What consumer benefits is ai driving? at least with industrial automation consumers benefited from new technologies, cheaper goods, and new job categories.
It would be great if there was some internal “make this benefit Main Street and knowledge workers” department, helping find ways for workers or creators to capture the value of some of the increased productivity.
I have no clue what this would look like other than maybe an investment fund for people creating apps/businesses based on Claude tools.
I can at least “imagine” a model that tries to crack this nut.
Nike’s logo designer was paid $35. One model says she should’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars, because of what her work product went on to become. Another model of the value says it was worth $35 because that’s what she agreed to.
If, as an employee, you think you’re massively undervalued for the impact you generate, go out to the market and either get another job or start your own business making widgets - either you’ll get that pay bump you expect, or you’ll see you actually were relying on a lot of other supporting mechanisms to generate that value.
You'll either need to freelance, or start a company (or maybe a co-op) to capture the new value created by your ability to leverage AI.
It won't be much different to when a company buys more CNC machines and the employees don't get any more money despite producing way more parts.
What I need instead is something that takes the burden off my entire society and gives them a breather. Universal health care to start. They could also use a higher minimum wage, and lower housing costs.
All perl programmers should be wishing for ponies, that's definitely less narrow minded.
That's just the system we have, but slightly better and completely achievable.
That already exists in any other country but the USA. Aim higher.
This is quite easy. Just optimize the models to do reviews and bug finding. This would make developers (who normally hate reviews) quite happy and let them do more coding, thus delivering more value and possibly earning more...
If they wanted to do this, they could put their models in a public trust for the public's access and benefit in research, education, etc. Then it could be licensed, pay a dividend like a sovereign wealth fund, etc.
Considering that they copy and train on the sum total of all human creativity, a public trust is something that would be in line with both the spirit, and first and fourth considerations, of fair use doctrine:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The intrinsic satisfaction of increasing the wealth of shareholders. We should all be happy to devote ourselves to getting them more, nothing is more important than that.
The point is there is little benefit to these technologies to the consumer, especially in relation to likely harm in other areas (you lost your customer service job, but AI overview will answer your trivia question with slightly less effort). Note: little does not mean none.
So the farce is they benefit by religiously worshiping capitalist shareholders.
> why don't you buy some stock and became the shareholder. Per your own words, you will get more.
LOL. Don't you get it? The kind of smallholdings of shares available to regular people won't provide the kind of returns to mitigate any of these harms. They work as a ploy to trick dumb-ass workers into identifying with capitalist tycoons (e.g. opposing pro-worker things that'd get you a dollar more an hour in wages to get a penny more a quarter in dividends, it works because most don't do the math).
No, I guess I wasn't smart enough to realize there are only two options: the present day status quo or Soviet central planning. Nothing else is possible.
Nothing.
Enjoy your pennies.
My kids like to use AI to discuss things they learned in school in greater depth, and from different angles than they learned in the textbook. They can also ask "What if" and "Why not" questions from this infinitely patient teacher.
That might not apply to the kinds of parents that hang out here though
AI chat bots will summarize the top N web search results as if they're fact, weaving them into seemingly coherent narratives, all while reassuring the user that their questions are really good and they're learning a lot.
Basically consumers don't really pay for software in the first place, and the leverage from labour companies get through software is already through the roof even before AI. Will much change for consumers of software?
So... not much benefit either.
But this implies higher productivity, no? This must mean more outputs that should benefit someone, unless the jobs that are being automated had little value to begin with. Seems paradoxical.