[JoBrad]

An optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.

At least one data point in favor of this view is the middling success of the AI rollout so far. Of course it’s eclipsed in the short run by the number of jobs cut to fund AI rollouts.

[slg]

So just to summarize, it seems like the most optimistic outcome that the collective of HN could come up with in the hour since my original comment was that medical care would improve and you might be able to pay for it if you retrain yourself for some yet unknown new career that might suddenly appear at some point in the future. That's the optimistic vision we're asking society to buy into? No wonder it's only 16%.

[ben_w]

The upper limit for biomedicine is halting aging, ending all illnesses including cancer and congenital genetic illnesses, and being able to bioprint replacement parts not only in the event of trauma but also as a free choice for e.g. a fully functional gender swap.

Given present culture wars, that last one may cause a lot of drama all by itself no matter how good it gets. But hopefully you get the picture about how transformative it can be.

Paying for it? Well, there's a reason I chose to move to Germany rather than the USA after the Brexit referendum.

[slg]

>Paying for it? Well, there's a reason I chose to move to Germany rather than the USA after the Brexit referendum.

Does Germany have a large enough share of these companies to be on the winning side of this or is the country effectively in the same position as the average American? Just think how much could a company charge Germany to extend the life of its citizens, could Germany actually afford to pay that price especially if and when it tax base shrinks?

[ben_w]

> Just think how much could a company charge Germany to extend the life of its citizens, could Germany actually afford to pay that price especially if and when it tax base shrinks?

The time-limited and jurisdiction-limited nature of patents aside, one of the great things about being a country is you can do things like pass laws saying "we have decided to force you to sell to us at the price we specify, and if you refuse we will shoot you".

How taxes work when labour shifts to AI is anybody's guess.

[slg]

>one of the great things about being a country is you can do things like pass laws saying "we have decided to force you to sell to us at the price we specify, and if you refuse we will shoot you".

But these companies aren’t based in Germany, so you’re talking about invading other nations. It’s starting to sound like this version of the optimistic outcome is World War 3.

[ben_w]

If they want to do business in German* jurisdiction, they operate in Germany*. Doesn't matter where the HQ is, as Musk learned the hard way with the also-dramatic-but-less-so case in Brazil.

If they don't want to do business in Germany*, they don't get to file a patent in Germany*, they don't get to sue Germany* for ignoring a patent that was geographically limited to not include Germany*.

* might be "EU", I have not checked.

[Perseids]

You are very conservative with the upper limits, probably because you are limiting yourself to medicine. With bioengineering the upper limits are hard to grasp. Why build a house, when you can grow one. Re-imagine all machines as custom-made biology. Why upload your conscience to silicon, when your body can be anything, your brain can experience anything, you brain can be reshaped to be anything.

How much is possible there, is only constrained in our understanding of biology. How difficult that turns out to be for a super intelligence… who knows? If we are actually on the cusp of the AI singularity, the future is going to be weird and/or wonderful and/or horrible, but definitely unimaginable different than today.

My mind is kind of shooing away from this intuitively. Too hard to believe. My whole life experience has been living in a different world. But imagine if "we" could actually create human level intelligence, say, for the price of a 100k USD/EUR/GBP. It could only do knowledge work, of course, but it would easily pay for itself and thus be mass produced. What is the market cap for cheap knowledge work? I would be surprised if it is only a billion human-equivalents, given humans find new creative ways to pay for themselves all the time. That explosion alone is mind-boggling and it does not rely on super-intelligence.

All of this should make one point clear: At no other point in history has it been more important to have our power structures be aligned with the interests of society.

[ben_w]

> You are very conservative with the upper limits, probably because you are limiting yourself to medicine. With bioengineering the upper limits are hard to grasp. Why build a house, when you can grow one. Re-imagine all machines as custom-made biology.

Sure, sure, but upthread said "biological and medical" so I was taking it that way.

> Why upload your conscience to silicon, when your body can be anything, your brain can experience anything, you brain can be reshaped to be anything.

I'd avoiding considering this one for now, simply because there's too many open questions. I don't expect it to be a physics problem, but I can't rule that out.

> All of this should make one point clear: At no other point in history has it been more important to have our power structures be aligned with the interests of society.

Yup.

Unfortunately, the human alignment problem is hard, let alone the AI alignment problem.

[nathan_compton]

It took decades if not hundreds of years for the social disruption of industrialization to clear.

I literally do not give a fuck about some hypothetical more productive activity I might be able to do in 150 years if it destroys my very real present ability to take care of my family today.

[expedition32]

Indeed. The industrial age led to great things to be sure but there were also 11 year old girls working in factories and families living in basements.

It took a long time for politicians to notice that Karl Marx had a fucking point.

"May you live in interesting times" as the Chinese say.

[rybosworld]

> An optimistic view is that the jobs displaced by AI will be like the jobs displaced by industrialization: while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.

At this point, it's condescending to keep rehashing the "this is just the next industrialization era". It's been beaten to death as an invalid comparison more on this website than maybe any other.

[JoBrad]

I’d love to read why it’s a wrong comparison.

[aDyslecticCrow]

> jobs displaced by industrialization

This argument is cute and all, but ... does a data-point of 1 from 200 years ago really give us much confidence? We replaced physical labor with a massive service sector.

Now we're automating the service sector so now people can go to... eeh... the 3rd category of jobs? Seems like physical labor is the most stable career at the moment; what machines have not already automated is pretty difficult to replace it turns out. But we outsourced most of that to low cost countries except plumbers and electricians.

But will a population of plumbers really be able to maintain a population of plumbers employed?

[irishcoffee]

> while fewer people will be needed to do the task, there will be more demand for the task over time, opening up new jobs with different skill sets than the previous job required.

“The task”

You really did not answer the question.

[layer8]

What would be “the task”, other than physical labor or doing dull RLHF work, unless you’re in the 1% of exceptional intellectual talent that AI won’t be able to replace yet?