Submitted by HorrorCharacter5127 t3_121wtri in Futurology
Congress can and will pass legislation to ensure a US based company can't replace more than an X percentage of workers with AI. Or some other formula to ensure AI won't threaten economic stability. In order for a company to make a profit, consumers have to be able to at least afford credit.
If, in the future, population starts shrinking like in Japan and this poses economic threats of its own, then AI can be utilized to a greater degree.
The same forces that have always been in play will ensure that any and all innovation will benefit the top 1%, not alleviate the burdens of the laborers. Neither the steam engine, nor electricity, nor the internet have actually allowed us to revolutionize the economy in a way that truly benefits the welfare of the working class. This will be no different.
Edit: naysayers, please please prove me wrong.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/HorrorCharacter5127:
Submission statement
Whether it’s based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, an artificial-intelligence gold rush has started over the last several months to mine the anticipated business opportunities from generative AI models like ChatGPT. App developers, venture-backed startups, and some of the world’s largest corporations are all scrambling to make sense of the sensational text-generating bot released by OpenAI last November.
You can practically hear the shrieks from corner offices around the world: “What is our ChatGPT play? How do we make money off this?”
But while companies and executives see a clear chance to cash in, the likely impact of the technology on workers and the economy on the whole is far less obvious. Despite their limitations—chief among of them their propensity for making stuff up—ChatGPT and other recently released generative AI models hold the promise of automating all sorts of tasks that were previously thought to be solely in the realm of human creativity and reasoning, from writing to creating graphics to summarizing and analyzing data. That has left economists unsure how jobs and overall productivity might be affected.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/121wtri/chatgpt_is_about_to_revolutionize_the_economy_we/jdnpowo/
i am very pessimistic about these technologies benefiting people as a whole. But the industrial revolution did lead to an overall higher standard of living, a drop in disease and death etc. But at least in the US it required a lot of regulation of industries to make sure many werent sacrificed for it. I do worry because those workers were able to unionize, whereas AI will replace workers.
Further development of ChatGPT and future competitors will ultimately create redundancy in a swath of industries.
The industrial revolution did not provide workers with fewer hours, better pay, or better working conditions. Labor unions, worker's rights organizations, and progressive activists did that, and all in the face of stiff and violent opposition from the capitalists who absolutely would have kept kids in coal mines for 12 hours a day if they could've gotten away with it (for longer than they already had).
Make no mistake, technology is nothing but a tool. The real problem is the slave drivers with their whips at our backs to keep us using those new and better tools for as long and as cheaply as they can possibly get away with, no matter how much more value we produce for them in the same time.
If we workers were truly going to benefit from the advancements in technology, our paid time off would be increased in proportion to the rise in the company's value each year. If the company stock goes up 10%, I should get 10% more PTO than I already had. Not even more money, just more time to live my life, because I was able to do more work in less time, and therefore deserve to reap the benefits of the advanced technology that let me finish that work faster.
Of course, you can see why this would never survive as a business model when competing with other businesses who don't reward workers in proportion with their productivity. There's a perverse incentive for employers to pay as little as possible and demand as much work as possible. Business interests are not human interests. Technology, in and of itself, benefits the owners, not the workers, and rising tides do not necessarily lift all boats equally.
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Wow! This is incredible. AI will pave the way for the future. Humans will be able to focus on the greater things in life, allowing AI to takeover and forge a greater tomorrow!
It might be the case that US based companies cannot compete with other non-US companies that do not have this restriction. I suspect that labor costs are significantly high enough in the total budget to make a difference. Moreover, I just think US as a whole would decline significantly if you have millions of people who are essentially working as some sort of an unnecessary prop just so that the system remains in tact. It might be better than the alternative of massive unemployment but just doesn't seem like a satisfactory solution.
I think there would still be tangential benefits but many of these benefits are quickly taken for granted. For example, let's say that the LLM can eventually do all the time-consuming tasks (e.g. ordering food, finding hotels, talking to customer service) that you had to do yourself previously. It is a clear benefit, right? But after a while, we just take this for granted and won't even see it as a clear benefit anymore. Is that us being spoiled or just the psychology of human beings?
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You can rest assured that absolutely none of those tangential benefits will translate directly into lessened work load, fewer working hours for the same pay, better working conditions, better benefits, or really anything else that would make working life less miserable for most people.
It might save you a couple of clicks when ordering a pizza, though. So we've got that going for us. Which is nice.
Other countries will impose similar rules as well. No country, not China, not North Korea, can survive massive unemployment. Profit requires consumers who can afford to consume.
As a point to support you: We already live in a world where everyone could be fed if we wanted to do it. The US has more empty houses than homeless, and plenty of land on top of that.
I'm not saying we're doomed, but we should directly address the issue if we don't want a decade of unprecedented turmoil.
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Do you think people in the year 1905 said “The labor movement is starting in a few years…”
One thing happens then another, few years later, everyone looks back And go “that’s was a neat little labor movement”
Makes it seem like it was planned, that it takes a leader
It’s not, it’s just people reading their breaking points
And the labor movement in America sucked, miners and farmers in America were too scared dying so we never got universal paid time off, universal healthcare and all that good stuff
if ai is so clever, it will prioritize longevity and sustainability and that will be good for all of us
It’s biased as fuck and fake as shit it could be real independent AI
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HorrorCharacter5127 OP t1_jdnpowo wrote
Submission statement
Whether it’s based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, an artificial-intelligence gold rush has started over the last several months to mine the anticipated business opportunities from generative AI models like ChatGPT. App developers, venture-backed startups, and some of the world’s largest corporations are all scrambling to make sense of the sensational text-generating bot released by OpenAI last November.
You can practically hear the shrieks from corner offices around the world: “What is our ChatGPT play? How do we make money off this?”
But while companies and executives see a clear chance to cash in, the likely impact of the technology on workers and the economy on the whole is far less obvious. Despite their limitations—chief among of them their propensity for making stuff up—ChatGPT and other recently released generative AI models hold the promise of automating all sorts of tasks that were previously thought to be solely in the realm of human creativity and reasoning, from writing to creating graphics to summarizing and analyzing data. That has left economists unsure how jobs and overall productivity might be affected.