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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

Even in the unlikely event AI somehow delivers on its valuations and thereby doesn't disappoint, the implied negative externalities on the population (mass worker redundancy, inequality that makes even our current scenario look rosy, skyrocketing electricity costs) means that America's and the world's future looks like a rocky road.

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I think part of the problem is the variance (economically) of AI delivering is so wide, that even that's hard to predict. e.g, is end stage AI:

- Where we have intelligent computers and robots that can take over most jobs

- A smarter LLM that can help with creative work but limited interaction with the physical world

- Something else we haven't imagined yet

Depending on where we end up, the current investment could provide a great ROI or a negative one.

I don't think many businesses are at the stage where they can actually measure whatever AI is delivering.

At one business I know they fired most senior developers and mandated junior developers to use AI. Stakeholders were happy as finally they could see their slides in action. But, at a cost of code base being unreadable and remaining senior employees leaving.

So on paper, everything is better than ever - cheap workers deliver work fast. But I suspect in few months' time it will all collapse.

Most likely they'll be looking to hire for complete rewrite or they'll go under.

In the light of this scenario, AI is false economy.

When standard of living increases significantly, inequality often also increases. The economy is not a zero sum game. Having both rising inequality and rising living standards is generally the thing to aim for.

Both parties seem to agree we should build more electric capacity, that does seem like an excellent thing to invest in, why aren't we?

As the cost of material goods decreases, they will become near free. IMO demand for human-produced goods and experiences will increase.

Yes, if AI proves to be a 10x productivity booster, it probably means most people will be unemployed

Electricity was a 10x productivity boost, just over a way longer timespan. We‘re just speedrunning this.

Also, what happens to those employed when they each have 10 people trying to take their job. It’s a downward spiral for employment as we know it.

The plow was a 10x productivity booster. Guess what happened next?

The main difference is that a plow cannot replace a human because a plow is a machine operated by a human.

The premise of AI is that it replaces humans.

Even if AI creates, say, 200 million new jobs - you would just fill those jobs with AI. Why would you fill them with humans? That's stupid.

>The main difference is that a plow cannot replace a human because a plow is a machine operated by a human.

A single human with a plow replaced 20 humans with shovels.

Do you believe the ratio of AI replacement will actually be higher? I doubt it.

> A single human with a plow replaced 20 humans with shovels.

Right, my point is, that single human cannot now be replaced with a plow because a plow and a human are two distinctly different things.

This is the opposite of the premise of AI, which is that AI and humans should be as similar as possible.

I can't get a plow to ride a plow because it doesn't have legs. It's made of metal.

I CAN get an AI to prompt AI because that's what AI does.

So again, even if you create X Y Z jobs, surely the goal then is to replace those jobs with AI? Like we can get rid of programmers, okay great. Now we need more people to write specs. Okay great.

Um... Why not have the AI write the specs? They can be different AIs. It's software, it's trivially copiable, unlike flesh and bones.

Idk I think the plow still has similar scaling. You can make a much bigger plow now maybe it replaces 40 humans. You could make it bigger still and have ox pull it, now maybe 400 humans since you still need one to lead the ox.

Farmer Joe then claims he can train ox + border collie teams to eliminate the need for humans entirely when it comes to plowing. But by that point no one cares because the cost to plow a field is so low that it really doesn't matter, other things are the bottleneck.

The cost of things where AI can produce value will trend downward and human labor will move to other things, like entertainment, services. IMO there will always be demand for things like human-given massages, human chefs, human teachers, etc.

> The cost of things where AI can produce value will trend downward and human labor will move to other things, like entertainment, services. IMO there will always be demand for things like human-given massages, human chefs, human teachers, etc.

Thereby suppressing the wages of jobs that are already at the lower end of the compensation ladder.

While there will be spots where a human will be replaced by AI there won't be nearly as much as people think over the next decade.

10X population?

Not necessarily. If $x is enough to get you 10x more Software engineering effort, people may be willing to increase their spending on software engineering, rather than decrease it

"skyrocketing electricity costs"

You said it right here. No one is going to give up energy at such a cheap rate anymore. Those days are over. Darkness for the US is coming.

Solar is extremely cheap and battery costs are dropping quickly, IMO you may see US neighborhoods, especially rural disconnecting from the grid and rolling their own solutions.

This china rare earth thing may slow down the battery price drop somewhat but not for long because plenty of chemistries don't rely on rare earths, and there will soon be plenty of old EV packs that have some life left in them as part of grid storage.

cost for solar power and storage is decaying exponentially

scarcity isn't real anymore, it is enforced politically for the benefit of the owning class

> scarcity isn't real anymore, it is enforced politically for the benefit of the owning class

Whatever the reason, it nonetheless seems like higher electricity prices are inbound.

Yeah, that's totally believable. I remember how everyone raved about cheap EV charging a decade ago, how it would save costs etc. And today a commercial fast DC changing is more expensive (per km of range) than an ICE car of the same class and size. And that's with gas prices doubling since 2009 crash. I've just did a quick calculation with today's prices and modern cars in the comparison.

> I remember how everyone raved about cheap EV charging a decade ago, how it would save costs etc. And today a commercial fast DC changing is more expensive (per km of range) than an ICE car of the same class and size.

The raving was over the cost of home charging vs gasoline, and that advantage still holds today, even in very expensive electricity markets like MA or CA.

The way most people will feel the hit is air conditioning costs, since their usage can't cheaply be moved off peak rate hours, and an array of home batteries isn't cheap enough for households that have high energy burden.

Oh, I completely agree, home charging even today is significantly cheaper than gas price (adjusted). The problem is that charging at home can be done only by people owning a detached or semi-detached house. So it's basically only possible for luxury owners (at least in EU) because a vast majority of population is living in the apartment blocks. So the situation is doubly funny, first - the main advantage in costs is only possible by already rich people who don't really appreciate it, while poorer people pay through the nose for the same thing. And second - the whole international car market is now shaped by the application of this rich people motivation to whole population. The whole "let's move all car sales to EV by the year 2035" or whatever. And poorer people will again may for the luxury toys of the rich.

PS: this comment sounds a bit weird I admit, but I'm not against EVs and I'm not a climate change denier. I'm just severely disappointed in how EV integration in the society actually happened.

I personally hope AI doesn't quite deliver on its valuations, so we don't lose tons of jobs, but instead of a market crash, the money will rotate into quantum and crispr technologies (both soon to be trillion dollar+ industries). People who bet big on AI might lose out some but not be wiped out. That's best casing it though.

What would quantum technology actually deliver?

Other than collapsing the internet when every pre-quantum algorithm is broken (nice jobs for the engineers who need to scramble to fix everything, I guess) and even more uncrackable comms for the military. Drug and chemistry discovery could improve a lot?

And to be quite honest, the prospect of a massive biotech revolution is downright scary rather than exciting to me because AI might be able to convince a teenager to shoot up a school now and then, but, say, generally-available protein synthesis capability means nutters could print their own prions.

Better healthcare technology in particular would be nice, but rather like food, the problem is that we already can provide it at a high standard to most people and choose not to.

> And to be quite honest, the prospect of a massive biotech revolution is downright scary rather than exciting to me because AI might be able to convince a teenager to shoot up a school now and then, but, say, generally-available protein synthesis capability means nutters could print their own prions.

Yep this type of pandora's box is scary. Our culture demonstrably has no good mechanism for dealing with these kinds of existential risks.

Humans are fortunate that nuclear weapons turned out to be very difficult and expensive to build even with the theory widely known. If they were something anyone with an internet connection could create we would probably be extinct by now. There is absolutely no guarantee that future developments will have similar restrictions.

If bio-engineering gets accessible enough that any random motivated individual can create a new super bug we're pretty much doomed. Seems like something to worry about!

Healthcare costs are a real issue especially for gerontocracies like France, and driving them down would be a massive benefit to society

Previous biotech breakthroughs have made good progress in treating many illnesses, but making healthcare cheaper overall is not one of them, even if it makes a specific therapy cheaper.

It would be unsurprising to me if a biotech gold-rush resulted in healthcare becoming a larger proportion of GDP, even if it produced miraculous results. We'd just have to scrimp and save and take out a reverse mortgage for generic re-transcription therapy or whatever instead of chemo and nursing homes.

> What would quantum technology actually deliver?

We might be able to finally determine the factors of 21

Quantum had already peaked in the hype. It doesn't scale, like at all. It can't be used for abstract problems. We don't even know the optimal foundation base on which to start developing. It is now in the fusion territory. Fusion is also objectively useful with immense depth or research potential. It's just humans are too dumb for it, for now and so we will do it at scale centuries later.

Crispr would clash with the religious fundamentalists slowly coming back to power in all western countries. Potentially it will be even banned, like abortions.

I like this, because I hate the idea that we should either be rooting for AI to implode and cause a crash, or for it to succeed and cause a crash (or take us into some neo-feudal society).

seriously, LLMs are cool but if this level of investment was happening around crispr, longevity and other health tech I would be 1000X more excited.

"quantum" and "biotech" have been wishful thinking based promises for several years now, much like "artificial intelligence"

we need human development, not some shining new blackbox that will deliver us from all suffering

we need to stop seeking redemption and just work on the very real shortcomings of modern society... we don't even have scarcity anymore but the premise is still being upheld for the benefit of the 300 or so billionaire families...

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