Currently, in the US the top 10% of earners are responsible for approximately half of all consumer spending. If AI causes this trend to continue and accelerate, I expect that we'd see similar dollar amounts of consumer spending, but it would be concentrated mainly in the people whose income comes from capital investments rather than from working for wages. Basically you'd see a situation like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snsXD6FwLYc
why would the price for a movie go up if supply goes up? this video lacks basic understanding of economics and I want my minute back
hell, if actors are still making movies for the love of the game and competing with cheaper (SOMEHOW! I guess we forgot about Sora already) then the price on those will actually go down
oh no, more indie movies made out of the labor of love, the horror.
Well the situation being portrayed is that the real movie is a luxury item while the AI movie is an inferior good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good). If the increase in wealth inequality meant that fewer people were able to afford to see the movie made by humans, then the price would go up because that's the only way to recoup the budget with fewer ticket sales. We're already seeing this to a certain extent. Movie ticket sales have been declining in the US for decades (the peak was in 2002, see https://web.archive.org/web/20260228182012/https://www.the-n...), all the box office sales records are due to a mixture of ticket price increases and inflation.
Sure, let's assume that is true now (I don't know and not on me to check really), but if half of consumption disappears, where will the earners earn from to continue that cycle? What if people stop paying their mortgages? Textbook recession where everyone is affected.
"Capital investments" are not a magic money source if the economy is tanked.
I hear this argument being repeated a lot but I think it shows a lack of imagination to stay stuck on the idea that modern capitalism has to continue (at least for the super-rich). Capitalism is just a means to an end, that is to generate wealth. The wealthy's goal is abundance for themselves, and screw the rest.
The only reason they tolerate the proletariat is the need for labor to handle tasks that still require human beings. That’s what the modern capitalist machine does: it harvests labor. If they manage to eliminate the need for intellectual labor via AI and automate enough physical work using tech like Boston Dynamics and John Deeres, whoever's still around become trash. The reliance on this system of money flowing back and forth ends, because the only reason to maintain it is having people generate wealth for them. Once they can eliminate that "cost," they’ll do it without blinking.
We’re already seeing jobs being wiped out by the tens of thousands with the arrival of AI, and billionaires hoarding capital far beyond what they could ever consume, driven simply by the pleasure of having more than the next guy. We’ve also seen how some are depraved enough to treat human beings as mere resources for their own gratification. Why would them keep people around they don't need anymore? People are failable, expensive to keep and unreliable. If all can be automated, it will be. Expecting wealth distribution from them is also a fantasy. If they cared they would do it now, but the talk is always "when we reach certain goal the riches will tricke down, just wait."
The argument that "there won't be anyone left to buy products and keep capitalism running" might hold true during a transition phase, but that would just be like ripping off a Band-Aid. None of them super-rich will care about the money flow once this structure becomes obsolete and can be replaced by another system that’s more efficient and easier to control.
This take is the correct one. You don’t need to go far to see what will happen. Just visit any former American coal town, or one that used to do manufacturing. They are desolate waste dumps. The people there are completely cut off from the economy. That’s what’s going to happen, only on a much greater scale. Say goodbye to all those office parks, small and medium sized companies. The future will be most of the country looking like a desolate wasteland, with a few very ultra rich areas. The process of consolidation will continue until there are only a few places left that actually participate in the economy.
> None of them super-rich will care about the money flow
I think they do care. If someone like Mamdani becomes U.S president in 10 years - when significant segments of the population are unemployed and/or radicalized, the U.S can actually become real socialist - like REAL socialist. That means business owners lose parts or all of their business. What if Musk and Zuckerberg won't like it and fight? They're not really gonna have an army of robots, nothing large enough to take over a country. The state controls the monopoly over violence. The state controls the ability to print dollars to build a bigger army. Legislation will make it impossible for a private citizen to accumulate a private army. Guardrails will be put in place. Governments are not that stupid.
I think the super rich have an incentive to see the current system keep ticking and not turn into a shit show, they will have no way to control what happens if it turns into a shit show.
I don't know, the US already looks like an oligarchy to me, with billionaires pulling some strings. I'm slightly surprised Mamdani won in NY, but not shocked since urban centers usually lean more left. A president though? I don't see it.
People can vote if they want, but the far right (which is heavily influenced by the super-rich) is already working to erode the legitimacy of the voting system. And people will have a hard time revolting against the state because the state is far more capable now than it was in the past.
Trump implies every now and then that he intends to stay in power. Even if he doesn't follow up on these threats I don't think we can expect democracy to keep order, it seems unlikely to me. When capitalism fails, democracy is the first casualty.
Right? Unless we've figured out Star Trek Welfare, who is buying anything when 50% of the population is unemployed and wages have crashed for the other 50% because of biblical levels of unemployment.
Our society lost the ability to think that far ahead, we will sacrifice ourselves and our children at the altar of quarterly returns and not even blink.
The median American has a 401k, yes. The median amount of stock owned is, I believe, $40,000 -- so, at the recommended annual withdrawal rate, that puts you at $1,600/year of spending money.
Let's assume that the stock market 10xes in the next decade, then the median American stock owner can get out $16,000/year.
> Only about 37% of adults hold stocks, bonds, or funds outside of a retirement account.
That's surprisingly high. I know several people with millions in their retirement accounts and nothing outside. It is also not uncommon for people to prefer real estate investment outside of retirement accounts. Both of these groups are wealthy but both would be excluded from this statistic.
> Between 55% and 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and are one large expense or missed paycheck away from homelessness.
This "statistic" is based on definitions so misleading or unrigorous as to be meaningless. Nor is it derived from any of the data sources that are the gold standard for this type of economic research.
US Federal Reserve and BLS studies are broadly recognized authoritative sources for these types of economic statistics. Per these sources, the percentage of American households that have income that is entirely consumed by necessary expenses is 10-15%.
In the US, the median household has a ~$15,000/year surplus after all ordinary (not necessary) expenses per US statistical authorities. This surplus has been growing over time, so it isn't like it is at risk of disappearing either. This data alone obviously contradicts your assertion that most Americans are "one large expense or missed paycheck away from homelessness".
It's a pretty well-known stat that I think originally came from one of Schwab's detailed Modern Wealth Index reports -- which are survey-based so there is likely some inaccuracy; they report 3% margin of error -- but other similar studies generally put the number somewhere between 53% and 63%.
From their methodology:
> The Modern Wealth Index, developed in partnership with Koski Research and the Schwab Center for Financial Research [...] was conducted by Koski Research from January 12 to January 19, 2018, among 1,000 Americans aged 21 to 75. Quotas were set so that the sample is as demographically representative as possible. The margin of error for the total survey sample is three percentage points.
Anecdotally, this percentage makes sense to me based on roughly half of the people in my circles/family/life living paycheck to paycheck, but there's obviously some exposure bias at work there too. It's possible you have some exposure bias as well if that number seems too high for you.
Without an explicit definition of what "paycheck to paycheck" actually means, the survey data can't be taken as accurate. I have no problem believing that for a large portion of the population (perhaps over half) a missed paycheck would be a big problem, but I absolutely do not believe that 60% are a missed paycheck away from homelessness, which is what you originally claimed.
According to some recent data[0], 22% of households earning above $250k report themselves as living paycheck to paycheck. That alone tells me that the term can have very different meanings for different people. Perhaps those high earners mean that after all the taxes, retirement and ESPP deductions are taken out of their paycheck, what's left over is just enough to pay for their lifestyle. That's not what I would call paycheck-to-paycheck. And whatever the definition, I can assure you that 22% of the households in that income bracket are not a paycheck away from homelessness.
The whole economy is allowed to exists to “feed” the rich. Money doesn’t matter in this scenario.
So as an owner of 1 million robots, in a world where there are 1000 rich people to serve, I can have 1000 robots per person to serve them and can do everything for them.
Why do I care about the rest of the population? Why I need them to consume my resources? I already have all the power in the world. I have food, health, security, scientist etc. I don’t need the rest of the humans for anything.
Why currently “the rich” need the rest of humans is: you need baristas, servers, builders to help save time and make life enjoyable for most humans. then you need office workers to do the research, manage wealth of a richer category. So all this chain is needed such as top 1000 people have: housing, food, health, security, etc. that’s all they care. They don’t need the money. That’s the real power.
what happens to labor markets in places like India if robots are able to accomplish that would have ordinarily required 5 manual labors at a fraction of the cost say (1/100th)?
This is already a thing? Just replace “robots” with “machines”.
And yet I see videos all the time of Indians running contraptions straight out of the steam age in their shacks to make plastic straws or sandals. Or just doing it by hand. Better machines to do these tasks already exist, but are obviously too expensive for them to afford. Why would these hypothetical robots be any more affordable or disruptive to Indian workers in particular?
If anything I think American blue collars would be the ones to worry about.
Yes, can confirm. Labor is extremely cheap in India, which makes any automation too expensive. The offering would have to be drastically cheaper. Small to medium businesses don't usually buy machines/software unless absolutely necessary, because they can simply throw more people at it for a fraction of the cost.
Don't discount that tech billionaires pursuing this are themselves nihilistic. They would enjoy the fruits of our labor and will not care what comes after they die.
basically, that is the question of wealth distribution. All the wealth created by these AI companies should be distributed to people so that they will have money to buy products from these companies. This can range from more taxes, UBI, or like Marx said: seize the means of productions (basically nationalize all these AI companies and share the profits to everyone)
We have been automating away jobs pretty frantically since the Industrial Revolution started ~250 years ago.
It has always resulted in no long term effect on unemployment and higher worker wages.
If you don't understand why that counterintuitive thing has consistently happened for centuries, you probably shouldn't speculate on the current automation wave.
If you can't see that AI is not merely "automation" but rather fundamentally aims to usurp human labor, you probably shouldn't be saying who should or shouldn't be speculating.
I keep thinking there should always be a little bit of a solar eclipse when there's a new moon. I think my model might need a z axis. Or maybe something in my mental model just still isn't right.
In these missed eclipse the moon is usually a little too high or a little too down. The moon revolves on a plane that is tilted respect the Earth's plane of revolution. These two planes of revolution intersect at the the two points called nodes.
The model also places the moon way further from the Earth than it really is or else you wouldn't be able to see it as separate from the Earth, so that messes with creating a mental model for how the whole thing works as well.
The only part I don't really agree with, is the avoidance of app separation and signals. It's one of the cleanest ways to decouple your modules and keep some level of sanity in a medium-sized codebase. It comes down to deciding what parts really need to depend on others and be very explicit about that.
I generally end up with a few core apps with the main data objects that a lot of other "parallel" ones depend on, a bit "star shaped". And then a few "aggregator" apps that cover functionality that needs to work across multiple of these domains. I see it all as an extension of how you think about your data model.
I always wonder about signals. I found them incredibly attractive from a code cleanliness standpoint, but every team I’ve joined avoided them either because they got burnt by them or because of superstition from blog posts by people who got burnt by them. It may be a cognitive load thing, that in smaller codebases it’s easy enough to remember “these three things fire a signal when saved”, but bites you in the ass when trying to make a quick patch for a bug in production late in the day because a customer called up screaming.
Computer use itself is evolving as CLIs and APIs are important again to enable AI use. We'll certainly converge at a happy medium, CLIs, APIs and text for AI, and maybe some form of dynamic interface that the AI builds/adapts on the spot for the exact task you want to execute, on the environment you're at. And of course, good ol' purpose built tools/UIs as we do today, when it makes sense.
Would you be able to share a bit about your workflow? Have been meaning to try AI gen for game models, and would love to know how people are tackling this.
The issue is, even with all the browser protections, you still create an account anywhere or buy something an input your name/email address/shipping address, your "hashed data" immediately gets sent to meta/google as a conversion with "this guy bought a cat toy", and you start getting ads for cat related stuff everywhere.
They don't even need to "track" you properly for this stuff to work and it seems there's no way to escape it.
I don't experience that though I have friends who use smartphones who describe it. So I think a lot of it is via javascript. I doubt every retailer, or even a significant fraction, has their backend sending that type of data to $megacorp. But maybe I'm just lucky or shop weird places or it's because I use a new email address @superkuh.com for every account sign up. Or maybe I'm just not seeing the targeted ads for my $superkuhprofile that do exist because I have almost all ads successfully blocked. Perfect is the enemy of good anyway, all mitigations help a bit. And blocking JS is a huge mitigation.
If those companies are using big SaaS companies for eCommerce and have not going "Don't Track" part of their admin panel to turn off tracking, a lot of those SaaS companies will just sell off the data.
So sure, cat toy small time retailer on Etsy won't but credit card processor or shipper might.
I think part of the issue is that these retailers are also customers of meta/google on the side of purchasing ads, and as a merchant you're highly encouraged to send as much data on your events as you can, or your conversion tracking can be "less accurate"and your campaigns are less efficient.
So it's less about "we're sending the data to $megacorp" and more about "I want the most bang for buck on my own campaigns" when the decision is made.
Using a different email certainly helps, though!
EDIT: highly encouraged by meta et. al! Whether this is a legitimate request to improve results or pure self-interest on the part of meta I don't know!
A fascinating thing for me after reading this is: how can it be that the "circuit input" is compatible with its output to the point where the performance improves? The training process never saw this particular connection just like it didn't see layer 60 output into layer 3 or whatever.
Great read, makes you wonder what else is encoded in these models that might be useful!
I think the intuition is that the first N layers decode into "thought language" while the last N encode back to desired output language. So if there are well defined points where it transitions between decoding/understanding, thinking, and rendering back to language, those 2 transition points should be in the same vector space of "LLM magic thinking language".
A good example of this is Rust. Rust is by default memory safe when compared to say, C, at the expense of you having to be deliberate in managing memory. With LLMs this equation changes significantly because that harder/more verbose code is being written by the LLM, so it won't slow you down nearly as much. Even better, the LLM can interact with the compiler if something is not exactly as it should.
On a different but related note, it's almost the same as pairing django or rails with an LLM. The framework allows you to trust that things like authentication and a passable code organization are being correctly handled.
I was under the impression from Rust developers that it was one of the languages LLMs struggled with a bit more than others? My view could be (probably is) very outdated.
Very small suggestion: Can you make the entries actual links/anchor tags so that it is possible to copy link, middle-click to open in a new tab, and so on?
(EDIT: I am not against AI at all, just trying to understand where this all leads)