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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   2758 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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automation of manual labour tasks is certainly feasible (and has been achieved in many cases) and more such jobs in these domains will eventually become obsolete once technological advances make the cost of doing so lower than employing human labour

Way back when, before I joined this place but was already keeping an eye on the rat-sphere, one of the AI Apocalypse scenarios thrown around was "technological unemployment", and one of the counter-arguments to it, other than "it's just a hype-fad" was "comparative advantage". Already at that time the Rats have discredited themselves as careful thinkers in my eyes, because they waved it away with the magic of recursive improvement. A careful thinker would look at where the logic of comparative advantage leads, and it's the scenario I outlined. You see it's not enough that we eventually figure out robotic/AI alternatives to manual labor, and it's not even enough that they are strictly superior to human labor in every way, they have to be superior to devoting the same AI resources to something else while having humans dig the fucking hole.

But back to your point, yeah the progress in AI is pretty wild, and people predicting that nothing will come out of it were clearly wrong. At the same time I'm having trouble saying anything meaningful about it, or where it will end up going, which is why I kind of went off topic relative to your original post.

You see it's not enough that we eventually figure out robotic/AI alternatives to manual labor, and it's not even enough that they are strictly superior to human labor in every way, they have to be superior to devoting the same AI resources to something else while having humans dig the fucking hole.

And yet that's not how mining works in any country but the shittiest on earth, so it's not clear to me why the practice would suddenly spread.

Yes it does. People who have talents in more lucrative fields than mining, tend to go those fields, even if they are better than the average miner.

"not how it works" applies to your claims that mining will consist of "handing someone a pickaxe, and feeding them insects".

You haven't heard of "artisenal mining"? Or are you objecting to the "feeding the bugs" part?

I'm saying that there's a reason artisanal mining is limited to the worst places in the world, and it's not because the Congolese have a comparative advantage in digging holes.

and it's not because the Congolese have a comparative advantage in digging holes.

The hell it's not! If they didn't have a comparative advantage there, they wouldn't be able to sell their cobalt.

Nevertheless, there's comparatively few resources produced by artisanal mining. Your argument would suggest that all resources should be mined artisanally, since apparently a guy with a shovel is comparatively better at mining than highly industrialized mining operations.

I'm not sure how that's implied. My point was addressing the idea of AI causing technological unemployment, or the more optimistic scenario of AI freeing us to do commit to higher intellectual pursuits. I've made no claim about the ratios of resources mined with manual human labor vs automated AI labor.

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