Comment by jameslk
3 hours ago
I get it’s a joke, and often a frequent cynical joke made here, but I actually think it’s a good thought experiment. Almost like a new Turing test
The thought experiment, to be clear, is building an artificially intelligent CEO or company founder with the intent of generating profit. If this AI can turn a profit, it has passed this new test
Of course, by the time this new AI starts turning a profit, it will be maximized to the extent that it loses its competitive advantage, and then we’re back to square 1. That is, when everyone uses the same AI, nobody has a competitive advantage over anyone else
My current theory is that because of this, it is not possible to build an AI that generates a profit perpetually. Only temporarily. Then human intervention would be required to adjust things to make the AI competitive again. But at that point, it’s no longer an AI driving the profit, it’s its human tinkerer
Doesn't the incentive here, lead to privatizing the AI and possibly releasing a different product to the public - or at least with a delay? (not too unlike how the frontier labs work today).
Yes I would think that would be the endgame goal. But in practice, I’m very skeptical a purely AI-driven executor can stay competitive when the market and government supporting it and surrounding it is driven by humans
You’re presuming here that CEOs cause companies to make profit instead of serving as a scapegoat for their often unavoidable market dynamics (at best).
In a 1-person company, who or what generates a profit?
One person isn't a company. Legally maybe, but there's no point in a company if you can profitably do all the labor yourself.
2 replies →
You're describing the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall[1], which, I'm sorry, is a Marxist idea so it's automatically wrong.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...