Hacker News Reader

Comment by protocolture | Hacker News Reader

Considering that the general trend has been that a few people get rich and everyone else gets poorer, this is a nothing statement.

View on HN

Isn't the difference between "capital -> labor -> capital" and "capital -> AI -> capital" (which is basically just "capital -> capital -> capital") that it's about the elimination of labor through its financialization? Not just that the poor get poorer, but from the POV of the rich that they don't even exist. (Conditional of course upon AI actually really being that much more productive than people and not dependent on them.)

Well, when AI replaces us as consumers, the economy will truly leave us behind

Capitalism already replaces many citizens with consumers, leaving some behind. Citizens have a say in how money are spent, not just how much money they get. Consumers might get nominal choice in how much money they get, but the choice of how to spend is either forced (e.g. rent or healthcare) or is meaningless (e.g. which brand of car to drive instead of having public transport).

Don't worry, capitalism knows how to make a business out of poor people. Just look at Walmart, and credit cards.

AI is just capital, you said it yourself. AI just adds more capital to the capital + labor = more capital equation. The more value capital brings in comparison to labor, the more value capital takes from the result compared to labor.

The issue is the increasing imbalance of capital being overvalued compared to labor, and how that has a negative impact on most individuals.

I guess pizza is saying that labor (in the sense of human labor/employment) is coming to an end. If AI + robotics just drives the economy capital self multiplies with out labor.

Is labor actually going to zero?

Really makes you take a step back and wonder why Luigi was so celebrated. /s

You should also consider that people have AI too, everyone has AI, AI makes no difference in competition. Like having Linux, or Google Search - immensely useful but not a differential. So "capital -> AI -> capital" would just be the inferior option. Like building a product with minimal coding and just putting together open source packages, that anyone could replicate in a few hours.

People don't "have" AI. People are being provided AI as a service by the corporations who invested billions into training it. If they ever make a leap where it can actually replace the workforce, it won't be provided for cheap like it is right now, and all the current open models will be obsolete.

I think that this kind of automation will lead to assets outweighting "real" work way more than they already do now, and I hope I am wrong.

This is not true. Look at median household income in FRED. It is unequivocally up for everyone across the board.

Inequality has increased but it’s no longer clear that it’s as severe an increase as Piketty and Saez once argued. So, yes, things could certainly be much better. The US could, for example, benefit from a more progressive taxation and a stronger social safety net. But at the same time, we aren’t all headed to hell.

Household income isnt really representative while cost of living is increasing faster than income.

If I make 100 tokens and that buys me 100 food, thats better than making 1000 tokens that buys me 1 food.

At least for the US (and I suspect for most other countries), that is incorrect. When adjusted for inflation both median wealth and median wages have increased in the last 30 years.

Fake news, based on confounding intra-country data with international data.

It's not. It directly contradicts the false utopia that tech bros have been selling us of AI solving world hunger, curing all diseases, bringing prosperity to everyone, and similar nonsense.

A statement like this from someone influential is important to break that narrative, despite the HN crowd finding it obvious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com