Comment by gnfargbl
3 days ago
Could this be a problem not with AI, but with our understanding of how modern economies work?
The assumption here is that employees are already tuned so be efficient, so if you help them complete tasks more quickly then productivity improves. A slightly cynical alternate hypothesis could be that employees are generally already massively over-provisioned, because an individual leader's organisational power is proportional to the number of people working under them.
If most workers are already spending most of their time doing busy-work to pad the day, then reducing the amount of time spent on actual work won't change the overall output levels.
You describe the "fake email jobs" theory of employment. Given that there are way fewer email jobs in China does this imply that China will benefit more from AI? I think it might.
Are there fewer busy-work jobs in China? If so, why? It's an interesting assertion, but human nature tends to be universal.
It could be a side effect of China pursuing more markets, having more industry, and not financializing/profit-optimizing everything. Their economy isn't universally better but in a broad sense they seem more focused on tangible material results, less on rent-seeking.
Could argue there are more. Lots of loss making SOEs in China.
less money, less adult daycare
As China’s population gets older and more middle class is this shifting to be more like America?
I really don’t know and am curious.
This is a part of it indeed. Most people (and even a significant number of economists) assume that the economy is somehow supply-limited (and it doesn't help that most 101 econ class will introduce the markets as a way of managing scarcity), but in reality demand is the limit in 90-ish% of the case.
And when it's not, the supply generally don't increase as much as it could, became supplier expect to be demand-limited again at some point and don't want to invest in overcapacity.
Agreed. If you "create demand", it usually just means people are spending on the thing you provide, and consequently less on something else. Ultimately it goes back to a few basic needs, something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
And then there's followup needs, such as "if I need to get somewhere to have a social life, I have a need for transportation following from that". A long chain of such follow-up needs gives us agile consultants and what not, but one can usually follow it back to the source need by following the money.
Startup folks like to highlight how they "create value", they added something to the world that wasn't there before and they get to collect the cash for it.
But assuming that population growth will eventually stagnate, I find it hard to not ultimately see it all as a zero sum game. Limited people with limited time and money, that's limited demand. What companies ultimately do, is fight for each other for that. And when the winners emerge and the dust settles, supply can go down to meet the demand.
It's not a zero sum game. Think, an agronomist visits a farm, instructs to cut a certain plant for the animals to eat at a certain height instead of whenever, the plant then provides more food for the animals to eat exclusively due to that, no other input in the system, now the animals are cheaper to feed, so more profit to the farmer and cheaper food to people.
How would this be zero sum?
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Varies depending on the field and company. Sounds like you may be speaking from your own experiences?
In medicine, we're already seeing productivity gains from AI charting leading to an expectation that providers will see more patients per hour.
> In medicine, we're already seeing productivity gains from AI charting leading to an expectation that providers will see more patients per hour.
And not, of course, an expectation of more minutes of contact per patient, which would be the better outcome optimization for both provider and patient. Gotta pump those numbers until everyone but the execs are an assembly line worker in activity and pay.
I don't think that more minutes of contact is better for anybody.
As a patient, I want to spend as little time with a doctor as possible and still receive maximally useful treatment.
As a doctor, I would want to extract maximal comp from insurance which I don't think is tied time spent with the patient, rather to a number of different treatments given.
Also please note that in most western world medical personnel is currently massively overprovisioned and so reducing their overall workload would likely lead to better result per treatment given.
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It is the delusion of the Homo Economicus religion.
I think the problem is a strong tie network of inefficiency that is so vast across economic activity that it will take a long time to erode and replace.
The reason it feels like it is moving slow is because of the delusion the economy is made up a network of Homo Economicus agents who would instantaneously adopt the efficiencies of automated intelligence.
As opposed to the actual network of human beings who care about their lives because of a finite existence who don't have much to gain from economic activity changing at that speed.
That is different though than the David Graeber argument. A fun thought experiment that goes way too far and has little to do with reality.