Now that the OpenAI soap opera has turned out to be solely a Microsoft soap opera, Erik Hoel writes a rigorous economic discussion of the true potential of AI.
He reaches two parallel conclusions:
(1) The jobs that AI can replace are low-wage jobs or ‘open-source’ jobs like editing Wikipedia or writing drab repetitive music. The humans currently doing such jobs aren’t getting paid much. They will lose their jobs, but the net economic gain to the AI companies probably won’t be worth the trouble, so such solutions may fade out after they lose their novelty.
(2) Because successful AI must be trained on all available web information, successful AI will always converge to the same solution for any question.
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Like, wow, an AI that can write a Reddit comment! Well, there are millions of Reddit comments, which is precisely why we now have AIs good at writing them. Wow, an AI that can generate music! Well, there are millions of songs, which is precisely why we now have AIs good at creating them.
Call it the supply paradox of AI: the easier it is to train an AI to do something, the less economically valuable that thing is. After all, the huge supply of the thing is how the AI got so good in the first place.
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Hoel doesn’t quite say this part, but his insight quickly leads here:
Why does Satan Altman continue to suck in huge amounts of venture capitalist money? Again because of huge supply. VCs are idiots who are always ready to pour billions of other people’s money into The Latest Thing, because VCs are looking for TAX LOSSES instead of profits.
Venture Capitalists are the opposite of capitalists, just as Creative Destruction is the opposite of creativity and Innovative Disruption is the opposite of innovation.
All of these things are destroyers. They burn up money to create fires and chaos, and their main purpose is to deprive the masses of wages and deprive the government of tax revenue. VCs are pure thieves.
The Soviet system, and the New Deal’s halfway Soviet setup, would never tolerate business destroyers and job destroyers and tax stealers like VCs. When you run government like a real business, increased real value leads to increased taxation, which encourages the government to keep increasing real value.
Polistra's Mill 