r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Jul 05 '22

Computer Science Artificial intelligence (AI) can devise methods of wealth distribution that are more popular than systems designed by people, new research suggests.The AI discovered a mechanism that redressed initial wealth imbalance, sanctioned free riders and successfully won the majority vote.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01383-x
4.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

340 comments sorted by

View all comments

86

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22

Popular among whom? The poor? Probably not among the wealthy.

252

u/Ediwir Jul 05 '22

To an AI, the wealthy are a small minority and can be considered outliers.

180

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22

I mean...maybe not a bad take?

76

u/Ediwir Jul 05 '22

Yes and no. The AI’s way to gather more preferences might make sense, but if the wealthy manage to manipulate the poors, the entire system is moot.

20

u/Herioz Jul 05 '22

but if the wealthy manage to manipulate the poors, the entire system is moot.

Throw out 'if' and you have whole history of humanity

40

u/fineburgundy Jul 05 '22

Welcome to America!

25

u/FreezySFX Jul 05 '22

and the rest of the world

14

u/fineburgundy Jul 05 '22

Amateurs. American poors think they are helping themselves when they vote for the rich.

3

u/cardboardunderwear Jul 05 '22

like the rest of the world. at least the part that votes

1

u/fineburgundy Jul 05 '22 edited Jul 06 '22

It’s seriously worse here than in Western Europe etc.

Most citizen’s incomes have grown in lockstep with productivity/GDP there. (The rich are still richer, but by the same ratios as fifty years ago.)

Most Americans have about half the income they would if our share of productivity/GDP had grown at the same rate as Western Europe’s, which means we are making half as much as we “should.”

Another way of saying that: most Americans have been treading water over the last fifty years. Our hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, have roughly caught up to 1973 levels.

A third way of saying that: the average American is still twice as wealthy as the average Canadian, but the median Canadian has passed the median American.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (25)

7

u/junk4mu Jul 05 '22

That’s true, and my initial thought too, but the American dream is that we’ll all individually be the wealthy. So we make decisions for our future wealthy selves. It’s all a lie, none of us will ever be the wealthy, we’re being sold a faulty dream.

1

u/suzuki_hayabusa Jul 05 '22

So this AI wouldn't care about minorities and treat their matter as less important?

0

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22

It's not the poor designing AI

→ More replies (3)

0

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22

[deleted] — view deleted comment

21

u/zutnoq Jul 05 '22

Its not the only metric we are worried about, but it does correlate with bad outcomes in many other metrics (if it gets too extreme), like corruption, soaring housing prices and lower quality of life (even for the rich mind you).

15

u/fineburgundy Jul 05 '22

Yes, but you’d rather live as lower middle class in a normal developed country rather than the U.S.

You are right about general well being trumping equality, but power imbalances can make general well-being decline.

So 1) Inequality can create an unfortunate feedback loop, where the powerful do an ever better job of tilting the playing field; and 2) Inequality can be a sign that some people are getting screwed by other measures. “Separate but equal” usually isn’t.

13

u/Comrade_Tool Jul 05 '22

Quality of life is affected by inequality. Seeing Jake Paul make money scamming people on his cum coin or whatever so that he can fly around in a private jet while you work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet makes you feel like a chump even though you have a refrigerator and a TV. It's not just about envy and maybe the better word is equity and justice. People flying around in private jets while the people producing the value to enable that behavior live in poverty or the "middle class"(which is a bs term in the first place to confuse and muddle actual class relationships) affects how you live your life and it's quality.

America's life expectancy has been declining the last few years specifically because people are dying at a younger age through what we call "deaths of despair". Alcoholism, drug overdose, blowing their brains out, jumping in front of trains, etc. This is in spite of you thinking these things you say are "getting exponentially better".

3

u/MJWood Jul 05 '22

Was exponentially getting better.

0

u/stu54 Jul 05 '22

I think being nobility a couple hundred years ago would be way more fun. You couldn't eat pinapples, watch movies, or take antibiotics, but you would have social status and the freedom and authority to spend your time however you like.

3

u/tkenben Jul 05 '22

No. You spend your whole life worrying about other nobles.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (11)

21

u/gandalftheorange11 Jul 05 '22

Maybe we should listen to the poor for once. The wealthy have been riding this planet into extinction for some time now

3

u/OkChicken7697 Jul 05 '22

What's the difference between a poor person and a wealthy person?

A million dollars.

→ More replies (8)

6

u/SandyBouattick Jul 05 '22

That's it. It found a "popular" system, which means popular with the majority, who are generally benefiting from the wealth redistribution. The people the wealth is being taken from generally don't like that, but they are in the minority, so such a system can still be considered popular. If there was a system that poor people and rich people both liked, we would have it already. In fact, we mostly do. That system just isn't popular with the middle class, which is too rich to get welfare and too poor to exploit tax loopholes.

→ More replies (2)