What do you think happens when AI compresses the economy and leaves us almost exclusively with manual labor jobs, most of which are already low-paying? And you may not be aware of this having never done such a job, but physical labor is often brutally taxing on the body, putting people at risk of a wide array of potential health complications.
I've seen this abjectly atrocious argument about manual labor made by a number of people on HN and it's astounding how poorly thought through it is.
Basically, people seem to assume that "AI" has some kind of magical power to do whatever bad thing they can imagine, and then they extrapolate from there. I don't see it.
> physical labor
If you think the jobs I described are purely "physical labor", or that the physical labor involved is so highly taxing that people can only do those jobs for a short time before they wear out, you definitely need to think again.
(You also definitely need to think again if you think those jobs are low paying. Plenty of people make quite a healthy living doing them.)
Compressing the economy means putting some significant percentage of white collar workers (let’s say 30%) out of a job, because their job can now be done by GPT-6 for 5 cents per day. Some of these people will become destitute, while others who have the education or talent will move to other as-yet unimpacted sectors. So the labour supply for these jobs goes up, and salaries are suppressed.
I wonder sometimes if these accounts on HN making insane arguments that generative AI somehow won't be economically calamitous are bots. In fact, if I was at OpenAI and the goal was to avert scrutiny long enough to get to AGI, unleashing a torrent of AI shill bots might be near the top of the agenda.
> Will they still make a healthy living when there's an influx of laborers fleeing more automated parts of the economy?
Will those laborers have the skills required for those jobs?
> GS just put out a report
LOL--Goldman Sachs as an authoritative source on the impact of AI.
> I wonder sometimes if these accounts on HN making insane arguments that generative AI somehow won't be economically calamitous are bots.
You must be joking: you actually have trouble telling posts by bots from posts by humans? Even with a large number of samples? (Never mind that you can also look at the account's profile page, which will give you very useful information.)
“You also definitely need to think again if you think those jobs are low paying. Plenty of people make quite a healthy living doing them.”
True today. What happens when the other industries collapse and there’s a flood of labor into these industries? Sure - initially the experienced and skilled labor will continue to command a higher price - but over time supply of talent will drive that down too.
I've seen this abjectly atrocious argument about manual labor made by a number of people on HN and it's astounding how poorly thought through it is.