What paid work might remain for human beings to do if we approach a world where AI is able to perform all economically useful tasks more productively than human beings? In this paper, I argue that the answer is not ‘none at all.’ In fact, there are good reasons to believe that tasks will still remain for people to do, due to three limits: ‘general equilibrium limits,’ involving tasks in which labor has the comparative advantage over machines (even if it does not have the absolute advantage); ‘preference limits,’ involving tasks where human beings might have a taste or preference for an un-automated process; and ‘moral limits,’ involving tasks with a normative character, where human beings believe they require a ‘human in the loop’ to exercise their moral judgment. In closing, I consider the limits to these limits as AI gradually, but relentlessly, becomes ever-more capable.
Not going to read most of this paper, because it reads like a freshman thesis, and it fundamentally oversells or misunderstands the existing limits on AI.
In closing, I consider the limits to these limits as AI gradually, but relentlessly, becomes ever-more capable.
The AI technofacists building these systems have explicitly said they’ve hit a wall. They’re having to invest in their own power plants just to run these models. They have scores of racks of GPUs, so they’re dependent upon the silicon market. AI isn’t becoming “ever more capable,” it’s merely pushing the limits of what they have left.
And all the while, these projects are still propped up almost entirely by venture capital. They’re an answer to a problem nobody is having.
Put another way, if the leaders of the AI companies are right in their predictions, and we do build AGI in the short- to medium-term, will these limits be able to withstand such remarkable progress?
Again, the leaders are doing their damnedest to convince investors that this stuff will pay off one day. The reality is that they have yet to do anything close to that, and investors are going to get tired of pumping money into something that doesn’t return on that investment.
AI is not some panacea that will magically make ultracapitalists more wealthy, and the sooner they realize that, the sooner we can all move on—like we did with the Metaverse and blockchain.
0x0@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
This current iteration of “AI” is just autocorrect on steroids, so… no, no AGI yet.
There’ll be a lot of work fixing the effects of vibe-coding and similar practices, for sure.
cattywampas@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Not yet, but it’s an interesting thought experiment if nothing else. Someday, thanks to advances in robotics and computers, human labor will become largely obsolete. So the question is how do we structure our society when that happens?
taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
The real question isn’t how we structure our society if some extremely far-fetched scenario happens. The real question is how we structure our society right now that is already failing most of society the way it is structured right now.
Labor is not a necessity for people to survive, in fact most people would consider a place where their job wasn’t required a utopia in terms of the enjoyment they get out of the actual labor. The real question is about wealth distribution, not labor.
demonsword@lemmy.world 1 week ago
If human labor becomes obsolete, our current ruling class might attempt to just kill off all of us “undesirables”.
0x0@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I’m sorry but that’s wishful thinking (IMO).
Don’t get me wrong, there still may be a humanity when we reach a point when that’s technically possible, but it’ll be one more of the cyberpunk dystopia kind.