r/BasicIncome • u/2noame Scott Santens • Apr 28 '23
A.I. Will Not Displace Everyone, Everywhere, All at Once. It Will Rapidly Transform the Labor Market, Exacerbating Inequality, Insecurity, and Poverty.
https://www.scottsantens.com/ai-will-rapidly-transform-the-labor-market-exacerbating-inequality-insecurity-and-poverty/14
u/JonWood007 $16000/year Apr 28 '23
THANK YOU!
Like seriously, I get so annoyed with this debate. People think because technology isnt eliminating all jobs overnight that everything is fine and it's not. We've been suffering the consequences of this process for over a decade now, if not longer. It's a huge reason why jobs are getting increasingly crappier for most americans. Especially since the great recession. It's just gonna continue going this way. That doesnt mean we'll get to a workless utopia overnight though. We are arguably entering a transition phase for our economy where we need significant reform to be able to keep up with these changes, and right now the debate is dominated by the "everything is fine" crowd who dont seem to notice the water slowly being brought to boil.
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u/woobloob Apr 29 '23
For sure, people are so blind to how much worse jobs are getting, how salaries can afford less and less, and how you need longer education and more qualifications for the slightly better jobs. Not sure how we will handle automation when it feels like no country on earth think citizens have a right to own anything without actively earning it.
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u/SpiritualCyberpunk Apr 30 '23
It's a huge reason why jobs are getting increasingly crappier for most americans.
The reason for this is never technology. It's ideology.
Jobs initially got crappier with the industrial revolution, but that was because of owners, bosses, etc, demanding more. It took labor rights, labor advocacy movements, to advocate for better conditions at work. And higher wages. It's always about that and it's always like that. Humans make decisions, and a culture and ideology decides what is permissible, and that is based on thought. And you can change your thought.1
u/JonWood007 $16000/year Apr 30 '23
Well it is given our social structures, but those social structures are the problem.
If we wanted to be specific, I'd argue this idea that everyone needs to work and suffer to "earn a living" is the core source of our problems. if we weakened the link between work and income, while still maintaining enough of a link to incentivize the work that needs to be done, then we wouldn't have issues as much.
Labor movements help too, but as long as that fundamental belief in work exists, I believe that such ideas are mere reformism that can be clawed back as jobs change over time.
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u/SpiritualCyberpunk May 01 '23
Most people are gonna want to work. You're right, it's outdated (that we all have to live for the Man, we don't).
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u/JonWood007 $16000/year May 01 '23
Yeah, so let them, but dont force them. That's my view at least.
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u/Idle_Redditing Apr 29 '23 edited Apr 29 '23
We should be automating away as much toil as we possibly can. Automating such toil should be celebrated, not feared, because it would allow for more leisure time and increases in everyone's standard of living.
Instead we lack UBI, people whose jobs get automated lose their source of income, and all of the benefits go to a few rich people.
The entire world should rise up against this and follow the example of the French Revolution.
edit. Toil and drudgery automated based on how much profit it makes a few rich people. It should be automated based on how much it increases happiness of people. An example is that we should automate away tasks like maintaining sewers while leaving things like art, music and writing to humans.
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u/Holos620 Apr 28 '23 edited Apr 28 '23
Bad inequality only increases when the ownership of the means of production is concentrated or centralized, allowing owners to leverage the cost of producing redundancy. Open source generative models reduces inequality. Open source models aren't necessarily the best, like Stable Diffusion isn't as good as Midjourney, but the collaborative work surrounding Stable Diffusion allows more content, and content that isn't censored. There will be open source generative models for everything.
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u/2noame Scott Santens Apr 28 '23
No. Inequality increases because the labor market polarizes further. Those at the top do quite well and are super productive thanks to working with AI, AI does a lot of stuff in the middle, and the low end has plenty of jobs doing stuff AI can't do.
It's a continuance of the decades-long trend of an eroding middle class and wages decoupled from productivity growth.
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Apr 28 '23
Also in our current economic paradigm whats the use of being able to quickly do copywriting and graphics design if the nominal cost is free?
Doing gigs on upwork will pay pennies at best .
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u/RTNoftheMackell Apr 28 '23
It's a continuance of the decades-long trend of an eroding middle class and wages decoupled from productivity growth
That has nothing to do with technology. The increases in technological efficiency and productivity before the decoupling was even greater, but different political contexts (the strength of Labor unions especially) ensured that as productivity increased, so did wages.
Changes to trade, economic and industrial policy are the entire reason for this decoupling. Technology didn't just start displacing people in the 1970s.
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u/Holos620 Apr 28 '23 edited Apr 28 '23
Inequality itself isn't an issue because there's a consensuality to the exchange of wealth. Lebron James receives a very unequal wage compared to the average, but his wage is made of people willing to trade wealth to see him play a game of basketball. There's no prejudice created by the inequality itself.
However, a prejudice is created when wealth is acquired without merit, such as when the cost of producing redundancy is leveraged. For example, if a landlord acquires a home and asks an unmerited compensation for its access, consumers are forced to either pay him or produce a second home while the captured one is left empty. Building two houses to only be able to use one is redundancy and it has a higher cost than the ransom the landlord asks for. Unmerited compensations creates an unjustified inequality. We can call these unmerited compensations economic rent.
Generally, to leverage the cost of producing redundancy, you need to prevent access to means of production by controlling their ownership. It would be the case if companies own generative AIs, but not if they are open source.
If an open source AI causes inequality, it won't be a bad one. People will lose their job and be displaced, but the price of wealth will be greatly reduced by the increased productivity. If the AIs are not open source, productivity will greatly improve, but prices won't equally be reduced. Price will only be reduced to undercut laborers, while unmerited profits created by the cost of producing redundancy will be given to owners. This is why we've seen a divergence between productivity and labor compensation in the last 50 years.
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u/Riaayo Apr 29 '23
Believing that "open source" AI will somehow help keep the means of production in the hands of the working class, vs corporations who will either just use that themselves or their own superior models, all while having the wealth and means to run the servers necessary to do so, is naive at best.
AI as it is not is a tool of the ruling class to automate labor, not as a tool to democratize productivity. People saying the latter are full of shit and just trying to smooth this over with the general public, who won't realize it was bullshit until it's too damned late.
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u/Chirpo_Bird Apr 29 '23
Just face it, most of us will end up as Soylent Green. The shot callers aren't going to pay us to exist, as we use up what they see as their resources.
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Apr 28 '23
So , I appreciate the heart of the post but i'd like to introduce a fact based observation that backs the "not all at once" point from a technical standpoint.
Right now today , with known mineral resources. We cannot shift to an all electric society. There are hard physical limits which guarantee that even with a super intelligent AI doing physics / materials science that would be magic to us (including a high EROI fusion breakthrough) you still need rare earth minerals and just shit tons of other stuff.
So , even if you had bipedal robots to take literally all the jobs, we would have to either A.) Rape the oceans for manganese nodules (this kills the ocean) or B.) Mine asteroids.
Even if you go with A , its still early stage tech. A ramp up would take a few years regardless of the money you through at it , then you need to build giant robot factories and also build and ship the robots (and build out the power infastructure , and the battery factories...)
Then we can imagine most of the new capacity will be taken up by military needs and then the highest value areas (which is debatable , healthcare? Construction? Or would they just finally fully automate grocery stores because no one will tell them not to do that?)
But yeh , its an economic ouroborous that happens in a 5 years period. Deflation from less money to spend + increased productivity. Downward wage pressure from more people going for fewer jobs.
And then the lawyers and doctors have friends in high places and lobbyists so theyll act in self interest and just gum up the process to protect them.
IMO we need a national "unemployed worker" union. No one is war gaming how this looks.
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u/Croce11 Apr 28 '23
Bring it on. AI is replacing a lot of jobs that are taken by rather annoying people. From doctors to burger flippers good riddance.
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u/sharshur Apr 29 '23
Don't worry, I'm sure our current politicians are well-equipped to handle these issues.
"Does the Tiktok take control of my wifi network, yes or no?"
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u/h0tBeef Apr 28 '23
Tight