James GleickMay 4, 2023

Once again Ted Chiang has it exactly right. The immediate danger from #AI is not that it will become sentient and do whatever it wants. The danger is that it will do what it’s being designed to do: help rich corporations destroy the working class in pursuit of ever-greater profits and thus concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey

Show threadDeanBaker13May 5, 2023
@JamesGleick Sorry, Ted Chiang has it completely wrong. It would be wonderful if AI led to a huge surge in productivity -- we need not worry about inflation for many decades -- but little reason to believe that will be the case. But,l this is the sort of stuff that excites New Yorker readers even if it has no basis in reality.
Show threadBrent, in a jarMay 5, 2023
@DeanBaker13
But isn't the whole goal of this hypothetical surge in productivity that the owners will no longer have to pay any workers?
@JamesGleick
Show threadDeanBaker13May 5, 2023
@BrentInMasto @JamesGleick sure, capitalists ALWAYS want to pay their workers as little as possible. That is a given. The question is whether AI is some huge qualitative breakthrough, which will hugely increase productivity growth. I have been hearing this claim literally for decades, and we have not seen it yet. Maybe the techno-optimists will be right this time, but they have a hell of a track record of being wrong.
Show threadDeanBaker13May 5, 2023
@BrentInMasto @JamesGleick I'll also add that our period of most rapid productivity growth was 1947-73, which was a period of rapid real wage growth and declining inequality.
Show threadBrent, in a jar
@DeanBaker13
Ah, that great post war expansion, strong unions and the GI bill growing the middle class and when CEOs still had a sense of obligation to society. Plenty of other problems then, just as now, but at least the working people were getting ahead.
P.S. - One might also add that the way that growth happened did a lot to bring us to the current climate cusp.
@JamesGleick
May 5, 2023 at 3:28amWeb