Yet another Hacker News

32 points alphabetatango 2 hours ago 21 comments

jaggederest 1 hour ago | parent

My read, but the effective policies are infeasible, and the feasible policies are largely business as usual. Pretty much precisely as expected, honestly. I struggle to see how anything like this is going to be implemented without business as usual changing in ways that the current system is extremely resistant to.

hn_throwaway_99 50 minutes ago | parent

I thought this was a good read with good data analysis, but at the end of the day none of this matters if the political and democratic systems collapse. If there is broad displacement by AI, I find it really difficult to believe folks will sit down and have a rational discussion about pros and cons of various policies, and it's nearly impossible to predict what will happen. I for one am fairly surprised that what I think is the valid anger among the US working class was successfully channeled into a cult around a grifter and huckster whose vast majority of policies are most detrimental to his biggest supporters.

pixl97 48 minutes ago | parent

>I for one am fairly surprised that what I think is the valid anger among the US working

While surprising it should be too surprising. 1930-1945 was another example of this happening.

dyauspitr 58 minutes ago | parent

Though AGI isn’t here yet (and in my opinion will only be marginally useful until we have physical AGI), we need to speedrun the painful bits so we can get to the other side in one generation. We need to bear the brunt of it and be the sacrificial generation.

harimau777 55 minutes ago | parent

I think that there are a lot of people who would be unwilling to sacrifice their life.

pixl97 49 minutes ago | parent

Looking back at the beginning of the 1900s and now there are a lot of meta level parallels. Too much change is happening too quickly for societies to realistically adapt. This leaves a lot of room for greedy agents to gather other power seeking agents to further destabilize the situation for their own gain. The outcome of things like this is almost always war. Problem is once war starts it tends to spiral out of control and the body counts increase rapidly.

ProfessorLayton 46 minutes ago | parent

>We need to bear the brunt of it and be the sacrificial generation.

Who is "We" here?

I'll take a guess: Gen Z, and Gen A.

Gen Z because they went through covid during college, and now this AI boom that's completely wreaked the entry level job market.

Gen A is looking increasingly grim, unfortunately. If any of you know any school teachers, you'd know how disheartening it is to try and teach someone that has a homework and entertainment machine in their pocket at all times.

Millenials (My generation) went through everything Gen Z has and more ('08), but there was at least a few years of relative normalcy growing up. I don't know what's next, but I'm not very excited about it.

/rant

breezybottom 32 minutes ago | parent

As always, named "generations" are completely arbitrary and meaningless. They're made up by marketers to sell products.

foota 26 minutes ago | parent

A generation is a time that people were born between and useful because it embodies much of the cultural context that people share.

breezybottom 11 minutes ago | parent

No, it doesn't. The baby boomers represented an actual demographic change, that's why they're tracked by the Census Bureau. Everything since then is marketing and astrology.

AIiscoming 2 minutes ago | parent

you are just nitpicking.

People get used to understand what generation 'name' they got from society, thinktanks and co and its not that hard to know what the younger generations are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_social_gene...

Astrology is just garbage.

rvz 7 minutes ago | parent

Correct. It is another way to divide people again, just like people who are pro-AI vs anti-AI.

Do not fall for it.

dyauspitr 30 minutes ago | parent

Probably late millennials, early gen Z

nicebyte 45 minutes ago | parent

"need to"? why?

cdrnsf 37 minutes ago | parent

There's no reason we need to and there's every reason to believe that the people and companies foisting this technology on society will accrue the benefits and dump the fallout on everyone else.

312iuz 50 minutes ago | parent

I'd rather read an analysis from the World's Socialist Website than from the perpetrators.

What are your concrete plans now for the 30,000 Oracle employees that have been fired because Larry got overly ambitious with AI?

arbirk 5 minutes ago | parent

Embodied robots is the most significant threat imo. Capital can be taxed but for now we have few general policy frameworks for the "who gets to walk and drive on the street" question

SoftTalker 4 minutes ago | parent

> Yet in the short term, significant transformations have often also produced lower wages for many, hollowed out regional economies, and deepened inequality.

"Short term" being rather loosely used? Most industrial regions have never recovered. Look at Gary Indiana, Detroit and surrounding towns, other regions that were dependant on manufacturing or mining. Most have been stagnating for decades; few have found a path back to thriving economically.