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I find it strange that the part of the conversation where AI has the potential to save thousands of hours of human labor doesn’t show up more often in these typ

I find it strange that the part of the conversation where AI has the potential to save thousands of hours of human labor doesn’t show up more often in these types of threads. That being said, we need to definitely be thinking about lowering the cost (environmental and monetary) of training these models. I’m glad research is being done within this domain. I’d love to see a study on what the human labor cost potential vs. training environmental costs would be for certain large models.

rahkiin 7y ago
I find it interesting that you see 'save thousands of hours of human labor' as something that's surely positive. What should those people start doing instead? They also need an income to get bread on the table.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Apply it backwards - would a welfare system of having people complete large N Tower of Hanoi locks that pay people money be a good idea? On one hand technically it is better than nothing immediately for those in need and is fraud resistant in that it consumes time and any better paying job without major negative externalities would be a better use of their time. The negative is that it does nothing productive and those who are dependent on it aren't able to use their time productively on anything else. While the problem of lack of income and lack of good uses for their labor certainly should be addressed just because it provides income doesn't make it a good thing overall. It is one of those things which puts the "dismal" in the "dismal science" term for economics - regardless of any misgivings over calling it a science. It is essentially a subset of human organizational and incentive problems which the economy "is designed" (technically more emergant even if it is literally a planned economy) to solve.
  - jkp56 7y ago
    What do you mean by "productive"?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- SeanAppleby 7y ago
  Literally anything else. Whatever makes them happy, petting their dog, having a conversation with their friends/family, make some music that one person listens to, literally anything produces more value for society than performing arbitrary unnecessary labor which could be automated for near-zero marginal cost. We should divert that capital to something more productive, tax the process and kick them back a basic income to do whatever they want with. If what they really want to do is what they currently do at their job, whatever, they can keep doing it while supporting themselves on the basic income, but that'd be their uncoerced choice. Most people are unhappy at work and only go because they are required to to survive. If our society weren't so myopic and steeped in puritan ethics this would be as absurd as asking whether the thirteenth amendment was going to be surely positive.
  - pacala 7y ago
    Work gives us purpose. There is no substitute for enjoying the fruits of one's labor. Working on teams anchors us socially. On the flip side, working for someone else with little agency and decompression time is not very enjoyable. Between pointless distraction and work, most people will pick the latter, especially after a solid decompression period, in spite of the surface enjoyability balance favoring the former.
    - jsjolen 7y ago
      There's a lot of work that I want to do that I cannot be paid to do, therefore those are the things I would be doing with my time instead. Being paid is not a substitute for enjoying the fruits of one's labour.
      - pacala 7y ago
        True. The point is that at a personal level leisure is no long term substitute for work. On organizing work. Chances are that at some point you'll want to work on things beyond the scope of what you can accomplish on your own. Or want to have a larger impact on the world / other people's lives. The big question is how to organize the work of people at society level. The pay per work model has proven to be very effective and gave us the marvels of the modern world. On the shadow side, the pay per work model has become heavily geared towards exploitation, as in exploration vs. exploitation. We are at a point where worker conditions in a BigTech warehouse, or as a mechanicized Turk, are meticulously quantified exploitation. At the same time, we find it natural to expend the energy budget of a small city to enable machines do large-scale exploration.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  Bertrand Russell's In praise of idleness might help: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html People won't stop finding things to do, they'll just get to choose things further removed from survival.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  There is no limit to demand. If X becomes cheaper, humans spend the surplus resources on Y. If Y becomes cheaper, humans spend the surplus resources on Z. And on it goes. "Save thousands of hours of human labor" doesn't mean humanity is working thousands of hours less total; it means that they accomplished the same specific X with thousands fewer hours (and then almost certainly spend thousands of hours on Y). That's not just an armchair theory. Time-honored tradition of technology advancement. Agriculture fell from 70% to 25% of all U.S. jobs in a single lifetime. Staggering economic change. And humanity is better off for it.
cscurmudgeon 7y ago
A lot of these AI research projects don't have immediate economic impact.
sharperguy 7y ago
Won't lowering the cost/complexity of deep learning just allow those with more resources to increase the complexity of their models while keeping the costs the same?

rahkiin 7y ago

I find it interesting that you see 'save thousands of hours of human labor' as something that's surely positive. What should those people start doing instead? They also need an income to get bread on the table.

Nasrudith 7y ago
Apply it backwards - would a welfare system of having people complete large N Tower of Hanoi locks that pay people money be a good idea? On one hand technically it is better than nothing immediately for those in need and is fraud resistant in that it consumes time and any better paying job without major negative externalities would be a better use of their time. The negative is that it does nothing productive and those who are dependent on it aren't able to use their time productively on anything else. While the problem of lack of income and lack of good uses for their labor certainly should be addressed just because it provides income doesn't make it a good thing overall. It is one of those things which puts the "dismal" in the "dismal science" term for economics - regardless of any misgivings over calling it a science. It is essentially a subset of human organizational and incentive problems which the economy "is designed" (technically more emergant even if it is literally a planned economy) to solve.
- jkp56 7y ago
  What do you mean by "productive"?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SeanAppleby 7y ago
Literally anything else. Whatever makes them happy, petting their dog, having a conversation with their friends/family, make some music that one person listens to, literally anything produces more value for society than performing arbitrary unnecessary labor which could be automated for near-zero marginal cost. We should divert that capital to something more productive, tax the process and kick them back a basic income to do whatever they want with. If what they really want to do is what they currently do at their job, whatever, they can keep doing it while supporting themselves on the basic income, but that'd be their uncoerced choice. Most people are unhappy at work and only go because they are required to to survive. If our society weren't so myopic and steeped in puritan ethics this would be as absurd as asking whether the thirteenth amendment was going to be surely positive.
- pacala 7y ago
  Work gives us purpose. There is no substitute for enjoying the fruits of one's labor. Working on teams anchors us socially. On the flip side, working for someone else with little agency and decompression time is not very enjoyable. Between pointless distraction and work, most people will pick the latter, especially after a solid decompression period, in spite of the surface enjoyability balance favoring the former.
  - jsjolen 7y ago
    There's a lot of work that I want to do that I cannot be paid to do, therefore those are the things I would be doing with my time instead. Being paid is not a substitute for enjoying the fruits of one's labour.
    - pacala 7y ago
      True. The point is that at a personal level leisure is no long term substitute for work. On organizing work. Chances are that at some point you'll want to work on things beyond the scope of what you can accomplish on your own. Or want to have a larger impact on the world / other people's lives. The big question is how to organize the work of people at society level. The pay per work model has proven to be very effective and gave us the marvels of the modern world. On the shadow side, the pay per work model has become heavily geared towards exploitation, as in exploration vs. exploitation. We are at a point where worker conditions in a BigTech warehouse, or as a mechanicized Turk, are meticulously quantified exploitation. At the same time, we find it natural to expend the energy budget of a small city to enable machines do large-scale exploration.
mattnewton 7y ago
Bertrand Russell's In praise of idleness might help: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html People won't stop finding things to do, they'll just get to choose things further removed from survival.
paulddraper 7y ago
There is no limit to demand. If X becomes cheaper, humans spend the surplus resources on Y. If Y becomes cheaper, humans spend the surplus resources on Z. And on it goes. "Save thousands of hours of human labor" doesn't mean humanity is working thousands of hours less total; it means that they accomplished the same specific X with thousands fewer hours (and then almost certainly spend thousands of hours on Y). That's not just an armchair theory. Time-honored tradition of technology advancement. Agriculture fell from 70% to 25% of all U.S. jobs in a single lifetime. Staggering economic change. And humanity is better off for it.

cscurmudgeon 7y ago

A lot of these AI research projects don't have immediate economic impact.

sharperguy 7y ago

Won't lowering the cost/complexity of deep learning just allow those with more resources to increase the complexity of their models while keeping the costs the same?