| ▲ | andrewmutz 4 hours ago |
| If you want to understand the likely capabilities of AI technology in the future, listen to software engineers like this guy. If you want to understand the impact of AI technology on the economy, don't listen to software engineers, listen to economists. |
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| ▲ | smallmancontrov 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Just remember that the US purged left-leaning economists during the cold war and the field re-grew under intense think-tank incentives towards the economic right, so if you think labor/capital dynamics might be important to the AI revolution you really ought to balance your "random" sampling of US economists with some Piketty (Atkinson, Stiglitz, Zucman -- but in an era where reading even one book is considered a herculean feat of focus, "Capital in the Twenty First Century" by Piketty is the canonical pick). |
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| ▲ | pirate787 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Piketty is just a marxist flailing around, backfilling data to fit his belief that communism is the solution for every problem. He's been spectacularly wrong in his predictions so far, for example he said Milei would be "devastating" for Argentina and the opposite is the case. | | |
| ▲ | wyre an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe critique his ideas instead of his predictions. Piketty is an economist, not a future-teller. | |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Let's see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty > A visit to the Soviet Union in 1991 was enough to make him a firm "believe[r] in capitalism, private property and the market" Ok, that's what he says, but what does he want? Does he want to eliminate social classes (communism)? Eliminate private ownership of the means of production (socialism)? > His 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, relies on economic data going back 250 years to show that an ever-rising concentration of wealth is not self-correcting. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a progressive global tax on wealth. No, looks like he just wants taxes. Case closed: this is instance #54367 of an economic conservative pretending that it's marxism to tax a penny from a billionaire. And you call yourself "pirate"? Sigh. |
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| ▲ | hurtigioll 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Taleb joke: junior trader for a bank looses $10 mil. boss asks him what happened. trader says he sold oil because bank economist said oil price will go down. boss fires him. junior asks how could he become a good trader if he's fired on the first losing trade. boss says "no, you idiot, I didn't fire you because you made a losing trade, I fired you because you listened to our economist" |
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| ▲ | koe123 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I come from a research background, and transitioned to software later. There is an interesting tendency of software engineers to believe they have skills outside of their skillset. Relevant here: the would we trust a Software engineer, which in general don’t always obtain the mathematical foundation to understand deep learning in the first place, on the trajectory of AI? |
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| ▲ | drtz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > would we trust a Software engineer, which in general don’t always obtain the mathematical foundation to understand deep learning in the first place, on the trajectory of AI? Valid point, but it suggests a mathematician who understands the math behind AI is more capable of grasping its trajectory, which is probably not the case. People who are deep in the inner workings of this stuff day in and day out are the only ones who have a chance at having any real insight. | |
| ▲ | PaulHoule 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Part of my software engineering skillset is "going native" with subject matter experts to be able to get more out out of them and even work around the lack of sufficient SME on a project. I see software development as part of a broader science, technology and even ideology of simulation. But I came from a research background too. |
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| ▲ | 827a an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you want to understand the impact of AI technology on the economy, don't listen to software engineers, in fact, don't listen to anyone, no one was able to predict what the economy was going to do pre-AI, no one has any clue what's going on. |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | david_shi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." |
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| ▲ | Animats an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I expected saturation to happen, having been working on the Internet since the early 1980s. I did not see the dot-com boom coming, with it becoming a necessity for all companies, down to the dry cleaner level, to have a web presence.
That was pushed over the top by hype and overfunding before it was cost effective. Like Uber and Space-X. | |
| ▲ | Jtarii 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Krugman is a bitch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiJXALBX3KM |
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| ▲ | forgetfreeman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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