Comment by md_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by md_ | Hacker News Reader

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I agree that "AGI" and "labor transformation" are two different issues.

I do want to pick on what I think is a bit of hype around the potential to eliminate whole classes of work, though.

First, in the weeds: I keep seeing this reference to script writing, which I assume is a reference to the WGA strike. But as https://www.gq.com/story/writers-strike-2023-wga-explained explains, the big technological transformation driving this dispute isn't the risk of generative AI; it's the changes in royalty payments created by streaming platforms.

I'm pretty skeptical of claims that generative models can replace script writers. Like, maybe for some really, really crappy shows? But I think "My ChatGPT could write that" is the 21st century version of looking at a Rauschenberg and saying, "My 5 year old could paint that." Good luck, I guess?

More generally: Labor productivity growth has remained fairly constant over the last 40 years or so. So anyone who thinks generative AI is going to totally upend productivity and the job market is implicitly suggesting it's a bigger technological change than the Internet--which didn't really do that!

So...dunno. That's a bold claim!

We live in the era of bold claims.

In 1820 if you said that 99% of farm labor will be replaced by machines in 100 years, you'd have been given the response of 'bullshit'. And yet a century later we had done just that.

With that redistribution of labor came the largest wars the world had ever seen. We don't even have to eliminate 'whole classes of work' to destabilize the working world and economy. Just eliminating 25% of work and not coming up with something new for the now jobless to do will create a wave of populism that can cause problems.

I agree that people underestimate the impact of the first two industrial revolutions while overestimating the impact of the third, if that was your point.

I'm not yet prepared to agree that the scale of bellicosity in the 20th century was the result of labor displacement (as opposed to, say, the results of the mechanization of violence). I mean, like, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe.

You would bring up the mechanization of violence, but at the same time discount the 'intelligent-ization' of violence? AI will displace labor, and at the same time is turning war into push a button and let the bomb figure out the rest.

Oh, sure, all of that. My point is that it's a tough argument to say that there were more wars because of labor displacement.

There was probably more political upheaval--that I agree with. But there were a ton of European wars prior to the industrial revolution and the (consequent?) rise of democratic movements.

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