Comment by wonkyfruit
1 day ago
The fact that this could happen is widely known and has been talked about for years now. What to do about it is the real issue. I've seen David Shapiro and many others tangentially talk about UBI and similar "post AI economics". The dream was that the machines could do the housework whilst we all painted, wrote music and built beautiful wood furniture in our sheds. It still could be that way, but we need to sort out responsible sharing of resources first, and humanity has never been able to do that. We actively try to earn as much as we can, for the very reason of getting access to the resources that others don't. So often now, it only results in standing still or sliding backwards. I feel like 20 or 30 years ago, the average person seemed to have more disposable income.
> I feel like 20 or 30 years ago, the average person seemed to have more disposable income.
Big if true but is it true?
> What to do about it is the real issue.
Yes, it is and the article isn't going there enough what options we have as societies. I think this is because the article is still trying to convince you that the white collar job losses are indeed coming rather than taking this as a given.
If we take it as a given but don't consider a Terminator/SkyNet scenario within the next 10 years, then we do have some options:
- Taxing token usage
- Requiring local data centers - Requiring AI oversight
- Nationalizing the AI companies
- We probably need Chinese-style national firewalls to prevent companies moving their AI compute abroad
- Charging companies per displaced worker
- Requiring human worker to token consumption ratios in companies
A lot of these could help soften the blow of the rapid changes so labor markets can adapt.
Let's say you do all that. What about literally every other country on earth that is not the home of Openai/Anthropic/Google?
Are tokens fungible? (not referring to NFT's!)
Tokens are not fungible for hosted models but there are resellers like Github Copilot and OpenRouter. These allow you to purchase capacity and choose which hosted models to burn your tokens on. Obviously there is some margin being taken in order to provide this flexibility, but there's probably some offset with volume contracts.
It's not widely known and mostly spun in MSM as fringe theory (thanks to marketing by big AI cos). this is a well written essay, and if it helps the discourse all the better.