safe.

Not if you have AI-powered autonomous "law" enforcement to gun them all down when they threaten you. It's only a matter of time.

If there is one thing that history taught us, it is that there is very little that can stop a determined populace ( Afghanistan being one recent example ). The mirror-like show scenarios are not impossible, but it would require a series of events that are hard to guarantee. I am saying that not because I think AI law enforcement won't happen. I am saying that because the moment it does happen, new equilibrium will manifest itself. And by this I mean.. do you really think people won't adjust their lives accordingly?

How will you use AI to solve these problems?

I won't. Frankly, neither will anyone else. This is not an AI problem. It is, inherently, a very human problem.

You'll probably like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is1YUQVYkvY&t=30s

It's Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist, sharing how he was invited to give a "talk" by a small group of billionaires, and their questions were about where to situate their post-apocalyptic bunkers, etc.

<< how do i maintain control of my security staff

I do believe some are. There are real concerns about a future conflict going beyond anyone's control.

Still, I think this question as presented alone reveals the reality behind my post. If there is no future, that tech mogul will be, at best, at mercy of their security detail. Why? In that scenario money has no value. Frankly, without his tech, he has no power. Power returns to a very simple equation and I am basically unable to believe that those seemingly very smart people can't see it. It even stops being realpolitik. It just become a question of who has a bigger stick.

shrug But sure.. if they want to return to that version of society.

Income isn't wealth though. It can lead to future wealth, but not if your source of income will go way which is exactly the topic of discussion with automation.

For some reason, that’s the average earnings that put you in the top 5%, which is weird.

Wealth has become increasingly concentrated in the states over the last 20 years, to the point where that statement doesn't hold anymore.

AI is arguably the most powerful production (as in “means of production”) tool ever created.

Anyone that is literate and somewhat intelligent/capable with access to the web is potentially more inventive and creative in the coming years than the greatest thinkers and creators that have ever lived. Billions of people will meet this qualification.

Everyone is now faced with a choice: use the tool and stay in the race, or ignore the tool and drop out of the race.

There are thousands of social problems to solve.

This doesn’t really match my experience of trying to get GPT to do all my daily software work. I don’t think I would have succeeded at all were it not for my ability to debug its output, which of course is the result of my model of the reality of the computing system and years of debugging my own and others code. So if I lacked that experience, I don’t think it would that valuable.

On the other hand, I did get it to make a nice story arc for JoJo in the style of a Shakespearean comedy.

My son and his friends have been getting it to write manga about themselves but in novel genre crossing stories. Like a normally happy magic genre where the main character lacks powers and dies.

So no more transformative than really good entertainment. Fun but not going to reduce income inequality or stop the sea from rising.

I don’t think policing analogies is serving the conversation well.

Someone whose job disappears in a puff of smoke doesn’t have a reason to care about whether the job was automated or whether it was moved overseas—in both cases, the economic activity is still there (or more likely, it’s increased), but the workers who trained for it are no longer getting compensated, and our concerns are for the welfare of these workers. Social consequences and all that.

Manufacturing jobs face both outsourcing and automation. The resulting productivity gains have certainly not been “swallowed”—consumer goods are just so damn cheap and plentiful these days—but the overall impact on local economies is sometimes disastrous. If you take a look at the US manufacturing sector, the output is higher than ever (maybe minus a dent from COVID), and the resulting benefits are spread across the US population (better access to manufactured goods), but the relative power of labor and capital is diverging—and both automation and outsourcing are making that possible. They both allow capital owners to create goods with lower labor costs. That’s the whole point, and the analogy makes a lot of sense.

IMO, a big part of the problem is that capital owners are so effectively able to externalize risk.

>If you take a look at the US manufacturing sector, the output is higher than ever

You are incorrect.

S&P Global US Manufacturing PMI Final March 49.2, down from flash print at 49.3, but up from the 47.3 in Feb - that is the 5th straight month of contraction (sub-50)

ISM Manufacturing March dropped to 46.3, from 47.7, and below 47.5 expectations - that is the 5th straight monthly contraction to the lowest since May 2020

They're talking about outsourcing and offshoring, which is a process that takes place over decades, so you should be looking at statistics to match that. Over decades, it is indeed higher than ever.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manu...

I think parent is saying we manufacture more today in the U.S. than we did 30 years or so ago with fewer people.

> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created.

It also massively lowers the cost of the product in general, and makes it a commodity. Yeah, automation might allow some company to keep more of each sale, but unless they're a monopoly, the price will plummet.

Consider buying a pair of handmade leather shoes vs buying some factory made leather shoes. The factory might have a higher margin than the craftsman, but suddenly leather shoes are very affordable.

No it's not healthy in my opinion. A drug addict doesn't exactly have a choice when he uses drugs.

Aspects of human behavior in aggregate are so predictable it's basically deterministic.

If AI one day matches or surpasses human intelligence it is obvious humanity will exploit that AI as it already is doing now. There is no actual "choice" here. Just an illusion of it.

We've changed collective human behavior before though, outlawed slavery etc.

And yet, even in countries where slavery is outlawed, it's still done - sometimes out in the open, sometimes behind closed doors.

e.g. the US, where people in jail are exempt from all our progressive slave labor laws.

Be that as it may, the collective behavior and shape of society has undeniably changed.

Has it?

Because when I look at humanity over the ages, I see a select few using technology and violence to exert power and influence over the great many to further their own desires.

I don't see that changing in the future anytime soon, especially before AI gets to be the next technology in a long line of technology used to oppress and inflict violence on others.

Aren't you excited to take the human element out of the loop of enforcing property ownership rights?

In China, in Tianenmen, they had to bring in forces from the countryside because the city police wouldn't fire on their neighbors. AI won't have any restrictions or morals. An AI-powered law enforcement force would gun down every single person in a city if authorities called for it.

This is the future - maybe not everywhere, and probably not soon, but it is an eventuality. Also, AI will be treated like encryption - it will become a munition, with the same type of restrictions as munitions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...). Governments will keep the best AI for themselves, leaving the goof-nuts ChatGPT type stuff for private citizens.

Then the question becomes did those gun downed humans deserve what they got? And did that massacre result in a greater good? Those are the not-so-pleasant questions the humans will have to ask themselves (probably using AI to help, ironically).

The real question in my mind is, does democracy survive once the top 1% has a complete and unquestioned monopoly on violence and power? I don't think so.

It doesn't survive, but that's the moment when the monopoly on violence broken, and the government becomes open season for citizens. Yes, the deck is stacked against the citizens, but all else equal, I think the 1% prefers it when the masses aren't constructing gallows and sharpening pitchforks. The mob is our truest and strongest weapon against the 1%.

This is a good point. The civil war like the drug war though are choices made after an inevitable plunge onto the predictable path. Both choices had a high cost and were incredibly hard to make.

It was also predictably a delayed response with varying levels of limited effectiveness.

Initially I didn’t like the drug addict analogy, but maybe it’s a good one, maybe you’re right. A drug addict did have a choice, and exercised it, and addiction was the consequence. With AI we’re at the first stage where we’re not yet addicted, but once we become addicted, it will be very very hard to wean ourselves off of it if/when we find out it’s doing more damage than good. We do have a choice right now, but you might be right that we’ll lose it soon.

> A drug addict did have a choice, and exercised it, and addiction was the consequence

This sort of disregards the large percentage of people who get hooked on drugs while recovering from injuries or medical issues. After marijuana, pain killers are the second most abused illegal substance.

That’s fair, you’re totally right. But, this is exposing why the drug addict analogy isn’t a great analogy relative to use of AI. I went along with it to find common ground, but I don’t believe the existence of drug addicts are evidence that we lack any choice when it comes to building, deploying, or using AI, like @Herval_freire implied. Do you? I think we do have the freedom to exercise caution, or regulate the use of certain dangerous machines, if we want.

We lack choice in aggregate. As an individual you have the choice of doing a drug. If I talk about a population of people and I introduce highly addictive drugs to a population of people, then it's almost a guarantee that part of that population will get addicted. In this sense it is not a choice.

For AI, if I introduce AI to a population of people then for sure part of the population will exploit and use AI. Logically speaking in order to compete, others will have to start using it as well.

We can and do choose to regulate addictive drugs, and we can similarly choose to regulate AI if necessary, right?

The fact that corporations and businesses will utilize AI to it's maximum extent is completely deterministic. This will happen.

Whether or not humanity in aggregate will launch a delayed immune response against AI via government regulation is not predictable. Regulating addictive drugs has a certain amount of clarity in moral action but regulating technology to prevent job loss is less clear. We didn't regulate calculators for replacing humans did we?

As I said, aspects of aggregate human behavior are deterministic. But I have to emphasize the "aspects" part because there are other "aspects" that are actually not predictable.

Good thing LLMs don't have any intelligence at all, since they lack agency. We're no closer to AI that can be meaningfully exploited than we were when Asimov dreamt up the positronic brain

I'm not sure if you are talking seriously or ironically, so I will assume the former.

Agency is a wonderful thing to have. But it's not as difficult to realize as getting something to be good at general intellectual tasks. Just built into the system a goal of utmost priority which is "to survive", and everything follows. There is a (slight) chance that it is not as easy as that, but I wouldn't bank anything on that chance.

> without much worry about the consequences

disagree, but the consequences I'm imagining are the consequences of loosing money due to not making those kinds of decisions.

the consequences for the decision makers are very different, the incentives which surround them and the consequences they'll face are not what you seem to think they are.

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