This is something that I stated on a number of occasions. It is time to cast aside the myth that "technology is creating more jobs then it destroy". This needs to be tossed out with the overpopulation rhetoric.
People are in denial about what is taking place. Over the last year, I made the case that Web 3.0 is crucial to the future of most people. Knowledge work is being obliterated at a pace never seen before. This is going to leave billions without a means of income, at least in the traditional sense.
Avital Balwit works at Anthropic. This is the company behind the large language model (LLM) Claude3. Hence, she has a front row seat to what is taking place.
In this article we will look into some of her conclusions.
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AI Taking The Jobs
What are people going to do? How will they find meaning?
These are common questions asked when people consider this situation. To me, the second question is a waste of time. People will pursue different paths of meaning. This is not going to be a problem. There are many ways that people engage with society. Some do it through video games. Other turn to family. There are those who focus upon their spiritual side. Some like to make music or paint.
The meaning question is less important than the economic or financial one.
How are people going to live?
People have expenses. Unfortunately, they do not have the assets to generate income. This means most are depending upon labor capital, i.e. exchanging their labor (time) for money.
According to Balwit, this is going away.
Naturally, many will disagree. This has not gone unnoticed.
The general reaction to language models among knowledge workers is one of denial.
This is my experience also. She goes on further to explain the rationalization:
They grasp at the ever diminishing number of places where such models still struggle, rather than noticing the ever-growing range of tasks where they have reached or passed human level. Many will point out that AI systems are not yet writing award-winning books, let alone patenting inventions. But most of us also don’t do these things.
Have you heard this before? It seems like a common defense. It is also invalid.
Many look at the idea of a machine trying to be better than the best in any field. While that is a likely outcome, at some point, it is not necessary for massive disruption. Instead, it simply needs to be able to perform a task better than the average human. That is a big difference.
Unfortunately, we are going to reach that point quicker than most people expect. There is a technical reason for this when it comes to LLMs.
I expect AI to get much better than it is today. Research on AI systems has shown that they predictably improve given better algorithms, more and better quality data, and more computational power. Labs are in the process of further scaling up their clusters—the groupings of computers that the algorithms run on.
In other words, the combination of more compute, cleaner data, and better software design (algorithms) is the basis. We see this happening all over the place.
Hence, it is not a matter of "if" but "when".
It is worth mentioning that, since she is a high level employee at Anthropic, she has insight into the versions not yet released. These companies, when they put out an update, usually have at least one more training set done, going through testing, along with one in the works.
Those of us on the outside look at things based upon the past whereas they can incorporate the future advancements.
The Economic Puzzle
We are looking at a total economic disruption.
Consider this from the above linked article:
Many expect AI to eventually be able to do every economically useful task. I agree. Given the current trajectory of the technology, I expect AI to first excel at any kind of online work. Essentially anything that a remote worker can do, AI will do better.
We discussed the rise of online work in the past. While that was valid, what if most of it could be replaced within the next 3 years by AI? All those jobs would go away.
Of course, that would take out a lot of in-office staff. If you think commercial real estate is struggling now, consider life when a significant percentage of the jobs are done by computers.
Naturally, there will be those who are in denial right up to the end. Nevertheless, those who follow the advancement of some of these models can see how the tentacles are spreading.
Which brings us back to the point of economics? What will the economy look like and how do we deal with this disruption?
One of the issues, as I see it, is AI is moving faster than robotics. There will be a time when technology provides the opportunity for abundance. In many ways, it already has. This will be minimal compared to the impact of robots on the economy.
If the timeline mentioned here is correct, AI is going to be like nuclear fallout over the next 3-5 years. Robotics are not going to be deployed on a mass scale within that period. The world of atoms is simply too slow compared to that of bits.
This puts us in a quandary.
How do we handle mass layoffs?
As this starts to snowball, we will get the conversation going. Keep in mind that, by the time the political hacks are talking about it, we are too late. They are reactionary means the bus already left the depot.
Web 3.0 Is The Solution
I keep coming back to this for a simple reason: it is the clearest solution to the problem.
If the online digital world is going AI, then we simply have to reorganize that. How is that done?
Web 3.0 is known to be the era of read-write-own. It appears to me the answer is right there. Web 3.0 provides a different ownership mechanism as compared to what we are presently dealing with. If AI is taking over the jobs, isn't it worthwhile to look at the ownership mechanism of the online world?
Here is where ownership enters.
Who economically benefits from the advancement of these technologies? The ones who own them is the obvious answer.
The Internet is "owned" by a handful of platforms. These household names control everything. Whether it is Facebook, Google, Spotify, Cisco, or Amazon, they are behemoths who mastered the concept of the network effect. They understand the digital platform business model and perfected its implementation.
Of course, this financially benefits a handful of shareholders. Unfortunately, even when it comes to stock ownership, this is mostly institutions holding the lion's share.
Asset ownership is the defense. In the traditional model, the majority of us do not have the proverbial pot to piss in. Much of the population was excluded from participation.
It is becoming evident they will also be excluded from the production of economic activity.
Web 3.0 is going to be crucial due to the fact that people will require new means of capital accumulation. If income capital is out the window, where will something else come from. The usual suspects will call for UBI and government intervention. The politicians will jump as this as they seek to remain relevant when, in reality, most of them should be tossed off a pier.
How come they are not talking about this now? Why will they wait so long if they are so smart and adept at coming up with solutions?
Most of us know the answer to this.
Web 3.0 provides the opportunity to get into asset ownership. Again, read-write-own. This means more than owning what one creates. It is actually participating in the value of the network that one is contributing to. At present, whatever you do on the Web 2.0 platforms benefits those owners. The average person has zero financial gain.
Those who are spending their time in Web 3.0 are ahead of the curve. While it is not a guaranteed defense considering the timeline, it does put on in a better position as compared to the masses who are completely unaware of what is taking place.
It is time to fill one's bags. That is where value is going to reside.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
