[epicureanideal]

In case someone at Anthropic reads this.. if you find some way to make software developer salaries go up as a result of using your tools, or find some way to fast forward society to that stage of the effect of AI, you’ll have a lot of fans, and even faster adoption.

It would be great if there was some internal “make this benefit Main Street and knowledge workers” department, helping find ways for workers or creators to capture the value of some of the increased productivity.

[heavyset_go]

> It would be great if there was some internal “make this benefit Main Street and knowledge workers” department, helping find ways for workers or creators to capture the value of some of the increased productivity.

If they wanted to do this, they could put their models in a public trust for the public's access and benefit in research, education, etc. Then it could be licensed, pay a dividend like a sovereign wealth fund, etc.

Considering that they copy and train on the sum total of all human creativity, a public trust is something that would be in line with both the spirit, and first and fourth considerations, of fair use doctrine:

    1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
    2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
    3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
    4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

That way everyone is rewarded with the benefits of running a model that was trained on everyone's creations.

[HoldOnAMinute]

I don't need software developer salaries to go up. That would be kind of selfish and narrow minded.

What I need instead is something that takes the burden off my entire society and gives them a breather. Universal health care to start. They could also use a higher minimum wage, and lower housing costs.

[redrove]

>Universal health care to start

That already exists in any other country but the USA. Aim higher.

[Cytobit]

Multiversal healthcare?

[AlienRobot]

You have my vote.

[brigandish]

Is it more selfish and narrow minded to wish for a "utopia" that is economically unsound and happens to be your personal preference, or to wish for productive workers' salaries to increase - something with an actual track record of improving any society it occurs in?

All perl programmers should be wishing for ponies, that's definitely less narrow minded.

[doesnt_know]

What part of universal health care, higher minimum wage and lower housing costs sounds like "utopia" to you?

That's just the system we have, but slightly better and completely achievable.

[brigandish]

It doesn't sound like utopia to me, hence the quotation marks. Eminently achievable, but not actually good. Only those engaged in utopian thinking - with a heavy slice of ignorance of basic economics and history - would think it is utopia or leads to it.

[mjamesaustin]

Universal healthcare is very sound economically. Costs are lower and outcomes better than under private insurance, and overhead is dramatically reduced.

[brigandish]

This is not true, the Kings Fund publishes a report that the Guardian fauns over whenever it comes out because it shows how "cost effective" the NHS is, yet if you read it you find that actual health outcomes are generally worse than other, insurance based systems. Give me wealth and health over a postcode lottery produced by utopianists.

[UncleMeat]

The economically sound thing is to accrue more power to those with wealth. The owners will have access to a machine that turns money into money without a cent flowing outside of the owner class. That'll improve society /s.

[ehnto]

I am afraid that will be up to individuals, the business you work for likely hasn't got much incentive to let you capture the new value.

You'll either need to freelance, or start a company (or maybe a co-op) to capture the new value created by your ability to leverage AI.

It won't be much different to when a company buys more CNC machines and the employees don't get any more money despite producing way more parts.

[qsera]

>if you find some way to make software developer salaries go up

This is quite easy. Just optimize the models to do reviews and bug finding. This would make developers (who normally hate reviews) quite happy and let them do more coding, thus delivering more value and possibly earning more...

[mdavid626]

Sigh… that’s not how it works.

[qsera]

How what works?

[alex43578]

Is that feasible? The coding tools already unlock a ton of possibilities for people to create value, but people have to capitalize on it.

I have no clue what this would look like other than maybe an investment fund for people creating apps/businesses based on Claude tools.

[ip26]

It’s often lamented that some employees have a difficult case to argue for their impact on the bottom line, and as a result probably get paid a lower fraction of their value to the business than other roles where the link is easy to measure.

I can at least “imagine” a model that tries to crack this nut.

[alex43578]

But your value to a company doesn’t just come from your impact, but how tough you are to replace, how much others value your skills, etc.

Nike’s logo designer was paid $35. One model says she should’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars, because of what her work product went on to become. Another model of the value says it was worth $35 because that’s what she agreed to.

If, as an employee, you think you’re massively undervalued for the impact you generate, go out to the market and either get another job or start your own business making widgets - either you’ll get that pay bump you expect, or you’ll see you actually were relying on a lot of other supporting mechanisms to generate that value.

[ip26]

If this was all unequivocally true and the end of the story, then no one would make commission, and yet some do.

[weird-eye-issue]

Lol they don't have control over the free market. But it absolutely does make the top 10% of developers much more valuable.