busybee fluffy rambles

Much of the piece is dedicated to a refrain that follows the template of:

• Every [demographic] will have an AI [support role] that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful. The AI [role] will be by each [demographic]’s side every step of their [whatever], helping them maximize their potential with the machine version of infinite love.

Okay so let’s look at some of the blindingly-obvious problems with this line of thinking:

• They will only have access to this if they have the privilege of doing so; not everyone has Internet access, or a computer; AI costs money to run, and these things will not be run for free out of the kindness of OpenAI’s heart for very long
• Infinite patience and compassion is only a virtue insofar as you don’t need to also teach people boundaries and interpersonal relationships
• If something is infinitely helpful, that also impacts peoples' willingness to learn how to do things themselves
• The models that build these things are built on the unacknowledged labor of many other people; this knowledge doesn’t just precipitate out of the ether, and given that AI has a tendency to just make shit up, responsible use of this stuff requires a lot more oversight than people are willing to put into it
• There is no algorithm for truth

• Productivity growth throughout the economy will accelerate dramatically, driving economic growth, creation of new industries, creation of new jobs, and wage growth, and resulting in a new era of heightened material prosperity across the planet.

Oh, you mean like how we’ve already been in a period of hyperproductivity that’s led to the devaluing of labor and the increase in the wealth divide? Hey Marc, where did that $1.7 billion net worth come from, Marc?

• And this isn’t just about intelligence! Perhaps the most underestimated quality of AI is how humanizing it can be. AI art gives people who otherwise lack technical skills the freedom to create and share their artistic ideas.

Hey maybe hear me out on this one but: maybe if people have ideas that they cannot execute on, they could use some form of talent exchange in which they share their ideas with a human artist who then produces the artwork, and then this artist is rewarded with some sort of token that they can then exchange for other goods and services in return. I realize that this is a very difficult thing to design from the ground up, and it’s difficult to envision how this exchange system would work. Perhaps these tokens could be linked to physical artifacts, such as a cerficiate that would fit in one’s wallet, and then this could eventually be expanded into some sort of ledger that keeps track of the amount of “work credit” one has. And maybe in the greater picture, these credits would flow between people like some sort of a river, with currents. Currents, see?

The stakes here are high. The opportunities are profound. AI is quite possibly the most important – and best – thing our civilization has ever created, certainly on par with electricity and microchips, and probably beyond those.

Ah, yes, artificial intelligence, that thing that exists completely independently of electricity and microchips, which also can’t be used for anything else other than AI and are therefore less profoundly useful than AI.

Anyway then he goes on to make this really weird analogy of all AI-related people as being “baptists” or “bootleggers” and then tries to build up this weird conspiratorial thing about how one group is really the other in disguise and that anyone who isn’t a True Believer is just cynically trying to capitalize on anti-AI sentiment, which is certainly a thing that people can say, insofar as there is no law against saying things that are provocative and conspiratorial.

Next, he insists that people are foolish to be concerned about AI generating misinformation and amplifying hate speech, despite all of the situations where AI has generated misinformation and amplified hate speech. It must be nice to be oblivious to the constant situations where language models are easy to abuse and lack any comprehension or context, or to the fact that language models are being built from, and amplifying, already-biased text.

Then of course he downplays concerns about AI taking away jobs, despite the fact that AI is already taking away jobs (and making things worse as a result). He trots out the tired old comparison to the mechanization and automation of textile manufacturing, but he completely misses the point:

The problem with the automatic loom wasn’t that it was automatic, but that it was implemented in a way which put human life at risk and led to factory conditions that caused injury and death.

The Luddites were not opposed to technology, but to the placement of profits and productivity above all else, and the devaluing of skilled human labor. They were not an anti-technology group, they were a pro-labor group.

I’ve had about all I can stomach of this essay at this point, so let me just directly quote the few paragraphs that made me fully nope out:

But, using the principles I described above, think of what it would mean for literally all existing human labor to be replaced by machines.

It would mean a takeoff rate of economic productivity growth that would be absolutely stratospheric, far beyond any historical precedent. Prices of existing goods and services would drop across the board to virtually zero. Consumer welfare would skyrocket. Consumer spending power would skyrocket. New demand in the economy would explode. Entrepreneurs would create dizzying arrays of new industries, products, and services, and employ as many people and AI as they could as fast as possible to meet all the new demand.

Suppose AI once again replaces that labor? The cycle would repeat, driving consumer welfare, economic growth, and job and wage growth even higher. It would be a straight spiral up to a material utopia that neither Adam Smith or Karl Marx ever dared dream of.

We are already in a period of extreme economic excess and super-production. We have entire nations whose productivity is based on endlessly churning out products that cost practically nothing to make and just end up in landfills when it doesn’t sell. We’re already stuck in a race to the bottom, in a world where nobody is being paid for things they cannot afford.

If we are going to change this nature of society, AI is not going to be the way that it happens.