Here we go! All aboard the mass unemployment train! Choo Choo!
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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I wonder if we can actually adopt technology so fast as to completely ruin our economy before we can notice that’s what’s happening.
Businesses are going to adopt AI and robotics to increase productivity and drive down costs. But it quickly becomes a tragedy of the commons if every business only considers their own selfish interests. Eventually there will not be enough employed consumers to be able to buy those products your pumping out at record rates.
especially for regions with developing middle class and a lot of people like india and china, rapid mass automation could crash the economy when local buying power disappears
Eventually there will not be enough human workers creating training data for LLMS to hallucinate with, and they will just be training each other with more and more incorrect bullshit.
I do find GitHub CoPilot helpful to save typing, but last night it took me longer to track down the mistakes it made than if I had just did a combination of copy/paste + regex.
Eventually there will not be enough employed consumers to be able to buy those products your pumping out at record rates.
That's when they'll all combine and become Buy n Large and create a corporate "basic income" just so that people can keep buying crap.
The corporations will bever agree to any sort of UBI until there is blood in the streets and they are forced to.
Unless we transition to UBI. As unemployment rises, there will be presssure to do so.
Don't worry people won't stay unemployed for long. WW3 breaks out and suddenly everyone unemployed is drafted.
I mean yeah. You have all those people you don't need or care about and they are rightfully angry. But you don't want them in your country... They might rebel and do something about their situation. So best to weaponize it and send out that anger to be someone else's problem.
We just need AI consumers to go full centipede.
On the one hand, I strongly doubt their AI will do a good job at this and my first thought was that their sales will go to shit. I mean we all know how shitty all communication with Google is for mostly everyone because of what they already automated (developer relations for Android app developers spring to mind).
On the other hand, I'm not convinced the sales people were doing a good job either so maybe we won't notice a difference.
I think they don't care if AI does a good job. I think that they will provide the AI capabilities to their lowest clients and keep the human sales team for the clients who are willing to spend more money. When you can no longer increase your sales base you start focusing on the ones you can milk for more.
And boom nailed it in one. It's just gonna be more and more of the "lessers" having no one to interact with but bots and walls that stop us from being able to do nearly anything useful.
When do we realize the wealthy have their own economy they don't really want the poor in other than to vacuum up some spare change occasionally? Let's start are own economy! With BlackJack and Hookers... Ok maybe forget the blackjack but keep the hookers.
I like where this is going
It will be fine for the simple stuff.
Anything complicated and the non -google side of the conversation will get frustrated and walk away.
I think Google sees that as a win win
Mass layoffs shoud incur major tax penalties for these large corperations
What is this, Europe? No caring about the little guy here.
Don't think EU is keeping up on that front. Infinite growth..to the moon!
The line on the graph must go up, even if it's for one second! Glory to the CEO! Praise the shareholders! My life for the corporation! Now give me that minute-by-minute profit projection!
It’s a disease.
I remember when googles catch phrase was "don't be evil."
I miss non evil google.
Oh they were always evil. They just pretended not to be.
Once upon a time, when they were the scrappy upstart disrupting shitty search engines like Yahoo and Altavista, there was a moment when they were awesome.
The tipping point was going public, in my opinion.
Going public usually makes everything worse.
I miss when they at least tried to pretend.
Given that AI is trained on content from the web, what happens when all the content is written by AI?
It’s like a digital Human Centipede.
I asked Bing your question, here's the answer:
"That's a very intriguing question. There is no definitive answer, but I can share some possible scenarios and implications.
One scenario is that AI content generation will become so advanced and ubiquitous that it will replace human writers entirely. In this case, the web will be filled with AI-generated content that is indistinguishable from human-written content. This could have some benefits, such as increased efficiency, scalability, and diversity of content. However, it could also have some drawbacks, such as loss of authenticity, creativity, and accountability. Moreover, it could raise ethical and legal issues, such as plagiarism, misinformation, and manipulation.
Another scenario is that AI content generation will coexist and collaborate with human writers, rather than replace them. In this case, the web will be a hybrid of AI-generated and human-written content, with varying degrees of quality and reliability. This could have some benefits, such as enhanced productivity, creativity, and accuracy of content. However, it could also have some drawbacks, such as confusion, bias, and conflict. Furthermore, it could require new skills and standards, such as critical thinking, verification, and attribution.
A third scenario is that AI content generation will be regulated and restricted, rather than allowed and encouraged. In this case, the web will be mostly human-written content, with limited and controlled use of AI-generated content. This could have some benefits, such as preservation of human values, culture, and identity. However, it could also have some drawbacks, such as stagnation, inequality, and censorship. Additionally, it could pose some challenges and risks, such as enforcement, compliance, and security.
As you can see, AI content generation is a complex and dynamic phenomenon that could have various outcomes and impacts on the web and society. It is not clear what will happen, but it is important to be aware and prepared for the possibilities."
Funny how it left out model collapse
Stonks
Maybe with less actual people involved, governments will be less opposed to scaling back the egregious level of surveillance such corporations are allowed.
Who am I kidding, though?
I could see that happening, its probably what holds a lot of States and Countys back.
A lot of States are happy not to have a large corporations tax, because they get their share through another means, say income, or land tax. Which they charge employed persons, if a company doesn't employ many people, then they will be less value to a State like that.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In December, we heard that job cuts might be coming for Google's ad sales division, and it's here.
Business Insider reports Google is laying off "hundreds of employees" from the ad sales team.
The cuts are mostly in the "Large Customer Sales" (LCS) team, which serves the company's biggest advertising clients.
Google's generative AI ad system is part of a product called "Performance Max" which works by autonomously remixing and tweaking your ads using the click-through rate as an instant feedback system.
Google used to have humans do sales guidance for its products, create art assets, and decide on text and layouts, but now AI can do it a thousand times a second.
The memo doesn't reference AI as a reason for the layoffs, but given the previous report, it seems that Googlers are now working to put some of their co-workers out of a job.
The original article contains 338 words, the summary contains 146 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Will the AI powered sales ring the bells too?
I hope they fire all the Indian call centers that scam people.... wait hold on, my mom is telling me that Samsung TVS are currently 90% off on Temu! Wait, she's much shorter than that! And she doesn't speak English! WTF! It's another AI! ....nah let's keep the Indian call centers. We love you guys! But we gotta go k? Bye!
Remember that Biden-appointed FTC chair is going after tech unlike her predecessors AND with vigor. While there are temporary benefits in their stock value, they are mainly working to discipline labor and crush union conversation with these layoffs. With that same action though, they are also looking to raise unemployment going into the US election year to hurt Biden and send a signal.
Society dead.
I'm not going to shed a single tear.
People who work in internet ad sales may not inspire much sympathy, but automation will have much broader impacts than just this one job sector.
Honestly conflicted over which I despise more. Advertisers/Marketers...or AI Advertisers/Marketers...damn.