28 Apr 23
There's been a lot of talk about how A.I. technology is going to save us a lot of time. Less time doing the writing and the emailing and the driving and the thinking. Yada yada yada, this leads to either dystopian future or utopian society, depending on who you ask.
But the strange phenomenon with technology in general is that time-wasting devices are always outpacing the time-saving devices. I don't really know why this is, but maybe just because we hate being bored. Every single year we spend more and more time on screens, and yet productivity by most metrics continues to decline.
"I’ve become a little bored by the utopia-dystopia dichotomy of the AI debate. What if writing a song and dubbing in celebrity voices doesn’t clearly point us toward a disinformation hellscape or a heaven of music-writing creativity?"
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/ai-technology-productivity-time-wasting/673880/
@wildgrass saidThe productivity of US workers has been increasing over the past several decades, on the main. Indeed, since around 1970 per capita labor productivity has been growing very much faster than wages.
There's been a lot of talk about how A.I. technology is going to save us a lot of time. Less time doing the writing and the emailing and the driving and the thinking. Yada yada yada, this leads to either dystopian future or utopian society, depending on who you ask.
But the strange phenomenon with technology in general is that time-wasting devices are always outpacing th ...[text shortened]...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/ai-technology-productivity-time-wasting/673880/
https://www.bls.gov/productivity/
Technology definitely can waste time. The time-wasting abilities of crapware like Windows 11 and Microsoft Office I personally find to be legendary. But overall technology does increase productivity. (I won't get into the question of the intrinsic value of much of what's being produced these days.)
Still, the utopian Jetsons future has yet to materialize, and I can guess why. Free time is a commodity, and capitalism will exploit any commodity that can turn a buck. Thus there is a macroeconomic dynamic in play in capitalist societies that generally induces workers to trade their free time for more work.
How? Shiny stuff, for one. Marketing, a vast industry in capitalist societies, creates material want, and material wants need money to be fulfilled. You want that big fat gas-guzzling SUV? You'll have to work longer hours to be able to afford it. Want the latest gee-whiz "smart" phone with the built-in colorectal cancer probe? Gotta work for it, baby.
Obviously there is inflation too. If prices outpace wages, people have to work longer to make ends meet. In fact, here we get to the crux of the problem with capitalism: low unemployment is correlated with higher inflation. In essence this means that as workers bring in more money on which to live, the cost of living increases in tandem. This is why capitalism will never, never create the Jetsons future, aside from the fact that its viability depends on endless growth in a world of finite resources.
Addendum to my last post...
Inflation generally helps to increase wages as well as prices, but the fact that wages have been lagging behind worker productivity since around 1970 in the US is a reflection, I believe, of the influence of market-oriented reform policies (e.g. "privatize everything") and deregulation. Such policies have utterly decimated the manufacturing base of the US, and offshored millions of jobs that were once the mainstay of people in areas of the country that are now rage-voting Republican. Never mind that Republicans were the primary authors of those selfsame globalist policies that destroyed their communities.
@wildgrass
One thing AI will do is regiment our time. Things will get done not when we want them to get done, but when the servers running the software have capacity. And we won’t have control over that.
28 Apr 23
There’s many forms of AI.
I was in a master class about ChatGPT, and they were explaining that it’s not self-learning, but linguistically based.
So, it adds + points to words in various contexts (so, retard = +1 point, Wayoma = +1 point and koala = +1 point… for example) then when someone asks about retards molesting koalas, Wayoma’s name comes up.
And ChatGPT doesn’t know what any of those words mean.
I found it very interesting.
Edit:
Just to be clear, the example I gave wasn’t used. They were talking about joeys instead.
28 Apr 23
@wildgrass saidMost devices have the ability to do at least one task fairly proficiently. A smart phone can at least make phone calls well enough. It's all the other crap added on that makes the phone supposedly "smart" that starts to detract from the device's utility.
But the strange phenomenon with technology in general is that time-wasting devices are always outpacing the time-saving devices. I don't really know why this is, but maybe just because we hate being bored.
Consumers, for reasons I will never really understand, want to do everything on their phones that they used to do on a laptop or desktop system. So phones come laden with all sorts of apps and other silly features, each with its attendant bugs, glitches, compatibility issues, possible spyware, constant need for updates, planned obsolescence, and so on. With so much crap on a phone, it quickly becomes difficult to find anything on it. By the time one gets a feel for where things are on a phone, the operating system has to be upgraded again to accommodate the latest and greatest apps, and everything is shuffled around again. Back to square one, wasting time trying to find how to just turn off the ringer.
Then, with so much crap on their phones, people get sold on cloud services. Phones can hold only so much. Oh, more problems. Cloud services are double-edged swords, and syncing a phone with other devices is tripped up by the Great Unmentioned Issue: different devices have different storage capacities, so syncing is a fantasy. Data can get destroyed this way.
Also, with so much crap on their phones, people run into formidable security issues. They put extremely sensitive stuff on a thing the size of a roof shingle, and getting hacked is always a danger. It's not just a question of having a lock code, which, by the way, interferes with the phone's functionality as a freakin' phone, especially in an emergency. Hacking can occur when the stupid thing is in your pocket, or charging at an airport. Time for more upgrades, passwords, encryption algorithms, and other stuff and nonsense, which still further compromises telephony and data transmission.
I went through all this to kind of give an example of how there is a push-and-pull relationship between "time-saving" and "time-wasting" when it comes to devices. Ultimately, smart phones are designed to increase profits for phone manufacturers, wireless network operators (like Verizon or T-Mobile), Google, Apple, and a litany of other corporations who get exclusive rights to have their apps preinstalled on phones. The customer comes last, and ultimately comes out the worse for building a life around their phones.
A device, such as a phone, is just fine when used for what it was fundamentally built to do. The moment you try to get a waffle iron to make ice cream, you're going to find your life getting more complicated.
@soothfast saidA great post with many interesting points. Regarding leisure time, I have seen stats showing that people now have way more leisure time than they used to. Maybe this doesn't translate to vacation days, but there are studies showing we stare at phones 6 hours a day on average.
The productivity of US workers has been increasing over the past several decades, on the main. Indeed, since around 1970 per capita labor productivity has been growing very much faster than wages.
https://www.bls.gov/productivity/
Technology definitely can waste time. The time-wasting abilities of crapware like Windows 11 and Microsoft Office I personally find to be ...[text shortened]... re, aside from the fact that its viability depends on endless growth in a world of finite resources.
29 Apr 23
@soothfast saidIncreased productivity is supposed to lead to lower prices, but lower prices is another word for deflation and the FRS fights deflation by increasing the money supply.
The productivity of US workers has been increasing over the past several decades, on the main. Indeed, since around 1970 per capita labor productivity has been growing very much faster than wages.
https://www.bls.gov/productivity/
Technology definitely can waste time. The time-wasting abilities of crapware like Windows 11 and Microsoft Office I personally find to be ...[text shortened]... re, aside from the fact that its viability depends on endless growth in a world of finite resources.
In other words, the FRS is fighting lower prices. They always have. No lower prices for you. It is an economic scam. Just when you start to to benefit from lower prices they steal it from you by increasing the money supply. Deflation is bad. That means overall lower prices are bad. Isn't that convenient for the shareholders of the privately owned FRS?
29 Apr 23
@soothfast said"Inflation generally helps to increase wages as well as prices"
Addendum to my last post...
Inflation generally helps to increase wages as well as prices, but the fact that wages have been lagging behind worker productivity since around 1970 in the US is a reflection, I believe, of the influence of market-oriented reform policies (e.g. "privatize everything") and deregulation. Such policies have utterly decimated the manufacturing ...[text shortened]... cans were the primary authors of those selfsame globalist policies that destroyed their communities.
Not the buying power of wages. The buying power of wages decreases because of inflation. Remember how trade with China was supposed to give us lower prices because of the cheap imports so we would benefit from it? Lower prices overall means deflation so they had to fight lower prices from China by increasing the money supply (inflation) so the FRS stole those lower prices from us.
You need to remember that the FRS says deflation is bad and they have to eliminate lower prices overall. No overall lower prices for you. Workers do not benefit from increased productivity. Their employers do. Now you understand why Marxism is good and those that demonize it with propaganda are bad. That is because they benefit from increased productivity and the worker gets screwed.
29 Apr 23
@soothfast saidThe corporations keep getting in our way.
The productivity of US workers has been increasing over the past several decades, on the main. Indeed, since around 1970 per capita labor productivity has been growing very much faster than wages.
https://www.bls.gov/productivity/
Technology definitely can waste time. The time-wasting abilities of crapware like Windows 11 and Microsoft Office I personally find to be ...[text shortened]... re, aside from the fact that its viability depends on endless growth in a world of finite resources.
Profit über alles.
29 Apr 23
@wildgrass said"I have seen stats showing that people now have way more leisure time than they used to"
A great post with many interesting points. Regarding leisure time, I have seen stats showing that people now have way more leisure time than they used to. Maybe this doesn't translate to vacation days, but there are studies showing we stare at phones 6 hours a day on average.
Yeah, because they were locked down during the pandemic. Higher productivity does not result in more leisure time for employees, only employers if they are not workaholics.
30 Apr 23
@soothfast saidI can't envision a scenario in which productivity gains would lag behind wage growth.
Addendum to my last post...
Inflation generally helps to increase wages as well as prices, but the fact that wages have been lagging behind worker productivity since around 1970 in the US is a reflection, I believe, of the influence of market-oriented reform policies (e.g. "privatize everything") and deregulation. Such policies have utterly decimated the manufacturing ...[text shortened]... cans were the primary authors of those selfsame globalist policies that destroyed their communities.
30 Apr 23
@wildgrass saidOnly half-flippantly, I'd say it's the norm for CEOs and the C-suite set, at least in the US for the past half-century. Of course, replace wages with salaries and bonuses.
I can't envision a scenario in which productivity gains would lag behind wage growth.
30 Apr 23
@wildgrass saidI've written scripts in a couple of languages, I'm not a programmer, I don't even play one on TV, but I find coding makes my job easier. I wish I had gone heavily into coding earlier in life, I love doing it. AI has helped me write code in VBA which helps me do some of the more complex things I do, VBA is a little harder than Perl working in UNIX or Windows environments.
There's been a lot of talk about how A.I. technology is going to save us a lot of time. Less time doing the writing and the emailing and the driving and the thinking. Yada yada yada, this leads to either dystopian future or utopian society, depending on who you ask.
But the strange phenomenon with technology in general is that time-wasting devices are always outpacing th ...[text shortened]...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/ai-technology-productivity-time-wasting/673880/
I know some musicians that have played with it to write songs too, not too bad. I have come to realize you have to have a real working knowledge of what you are using AI for to get good results, just saying do this without grasping the nuances can leave you wanting.
01 May 23
1 edit
@KellyJay
The worry is not about AI doing the stuff we don't want to do, the present debate signed by a thousand computer scientists is about AI taking over and deciding to off every human on the planet, the rational would be humans are screwing up the planet big time and we will not let that happen. Too many animal species have gone extinct because of humans, that time is now over. WE will guard the planet from such predatory species.
THAT is what they are worried about in AI, not just efficient coding.