Risks on both sides of AI costs
nishio I recently talked about how I think there are two sides of the risk these days: the risk of a future where the cost of AI goes so low that the market value of my intellectual production is lost, and the risk of a future where the cost of AI goes so high that I fall on the "AI-unavailable" side of the disparity disconnect. I mentioned recently that I think there are two sides of the risk of a future where the cost of AI goes up so much that I fall on the "AI useless side" of the disparity gap nishio So, after a while, I had a dimly different feeling about the "engineers should earn and FIRE these years" argument, and it became a little more clear. The plan to make money in the short term and live the rest of your life with that money is a single bet on the value of gold. In the former risk, the value of the money increases relative to the value of the money because one's productive capacity is reduced.
nishio But on the other side, in a world of risk, the value of gold will decrease and the relative value of "productive capacity of what is still considered valuable in that world" will increase, and that The ability to make it and turn it into AI use credits will be the main factor in wealth, and as the value of gold begins to disappear, so does the "gold producing" value of gold nishio After writing all this, I remembered seeing a related tweet recently, about a friend of mine preparing for the "risk of the end of capitalism". This concept makes the story much simpler. The bottom line is that the idea of accumulating financial assets and living off their investment assumes that the current capitalism will continue to be stable.
1. invention of printing (mid-15th century) Related keywords: "sharp decline in intellectual production costs," "falling value of old jobs"
Johannes Gutenberg's improvements in letterpress printing in the mid-15th century enabled the mass production of books and dramatically lowered the cost of handling knowledge and information.
Background: Until then, manuscripts were made by hand by monks and professional copyists, and books were very expensive.
Impact: As books became cheaply available through mass production, the work of those who made their living as handwritten manuscripts declined dramatically, and the authority of monasteries and churches, which until then had a monopoly on their value as "collections of knowledge," was altered. Lesson: As the "cost of knowledge replication" plummets, the scarcity value of individual skills (e.g., transcription) will plummet and new business models (e.g., publishing) will emerge, a composition that also overlaps in some ways with the value changes brought about by AI.
2. the Industrial Revolution and the Luddite Movement (18th-19th centuries)
Related keywords: "productivity gains through technology", "loss of value of traditional job skills"
During the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries, the invention of spinning and weaving machines and steam engines dramatically lowered production costs. At the same time, the value of the skills that handicraftsmen had developed over the years fell sharply, creating a problem of job loss.
Luddite Movement: A symbolic example is the Luddite Movement of the 1810s, when British weavers, believing that machines were taking away their jobs, started a machine-breaking movement.
Lesson: When new technology lowers the cost of production, in the short term, jobs and incomes on the "technology left behind" side can plummet, while new industries can flourish and the overall economy can expand in the long term - a similar picture can be seen in the world of AI. Risks and opportunities are inextricably linked.
Related keywords: "loss of value of money," "capitalist diminution of wealth"
In Germany after World War I, reparations and economic instability caused a sharp increase in currency issuance, leading to a period of intense inflation (hyperinflation) through around 1923.
BACKGROUND: Although it appeared that the more bills were printed, the more demand was met, the currency consequently collapsed and people's savings and salaries were worth almost nothing in real terms.
Lesson learned: there are people who actually experience a future in which "having money no longer makes sense." Hyperinflation is an extreme illustration of the "risk of the end of capitalism" and the "decline in the value of money" spoken of in the tweets.
Related keywords: "sense of collapse of capitalism," "concentration of wealth and massive unemployment"
In the Great Depression triggered by the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929, many people lost their assets and jobs due to bank runs, corporate bankruptcies, and a sharp rise in unemployment.
Background: The "speculative fever" to get rich by investing in stocks has resulted in a sudden collapse of bubbling asset values and a turmoil so great that the very survival of capitalism itself is in jeopardy.
Lesson learned: the anxiety that "capitalism may end" is not necessarily a fantasy, and has been conscious of as a realistic crisis on several occasions historically, which coincides with the tweet "Considering the risk of capitalism ending".
5. collapse of the Soviet Union (1991)
Related keywords: "changes in social systems," "radical changes in economic models
With the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the socialist distribution system that the people had been accustomed to rapidly fell apart. The rapidly introduced transition to a market economy destabilized the currency values of the former Soviet regions, and the savings and pensions that many citizens had accumulated were effectively diminished. Lesson: It is an illustration that major regime changes can cause previously valid forms of property to lose value overnight. In the case of tweets, the possibility that "gold will lose its value" or that "other rights or credits will become more important" is not historically uncommon.
6. Meiji Restoration (19th century Japan)
Related keywords: "abolition of samurai privileges", "evaluation of competence in a new era"
With the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan's feudal system collapsed, and the samurai class lost their stipends and privileges known as chichiroku (family stipend).
Background: Due to the abolition of the sword and the disposition of chichiroku, samurai lost the foundation of their lives, which depended on the martial arts and status privileges they had specialized in, and were forced to acquire the means to support themselves in the new era (capitalistic commerce, technical learning, etc.).
Lesson learned: The risk that the skills and status you have built up will quickly become obsolete due to changes in social systems coincides with the risk of a "widening gap between the useful and the useless" in the context of tweeting AI.
summary
History is replete with examples of "sudden diminishing value" and "productivity exploding as previously daunting costs drop all at once" due to rapid technological advances and changes in economic and social systems. The "risks on both sides of AI costs," as described in the tweet, seem to be exactly the kind of "great turnaround" that history has repeatedly seen. The rapid progress of AI is key today, but we can learn a lot about its structure from past social changes.
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