Comment on MIT Economist Daron Acemoğlu Takes on Big Tech: "Our Future Will Be Very Dystopian"

• PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  But that’s not the point. It did have a significant impact. Acemoğlu’s point is about the distribution over time of that impact. Elites tend to accrue for themselves the benefits of technological change.

  In terms of AI, it makes some people more productive that others. So, right now, only some people are benefiting from the introduction of AI. Jobs with a $1 million salary are being advertised to replace striking Hollywood writers. It’s easy to say technological change creates winners and losers as I learned in my econ classes. But in the midst of such change, how long winners remain winners and losers remain losers matters a great deal to both.

  In other words, the transition to cleaner energy sources puts coal miners out of a job until the sun goes out and the wind stops blowing. And it’s foolish claim the trade for higher quality air and a decline of associated respiratory illnesses is worth a miner’s despair and depression because they’re forever unemployed, their skills worthless.

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  • MxM111@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You are making very different argument, with which I actually agree. But his point was counter argument to the statement that technology benefited us in the past. And his counter argument is bad and just wrong.

    AI is nothing like what was in the past. That should be the argument, not that in the past technology did not benefited us.

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    • PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      From the article:

      Take medieval windmills, a very transformative technology. It changed the organization of textile manufacturing, but especially agriculture. But you didn’t see much improvement in the conditions of the peasants. The windmills were controlled by landowners and churches. This narrow elite collected the gains. They decided who could use the windmills. They killed off competition

      Except technological innovation didn’t benefit “us”, it benefited elites.

      Der Spiegel’s implicit argument (in the one sentence of (“But it is true that humankind has indeed benefited a lot from new technologies”) is that technological change benefited “us” over time and, therefore, technological change is good. Acemoğlu offers a different amount of time to survey to determine the effects of innovation, which challenges the idea that technological change is always good.

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      • MxM111@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I find his statement about wind mills without any merit. I am not historian and forgive me for being lazy, but if If I ask ChatGPT4 about it, here is the answer I get:

        The invention of the windmill had a substantial impact on peasant life, particularly in medieval Europe. Before windmills, much of the labor-intensive tasks like grinding grain, pumping water, and other mechanical work were done manually or with the help of animals. The introduction of windmills automated these processes to some extent, making life easier for peasants by reducing their labor burden.

        The windmill can be considered one of the key innovations that started moving societies away from purely manual labor, allowing people to focus on other tasks and thereby improving overall quality of life. While it didn't entirely revolutionize the peasant lifestyle overnight, it was a step towards greater efficiency and productivity.

        —-

        Yes, I understand that it is not really a proof, but at least some evidence that his statement is simply hot air.

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• Pig@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I can, totally, see AI only benefitting the people who own the code and make policies for it. Despite the fact that it may be used to “benefit” most people, the ones who will benefit the most are the people who own it. Similar to targeted ads. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that gathers insane swathes of information on individuals, and that information is bought and sold to the highest bidder. You could make the argument that it’s easier to buy shoes online, but is it worth having literally everything about you sold to whoever is willing to buy it? It’s usually a ruse crafted by people with the ability to profit off of others, making the majority think they’re benefiting in some minute way.

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• conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  What Acemoglu is saying is fundamentally a Marxist argument, and I’m saying that with no value judgments attached, I’m just pointing out factually that he’s essentially saying the same thing as Marx. In summary, technology tends to disproportionately benefit the people who can afford to implement it (the owners). AI is a means of production. While it’s currently possible for anyone to download the means of production for free, no violence required, currently you’ve got several large AI companies (like OpenAI) trying to pull the ladder up behind themselves under the guise of safety and ethics concerns. They’re trying to protect themselves from the tendency of the rate of profit to fall by angling to limit the pool of competitors. Indeed, much of whether a technology benefits society at large is dictated by the barriers to entry to using that technology. If they are successful, the barriers to entry will be made much higher, and it will all but guarantee that the benefits of AI stay at the top.

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