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Long ago I learned in an economics class that business is all about exploitation of underprivileged populations. From indigenous people to slaves to poor citizens to “third-world” countries.
Corporations are running out of people to exploit globally, so the idea of infinite artificial labor is the holy grail of cost optimization.
and what will likely happen is when they finally develop it, suddenly that thing deserves to not be exploited.
Nah. I haven't seen a convincing argument that gen AI is going to coalesce from this shit show.
never said it would. I'm asserting that by the time AI gets to the point where its as useful as humans, it'll inherently be as deserving of autonomy and freedom as we are. which brings you back to being required to pay a living wage.
My point is, I don't believe the current AI tech is going to get to the point where it's as useful as humans.
We have long since reached the point where diminishing returns make significant improvements or advancement unfeasible.
yes, we're talking about different things.
Most of the shit going on right now can be explained by fatcats in the West, having run out of Economic growth to capture as the West's growth rate pretty much collapsed (quite possible due to the very actions those fatcats during the Neoliberal era, were amongst other things Social Mobility collapsed), have increasingly started pillaging the wealth and productive capacity of the rest of society, or in other words, exploiting everybody else.
It's a vicious cycle were the tightening of the screws on everybody else leads to lower productivity and higher discontent which in turn leads to further tightening of the screws on everybody else in order for the elites to keep on getting wealthier at the same rate.
AI was supposed to be a way for the fatcats to be able to extract even more wealth from the rest whist having less exposure to all those pesky natural human and societal responses to that.
For the elites to get wealthier at the same rate
Its a problem, don't get me wrong, but the real fuck up was they decided they decided they needed gains on the wealth increase rate also. It wasn't enough to just "make money", they HAVE to constantly make MORE making money every turn.
Making 10% profits (or whateber) ever quarter was no longer good enough, they needed to increase profits every quarter too, 10%, 11%, 13%, the line going up, must also go up at a going up rate.
They just accelerated it and fucked everyone.
Their desire for quick riches may just turn the masses against them. Maybe.
I'm not even sure this is about the desire for quick riches.
If AI and human labor cost exactly the same, I bet most CEOs would still want to fire everyone and replace them with AI. Because they prefer the sycophantic AI over humans who might sometimes talk back and disagree ... or worse, try to form a union. And add to that just some pig-headed enjoyment of cruelty.
Of course, ai doesn't require healthcare, sick days, paid vacation, raises, maternity/paternity leave.
*The usa sucks
The total cost of AI might be the same as employee salaries and benefits. That’s the whole issue.
For some tasks the AI is cheaper, and for other tasks the human is cheaper. Same as any previous automation tool. Like with robotic assembly, they are heavily used in car manufacture because they enable more production per unit cost, but using as bartender is done only as a novelty where people are willing to pay extra to cover the higher cost.
In previous automation waves, it took decades to shake out which applications made sense and which didn't. We are still early days with LLMs.
"The proles keep telling me that my brilliant ideas aren't technically feasible!"
"The people are revolting" takes on a new meaning every time somebody's net worth gains a comma.
Feels like now, "The people are revolting" will only ever be the title of a tabloid opinion piece on the comments of two Redditors and maybe a tweet
that'll be fun once the AI finds out how expensive the CEO is
It won't. AI doesn't fire anyone. AI doesn't replace anyone. AI shows the potential of doing the same job as a human, so another human fires that person and replaces them with an AI.
The CEO isn't going to fire himself. His "replacement" with AI is going to be him using it to make decisions, and feeling so smart about "using all the tools available", but he'll still be there to collect a paycheck.
Idolatry at its finest, really.
The idolmaker demands the worshipper to worship his idol, of which, the former probably doesn' believe in himself but it sure does stoker his ego to talk to it.
That’s an interesting thought. Do you think they will downsize boards of directors and slowly whittle away the executives? Either they won’t stand for it to ensure that they and their friends all stay rich, or they can use it to exclude the people they disliked all along and it can be a slow voting out like reality TV. The general egoistic nature of most billionaires makes me lean toward the latter
It's amazing to me how fast the executive class jumped on the notion of replacing their workers, although it was obviously too early to know. The idea makes them salivate so much that they showed their hand immediately like children before candy.
I think the class divide will take a long time to recover. Basically every boss in the world declared to the public, including their own employees, how eager they are to just fire the lot of them.
The class with the least self-preservation and the most need for attention working as expected.
What do you mean I can't do a wage theft????
firing people isnt wage theft 🙄 Yes unjustified firings and wage theft are both evil, but that doesn't make them the same thing. Same as telling kids santa isn't real ain't wage theft.
Ai costs more than people because you cant wage theft ai
Building data centers is expensive. But they are an essential part of the AI surveillance state infrastructure that the Trump-Epstein class wants for complete control.
So this is just a short term expense. It will become much cheaper, like any new tech.
This is more like what we imagine it's going. In reality, they couldn't care less and will shift gears to keep the line going up and cutting costs. If full AI adoption won't work, then they'll shift resource direction to what they are already experienced in: outsourcing to SE Asia (with AI sprinkled on top).
Someone must be looking in on my ceo and cto.
