The current state of the economy - part two

[Vexr]

I think the movie Elysium hits the closest to where we're headed.

Once AI gets intelligent enough to be able to solve things like Nuclear Fusion and AI is good enough to be a robot to get food from ground to plate and care for the old age. The cost of keeping a human alive is close to zero.

If AI ever makes breakthroughs like solving nuclear fusion or curing cancer, those benefits will surely be reserved for the privileged at the very top of the pyramid.

The rest of us can languish in the old world and hit the jobcentre like so:

 

[Mr Badger]

Perhaps but I think we have only touched the surface. Once AI gets intelligent enough to be able to solve things like Nuclear Fusion and AI is good enough to be a robot to get food from ground to plate and care for the old age. The cost of keeping a human alive is close to zero.

Efficiency will also go through the roof on several magnitudes. Robots will be productive 24/7/365 without any need for breaks, holiday, sick pay etc.

The worry not so much for myself but more for my kids will be what purpose will you have in life? Education will not really be needed apart for leisure because AI will have vastly more intelligence for inventing and solving everything.

Once robot AI becomes sufficiently evolved, they are just going to sit around downloading robot porn all day.

 

[413x]

Isn't this just the Luddite view? No different to the introduction of machinery for factory work?

Disagree

AI could easily out compete us immediately.
And when it happens it could be instantly, everywhere, all at once.

Lets say AGI does suddenly spawn. It has perfect memory, can think faster, learn faster. Doesn't need to sleep. Has access to basically all human knowledge immediately.

In our networked world it could easily do whatever it wanted.


Machinery can't do this. It was never and still isn't as dexterous. It can't think or create.


With AI you have the best minds and the biggest companies in the world all working to make you obsolete.

But it's AGI we really need to care about.



But.. It is same as nuclear war. Individually we can't do anything about it except trying to find jobs that are AI proof. But AGI? All bets are off for that.

If I was an AGI? I'd see humans as parasitic, greedy, inefficient, cruel, inferior etc. So I don't like our chances even with a "good" AGI

 

[413x]

I think the movie Elysium hits the closest to where we're headed.



If AI ever makes breakthroughs like solving nuclear fusion or curing cancer, those benefits will surely be reserved for the privileged at the very top of the pyramid.

The rest of us can languish in the old world and hit the jobcentre like so:

Yeah I agree with this if humans are in control of it.

Even now, the mega wealthy could do so much good to help the world. They do not as a group. There is no reason to think this won't get more extreme as time goes on.

 

[adam cool dude]

AI is not capable of original thought, it is only capable of rehashing what has been thought already.

In 2025 yes but this is just the beginning. Look at how much has changed in just a matter of 5 years and I would hazard a guess that the growth is not linear either.

 

[Hagar]

In 2025 yes but this is just the beginning. Look at how much has changed in just a matter of 5 years and I would hazard a guess that the growth is not linear either.

Yup, we are going back in time to socialist Britain again. That has never worked.

 

[Bluecube]

It would also be bloody terrible for a lot of service workers.

Use of AI is more likely to hit high value white collar jobs as much as anything else. Who needs accountants, GPs (note GPs not doctors) or IT help desks when you can just use AI? Blue collar jobs are safe until the first AI controlled robots are produced and even then…

 

[slinxy]

AI is not capable of original thought, it is only capable of rehashing what has been thought already.

I’m really quite disappointed… I thought you would go full radderfire on this.. lol

 

[Hades]

I don't see this as the real AI evolution yet. Yes it has and will continue to improve and be used more. But in technology it's usually the second wave that i successful, not the first.

Before dotcom 2.0, selling on the internet was not mainstream.
Yahoo lost to the real game changer of Google.
Myspaces lost to Facebook.
etc.

AI is going to be dramatic and devastating but we haven't seen the real changes yet. There needs to be a further leap before that happens.

 

[Brackish]

I think if AI took over certain jobs then manufacturing would increase to cope with industrial equipment requirements so the "office job" could transition to a labour job. Surely AI would also need to be heavily controlled to take over?

 

[Pipe & Slippers]

robot hoovers already can wash the mop pads, empty the dust, go recharge when the battery gets low etc.
the only time a humans needed is if it gets stuck or something else goes wrong.

My entire professional career was fixing things getting stuck or something else going wrong

 

[adam cool dude]

Yup, we are going back in time to socialist Britain again. That has never worked.

What is wrong with everyone being wealthy?

There needs to be a balance on both sides. IMO capitalism is getting out of hand to the point where you have a monopoly in many sectors where the super rich are getting increasingly wealthy and increasingly eroding democracy to the point where we all end up in a dictatorship anyway.

 

[Pipe & Slippers]

Use of AI is more likely to hit high value white collar jobs as much as anything else. Who needs accountants, GPs (note GPs not doctors) or IT help desks when you can just use AI? Blue collar jobs are safe until the first AI controlled robots are produced and even then…

I disagree. It’s more likely to hit low value white collar jobs. Re accountants, the moment you get 2 levels up from the bottom, you are removed from the grunt work and are exercising judgement based on experience. I guess AI could do that, but it would probably make economic sense to do the low level stuff first

 

[Illusion]

This feels like two separate discussions, the stock market AI bubble and what effect AI will have on humanity...

Personally I'm making a conscious effort to use AI less at work since it is both wrong all the time and means skills I previously had were eroding (mostly writing Python code to automate things myself vs using AI, with coding not being my primary job responsibility)

On the stock market side of things I am still 2-3 decades from retirement so I am not too concerned about a crash, I'd likely just buy more in a huge downturn

 

[413x]

This feels like two separate discussions, the stock market AI bubble and what effect AI will have on humanity...

Personally I'm making a conscious effort to use AI less at work since it is both wrong all the time and means skills I previously had were eroding (mostly writing Python code to automate things myself vs using AI, with coding not being my primary job responsibility)

On the stock market side of things I am still 2-3 decades from retirement so I am not too concerned about a crash, I'd likely just buy more in a huge downturn

I am the same.
I do not enjoy getting AI to do the work. I'd rather manage people actually.

For now I think i am safe. Think AI has stalled a bit.
The stuff I "worry" about would be unbeatable anyway. So really, I'm just continuing on until/if that paradigm shift comes along. And if/when it does, nothing will really matter anyway.

 

[radderfire]

In 2025 yes but this is just the beginning. Look at how much has changed in just a matter of 5 years and I would hazard a guess that the growth is not linear either.

My point is that whatever it has done so far, is only ever a rehash of what something a human has thought or done before. AI will never be capable of totally original thought or action and this is a major weakness of it.

 

[radderfire]

The worry not so much for myself but more for my kids will be what purpose will you have in life? Education will not really be needed apart for leisure because AI will have vastly more intelligence for inventing and solving everything.

Education is currently needed to supervise kids whilst their parents do work for someone else. AI will not relieve this need. You could argue that present education is more like daycare than actual useful education.

 

[Pipe & Slippers]

What is wrong with everyone being wealthy?

Brought to mind Terry Pratchett’s Mort - Rincewind's brow furrowed. He thought. 'We'd all be rich?'

Regarding people thinking there would be no work for anyone once AI gets going, I thought the demographic of the forums would trigger memories of the IT Revolution. There was lots of talk about how society would have to prepare for only 5% being employed while the rest would just leisure their way through life

 

[Hagar]

Brought to mind Terry Pratchett’s Mort - Rincewind's brow furrowed. He thought. 'We'd all be rich?'

Regarding people thinking there would be no work for anyone once AI gets going, I thought the demographic of the forums would trigger memories of the IT Revolution. There was lots of talk about how society would have to prepare for only 5% being employed while the rest would just leisure their way through life

Tomorrow's world in the nineteen sixties posited a life of leisure served by robots. Sixty years later the only robot is the computer at HMRC.

 

[radderfire]

What are your thoughts on the current economic situation? What will things look like from here? The bubble can't continue indefinitely but what on earth is that going to look like when it does give up the ghost?

The focus is being put on AI, but in reality the major problems are elsewhere, and these are related to bad loans by the banking sector that will never be paid back, or where collateral has crashed, e.g. commercial property sector.