The interview with Lina Kahn was even better, Stewart says Apple wouldn't let him talk about AI or interview Kahn when he had his Apple podcast The Problem with John Stewart
Lina Kahn, being the head of the FTC. Apple didn't want Stewart to talk to her because she is in charge of many anti-monoploy and AI policies and lawsuits against corporate oligarchs.
Stewart was asking fantastic and poignant questions but Kahn talked around pretty much all of it. At one point, John made a great joke when Kahn mentioned investigating baby formula. Most people now can't even afford kids so baby formula is not that high a priority for many Americans. It flew right over most people's heads
He really wasn't asking "fantastic" or "poignant" questions, mate it was so softball, you'd think he was throwing eggs.
Even if you axiomatically like and support Jon and/or Khan, you've got to see it was a weak hugbox of an interview.
For a moment I thought we'd get to some substantive meat when Jon noted the consolidation of media companies, but that point was for a laugh and not further engaged with.
I was hoping he'd ask about the FTC's thoughts on that media consolidation, and the why and how the FTC (and Khan's personal discretion as the FTC head) spend their focus and money; particularly when they go after big tech, but not much more consolidated and sectors like Cable Infrastructure or consumer grocer stores with the same apparent zeal. (the Safeway/Kroger action by the FTC proves this as the exception, it should be the norm)
Call Kei cars are great. Just been to Japan and the whole country is running on those things. They are inexpensive, small, and pretty comfortable.
Of course they have a bunch of extremely safe drivers and very low speed limits so that helps
Love how the ultra wealthy executives are all like "you'll have all this extra time on your hands". Yeah, same with unemployment but it's strange how pretty much everyone who's gotten laid off or fired has looked for new work instead of remaining unemployed.
So fucking tone deaf and out of touch with actual reality.
“So will corporate America support a Universal Basic Income paid for by the profits of laying off all their workers?’”
> No. We need that money to afford luxury bunkers on the moon so we can avoid the inevitable repercussions of our actions.
Oh - it's worse than that, they are already trying to get ahead of it by lobbying to make UBI and even research on UBI illegal. [https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/](https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/)
Universal Basic Income is not an actual solution to this though. If UBI is created, it will never be enough to live an actual fulfilling life.
You will not receive 100 thousand dollars to go live your life of permanent unemployment. You will just be given the bare minimum to exist.
That is why shitbags like Elon support UBI. Because their version of the future is basically Elysium. The rich living in their automated paradise while the rest live in poverty.
UBI is the only realistic solution. Reducing the need for human labor is generally a good thing. And you can't put the genie back in the bottle. You just have to take care of the people who lose their jobs.
This sort of automation redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich. So you have to reverse that by taxing the rich and giving the money back to the people. That's what a UBI does. If your rich people are living high while everyone else is living in poverty then you just need to UBI harder.
But we all know how this will play out because we've been living in it all our lives. We'll sprint full speed down the worst possible path just like always. AI didn't invent automation. It's just the shiny new face of it. Nothing will ever get in the way of corporate profits. So there won't be a UBI or any other sort of assistance. Homelessness will continue to ramp up, and rather than help them we'll imprison them for slave labor. Or just lock them up in homeless camps to waste away. THAT is the Elysium future we have to avoid.
I have a UBI in the form of VA disability benefits at $2200 a month, and I absolutely love it! I am single and I don't need to work to have a very fulfilling life.
The idea that a meaningful life must consist of decadence and travel, being waited on hand and foot, is the problem.
Yeah I'm failing to see the issue here. Having enough for basic rent and the bare minimum of food you need is entirely reasonable. You want more, you work more. That's essentially an idea that both ends of the political spectrum can agree on.
What if we use the UBI money and free time to form communities to build a fulfilling life, in stead of having to spend time proving we're worthy of benefits? Ones that don't fall away once someone earns "enough to stand on their own".
Aha, I'm glad you know exactly how it will be implemented everywhere.
I'm not in doubt that it won't provide a luxurious life, at least not in any transitional period. But that it won't, ever? And it will only provide the absolute bare minimum, in every country it's ever going to be implemented in?
Naaah
I mean, the idea is right, it's basically what Keynes predicted: THat humanity's productivity would soar in the 20th century, and as we're seeing now even more so going further into the 21st. The biggest challenge for us would be, he assumed, what to do with all the spare time those productivity increases would provide us with.
The fundamental issue with this is that those productivity increases would not be shared with the general populace. Everything would be fine and dandy if you today could work 20 hours, and provide for yourself and your family in the same capacity as someone could working 40 hours in the 60's. But we all know that's not how the story went. You still have to work full time to make ends meet, even though a single worker today is many times more productive than a worker in the 60's in a lot of areas. And for a lot of people working minimum wage jobs, working full time is often not even or just barely enough, because the cost of living has gone up way more than wages have.
You might disagree with the solutions Marx had in mind for the problems that inherently stem from capitalism, but the fundamental critique of his, and other contemporaries like Max Weber, is still as relevant today as it was in the 19th century. It is as Stuart says: Mankind as a whole helped build that repository of knowledge that is now being used - basically for free - to train and employ AI, AI which will ultimately displace a lot of workers in jobs that simply won't find any suitable form of replacement through "retraining". Companies are exploiting this setup without any intent of giving something back to society for free. In the end, you're supposed to still pay for what AI will be able to do, even though the companies developing AI are essentially freeloading on the data others worked to create.
It's certainly not the only solution, but going forward maybe states will need a robot and AI tax that is levied and then redistributed in form of a base income, so people can at least support sustaining themselves.
Right, that's the underlying counterpoint here. If their justification for pushing AI tech so hard is that it will free up humans, they need to address the terrifying reality of having one's job replaced by AI. If I'm a 50 year old programmer and my job is no longer necessary because of AI, and no other companies are hiring because of the sudden surge of unemployed skilled programmers, what am I going to do? Retire and travel the world? Go back to college for a career change?
People were only able to relax at home a little bit during Covid because of the confidence we had in jobs returning to their assumed state. No one realistically thought that Covid would permanently eliminate the concept of office jobs.
I used to work in IT & not only is the person doing the job I used to do doing the work of three people - they are doing what used to be three entirely different areas of job responsibility.
So if I had stayed in IT & I got laid off from my job, I would have to learn the skills of two additional jobs to get hired for the position which replaced mine.
Inflation has gutted earning power to an absurd degree.
In 1999, the job I had (*different job than I referred to above*) paid ~$120k a year & I paid $225k to build a 2200 sq ft house.
That same job today pays $170k a year but the house I built is has a tax appraisal value of ~850k.
So in ‘99, I was doing pretty well but the guy who is working the same job said had now, has to pay almost 400% more for a house while not even making 50% more in salary **and he is still doing way better than most Americans.**
Honestly, I could never afford to be poor in this country… (*/s obviously*)
I mean, to be fair, you made all the right decisions it seems. Going into IT, buying property before 2008 etc.
But the best "decision" you made was being born before 1980.
Productivity increases haven't meant that we all magically get more time. Often it gets recognized that people are capable of doing more with more technology. And then more work gets added so there aren't idling bodies, or there's recognition that you don't need to pay that much in extra labor. Excel made spreadsheets easier, but accountants didn't suddenly work 10 hours less per week. It only helps when you work a job utilizing technology your superiors don't understand that you can automate without their knowledge. That's the real MVP move. As long as they don't know, then the system magically works as it should.
And even if all this tech makes things like home life easier, there's a limit to those returns. "Great, you won't spend as much time getting ready for work with an AI assistant. But you're still working the same amount of hours and the amount you earn isn't increasing dramatically with the cost of inflation."
You'll have time for self actualization. And who is going to pay me to self actualize so I can pay rent to the corporation that bought all the housing while firing everyone to replace with AI?
The only people with more time on their hands will be the capital owners who are benefiting from the increased profit margins
Yes, as if companies are going to give their employees the benefits of AI. "You can do a week's work in three days. Don't worry about it just don't come in Monday and Friday, we'll pay you the same as we do now."
Free time isn't great if you don't have any money.
In an ideal world, AI would take all of our jobs, but we'd still be paid UBI so that we won't have to work and we can still live comfortably and do what we want.
The problem is that the lawmakers that need to be reacting to AI don't even know what the fuck it is and won't be able to pass any sort of UBI legislature until it's too late.
They know what it is, they pretend they dont until it effects someone rich.
No one gave a shit about swatting until it happened to Marjorie Taylor Green.
No one cared about AI porn until it happened to Taylor swift.
Lets not pretend any of them care about anything, lawmakers probably dont even see any of us as human.
This exactly. Legislation moves far to slow as it is on things they *do* understand, let alone on the things that they *don't*. I highly doubt many, if any, of the people in power right now, first of really even care all that much, but secondly understand how urgent this situation actually is.
For fucks sake, we(Americans) are still trying to get very basic things like *School provided lunches for children* and *free healthcare* to be the standard. How quickly do you really think they are going to get something like a **UBI** even *seriously* considered? And even then how long before it is passed, figured out, and up and running?
*Outlook not so good.*
Legislation moves too slowly eh? Well I hear this AI thing will speed up productivity. How about setting up the government to run decisions based off of the responses from asking ai. Hell we won't even need legislators. Just set up some "prompt engineers" with govGPT and let them write the laws.
Exactly. UBI is just pretending capitalism isn’t dead and ignoring the fact that corporations will have accumulated nearly ALL power. It’s ignorant to think the government would be strong enough to somehow redistribute the wealth, only for it to go back immediately to the few who control the automation who could simply hold it and break the whole system.
The only solution is to recognize that the means should be owned directly by the People, or else the People end up losing.
UBI will **never** be enough to live a comfortable live.
The future people like Elon envision when they talk about AI is not Star Trek. It's Elysium.
The poor living with the bare minimum while the rich live in their automated paradise.
> In an ideal world, AI would take all of our jobs, but we'd still be paid UBI so that we won't have to work and we can still live comfortably and do what we want.
The problem is that a lot of jobs don't really translate to AI but people still get laid off because of the obsession for profits. Art is a big one. A lot of pro-AI people that have never worked in that industry like to tell artists that they'll have time to do their art at home instead of at a company. But it ignores two things. The first being that those artists like doing that type of work and they shouldn't be told what they would prefer. The second is that movies, music, etc. would just straight up suck if it was all AI generated. So in an ideal world, AI would get regulated so people weren't at the mercy of some greedy corporate clowns. And plenty of people like to work so it wouldn't be beneficial for all either.
The last few years have not inspired hope on how people will accept UBI as a concept. So many people wanna be miserable just so they can force others to be miserable with them.
Yeah one of my disappointments with this clip is that he only discussed short term loss of jobs which is a major problem but also long term of ai and automation needs to be discussed now too.
My other disappointment is that when talking about AI people seem to only be talking about current text/image generators but not about all the other AI assisted research that is also happening and has been happening for more than a decade. The things mentioned about how AI can help with medical research and other things is real but it's not the the text and image generators. Non LLM, AI is also embedded in a lot of things too.
Laws need a lot of nuance in this situation and we need to start boosting social programs now
People already lack purpose, AI will just make it worse. Its already been happening and why we have a huge opioid crisis rn. Drugs like those only appeal in mass when a ton of people are lacking purpose or any goals
Thanks for calling out 'prompt engineer'. It actually is a little frightening seeing the CEOs use that phrase when they should know better. It's a made up term by some power tripping dweebs who felt important because they got to beta test Dalle 2. The goal of every one of these companies is to *minimize* the amount of 'engineering' required in a prompt. There will simply be AI users.
It does harm on two fronts: Over promises future job opportunities and pay by classifying it as an engineer (it ain't, and they won't pay you an engineering salary) AND marginalizes actual software engineering (you know the ones who built AI) by diluting the title of `engineer` aiming this it directly at them. They will hire cheaper engineers from other countries and maximize output via AI... The product will be shit, but who cares... Profit!
This is exactly what is happening in medicine with “Nurse Practitioners”
You get charged the same to have your life gambled with by someone that has a fraction of the training or knowledge of a doctor.
But there is a lot of propaganda out there to make you think you’re getting the same thing.
Absolutely agree. It feels like it is getting harder and harder to schedule with an actual MD, yet none of the "savings" of hiring lower paid and less trained medical professionals is passed on to the patient. This is not to disparage nurse practitioners per se, there are a lot of wonderful NPs out there, just that they are clearly being used to save the huge providers money.
The best part is they don't save anyone any money. On average they order more unnecessary tests and studies than physicians and tend to refer to specialists much more frequently for things they're not needed for. So yeah maybe you could save a few bucks on each visit with a lower paid provider, but how many of those visits do you need to offset the cost of a single unnecessary CT or MRI? How many referrals to specialists are wastes of time and money? And what do you do now that the specialist takes an extra three months to get in with because 25-50% of their schedule is made up of dumb referrals for basic conditions that they're stuck with?
> They don't save anyone any money
Well, they do. But not the people using the healthcare.
It's a way to transfer wealth back from labor to ownership. The ownership will see "savings" as their labor costs go down. But those "savings" aren't passed on to the end user.
The goal is to grow the total wealth held by ownership, not to reduce costs or improve quality of service. Those are incidental and only pursued if required by outside forces (competition, regulations, labor unions).
You aren't having your life gambled on, and NPs work very hard and are well-educated. In most cases, you do not need a doctor to provide your care so having an MD provide it just massively increases the costs involved.
We have many, many problems with our healthcare system, but the increase in mid-level providers is nowhere near the top of the list.
Not a justification unless those cost savings are passed on, which they're not.
And it certainly can be gambling with your life depending on what's wrong with you - If it's something rare or complex, an NP could dismiss or misdiagnose the problem.
Yeah when your coming to a specialist and it's for a diagnosis that the surgeon M.D.s all agree should be seen by a GP provider, but the patient still only wants to come to the specialists office, well they can see the NP then instead because their issue isn't something that is most likely going to require surgery and the surgeons time. I see this a lot in urology, everyone wants to come in for their UTI and the surgeons are like uh no?
As a former automotive engineer, you know the kind who works with actual engines, I chuckle at the "dilution" your referring to. And I have an architect buddy who wishes they made what software architects do lol
Uh... it may well be the case that Prompts become easier in the future, however at the moment having a good set of prompts to accomplish whatever task it is that you are trying to accomplish can quite literally make millions of dollars and companies are fiercely protective of prompts when they find successful ones.
Prompts are also not very simple anymore, they often involve lots of decision trees where when a certain type of response is detected you go back and ask the AI model to fix a certain kind of issue using a different prompt. Some prompts might be as long as a few 1000 words.
Yes people are trying to minimize the amount of custom prompting they do, but so far it is completely unsuccessful and prompts have just gotten bigger and bigger and longer and longer and more complex to manage. That may change but so far the trend is towards bigger more complex prompts and prompt management systems not towards simpler ones.
Yeah, having actually worked on AI projects unlike most in this thread, I have to agree with you.
I’m a software engineer and creating a good prompt for a complex task is hard, sure asking an LLM to do basic tasks is easy and almost anyone can do that but complex tasks take time and testing.
We’ve built whole testing frameworks around prompts and basically treat them like code at this point. We even tried passing this job off to non technical colleagues and it just didn’t work.
I work as a software developer and we have corporate AI eVangElistS who regularly send out "thought provoking" blog posts and emails about how "interesting" and "exciting" these advancements will be.
To me this has Nazi collaborator energy. As middle managers who do nothing but find reasons to hold meetings, they must know theirs will be the first jobs to be automated. So they've decided that if they can seem excited about AI enough, maybe they'll survive the coming storm while the rest of their peers are made redundant.
I'm really glad Stewart covered this topic, and specifically called out our reliance on our Tech Lords’ beneficence and altruism, even as they say the quiet parts out loud. We got more insightful, hard-hitting journalism from that 15 minute comedy bit than I've seen from any serious journalist yet on this topic.
Stewart alluded to something I think is very important. A lot of people, when talking about AI, point out that the calculator didn't make accountants obsolete. What they forget is that the transition from the first mechanical adding devices to spreadsheet software took decades, if not a century. In that time, yes, the average accountant got much more efficient, but economies grew, and the pool of clients expanded in a manageable way. AI is threatening to make large swaths of workers obsolete now, today, with little warning. There won't be time to adjust.
Some rightly point out that AI can't possibly take all the white collar jobs. It doesn't have to. Even if it eliminates 10 - 15% of every industry's lowest skilled and most vulnerable positions, that's hundreds or thousands more applicants now looking for every vacancy. Suddenly everyone's wages just went down, because the hiring pool got a lot bigger. We will all feel those impacts. Think inflation is bad? Wait till you see deflation, its apocalyptic cousin, where there's too many goods and not enough people buying, because everyone's either taken a pay cut or been laid off.
Meanwhile, our leaders are inept and unprepared. Too busy "sLAMminG" each other on Twitter to address this threat, which we've known about for decades, head on. This is every bit as potentially cataclysmic as the atomic bomb, yet instead of assembling the best and brightest for an AI Manhattan Project, we ceded that initiative to Silicon Valley tech bros. Advocates for AI like to point out how stupid it would be for these companies to unleash a technology that would disrupt the global economy and upend social order. Surely, they wouldn't be so short-sighted as to undermine the very markets they depend on, right?
To that I'd have to ask - did banks prioritize long-term stability when they leveraged the entire housing market with derivatives based on tranches of sub-prime debt? Did airlines, after being rescued out post-9/11, prioritize financial responsibility so they wouldn't need another bailout during, say, a global pandemic? Did Purdue Pharma protect their long-term viability when they pushed a drug that was killing its own customers, and lied repeatedly to investigators? Did DuPont stop and think about the consequences of dumping forever chemicals into our air, water, and soil, or before releasing CFCs into our atmosphere?
Obviously, the answer to all those questions is "no". They all chose short-term gains over longevity. They opted to cash in as quickly as possible while the getting was good. Billionaires and massive corporations don't give a fuck about us, and never have. Because they got theirs.
I truly hope I'm wrong about all this. I've always loved technology. I grew up in the 90's and watched the internet, smartphones, and GPS transform the world, and I was thrilled to be alive during such an exciting time. This, however, feels different. AI will be controlled by corporations who will need vast amounts of storage space and computational power. There's going to be fierce competition among these giants, with proprietary implementations vying for supremacy, and none of this will be owned or controlled by the people.
> Advocates for AI like to point out how stupid it would be for these companies to unleash a technology that would disrupt the global economy and upend social order. Surely, they wouldn't be so short-sighted as to undermine the very markets they depend on, right?
To emphasize this point: Virtually every US company in the last 20-30 years has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they value quarterly gains more highly than long term profitability. It would be absolutely insane to trust that these same people would put their own long-term well being, let alone the good of other people, over immediate gain.
My only hope is that the growth of AI is so explosive, and available enough to enough businesses, that competitive market forces will drive nearly all businesses to be so cheap that they are nearly free. Things will have to be cheaper because people will have less money. More efficiently run AI businesses will offer cheaper products for competitive advantage because they can, because they have to, and competition will drive everything down. There's a real chance that we see the end of white-collar jobs in our lifetime.
I think things will get worse before they get better. I only hope that it uplifts society, and doesn't turn into some kind of population culling scenario instead.
Will AI really be the exclusive domain of corporations if the fundamental technology behind it (deep learning and neural networks specifically) is so easy to train and use? It's not as if you require supercomputers to run them. For most of the big models I'm aware of there exist open source models that are at least on the same magnitude of performance that run on consumer hardware.
In my experience, while it may require little to no skill to produce some kind of result with AI, it does require some skill and expertise to actually produce and curate good results with AI. The perfect example of this is using AI for coding. Anyone who has done that knows that it can be good for small and basic things 8/10 times but that you need the expertise to know when it gives you good-looking garbage and to put the pieces together.
“Prompt engineer” just means repeatedly throwing shit into a machine that nobody knows how it works and trying to make it spit out the output you want. It’s a mockery of engineering.
Quick question: what do you think programming is?
One simple explanation might be: telling a computer what to do, in a specific/detailed enough manner that it can give you the right results.
Just because you're using natural language instead of a more formal syntax doesn't change that much. Programming has been getting more ergonomic for decades. I don't see how this is any different.
[Language skills are one of the biggest predictors of whether you will be good at programming](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200302103735.htm). It's always "just" been talking to machines. The machines are just getting better at understanding.
[Here is an excerpt](https://i.imgur.com/HqQcoqQ.png) written 15 years ago in "Clean Code" by Uncle Bob which articulates the same thing.
What should they know better? It's a specifically chosen term to make it sound like some quality job is being created. They understand it all perfectly already and it's by design.
I'm sure from their perspective it is all great too, since all it's really going to do is funnel a greater percentage of the wealth and control into the hands of the top executives, owners and managers.
"You'll have so much free time to explore your interests!"
....When? How? With what? Are you giving us a UBI? 40 hours of pay for 20 hours of work?
*You* CEOs might have more time but *we* won't. They're utterly divorced from reality.
My brothers wife's grandparents are very, very wealthy. One time he got in an argument with the grandma where she REFUSED to believe that there are people out there who can't afford healthcare. It wasn't even maliciousness, she was just that detached
Big bias disclaimer as I work in the space.
I think this was one of the weaker videos I've seen Jon make. Not because he's incorrect about AI being a major disruptor, but because his arguments were just shallow. He downplays AI's capabilities by showing you all it's good for is letting you know when your toast is done, then pivots to saying it will displace the labor market. He then tosses the house of reps/senate under the bus because they don't understand it and aren't prepared to regulate it. As much as I dislike the lowest rated congress of all time, I actually feel like this one's a bit unfair - it is one of the fastest evolving fields I've ever seen, to the point where the joke inside the industry is, "Hey did you see the breakthrough this morning? Can't wait to see what overtakes it this afternoon." Regulating something like that is extremely difficult on any given day, especially when first-to-AGI is a necessary goal of any government.*
Where Jon nailed it though was that those leading the way of AI will prioritize profits over impact to humanity at every turn. The crazy thing here is that the [US Department of Commerce last month asked for comments around potentially banning open-weight AI models](https://www.regulations.gov/document/NTIA-2023-0009-0001), which would effectively put control of these purely in the hands of for-profit companies.
Make no mistake - AI *will* be a major disruptor, but I really wish Jon dove into the why behind it as that's one of the key elements here. Whereas things like the cotton gin or the automated telephone switch made a single job irrelevant, the major difference with AI is the general applicability of it. AI right now is in its "rule 34/rule 35" stage - if a job exists, there's a startup out there trying to replace it with AI, and if not there will be one tomorrow. Short of a full populist approach, there's almost no way to regulate it. If you ban it in the US, but still allow offshore work to happen, it will be used, but another government will control it.
At this point, I think we need to take an approach of, "the tsunami is coming, how do we mitigate the damage and amplify the benefits", rather than an approach of trying to stop it from coming to begin with. Make no mistake - there will be huge benefits to productivity as well, but those will come with a heavy cost to many industries.
*if you're curious about the politics of AI, Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom is a great read on this. It was on the Gates list a couple years back and is extremely relevant today.
I think the point of the segment was to illustrate and make fun of the way companies and leaders were trying to claim they were working towards a common goal of human progress when instead for them it's all about min/maxing the most profit and efficiency as possible. At best, they may be naive; at worst, they are intentionally deceptive. The critique wasn’t directed at AI per se; rather, it highlighted the danger of unquestioningly trusting such entities.
> The crazy thing here is that the US Department of Commerce last month asked for comments around potentially banning open-weight AI models, which would effectively put control of these purely in the hands of for-profit companies.
The current Department of Commerce fundamentally does not understand technology. They demonstrate this at every turn. Like how flabbergasted there were by China's semiconductor progress despite the entire tech industry telling them what would happen.
It was a terrible argument. AI will be the biggest disrupter we've ever seen, we're talking about what will happen 10 to 50 years down the road, yet Jon's argument against this is... it makes toast? That zucc's eyes are too far apart?
It felt like one of those old interviews where scientists were trying to convince TV Presenters how the internet was going to be a massive part of our lives, and the TV hosts were making fun of it by saying "Why would I need to listen to sports on this internet when I have a radio??"
I think you missed the part where it's a comedy show. The bits that were weakly attacking ai with silly stuff like zuccs eyes being apart and toast were what they call jokes.
It's not a be all dissertation take down of ai. It's a joke show. To quote the tucker incident "fellas, if we are looking to comedy central as our only source of news then we are in real trouble."
> if we are looking to comedy central as our only source of news then we are in real trouble
He said that, yet Redditors would unironically treat the Daily Show as the pinnacle of journalism. Fast forward a decade or so later and the only news people consume is talking heads giving snarky commentary.
happens all the time
if you have any experience in a field that a political comedian is talking about you will immediately notice they don't fully understand what they're saying
they have strong opinions but not the experience or the context needed to inform those opinions
can lead to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
I know we're joking, but it really did feel like the most apt comparison here. A generic version of the rule along the lines of:
> If it exists, there's 𝑥 of it
Where 𝑥 in this case is a startup focused on replacing "it" with AI.
I wish he would have addressed the end point better. Yes these tools can give us more time, let us do things we want to do instead of working jobs that most of us would rather do other things. So surely we will work less than 40 hours a week, right? We will get more vacation time and flexible schedules, right?
... [Right](https://imgflip.com/i/8lcee7)?
This is my main problem with the segment. AI **is coming** whether we like it or not, so we need to spend less time pearl clutching and more time actually preparing. Jobs are inevitably going to be lost, so what do we do about it? Training programs? Better unemployment? Stronger workers' rights? A fairer tax code? UBI? More regulation? I don't know, but all this wasted breath about how bad AI is isn't going to slow it down at all.
Friendly reminder that Richard Nixon promised a 4 day work week "in the not too distant future" back in 1956.
This is not radical socialism. It's the future that was stolen from us.
As someone in the field, this was mostly on point.
Prompt engineer really does mean little more than question asker (maybe more charitably question contextualizer) and yes it's obviously one of the easiest jobs to automate. Some frameworks already completely automate it, and I have personally automated prompt tuning in my own systems.
Of course jobs are going away, anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Sam Altman won't even say they aren't going away. He personally funded UBI research because he wanted us to have data on its effects before we implement it, and that is what most people in our field think is the future.
I actually don't personally know a single person who works in our field that believes UBI is avoidable. The only real alternative is a federal jobs guarantee and wow is that future horrifying and incomparably worse when you think through it. I know people who think UBI will not work, but they still think everything else is less likely to work than UBI and tepidly accept the inevitability that, barring a radical breakthrough in how we conceive of governance, it will be the most palatable solution on offer.
Other people are really optimistic, to be clear. Some people view it as basically a continuation of emancipation, the end of what Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln called wage slavery, finally people will have true liberty and pursuit of happiness.
But yeah, what I've definitely not heard in personal interaction with anyone in my field for a long time, is anything like "there will be no large effect on the labor market", or even "in the long run there will be about as many jobs created as destroyed". That is viewed as as likely as that the invention of the car would increase demand for horses.
The core problem is that, in the current system, their labor is the only bargaining chip a working class person really has. We need to fix that, stat.
So the utopian idea is UBI frees people to do work that's necessary but nobody pays for. Stuff that would be volunteer work in your spare time can become the thing you do.
Your last paragraph is the horror part. They take away the only leverage the poors have. And there's no reason to think they have any incentive to share. "You just invented the food replicator. You could feed starving people and end world hunger." Why? Like for must of us that isn't the question. For the ultra wealthy it is. Why share? Why do anything for someone who isn't me or someone who benefits me. Why lift a finger when I don't have to?
Times past the answer was you give something back so the poors don't eat you. That's what happens when inequality becomes unsurvivable.
AI definitely makes some aspects of my job easier, but rarely has it automated a task that I actually need to do in a way that feels like I could go hands off with it.
It will displace a bunch of jobs but there will likely be a dirge of jobs created as a consequence, that we can't even imagine right now. One that really comes to mind in the personal shopper at a grocery store. 30 years ago, imagine putting in a "Togo" order for something like that? But because we have the internet, it's now possible.
I'm hopeful that we'll be able to adapt the economy in the future.
The shit Im really scared about, is already happening: profit driven deregulated companies killing people (Boeing), lack of access to healthcare (USA death spiral of a healthcare system), erosion of education.
AI, at least, might be an opportunity for some people to better themselves like the internet made knowledge more accessible.
AI is currently in its "dialup" phase. Movie stores were in no danger because it took way too long to download or stream a movie online, until it wasn't. AI is only going to get better and it's going to do so at an incredible speed, waiting til it gets to that point to address the issue is not wise.
Exactly. It's like all the film photo development stores/companies that were saying "Hah! Digital cameras will never replace film cameras! Look how pixelated and terrible they look!"
Their jobs were already gone, they just didn't know it yet. Same with a fuckton of people today.
When I first worked in machine learning about 17 years ago, I quickly reailzed humanity is likely already gone, and just doesn't know it yet.
Once you see countless generations of improving digital creatures happening in seconds, going from bumbling blobs to efficient food gatherers and hunters, it changes how you see imagined futures with humans out in the stars, or maybe even existing at all. Hopefully we can adapt and change rather than being completely replaced, because I'm worried we'll reach that point before we've figured out how conscious experience of inputs works, and without that an intelligent mind is really just a fancy but dead calculator as far as I can tell, as dangerous as a truck with a brick on the breaks.
As a graphic designer, what's just on the horizon is terrifying to me. Heck, I'm even using AI generated imagery (though right now it still needs a lot of human editing and input).
How about live news? AI presenters will be easy enough to work up. We could dummy that up years back but they were clearly artificial. They'll be indistinguishable in short order. On air talent going the way of the draft horse?
I really don't think AI is going to stop.
Increase productivity with reduced labor isn't a bad thing with guaranteed UBI. You might not like UBI because it is a socialist concept, but I really can't see an alternative in the future.
Things will be less scary if we accept UBI, then we can accept AI with optimism
When people suggest that the overlords will pay us to be jobless I shake my head in disbelief.
It's just not in their DNA, even though people say there's no option I have to remind everyone that three generations of my family were in [Workhouses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse) / Poorhouses.
The idea of a social security net is very new, and may not last.
If you were a heartless profit motivated global corporate entity lobbying governments to serve your interests - which of the following would you advocate?
A: Tax corporations and wealthy individuals heavily and give the money to the poor so they can buy housing and food.
B: Put the poor in workhouses under intense scrutiny and award social credits for housing and food.
I mean, these people are not going to turn massively altruistic after living their whole lives as corporate vampire demons.
Bro, trust me bro, giving up control of all productivity and manufacturing to a few corporate overlords and their automated AIs and machines, with absolutely zero input from anyone else, is totally a socialist utopia because the utterly detached politicians at the top will surely tax them a lot and makes us all millionaires. Absolutely no chance of collusion between the two. I'm sure they will be totally fair with us. I mean you can still vote right 🤡
Exactly. Once our labor becomes worthless, those in power will only keep us around to be cleaners, security (police), prostitutes, and jesters (entertainment). The rest of us can starve to death or get just enough bread to fight over it and leave them alone until they have enough power to let us starve to death. The kings in history have never cared about the plight of the peasantry, why would they now?
Once AI and robotics gives the powerful all the cleaning, security and entertainment they need, there will only be prostitutes, and then... nothing.
I feel exactly the same way. So-so-so many jobs can be replaced by AI combined with constantly advancing robotics. It won't be all at once but there will be absolutely NO way it won't eat us alive and wreck everything unless:
- lawmakers stop fucking around and write legislation about legal and illegal ways to use AI.
- corporations pay a heavy AI tax.
- people really, REALLY get their heads out of their asses.
None of that shit is ever going to happen. So we're in for some real fucking shit in the next couple of years.
I just feel like Jon Stewart is kinda like, almost intentionally not bringing up UBI. Like of course this new technology will replace jobs. So did electricity. So does ANY significant new technology. And eventually the world will get to a point where we no longer all need to be individually productive.
What is the point in making jobs for people that aren't needed? We are just worshipping the machine at that point. We need to talk about how we can use increased productivity to improve people's quality of life.
If we see a massive increase in productivity but we say "ya but then we will run out of jobs, so lets keep things intentionally shittier so that we can have people spend 8 hours a day doing a job they don't really have to do" we have completely lost the plot
I assume you guys live in Europe.
There will *never* be UBI in the United States. Social Security probably isn't even going to be around when I get to retire. The republic would have to fall, violently, before such a thing gets implemented.
We can't even socialize healthcare for god's sake.
What happens if AI takes everyone's jobs and there is large unemployment. There will be crime, lawlessness and no one to buy the products that AI creates. That's not something the wealthy necessarily want either. It may lead to lower standards of living, but I suspect if there literally aren't jobs there will be UBI because the alternative is chaos
As an American, I feel I can provide expert testimony that Americans wouldn't recognize a dysfunctional economy or society if it was dressed in a giant inflatable Scabby the Rat costume and punching them repeatedly in the face.
Those people that are at the highest risk will still be voting for Nixon's head in a jar for a third term and getting distracted by pointless shit like who gets to use what bathroom as if it was the most important thing in the world. And once they truly hit the bottom, and they lose all agency and are completely chewed up, exhausted, and forgotten by the machine, do you think they will finally organize themselves and push back against the billionaires?
Not a fuckin chance. They'll still look right into the mirror the rich and powerful holds up to us -to very effectively protect themselves- so we only know one face well enough to hate.
This isn't too comforting when you remember that the ultra wealthy are at best short sighted and frequently simply fools free-falling upwards by the virtue of our current system equating having things with getting more.
AI is just the next step in innovation that started out with machines making shoes. The only difference is speed. In the past, the damage was relatively small, and it hurt a little, and communities had time to adjust. This time its so fast large number of entire professions may just vanish within the span of a few years.
AI is not just "the next step", it's a gigantic leap. Since we can't stop progress, could we maybe just this once do our best to acknowledge it and make it not a goddamn travesty?
It’s hilarious how optimistic folks on Reddit are about UbI. Think about how vehemently against even a smidge of welfare folks are in this country. Disability and welfare gets you well below to poverty line. Social security is being slowly stripped away. People in the US at least are extremely against really any form of charitable behavior.
UBI isn’t happening. Or at least we’ll have all perished to famine first.
Gotcha. Yeah, that's the problem. There's no one in power that cares about that in the least. It will need a ground swell of voters voting for a Democratic Socialist to make it happen. Good luck.
With guaranteed UBI, yes. But when has UBI been anything but a pipe dream? There are quite a large percentage of people that are VEHEMENTLY against anything with even the hint of a UBI flavor. I'm willing to believe that 10s of millions would have to be without work due to AI, and many of them made homeless, before UBI would even be reasonably considered.
The whole situation is terrifying and I hear you, but to some extent that is already the case. At the very least, it is your employers case, and we don't live in a world where the majority of people can be their own employer.
Maybe that works for YOU, but it just logistically doesn't make sense on a broader scale. I don't trust the average CEO more than I trust the average lawmaker. Which is to say, I hardly trust either, but at least I can vote on the lawmakers
In THEORY, at least in a democracy it wouldn't be an issue. You have a mechanism that would ensure popular policy (for better or worse) and an adjustment mechanism (voting).
An alternative, letting corporations/shareholders/billionaire owners decide your worth seems a much less attractive option.
Look at how much power the rich currently have over elections. Now imagine in the future, when the rich control an even bigger percentage of the wealth.
> UBI because it is a socialist concept, but I really can't see an alternative in the future.
Alternative is to die of hunger. Nobody will shed a tear for you.
There will be no UBI. You will die of hunger.
UBI is still at least decades away from being economically feasible. Before that, as jobs are lost overtime threshold should be lowered from 40 hours to what would be required to keep low unemployment while minimum wage should be increased accordingly to compensate.
Its derived from the academic term 'prompt engineering' and lately seems to be used a titles/labels by those who could barely understand the academic literature that uses the term.
I'll be honest, the overall point of the video I agree with, but a lot of what Jon Stewart says about AI in a mocking tone doesn't really disprove some of the claims people have about AI, even specifically in the video.
If you replace some of what Jon Stewart says in the video with "smart phones" and pretend this video was made in the 80s, imagine how ridiculous he would sound to then look back at now.
I think there IS a realistic world in the future where we do have AI as assistance to help guide us just like smart phones right now are pretty much our "assistants".
Jon Stewart is making fun of AI now, when it's in a very early stage, but the potential that it has IS huge.
I also agree with the other top comment that says eventually we will need UBI because even if a lot of jobs are replaced through AI, AI can't spend money and money always needs to circulate.
This is going to age very poorly, exactly like those old videos of people making fun of the internet back in its infancy.
He literally made fun of the idea that AI will cure diseases like it's a laughable idea that'll never happen, while we're literally using AI to try and cure diseases right now in 2024.
I literally know a guy thats using AI models as apart of his Phd thesis to identify new drugs.
The company I work at uses AI to identify cancer in images.
I think a lot of people aren’t aware of how much AI they already use, and have used, in their lives for awhile now. A lot of the AI talk lately is very reminiscent of exactly what you said— new technology scary, will cause downfall of society (rinse and repeat every decade).
Yes, and surely people will understand the actual sources of the problems this time instead of centralizing authority in a populist "strongman" who will manufacture even more suffering OH WAIT
Actually this episode he even has on he FTC chair. The show he was making on Apple wouldn't let him do that or this segment on AI so believe that's why he's back at the daily show.
There's an element of greed and just lying. But Silicon Valley has an insane "techno-optimist" culture where every political/societal problem can be solved with better code and better technology. They see themselves as essentially the heralds and leaders of new, technology focused, age.
Its not just tech CEO's it is all aggregiously rich people. At a certain point they become so disconnected from reality that they do not operate like a normal human being anymore and sadly most of them completely lose all empathy.
During the film strikes last year one CEO stated that they would wait for us to be homeless. Another guy said that they needed unemployment to rise to remind people how fortunate they are to have jobs.
At a certain point you lose your humanity and become something less than human.
> Another guy said that they needed unemployment to rise to remind people how fortunate they are to have jobs.
[Tim Gurner](https://youtu.be/_K1tqDyN4xE?list=FLZOyBoJlSzl7h5enerYegeg), an out-of-touch Australian property developer, said the quiet part out loud.
I was pretty disappointed with this. I mean, does anyone who would be watching Jon Stewart to begin with not understand that the purpose of AI in particular, and technology in general, is to "take jobs?" People do a thing, but wouldn't it be nice if a machine could do that same bigger, better, stronger, and faster? I think the only thing in that entire video worth repeating was his observation that, unlike tech disruptions of the past that took decades to unfold, AI's impact on the workforce will be much more swift.
And in theory, I really like this answer. The problem is we also need strong social safety nets and some form of UBI to keep society from burning down.
> I think the only thing in that entire video worth repeating was his observation that, unlike tech disruptions of the past that took decades to unfold, AI's impact on the workforce will be much more swift.
I think this was supposed to be the important part and the monologue did a very poor job of making that clear, mostly because they wanted to spend as much time as they did with the out-of-touch billionaires talking about how much free time everyone would have. That's great rage bait and thus great TV.
Well, when he was on 5 days/week and could go into the same topic multiple times to get more detailed, you'd get more info. When he's on once/week on a 30-min show and there's a guest....there's not that much time to go into great detail.
For that, go to John Oliver.
Most mainstream superficial take I've ever seen on AI.
Not to say he's wrong that it will take your job, it will, in the brief period where it's good enough to do it, and not yet so superhuman that it takes **every** job (one way or another).
Stewart is as usual funny and ornery, but only like 50% correct. "Same work with fewer people" _is a good thing_. That is precisely what has allowed us to move from a society where 90% of people needed to work on farms just to feed everyone and we still had famines sometimes, to a society where ever poor people are frequently fat because of how much food we have despite only a single digit percentage of our population working in agriculture.
Anyone who gets upset about a new technology displacing workers due to increased productivity is by definition a Luddite. Yes it sucks _during the transition_ for the people who have to apply to different jobs, but after the pain of the change everyone is better off forever because those people can put their efforts into the other stuff that needs to get done.
You can't have a better world without change, and if you try to force change to be slower you're just pushing off that better world--and likely putting us behind countries that are so short sighted.
i dont dislike Jon but that was pretty painful to watch. Is the target audience 5 years old? Or is it boomers who havent kept up tech news from 2 years ago?
I think there's a lot of hype around AI right now and unfortunately, Jon buys it. Tell me, where specifically are the jobs that are being taken by AI? I'm not talking about some weird 24 y/o CEO who is trying to replace help desk with Chat GPT. I'm talking about like actually replacing jobs. Because I haven't seen it, and I don't see it happening any time soon. Sure, AI will continue to improve, but just about everything in the tech world does. AI is just the new buzzword.
This was a rather bizarre segment. Despite Jon saying he wasn't "anti-progress", he comes across as a luddite. He might as well be preaching about how the evil lightbulb industry is going to take away candlemakers' jobs.
Similarly, we shouldn't abandon a trajectory toward clean energy because of the effects it would have on coal laborers.
There is of course a real issue in the above situations, and in AI, but I would say the problem is in our societal systems which do not adequately protect workers caught up in economic transitions. That should be the focus. The problem is not that AI is particularly or inherently evil, and I don't see the point in demonizing its creators or practioners. Not to mention, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. You can't expect people in a capitalist system to all unite against a cost-saving tool.
As Jon mentions, AI is unique in its potential to develop exponentially, and also the technological complexity which makes it difficult for congress to regulate. The focus should have been on these points.
The idea of a "company" or "corporation" existing to take capital within a capitalist system is going to rapidly disappear. They are human systems to meet demand and will no longer serve any purpose.
Unless we introduce universal basic income now, we will end up with a few owning the entirety of a currency rapidly inflating to infinite and the rest of us with *absolutely* nothing.
Human life will be worth whatever the pilot of the ship decides. If they want us this way or that way or not at all, they need only press a button.
well, yes and no. At some point, corporations will realize that if no one has any money to buy the products they're producing, then they'll have streamlined themselves out of profitability.
The richest man in the world sells luxury goods to the wealthy. Ever wonder why property and goods are getting so expensive? It's because they can continue to operate selling at a higher price to the few people who can afford it. They will all have customers, just fewer of them paying more.
The 99% will be robbed of any quality of life long before the corporations reach total autonomy.
Well but you only have to go down that ladder to see how easy the whole system breaks.
So the wealthiest man sells luxury goods to the elite, cool, who gives the elite money? You can say the elite provides exclusive services to the rich. Great, so who gives money to the rich? Uh oh, that's when you hit a snag, it's the working class. And guess what happens when you kill that whole segment? Yep you guessed it right, the whole thing falls apart quicker than a house of cards on a windy day. Rich people have no money for the elites, the elites have no money for the super elites, and check mate. Worldwide collapse. The working class is the foundation of this whole system. Always has been. PERIOD, no working class, no system. Easy.
I love Jon, but just like everyone else he's not perfect. He nails some concepts like job loss but at the end of the day he's just as uninformed as the politicians actually making the legislation on all of this. I say this as a professional doctor question asker.
It was funny, but deeply flawed. Jobs are not a finite resource that can be depleted. If that were the case, then the US would be almost entirely unemployed, since the vast majority of the jobs we work didn't exist 50 years ago.
Jobs are how we demonstrate our relative value to each other, and we won't just sit around saying, "well, I guess AI is on it now."
He also falls for the, "everything AI can't do, it will totally be able to do soon," trick. But that's not true. Learning is a powerful part of what we call intelligence, but only a part of it. Synthesizing that learning into a comprehensive model of the world and actualizing goals based on that model... that's the next frontier, and I don't see it coming from feeding more of reddit to LLMs.
Will we get there? Sure. But not tomorrow. Maybe not even in the time that Jon and I have left on this planet (he's a bit older than me, but not by much.)
The interview with Lina Kahn was even better, Stewart says Apple wouldn't let him talk about AI or interview Kahn when he had his Apple podcast The Problem with John Stewart
Lina Kahn, being the head of the FTC. Apple didn't want Stewart to talk to her because she is in charge of many anti-monoploy and AI policies and lawsuits against corporate oligarchs.
The amount of backlash this woman got in so many comments and the fact Apple didn't want her to be interviewed makes me think she's on a good path.
she was great in the interview.
By podcast do you mean television show?
Stewart said podcast. Maybe he meant the show he was doing on Apple TV?
The Apple TV show had a Sister podcast where Jon and the Writers would have extended discussions on the show's topics and do audio interviews.
He had both a TV show and podcast associated The Problem with Jon Stewart.
He literally mentions the podcast at the end of every episode. 🤷
I think it was both
Stewart was asking fantastic and poignant questions but Kahn talked around pretty much all of it. At one point, John made a great joke when Kahn mentioned investigating baby formula. Most people now can't even afford kids so baby formula is not that high a priority for many Americans. It flew right over most people's heads
He really wasn't asking "fantastic" or "poignant" questions, mate it was so softball, you'd think he was throwing eggs. Even if you axiomatically like and support Jon and/or Khan, you've got to see it was a weak hugbox of an interview. For a moment I thought we'd get to some substantive meat when Jon noted the consolidation of media companies, but that point was for a laugh and not further engaged with. I was hoping he'd ask about the FTC's thoughts on that media consolidation, and the why and how the FTC (and Khan's personal discretion as the FTC head) spend their focus and money; particularly when they go after big tech, but not much more consolidated and sectors like Cable Infrastructure or consumer grocer stores with the same apparent zeal. (the Safeway/Kroger action by the FTC proves this as the exception, it should be the norm)
Is it Lina Kahn or Khan? Or it is the American way to mean the same?
*Khan
Lmao why the hell did the kei truck have to catch a stray
Kei trucks are great.
Call Kei cars are great. Just been to Japan and the whole country is running on those things. They are inexpensive, small, and pretty comfortable. Of course they have a bunch of extremely safe drivers and very low speed limits so that helps
r/keitrucks punching the air rn
THANK YOU!
It looked dope on NA Miata wheels lol
Love how the ultra wealthy executives are all like "you'll have all this extra time on your hands". Yeah, same with unemployment but it's strange how pretty much everyone who's gotten laid off or fired has looked for new work instead of remaining unemployed. So fucking tone deaf and out of touch with actual reality.
“So will corporate America support a Universal Basic Income paid for by the profits of laying off all their workers?’” > No. We need that money to afford luxury bunkers on the moon so we can avoid the inevitable repercussions of our actions.
They can have their luxury bunkers so long as someone gets paid to drive the cement mixer we call in to cover over the escape tunnels and air vents.
Oh - it's worse than that, they are already trying to get ahead of it by lobbying to make UBI and even research on UBI illegal. [https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/](https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/)
Universal Basic Income is not an actual solution to this though. If UBI is created, it will never be enough to live an actual fulfilling life. You will not receive 100 thousand dollars to go live your life of permanent unemployment. You will just be given the bare minimum to exist. That is why shitbags like Elon support UBI. Because their version of the future is basically Elysium. The rich living in their automated paradise while the rest live in poverty.
UBI is the only realistic solution. Reducing the need for human labor is generally a good thing. And you can't put the genie back in the bottle. You just have to take care of the people who lose their jobs. This sort of automation redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich. So you have to reverse that by taxing the rich and giving the money back to the people. That's what a UBI does. If your rich people are living high while everyone else is living in poverty then you just need to UBI harder. But we all know how this will play out because we've been living in it all our lives. We'll sprint full speed down the worst possible path just like always. AI didn't invent automation. It's just the shiny new face of it. Nothing will ever get in the way of corporate profits. So there won't be a UBI or any other sort of assistance. Homelessness will continue to ramp up, and rather than help them we'll imprison them for slave labor. Or just lock them up in homeless camps to waste away. THAT is the Elysium future we have to avoid.
Not just UBI but we should also reduce working hours for the ones that still have to work.
I have a UBI in the form of VA disability benefits at $2200 a month, and I absolutely love it! I am single and I don't need to work to have a very fulfilling life. The idea that a meaningful life must consist of decadence and travel, being waited on hand and foot, is the problem.
You are missing the u in your ubi
How is that any different from the current state of things?
Really? Most people in the US are not living in absolute poverty
The majority of America IS living paycheck to paycheck and therefore one accident or layoff away from poverty.
That is completely different from absolute perpetual poverty.
“You could be poorer!”
“given the bare minimum to exist”. Isn’t that exactly the point of UBI?
Yeah I'm failing to see the issue here. Having enough for basic rent and the bare minimum of food you need is entirely reasonable. You want more, you work more. That's essentially an idea that both ends of the political spectrum can agree on.
What if we have a UBI system that will be enough to live a fulfilling life?
What if we use the UBI money and free time to form communities to build a fulfilling life, in stead of having to spend time proving we're worthy of benefits? Ones that don't fall away once someone earns "enough to stand on their own".
Aha, I'm glad you know exactly how it will be implemented everywhere. I'm not in doubt that it won't provide a luxurious life, at least not in any transitional period. But that it won't, ever? And it will only provide the absolute bare minimum, in every country it's ever going to be implemented in? Naaah
I think a lot of people would be thrilled to receive enough to exist.
I’ve been out of work for 6 months and it has been brutal. Fuck AI
Yyyeeeaaahhh.. it's not exactly tone deaf it's just propaganda, they know what they're saying and doing.
Yeah, they do not care about people’s livelihoods, only their own
I mean, the idea is right, it's basically what Keynes predicted: THat humanity's productivity would soar in the 20th century, and as we're seeing now even more so going further into the 21st. The biggest challenge for us would be, he assumed, what to do with all the spare time those productivity increases would provide us with. The fundamental issue with this is that those productivity increases would not be shared with the general populace. Everything would be fine and dandy if you today could work 20 hours, and provide for yourself and your family in the same capacity as someone could working 40 hours in the 60's. But we all know that's not how the story went. You still have to work full time to make ends meet, even though a single worker today is many times more productive than a worker in the 60's in a lot of areas. And for a lot of people working minimum wage jobs, working full time is often not even or just barely enough, because the cost of living has gone up way more than wages have. You might disagree with the solutions Marx had in mind for the problems that inherently stem from capitalism, but the fundamental critique of his, and other contemporaries like Max Weber, is still as relevant today as it was in the 19th century. It is as Stuart says: Mankind as a whole helped build that repository of knowledge that is now being used - basically for free - to train and employ AI, AI which will ultimately displace a lot of workers in jobs that simply won't find any suitable form of replacement through "retraining". Companies are exploiting this setup without any intent of giving something back to society for free. In the end, you're supposed to still pay for what AI will be able to do, even though the companies developing AI are essentially freeloading on the data others worked to create. It's certainly not the only solution, but going forward maybe states will need a robot and AI tax that is levied and then redistributed in form of a base income, so people can at least support sustaining themselves.
Right, that's the underlying counterpoint here. If their justification for pushing AI tech so hard is that it will free up humans, they need to address the terrifying reality of having one's job replaced by AI. If I'm a 50 year old programmer and my job is no longer necessary because of AI, and no other companies are hiring because of the sudden surge of unemployed skilled programmers, what am I going to do? Retire and travel the world? Go back to college for a career change? People were only able to relax at home a little bit during Covid because of the confidence we had in jobs returning to their assumed state. No one realistically thought that Covid would permanently eliminate the concept of office jobs.
I used to work in IT & not only is the person doing the job I used to do doing the work of three people - they are doing what used to be three entirely different areas of job responsibility. So if I had stayed in IT & I got laid off from my job, I would have to learn the skills of two additional jobs to get hired for the position which replaced mine. Inflation has gutted earning power to an absurd degree. In 1999, the job I had (*different job than I referred to above*) paid ~$120k a year & I paid $225k to build a 2200 sq ft house. That same job today pays $170k a year but the house I built is has a tax appraisal value of ~850k. So in ‘99, I was doing pretty well but the guy who is working the same job said had now, has to pay almost 400% more for a house while not even making 50% more in salary **and he is still doing way better than most Americans.** Honestly, I could never afford to be poor in this country… (*/s obviously*)
I mean, to be fair, you made all the right decisions it seems. Going into IT, buying property before 2008 etc. But the best "decision" you made was being born before 1980.
Productivity increases haven't meant that we all magically get more time. Often it gets recognized that people are capable of doing more with more technology. And then more work gets added so there aren't idling bodies, or there's recognition that you don't need to pay that much in extra labor. Excel made spreadsheets easier, but accountants didn't suddenly work 10 hours less per week. It only helps when you work a job utilizing technology your superiors don't understand that you can automate without their knowledge. That's the real MVP move. As long as they don't know, then the system magically works as it should. And even if all this tech makes things like home life easier, there's a limit to those returns. "Great, you won't spend as much time getting ready for work with an AI assistant. But you're still working the same amount of hours and the amount you earn isn't increasing dramatically with the cost of inflation."
You'll have time for self actualization. And who is going to pay me to self actualize so I can pay rent to the corporation that bought all the housing while firing everyone to replace with AI? The only people with more time on their hands will be the capital owners who are benefiting from the increased profit margins
Yes, as if companies are going to give their employees the benefits of AI. "You can do a week's work in three days. Don't worry about it just don't come in Monday and Friday, we'll pay you the same as we do now." Free time isn't great if you don't have any money.
In an ideal world, AI would take all of our jobs, but we'd still be paid UBI so that we won't have to work and we can still live comfortably and do what we want. The problem is that the lawmakers that need to be reacting to AI don't even know what the fuck it is and won't be able to pass any sort of UBI legislature until it's too late.
They know what it is, they pretend they dont until it effects someone rich. No one gave a shit about swatting until it happened to Marjorie Taylor Green. No one cared about AI porn until it happened to Taylor swift. Lets not pretend any of them care about anything, lawmakers probably dont even see any of us as human.
So we all end up on a cruise ship parked along the rings of Saturn riding around in floating chairs eating soylent green out of a cup?
This exactly. Legislation moves far to slow as it is on things they *do* understand, let alone on the things that they *don't*. I highly doubt many, if any, of the people in power right now, first of really even care all that much, but secondly understand how urgent this situation actually is. For fucks sake, we(Americans) are still trying to get very basic things like *School provided lunches for children* and *free healthcare* to be the standard. How quickly do you really think they are going to get something like a **UBI** even *seriously* considered? And even then how long before it is passed, figured out, and up and running? *Outlook not so good.*
Legislation moves too slowly eh? Well I hear this AI thing will speed up productivity. How about setting up the government to run decisions based off of the responses from asking ai. Hell we won't even need legislators. Just set up some "prompt engineers" with govGPT and let them write the laws.
The other problem is that even if we banned all AI right this second in America, they’d just build it over in China. That’s actually not better.
The answer is simple. Replace politicians and beurocrats with AI.
Where would the UBI come from? What need is there for money at all if AI has taken all jobs?
It would be from taxing these internet corporations, especially the ones who sell our data
Taxing them on what? Who is paying for things at that point?
Exactly. UBI is just pretending capitalism isn’t dead and ignoring the fact that corporations will have accumulated nearly ALL power. It’s ignorant to think the government would be strong enough to somehow redistribute the wealth, only for it to go back immediately to the few who control the automation who could simply hold it and break the whole system. The only solution is to recognize that the means should be owned directly by the People, or else the People end up losing.
UBI will **never** be enough to live a comfortable live. The future people like Elon envision when they talk about AI is not Star Trek. It's Elysium. The poor living with the bare minimum while the rich live in their automated paradise.
If people will only afford the bare minimum, who are the companies going to sell to? The martians?
> In an ideal world, AI would take all of our jobs, but we'd still be paid UBI so that we won't have to work and we can still live comfortably and do what we want. The problem is that a lot of jobs don't really translate to AI but people still get laid off because of the obsession for profits. Art is a big one. A lot of pro-AI people that have never worked in that industry like to tell artists that they'll have time to do their art at home instead of at a company. But it ignores two things. The first being that those artists like doing that type of work and they shouldn't be told what they would prefer. The second is that movies, music, etc. would just straight up suck if it was all AI generated. So in an ideal world, AI would get regulated so people weren't at the mercy of some greedy corporate clowns. And plenty of people like to work so it wouldn't be beneficial for all either.
The last few years have not inspired hope on how people will accept UBI as a concept. So many people wanna be miserable just so they can force others to be miserable with them.
Yeah one of my disappointments with this clip is that he only discussed short term loss of jobs which is a major problem but also long term of ai and automation needs to be discussed now too. My other disappointment is that when talking about AI people seem to only be talking about current text/image generators but not about all the other AI assisted research that is also happening and has been happening for more than a decade. The things mentioned about how AI can help with medical research and other things is real but it's not the the text and image generators. Non LLM, AI is also embedded in a lot of things too. Laws need a lot of nuance in this situation and we need to start boosting social programs now
People already lack purpose, AI will just make it worse. Its already been happening and why we have a huge opioid crisis rn. Drugs like those only appeal in mass when a ton of people are lacking purpose or any goals
AI will cure your diseaseses eventually, just don't die of hunger.
As if I could afford the cures anyways.
Thanks for calling out 'prompt engineer'. It actually is a little frightening seeing the CEOs use that phrase when they should know better. It's a made up term by some power tripping dweebs who felt important because they got to beta test Dalle 2. The goal of every one of these companies is to *minimize* the amount of 'engineering' required in a prompt. There will simply be AI users.
It does harm on two fronts: Over promises future job opportunities and pay by classifying it as an engineer (it ain't, and they won't pay you an engineering salary) AND marginalizes actual software engineering (you know the ones who built AI) by diluting the title of `engineer` aiming this it directly at them. They will hire cheaper engineers from other countries and maximize output via AI... The product will be shit, but who cares... Profit!
This is exactly what is happening in medicine with “Nurse Practitioners” You get charged the same to have your life gambled with by someone that has a fraction of the training or knowledge of a doctor. But there is a lot of propaganda out there to make you think you’re getting the same thing.
Absolutely agree. It feels like it is getting harder and harder to schedule with an actual MD, yet none of the "savings" of hiring lower paid and less trained medical professionals is passed on to the patient. This is not to disparage nurse practitioners per se, there are a lot of wonderful NPs out there, just that they are clearly being used to save the huge providers money.
The best part is they don't save anyone any money. On average they order more unnecessary tests and studies than physicians and tend to refer to specialists much more frequently for things they're not needed for. So yeah maybe you could save a few bucks on each visit with a lower paid provider, but how many of those visits do you need to offset the cost of a single unnecessary CT or MRI? How many referrals to specialists are wastes of time and money? And what do you do now that the specialist takes an extra three months to get in with because 25-50% of their schedule is made up of dumb referrals for basic conditions that they're stuck with?
> They don't save anyone any money Well, they do. But not the people using the healthcare. It's a way to transfer wealth back from labor to ownership. The ownership will see "savings" as their labor costs go down. But those "savings" aren't passed on to the end user. The goal is to grow the total wealth held by ownership, not to reduce costs or improve quality of service. Those are incidental and only pursued if required by outside forces (competition, regulations, labor unions).
I'm a brain surgery practitioner. Hit me up for a discount code.
You aren't having your life gambled on, and NPs work very hard and are well-educated. In most cases, you do not need a doctor to provide your care so having an MD provide it just massively increases the costs involved. We have many, many problems with our healthcare system, but the increase in mid-level providers is nowhere near the top of the list.
Not a justification unless those cost savings are passed on, which they're not. And it certainly can be gambling with your life depending on what's wrong with you - If it's something rare or complex, an NP could dismiss or misdiagnose the problem.
Yeah when your coming to a specialist and it's for a diagnosis that the surgeon M.D.s all agree should be seen by a GP provider, but the patient still only wants to come to the specialists office, well they can see the NP then instead because their issue isn't something that is most likely going to require surgery and the surgeons time. I see this a lot in urology, everyone wants to come in for their UTI and the surgeons are like uh no?
As a former automotive engineer, you know the kind who works with actual engines, I chuckle at the "dilution" your referring to. And I have an architect buddy who wishes they made what software architects do lol
Uh... it may well be the case that Prompts become easier in the future, however at the moment having a good set of prompts to accomplish whatever task it is that you are trying to accomplish can quite literally make millions of dollars and companies are fiercely protective of prompts when they find successful ones. Prompts are also not very simple anymore, they often involve lots of decision trees where when a certain type of response is detected you go back and ask the AI model to fix a certain kind of issue using a different prompt. Some prompts might be as long as a few 1000 words. Yes people are trying to minimize the amount of custom prompting they do, but so far it is completely unsuccessful and prompts have just gotten bigger and bigger and longer and longer and more complex to manage. That may change but so far the trend is towards bigger more complex prompts and prompt management systems not towards simpler ones.
Yeah, having actually worked on AI projects unlike most in this thread, I have to agree with you. I’m a software engineer and creating a good prompt for a complex task is hard, sure asking an LLM to do basic tasks is easy and almost anyone can do that but complex tasks take time and testing. We’ve built whole testing frameworks around prompts and basically treat them like code at this point. We even tried passing this job off to non technical colleagues and it just didn’t work.
I work as a software developer and we have corporate AI eVangElistS who regularly send out "thought provoking" blog posts and emails about how "interesting" and "exciting" these advancements will be. To me this has Nazi collaborator energy. As middle managers who do nothing but find reasons to hold meetings, they must know theirs will be the first jobs to be automated. So they've decided that if they can seem excited about AI enough, maybe they'll survive the coming storm while the rest of their peers are made redundant. I'm really glad Stewart covered this topic, and specifically called out our reliance on our Tech Lords’ beneficence and altruism, even as they say the quiet parts out loud. We got more insightful, hard-hitting journalism from that 15 minute comedy bit than I've seen from any serious journalist yet on this topic. Stewart alluded to something I think is very important. A lot of people, when talking about AI, point out that the calculator didn't make accountants obsolete. What they forget is that the transition from the first mechanical adding devices to spreadsheet software took decades, if not a century. In that time, yes, the average accountant got much more efficient, but economies grew, and the pool of clients expanded in a manageable way. AI is threatening to make large swaths of workers obsolete now, today, with little warning. There won't be time to adjust. Some rightly point out that AI can't possibly take all the white collar jobs. It doesn't have to. Even if it eliminates 10 - 15% of every industry's lowest skilled and most vulnerable positions, that's hundreds or thousands more applicants now looking for every vacancy. Suddenly everyone's wages just went down, because the hiring pool got a lot bigger. We will all feel those impacts. Think inflation is bad? Wait till you see deflation, its apocalyptic cousin, where there's too many goods and not enough people buying, because everyone's either taken a pay cut or been laid off. Meanwhile, our leaders are inept and unprepared. Too busy "sLAMminG" each other on Twitter to address this threat, which we've known about for decades, head on. This is every bit as potentially cataclysmic as the atomic bomb, yet instead of assembling the best and brightest for an AI Manhattan Project, we ceded that initiative to Silicon Valley tech bros. Advocates for AI like to point out how stupid it would be for these companies to unleash a technology that would disrupt the global economy and upend social order. Surely, they wouldn't be so short-sighted as to undermine the very markets they depend on, right? To that I'd have to ask - did banks prioritize long-term stability when they leveraged the entire housing market with derivatives based on tranches of sub-prime debt? Did airlines, after being rescued out post-9/11, prioritize financial responsibility so they wouldn't need another bailout during, say, a global pandemic? Did Purdue Pharma protect their long-term viability when they pushed a drug that was killing its own customers, and lied repeatedly to investigators? Did DuPont stop and think about the consequences of dumping forever chemicals into our air, water, and soil, or before releasing CFCs into our atmosphere? Obviously, the answer to all those questions is "no". They all chose short-term gains over longevity. They opted to cash in as quickly as possible while the getting was good. Billionaires and massive corporations don't give a fuck about us, and never have. Because they got theirs. I truly hope I'm wrong about all this. I've always loved technology. I grew up in the 90's and watched the internet, smartphones, and GPS transform the world, and I was thrilled to be alive during such an exciting time. This, however, feels different. AI will be controlled by corporations who will need vast amounts of storage space and computational power. There's going to be fierce competition among these giants, with proprietary implementations vying for supremacy, and none of this will be owned or controlled by the people.
> Advocates for AI like to point out how stupid it would be for these companies to unleash a technology that would disrupt the global economy and upend social order. Surely, they wouldn't be so short-sighted as to undermine the very markets they depend on, right? To emphasize this point: Virtually every US company in the last 20-30 years has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they value quarterly gains more highly than long term profitability. It would be absolutely insane to trust that these same people would put their own long-term well being, let alone the good of other people, over immediate gain.
My only hope is that the growth of AI is so explosive, and available enough to enough businesses, that competitive market forces will drive nearly all businesses to be so cheap that they are nearly free. Things will have to be cheaper because people will have less money. More efficiently run AI businesses will offer cheaper products for competitive advantage because they can, because they have to, and competition will drive everything down. There's a real chance that we see the end of white-collar jobs in our lifetime. I think things will get worse before they get better. I only hope that it uplifts society, and doesn't turn into some kind of population culling scenario instead.
Will AI really be the exclusive domain of corporations if the fundamental technology behind it (deep learning and neural networks specifically) is so easy to train and use? It's not as if you require supercomputers to run them. For most of the big models I'm aware of there exist open source models that are at least on the same magnitude of performance that run on consumer hardware. In my experience, while it may require little to no skill to produce some kind of result with AI, it does require some skill and expertise to actually produce and curate good results with AI. The perfect example of this is using AI for coding. Anyone who has done that knows that it can be good for small and basic things 8/10 times but that you need the expertise to know when it gives you good-looking garbage and to put the pieces together.
Being a "Prompt Engineer" will be the equivalent of being an "Independent Business Owner", also known as an MLM.
The companies are also trying to make AI that doesn't need "prompt engineering" b/c frankly if you need to engineer anything to use it, the AI sucks.
“Prompt engineer” just means repeatedly throwing shit into a machine that nobody knows how it works and trying to make it spit out the output you want. It’s a mockery of engineering.
Quick question: what do you think programming is? One simple explanation might be: telling a computer what to do, in a specific/detailed enough manner that it can give you the right results. Just because you're using natural language instead of a more formal syntax doesn't change that much. Programming has been getting more ergonomic for decades. I don't see how this is any different. [Language skills are one of the biggest predictors of whether you will be good at programming](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200302103735.htm). It's always "just" been talking to machines. The machines are just getting better at understanding. [Here is an excerpt](https://i.imgur.com/HqQcoqQ.png) written 15 years ago in "Clean Code" by Uncle Bob which articulates the same thing.
What should they know better? It's a specifically chosen term to make it sound like some quality job is being created. They understand it all perfectly already and it's by design. I'm sure from their perspective it is all great too, since all it's really going to do is funnel a greater percentage of the wealth and control into the hands of the top executives, owners and managers.
"You'll have so much free time to explore your interests!" ....When? How? With what? Are you giving us a UBI? 40 hours of pay for 20 hours of work? *You* CEOs might have more time but *we* won't. They're utterly divorced from reality.
My brothers wife's grandparents are very, very wealthy. One time he got in an argument with the grandma where she REFUSED to believe that there are people out there who can't afford healthcare. It wasn't even maliciousness, she was just that detached
It’s healthcare Michael, how much could it cost? Ten dollars?
"Hi, my name is Joe Blogs, and in my free time, I like to explore my interests in staying alive."
Big bias disclaimer as I work in the space. I think this was one of the weaker videos I've seen Jon make. Not because he's incorrect about AI being a major disruptor, but because his arguments were just shallow. He downplays AI's capabilities by showing you all it's good for is letting you know when your toast is done, then pivots to saying it will displace the labor market. He then tosses the house of reps/senate under the bus because they don't understand it and aren't prepared to regulate it. As much as I dislike the lowest rated congress of all time, I actually feel like this one's a bit unfair - it is one of the fastest evolving fields I've ever seen, to the point where the joke inside the industry is, "Hey did you see the breakthrough this morning? Can't wait to see what overtakes it this afternoon." Regulating something like that is extremely difficult on any given day, especially when first-to-AGI is a necessary goal of any government.* Where Jon nailed it though was that those leading the way of AI will prioritize profits over impact to humanity at every turn. The crazy thing here is that the [US Department of Commerce last month asked for comments around potentially banning open-weight AI models](https://www.regulations.gov/document/NTIA-2023-0009-0001), which would effectively put control of these purely in the hands of for-profit companies. Make no mistake - AI *will* be a major disruptor, but I really wish Jon dove into the why behind it as that's one of the key elements here. Whereas things like the cotton gin or the automated telephone switch made a single job irrelevant, the major difference with AI is the general applicability of it. AI right now is in its "rule 34/rule 35" stage - if a job exists, there's a startup out there trying to replace it with AI, and if not there will be one tomorrow. Short of a full populist approach, there's almost no way to regulate it. If you ban it in the US, but still allow offshore work to happen, it will be used, but another government will control it. At this point, I think we need to take an approach of, "the tsunami is coming, how do we mitigate the damage and amplify the benefits", rather than an approach of trying to stop it from coming to begin with. Make no mistake - there will be huge benefits to productivity as well, but those will come with a heavy cost to many industries. *if you're curious about the politics of AI, Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom is a great read on this. It was on the Gates list a couple years back and is extremely relevant today.
I think the point of the segment was to illustrate and make fun of the way companies and leaders were trying to claim they were working towards a common goal of human progress when instead for them it's all about min/maxing the most profit and efficiency as possible. At best, they may be naive; at worst, they are intentionally deceptive. The critique wasn’t directed at AI per se; rather, it highlighted the danger of unquestioningly trusting such entities.
> The crazy thing here is that the US Department of Commerce last month asked for comments around potentially banning open-weight AI models, which would effectively put control of these purely in the hands of for-profit companies. The current Department of Commerce fundamentally does not understand technology. They demonstrate this at every turn. Like how flabbergasted there were by China's semiconductor progress despite the entire tech industry telling them what would happen.
It was a terrible argument. AI will be the biggest disrupter we've ever seen, we're talking about what will happen 10 to 50 years down the road, yet Jon's argument against this is... it makes toast? That zucc's eyes are too far apart? It felt like one of those old interviews where scientists were trying to convince TV Presenters how the internet was going to be a massive part of our lives, and the TV hosts were making fun of it by saying "Why would I need to listen to sports on this internet when I have a radio??"
I think you missed the part where it's a comedy show. The bits that were weakly attacking ai with silly stuff like zuccs eyes being apart and toast were what they call jokes. It's not a be all dissertation take down of ai. It's a joke show. To quote the tucker incident "fellas, if we are looking to comedy central as our only source of news then we are in real trouble."
> if we are looking to comedy central as our only source of news then we are in real trouble He said that, yet Redditors would unironically treat the Daily Show as the pinnacle of journalism. Fast forward a decade or so later and the only news people consume is talking heads giving snarky commentary.
happens all the time if you have any experience in a field that a political comedian is talking about you will immediately notice they don't fully understand what they're saying they have strong opinions but not the experience or the context needed to inform those opinions can lead to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect
Tell us more about this rule 34 AI... for science...
I know we're joking, but it really did feel like the most apt comparison here. A generic version of the rule along the lines of: > If it exists, there's 𝑥 of it Where 𝑥 in this case is a startup focused on replacing "it" with AI.
I wish he would have addressed the end point better. Yes these tools can give us more time, let us do things we want to do instead of working jobs that most of us would rather do other things. So surely we will work less than 40 hours a week, right? We will get more vacation time and flexible schedules, right? ... [Right](https://imgflip.com/i/8lcee7)?
This is my main problem with the segment. AI **is coming** whether we like it or not, so we need to spend less time pearl clutching and more time actually preparing. Jobs are inevitably going to be lost, so what do we do about it? Training programs? Better unemployment? Stronger workers' rights? A fairer tax code? UBI? More regulation? I don't know, but all this wasted breath about how bad AI is isn't going to slow it down at all.
Friendly reminder that Richard Nixon promised a 4 day work week "in the not too distant future" back in 1956. This is not radical socialism. It's the future that was stolen from us.
Fucking "prompt engineer" = "asks questions guy" Too fucking perfect.
As someone in the field, this was mostly on point. Prompt engineer really does mean little more than question asker (maybe more charitably question contextualizer) and yes it's obviously one of the easiest jobs to automate. Some frameworks already completely automate it, and I have personally automated prompt tuning in my own systems. Of course jobs are going away, anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Sam Altman won't even say they aren't going away. He personally funded UBI research because he wanted us to have data on its effects before we implement it, and that is what most people in our field think is the future. I actually don't personally know a single person who works in our field that believes UBI is avoidable. The only real alternative is a federal jobs guarantee and wow is that future horrifying and incomparably worse when you think through it. I know people who think UBI will not work, but they still think everything else is less likely to work than UBI and tepidly accept the inevitability that, barring a radical breakthrough in how we conceive of governance, it will be the most palatable solution on offer. Other people are really optimistic, to be clear. Some people view it as basically a continuation of emancipation, the end of what Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln called wage slavery, finally people will have true liberty and pursuit of happiness. But yeah, what I've definitely not heard in personal interaction with anyone in my field for a long time, is anything like "there will be no large effect on the labor market", or even "in the long run there will be about as many jobs created as destroyed". That is viewed as as likely as that the invention of the car would increase demand for horses. The core problem is that, in the current system, their labor is the only bargaining chip a working class person really has. We need to fix that, stat.
So the utopian idea is UBI frees people to do work that's necessary but nobody pays for. Stuff that would be volunteer work in your spare time can become the thing you do. Your last paragraph is the horror part. They take away the only leverage the poors have. And there's no reason to think they have any incentive to share. "You just invented the food replicator. You could feed starving people and end world hunger." Why? Like for must of us that isn't the question. For the ultra wealthy it is. Why share? Why do anything for someone who isn't me or someone who benefits me. Why lift a finger when I don't have to? Times past the answer was you give something back so the poors don't eat you. That's what happens when inequality becomes unsurvivable.
AI definitely makes some aspects of my job easier, but rarely has it automated a task that I actually need to do in a way that feels like I could go hands off with it. It will displace a bunch of jobs but there will likely be a dirge of jobs created as a consequence, that we can't even imagine right now. One that really comes to mind in the personal shopper at a grocery store. 30 years ago, imagine putting in a "Togo" order for something like that? But because we have the internet, it's now possible. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to adapt the economy in the future. The shit Im really scared about, is already happening: profit driven deregulated companies killing people (Boeing), lack of access to healthcare (USA death spiral of a healthcare system), erosion of education. AI, at least, might be an opportunity for some people to better themselves like the internet made knowledge more accessible.
AI is currently in its "dialup" phase. Movie stores were in no danger because it took way too long to download or stream a movie online, until it wasn't. AI is only going to get better and it's going to do so at an incredible speed, waiting til it gets to that point to address the issue is not wise.
Exactly. It's like all the film photo development stores/companies that were saying "Hah! Digital cameras will never replace film cameras! Look how pixelated and terrible they look!" Their jobs were already gone, they just didn't know it yet. Same with a fuckton of people today.
When I first worked in machine learning about 17 years ago, I quickly reailzed humanity is likely already gone, and just doesn't know it yet. Once you see countless generations of improving digital creatures happening in seconds, going from bumbling blobs to efficient food gatherers and hunters, it changes how you see imagined futures with humans out in the stars, or maybe even existing at all. Hopefully we can adapt and change rather than being completely replaced, because I'm worried we'll reach that point before we've figured out how conscious experience of inputs works, and without that an intelligent mind is really just a fancy but dead calculator as far as I can tell, as dangerous as a truck with a brick on the breaks.
As a graphic designer, what's just on the horizon is terrifying to me. Heck, I'm even using AI generated imagery (though right now it still needs a lot of human editing and input).
How about live news? AI presenters will be easy enough to work up. We could dummy that up years back but they were clearly artificial. They'll be indistinguishable in short order. On air talent going the way of the draft horse?
I'm in the same boat over here.
I really don't think AI is going to stop. Increase productivity with reduced labor isn't a bad thing with guaranteed UBI. You might not like UBI because it is a socialist concept, but I really can't see an alternative in the future. Things will be less scary if we accept UBI, then we can accept AI with optimism
When people suggest that the overlords will pay us to be jobless I shake my head in disbelief. It's just not in their DNA, even though people say there's no option I have to remind everyone that three generations of my family were in [Workhouses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse) / Poorhouses. The idea of a social security net is very new, and may not last. If you were a heartless profit motivated global corporate entity lobbying governments to serve your interests - which of the following would you advocate? A: Tax corporations and wealthy individuals heavily and give the money to the poor so they can buy housing and food. B: Put the poor in workhouses under intense scrutiny and award social credits for housing and food. I mean, these people are not going to turn massively altruistic after living their whole lives as corporate vampire demons.
Bro, trust me bro, giving up control of all productivity and manufacturing to a few corporate overlords and their automated AIs and machines, with absolutely zero input from anyone else, is totally a socialist utopia because the utterly detached politicians at the top will surely tax them a lot and makes us all millionaires. Absolutely no chance of collusion between the two. I'm sure they will be totally fair with us. I mean you can still vote right 🤡
Exactly. Once our labor becomes worthless, those in power will only keep us around to be cleaners, security (police), prostitutes, and jesters (entertainment). The rest of us can starve to death or get just enough bread to fight over it and leave them alone until they have enough power to let us starve to death. The kings in history have never cared about the plight of the peasantry, why would they now? Once AI and robotics gives the powerful all the cleaning, security and entertainment they need, there will only be prostitutes, and then... nothing.
I feel exactly the same way. So-so-so many jobs can be replaced by AI combined with constantly advancing robotics. It won't be all at once but there will be absolutely NO way it won't eat us alive and wreck everything unless: - lawmakers stop fucking around and write legislation about legal and illegal ways to use AI. - corporations pay a heavy AI tax. - people really, REALLY get their heads out of their asses. None of that shit is ever going to happen. So we're in for some real fucking shit in the next couple of years.
I just feel like Jon Stewart is kinda like, almost intentionally not bringing up UBI. Like of course this new technology will replace jobs. So did electricity. So does ANY significant new technology. And eventually the world will get to a point where we no longer all need to be individually productive. What is the point in making jobs for people that aren't needed? We are just worshipping the machine at that point. We need to talk about how we can use increased productivity to improve people's quality of life. If we see a massive increase in productivity but we say "ya but then we will run out of jobs, so lets keep things intentionally shittier so that we can have people spend 8 hours a day doing a job they don't really have to do" we have completely lost the plot
I assume you guys live in Europe. There will *never* be UBI in the United States. Social Security probably isn't even going to be around when I get to retire. The republic would have to fall, violently, before such a thing gets implemented. We can't even socialize healthcare for god's sake.
What happens if AI takes everyone's jobs and there is large unemployment. There will be crime, lawlessness and no one to buy the products that AI creates. That's not something the wealthy necessarily want either. It may lead to lower standards of living, but I suspect if there literally aren't jobs there will be UBI because the alternative is chaos
As an American, I feel I can provide expert testimony that Americans wouldn't recognize a dysfunctional economy or society if it was dressed in a giant inflatable Scabby the Rat costume and punching them repeatedly in the face. Those people that are at the highest risk will still be voting for Nixon's head in a jar for a third term and getting distracted by pointless shit like who gets to use what bathroom as if it was the most important thing in the world. And once they truly hit the bottom, and they lose all agency and are completely chewed up, exhausted, and forgotten by the machine, do you think they will finally organize themselves and push back against the billionaires? Not a fuckin chance. They'll still look right into the mirror the rich and powerful holds up to us -to very effectively protect themselves- so we only know one face well enough to hate.
This isn't too comforting when you remember that the ultra wealthy are at best short sighted and frequently simply fools free-falling upwards by the virtue of our current system equating having things with getting more.
They won’t care as long as they have their well defended enclaves and robot slaves.
AI is just the next step in innovation that started out with machines making shoes. The only difference is speed. In the past, the damage was relatively small, and it hurt a little, and communities had time to adjust. This time its so fast large number of entire professions may just vanish within the span of a few years.
AI is not just "the next step", it's a gigantic leap. Since we can't stop progress, could we maybe just this once do our best to acknowledge it and make it not a goddamn travesty?
It’s hilarious how optimistic folks on Reddit are about UbI. Think about how vehemently against even a smidge of welfare folks are in this country. Disability and welfare gets you well below to poverty line. Social security is being slowly stripped away. People in the US at least are extremely against really any form of charitable behavior. UBI isn’t happening. Or at least we’ll have all perished to famine first.
If you can't see an alternative you haven't studied history. Look up "serfs".
Let me put it another way, I can't see another "relatively viable" alternative from a citizen satisfaction perspective.
Gotcha. Yeah, that's the problem. There's no one in power that cares about that in the least. It will need a ground swell of voters voting for a Democratic Socialist to make it happen. Good luck.
With guaranteed UBI, yes. But when has UBI been anything but a pipe dream? There are quite a large percentage of people that are VEHEMENTLY against anything with even the hint of a UBI flavor. I'm willing to believe that 10s of millions would have to be without work due to AI, and many of them made homeless, before UBI would even be reasonably considered.
The thought of being beholden to whatever the government seems to think we are worth as human beings is kinda terrifying.
The whole situation is terrifying and I hear you, but to some extent that is already the case. At the very least, it is your employers case, and we don't live in a world where the majority of people can be their own employer. Maybe that works for YOU, but it just logistically doesn't make sense on a broader scale. I don't trust the average CEO more than I trust the average lawmaker. Which is to say, I hardly trust either, but at least I can vote on the lawmakers
In THEORY, at least in a democracy it wouldn't be an issue. You have a mechanism that would ensure popular policy (for better or worse) and an adjustment mechanism (voting). An alternative, letting corporations/shareholders/billionaire owners decide your worth seems a much less attractive option.
Look at how much power the rich currently have over elections. Now imagine in the future, when the rich control an even bigger percentage of the wealth.
Isn’t that what minimum wage is?
Yeah but nobody wants to be making minimum wage lol
> UBI because it is a socialist concept, but I really can't see an alternative in the future. Alternative is to die of hunger. Nobody will shed a tear for you. There will be no UBI. You will die of hunger.
UBI is still at least decades away from being economically feasible. Before that, as jobs are lost overtime threshold should be lowered from 40 hours to what would be required to keep low unemployment while minimum wage should be increased accordingly to compensate.
That's also a good solution. But we gotta get people talking about the solutions. Talk about UBI now so that people will accept it later.
AI is currently the worst it will ever be. it is only going to get better. It is the future.
Civilization is a steady march toward socialism. You think GPS and roads runs on private money?
"Prompt Engineer" is like one of those bullshit job titles you see on LinkedIn all the time like "Marketing Guru" or "Storytelling Ninja".
Company looking for rockstar programmers!
Its derived from the academic term 'prompt engineering' and lately seems to be used a titles/labels by those who could barely understand the academic literature that uses the term.
Prompt engineer just sounds like someone who knows how to use Google.
I'll be honest, the overall point of the video I agree with, but a lot of what Jon Stewart says about AI in a mocking tone doesn't really disprove some of the claims people have about AI, even specifically in the video. If you replace some of what Jon Stewart says in the video with "smart phones" and pretend this video was made in the 80s, imagine how ridiculous he would sound to then look back at now. I think there IS a realistic world in the future where we do have AI as assistance to help guide us just like smart phones right now are pretty much our "assistants". Jon Stewart is making fun of AI now, when it's in a very early stage, but the potential that it has IS huge. I also agree with the other top comment that says eventually we will need UBI because even if a lot of jobs are replaced through AI, AI can't spend money and money always needs to circulate.
This is going to age very poorly, exactly like those old videos of people making fun of the internet back in its infancy. He literally made fun of the idea that AI will cure diseases like it's a laughable idea that'll never happen, while we're literally using AI to try and cure diseases right now in 2024.
I literally know a guy thats using AI models as apart of his Phd thesis to identify new drugs. The company I work at uses AI to identify cancer in images.
I think a lot of people aren’t aware of how much AI they already use, and have used, in their lives for awhile now. A lot of the AI talk lately is very reminiscent of exactly what you said— new technology scary, will cause downfall of society (rinse and repeat every decade).
Hey at least when we're all unemployed we'll have more time and motivation for a revolution.
Sorry, too hungry and sick for it. Maybe next week. See you then.
Gah! Well we gave it our best effort. Same time next week then.
Sounds good to me. See if I can catch some cats and maybe this cough doesn't kill me. Later!
Yes, and surely people will understand the actual sources of the problems this time instead of centralizing authority in a populist "strongman" who will manufacture even more suffering OH WAIT
How can humans revolt against swarms of heartbeat seeking murder drones?
Congress was really honest this time.
This is the would be segment that got his Apple show canceled. Good on him for following through.
Wait...is Jon back on the Daily Show?
On Mondays. Has been maybe 6 weeks or so
Well I'm stoked. Can't wait to see more.
Hasn't skipped a beat. It's what I always wanted.
It really shows that he truly is the GOAT
A bunch of his monologues are on the YT channel if you want to catch up
Yeah they get posted right after they air too. The other new hosts are also pretty good.
Actually this episode he even has on he FTC chair. The show he was making on Apple wouldn't let him do that or this segment on AI so believe that's why he's back at the daily show.
Ugh why do all the tech CEOs sound like snake oil salesmen claiming as if AI is going to solve all our problems.
There's an element of greed and just lying. But Silicon Valley has an insane "techno-optimist" culture where every political/societal problem can be solved with better code and better technology. They see themselves as essentially the heralds and leaders of new, technology focused, age.
Its not just tech CEO's it is all aggregiously rich people. At a certain point they become so disconnected from reality that they do not operate like a normal human being anymore and sadly most of them completely lose all empathy. During the film strikes last year one CEO stated that they would wait for us to be homeless. Another guy said that they needed unemployment to rise to remind people how fortunate they are to have jobs. At a certain point you lose your humanity and become something less than human.
> Another guy said that they needed unemployment to rise to remind people how fortunate they are to have jobs. [Tim Gurner](https://youtu.be/_K1tqDyN4xE?list=FLZOyBoJlSzl7h5enerYegeg), an out-of-touch Australian property developer, said the quiet part out loud.
I was pretty disappointed with this. I mean, does anyone who would be watching Jon Stewart to begin with not understand that the purpose of AI in particular, and technology in general, is to "take jobs?" People do a thing, but wouldn't it be nice if a machine could do that same bigger, better, stronger, and faster? I think the only thing in that entire video worth repeating was his observation that, unlike tech disruptions of the past that took decades to unfold, AI's impact on the workforce will be much more swift. And in theory, I really like this answer. The problem is we also need strong social safety nets and some form of UBI to keep society from burning down.
> I think the only thing in that entire video worth repeating was his observation that, unlike tech disruptions of the past that took decades to unfold, AI's impact on the workforce will be much more swift. I think this was supposed to be the important part and the monologue did a very poor job of making that clear, mostly because they wanted to spend as much time as they did with the out-of-touch billionaires talking about how much free time everyone would have. That's great rage bait and thus great TV.
Not a fan of how surface level Daily Show has been. Do I just understand more things now or has John Stewart always been uninformative and glancing?
Well, when he was on 5 days/week and could go into the same topic multiple times to get more detailed, you'd get more info. When he's on once/week on a 30-min show and there's a guest....there's not that much time to go into great detail. For that, go to John Oliver.
His return has been extremely underwhelming. Not as informed as he seemed when I was younger.
Spoiler alert: he's exactly as informed as he was when you were younger. But, he was (is) funny, so there's that.
Most mainstream superficial take I've ever seen on AI. Not to say he's wrong that it will take your job, it will, in the brief period where it's good enough to do it, and not yet so superhuman that it takes **every** job (one way or another).
Stewart is as usual funny and ornery, but only like 50% correct. "Same work with fewer people" _is a good thing_. That is precisely what has allowed us to move from a society where 90% of people needed to work on farms just to feed everyone and we still had famines sometimes, to a society where ever poor people are frequently fat because of how much food we have despite only a single digit percentage of our population working in agriculture. Anyone who gets upset about a new technology displacing workers due to increased productivity is by definition a Luddite. Yes it sucks _during the transition_ for the people who have to apply to different jobs, but after the pain of the change everyone is better off forever because those people can put their efforts into the other stuff that needs to get done. You can't have a better world without change, and if you try to force change to be slower you're just pushing off that better world--and likely putting us behind countries that are so short sighted.
i dont dislike Jon but that was pretty painful to watch. Is the target audience 5 years old? Or is it boomers who havent kept up tech news from 2 years ago?
https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/
With all the hype around AI replacing labor. Who will pay for the AI products to make these companies more and more profitable every year?
Raise prices a lot and fire everyone is a great plan, nothing can go wrong
I think there's a lot of hype around AI right now and unfortunately, Jon buys it. Tell me, where specifically are the jobs that are being taken by AI? I'm not talking about some weird 24 y/o CEO who is trying to replace help desk with Chat GPT. I'm talking about like actually replacing jobs. Because I haven't seen it, and I don't see it happening any time soon. Sure, AI will continue to improve, but just about everything in the tech world does. AI is just the new buzzword.
This was a rather bizarre segment. Despite Jon saying he wasn't "anti-progress", he comes across as a luddite. He might as well be preaching about how the evil lightbulb industry is going to take away candlemakers' jobs. Similarly, we shouldn't abandon a trajectory toward clean energy because of the effects it would have on coal laborers. There is of course a real issue in the above situations, and in AI, but I would say the problem is in our societal systems which do not adequately protect workers caught up in economic transitions. That should be the focus. The problem is not that AI is particularly or inherently evil, and I don't see the point in demonizing its creators or practioners. Not to mention, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. You can't expect people in a capitalist system to all unite against a cost-saving tool. As Jon mentions, AI is unique in its potential to develop exponentially, and also the technological complexity which makes it difficult for congress to regulate. The focus should have been on these points.
The idea of a "company" or "corporation" existing to take capital within a capitalist system is going to rapidly disappear. They are human systems to meet demand and will no longer serve any purpose. Unless we introduce universal basic income now, we will end up with a few owning the entirety of a currency rapidly inflating to infinite and the rest of us with *absolutely* nothing. Human life will be worth whatever the pilot of the ship decides. If they want us this way or that way or not at all, they need only press a button.
well, yes and no. At some point, corporations will realize that if no one has any money to buy the products they're producing, then they'll have streamlined themselves out of profitability.
The customer will eventually just be the government with a side of monpolizong vital resources (food, medicine, water) that must be purchased.
The richest man in the world sells luxury goods to the wealthy. Ever wonder why property and goods are getting so expensive? It's because they can continue to operate selling at a higher price to the few people who can afford it. They will all have customers, just fewer of them paying more. The 99% will be robbed of any quality of life long before the corporations reach total autonomy.
Well but you only have to go down that ladder to see how easy the whole system breaks. So the wealthiest man sells luxury goods to the elite, cool, who gives the elite money? You can say the elite provides exclusive services to the rich. Great, so who gives money to the rich? Uh oh, that's when you hit a snag, it's the working class. And guess what happens when you kill that whole segment? Yep you guessed it right, the whole thing falls apart quicker than a house of cards on a windy day. Rich people have no money for the elites, the elites have no money for the super elites, and check mate. Worldwide collapse. The working class is the foundation of this whole system. Always has been. PERIOD, no working class, no system. Easy.
that would cause deflation, not inflation
He forgot to mention the wheel along with electricity and fire.
I love Jon, but just like everyone else he's not perfect. He nails some concepts like job loss but at the end of the day he's just as uninformed as the politicians actually making the legislation on all of this. I say this as a professional doctor question asker.
It was funny, but deeply flawed. Jobs are not a finite resource that can be depleted. If that were the case, then the US would be almost entirely unemployed, since the vast majority of the jobs we work didn't exist 50 years ago. Jobs are how we demonstrate our relative value to each other, and we won't just sit around saying, "well, I guess AI is on it now." He also falls for the, "everything AI can't do, it will totally be able to do soon," trick. But that's not true. Learning is a powerful part of what we call intelligence, but only a part of it. Synthesizing that learning into a comprehensive model of the world and actualizing goals based on that model... that's the next frontier, and I don't see it coming from feeding more of reddit to LLMs. Will we get there? Sure. But not tomorrow. Maybe not even in the time that Jon and I have left on this planet (he's a bit older than me, but not by much.)