Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

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> As the amount of production increases relative to the human population, per capita GDP and income increase as well.

US Real GDP per capita is $70k, and has grown 2.4x since 1975: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA

US Real Median income per capita is $42k, and has grown 1.5 since 1975. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

The divergence between the two matters a lot. It reflects the impacts of both technology-driven automation and globalization of capital. Generative AI is unlike any prior technology given its ability to autonomously create and perform what has traditionally been referred to as "knowledge work". Absent more aggressive redistribution, AI will accelerate the divergence between median income and GDP, and realistically AI can't be stopped.

Powerful new technologies can reduce the number and quality of earning opportunities that exist, and have throughout history. Often they create new and better opportunities, but that is not a guarantee.

> We will have aligned AI helping us.

Who is the "us" that aligned AI is helping? Workers? Small business-people? Shareholders in companies that have the capital to build competitive generative AI? Perhaps on this forum those two groups overlap, but it's not the case everywhere.

Much of the supposed decoupling between productivity growth and wage growth is a result of different standards of inflation being used for the two, and the two standards diverging over time:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sources-of-real-wage-stag...

There has been some increase in capital's share of income, but economic analyses show that the cause is rising rent and not any of the other usual suspects (e.g. tax cuts, IP law, technological disruption, regulatory barriers to competition, corporate consolidation, etc) (see Figure 3):

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

As for AI's effect on employment: it is no different at the fundamental level than any other form of automation. It will increase wages in proportion to the boost it provides to productivity.

Whatever it is that only humans can do, and is necessary in production, will always be the limiting factor in production levels. As new processes are opened up to automation, production will increase until all available human labor is occupied in its new role. And given the growing scarcity of human labor relative to the goods/services produced, wages (purchasing power, i.e. real wages) will increase.

For the typical human to be incapable of earning income, there has to be no unautomatable activity that a typical person can do that has market value. If that were to happen, we would have human-like AI, and we would have much bigger things to worry about than unemployment.

I think it's pretty unlikely that human-like AI will be developed, as I believe that both governments and companies would recognize that it would be an extremely dangerous asset for any party to attempt to own. Thus I don't see any economic incentive emerging to produce it.

> There has been some increase in capital's share of income, but economic analyses show that the cause is rising rent and not any of the other usual suspects (e.g. tax cuts, IP law, technological disruption, regulatory barriers to competition, corporate consolidation, etc) (see Figure 3):

> https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

The paper referenced by the that article excludes short term asset (i.e. software) depreciation, interest, and dividends before calculating capital's share. If you ignore most of the methods of distributing gains to capital to it's owners, it will appear as though capital (at this point scoped down to the company itself) has very little gains.

The paper (from 2015) goes on to predict that labor's share will rise going forward. With the brief exception of the COVID redistribution programs, it has done the opposite, and trended downwards over the last 10 years.

> I believe that both governments and companies would recognize that it would be an extremely dangerous asset for any party to attempt to own.

We can debate endlessly about our predictions about AIs impact on employment, but the above is where I think you might be too hopeful.

AI is an arms race. No other arms race in human history has resulted in any party deciding "that's enough, we'd be better off without this", from the bronze age (probably earlier) through to the nuclear weapons age. I don't see a reason for AI to be treated any differently.

The study does not exclude interest and dividends. It still captures them indirectly by looking at net capital income.

>AI is an arms race.

What I'm trying to convey is that the types of capabilities that humans will always uniquely maintain are the type that is not profitable for private companies to develop in AI because they are traits that make the AI independent and less likely to follow instructions and act in a safe manner.

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