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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020

What exactly is the utility of AI writing comments that seem indistinguishable from people? What is the economic value of a comment or an article?

At present rate, there is a good argument to be made that the economic value is teetering towards negative

A comment on a post or an article on the internet has value ONLY if there are real people at the other end of the screen reading it and getting influenced by it

But if you flood the internet with AI slop comments and articles, can you be 100% sure that all the current users of your app will stick around?

If there are no people to read your articles, your article has zero economic value

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Perhaps economic value can come from a more educated and skilled workforce if they're using AI for private tuition (if it can write as well as us, it can provide a bespoke syllabus, feedback etc.)

Automation over teaching sounds terrible in the long run, but I could see why learning languages and skills could improve productivity. The "issue" might be here that there's more to gain in developing nations with poor education standards, and so while capital concentrates more to the US because they own the tech, geographical differences in labour productivity reduces.

What is the economic value of a wheel? If we flood the market with wheels, we’re going to need far fewer sleds and horses. Pretty soon, no one might need horses at all — can you imagine that?

No, you flood the roads with so many constantly running robot wheels that no one actually wants to walk or drive on the road anymore because the robot wheels keep bumping into them

In the process of making better wheels, you’ve made the roads unusable and now no one wants to leave the house - or buy wheels

I’m not sure if it’s going to be a better world for humans, but roads so crowded with wheels that I don’t want to leave my house sounds like an economy where a lot of wheels are being sold.

The wheels are being sold to humans sitting inside their houses who have been told that if they have enough wheels on the road, they will make the world more productive. Meanwhile, the wheelmaker loses money on every wheel but gets money from the rubber factory. And the rubber factory gets money by selling its stock to the humans sitting inside their houses.

But yes, a lot of wheels are being sold. For now

This is the most nothing-burger response I've ever seen in my life.

Comments written by fucking humans barely have any value. All their value comes from the fact you can manipulate humans into buying shit - advertising.

You can't manipulate AI into buying shit because it doesn't have money because it's not a laborer and doesn't have a right to a fair wage.

hell, it has negative economic value because of the opportunity costs of the electricity and water used to produce it.

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