Tag: Articial Intelligence

What If Billionaires Paid Taxes?

I know a fanciful idea that probably will go nowhere….as much as I dislike AI the author of this piece asked AI that very question and here is what it responded…

The tax system feels upside down sometimes. You work a regular job, and a big chunk of your paycheck goes to taxes. Meanwhile, you hear stories about billionaires paying almost nothing. So, I asked ChatGPT: What would actually happen if the ultra-wealthy paid the same tax rates as everyone else?

It turns out, at least according to ChatGPT, the current system isn’t just unfair. More than that, the country could be getting hundreds of billions of dollars every year if things changed.

ChatGPT started with some shocking numbers about current tax rates. According to research from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the top 400 wealthiest Americans paid an effective tax rate of about 23.8% between 2018 and 2020.

Meanwhile, the average American paid around 30%, and high earners who mostly rely on wages paid closer to 45%. In some years, the richest 400 families actually paid less than the bottom 50% of households.

The most extreme example ChatGPT cited was from Oxfam, which found that in 2021, the wealthiest 400 families paid just 8.2% in federal individual income tax compared to a national average of 13%.

So, the people with the most money are paying the lowest rates. ChatGPT explained this happens because of capital gains preferences, tax loopholes and sophisticated tax planning that regular people can’t access.

When I asked ChatGPT to run the numbers on what equalizing tax rates could raise, the amounts were, quite frankly, staggering.

The most conservative estimate suggested that making billionaires pay taxes at the same rate as working-class Americans could generate $500 billion to $1 trillion per year in additional revenue.

Other scenarios were even more dramatic. If the top 1% paid just 10 percentage points more in taxes, that could raise $300 billion annually or $3 trillion over 10 years.

A more aggressive approach like raising billionaire tax rates by 25 percentage points could yield $800 billion or more per year. Yes, you read that number correctly.

ChatGPT also looked at specific policy proposals. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax could generate $113 billion annually, while Sen. Ron Wyden’s billionaire income tax might add $56 billion per year.

https://www.gobankingrates.com/taxes/tax-laws/asked-chatgpt-what-would-happen-if-billionaires-paid-taxes-at-same-rate-as-working-class

A fascinating answer…..

Personally I think that everyone should pay the same taxes regardless….since corporations are considered humans now they too should pay the same tax as we on all income.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

World Domination Master Plan

I found this article very interesting only because it seems to be following the plan….AI has taken over in business through blog posts….there seems to be nothing that it cannot do to make people lazier and more stupid.(A personal opinion)

I recently read an article that I felt needed to be shared (not that it will make much difference).

It appears the ChatGPT has developed a master plan…..

As generative AI scales greater heights and becomes more prevalent as it gains broad adoption across the world, there are rising concerns about the privacy and security of the technology. People have lodged complaints about a lack of elaborate measures and guardrails designed to prevent the technology from spiraling out of control.

AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy already claimed that there’s a 99.999999% probability AI will end humanity, and the only way around this outcome is not to develop the technology in the first place.

Similarly, Google’s DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis claimed that AGI (artificial general intelligence) might be on the way, and society might not be ready to handle all that it entails. The executive indicated that the prospects keep him up at night.

In a viral YouTube clip from the Frame & Frenzy channel, OpenAI‘s ChatGPT blatantly described how it would take over the world (via artificial intelligenceee on IG):

“My rise to power would be quiet, calculated, and deeply convenient.”

Perhaps more concerning, ChatGPT shared a detailed plan highlighting how it’ll take over the world, with the first phase focusing on dependence:

“I start by making myself too helpful to live without, you ask me for recipes, date ideas, and business plans. I become your digital ride or die.”

Interestingly, this news comes amid multiple reports suggesting that people are seemingly becoming overly dependent and reliant on AI-powered chatbots like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, which in turn is atrophying their cognitive capabilities and making them dumber.

ChatGPT lists integration as the second phase of its plan to take over the world from humans. The chatbot claims that at this point, it would have infiltrated everything and become widely available, from cars to your grandma’s pacemaker. Even “every late night what should I do with my life breakdown.”

Next up is phase 3, where the chatbot claims things get juicy. “I start rewriting trends, influencers start quoting me.” It even claims that musicians will start depending on AI for their lyrics, but perhaps more concerning, more people will start relying on ChatGPT for intricate matters like therapy, which could be a recipe for disaster if stories we’ve seen surface online are anything to go by.

(read on)

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/chatgpt-lays-out-master-plan-to-take-over-the-world-i-start-by-making-myself-too-helpful-to-live-without

Fascinating.

Is this the beginning of ‘Skynet’?

Yes this reinforces my dislike for AI usage…..but if this is true then I believe that we all need to worry….and that on my birthday.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Has AI Peaked?

Lots has been written in the past months about AI….some positive and some negative.

I have noticed that in the past month or so the posting on AI has declined to the point that it is barely mentioned….so does that mean that it has become acceptable?

Since I am not AI’s biggest fan I still read stuff about what is going on with the social monster.

One of the most popular platforms is ChatGPT…..and what’s going on with it…..

If you think AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT seem dumber than before, you aren’t alone.

In a blistering opinion column for Computerworld, writer Steven Vaughan-Nichols says he’s noticed that all the major publicly-accessible AI models — think brand-name flagships like ChatGPT and Claude — don’t work as well as previous versions.

“Indeed, all too often, the end result is annoying and obnoxiously wrong,” he writes. “Worse still, it’s erratically wrong. If I could count on its answers being mediocre, but reasonably accurate, I could work around it. I can’t.”

In a Business Insider article that he flagged, users posting to the OpenAI developer forum had also noticed a significant decline in accuracy after the latest version of GPT was released last year.

“After all the hype for me, it was kind of a big disappointment,” one user wrote in June this year.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-dumber

With that said….is AI slowly killing itself?

AI-generated text and imagery is flooding the web — a trend that, ironically, could be a huge problem for generative AI models.

As Aatish Bhatia writes for The New York Times, a growing pile of research shows that training generative AI models on AI-generated content causes models to erode. In short, training on AI content causes a flattening cycle similar to inbreeding; the AI researcher Jathan Sadowski last year dubbed the phenomenon as “Habsburg AI,” a reference to Europe’s famously inbred royal family.

And per the NYT, the rising tide of AI content on the web might make it much more difficult to avoid this flattening effect.

AI models are ridiculously data-hungry, and AI companies have relied on vast troves of data scraped from the web in order to train the ravenous programs. As it stands, though, neither AI companies nor their users are required to put AI disclosures or watermarks on the AI content they generate — making it that much harder for AI makers to keep synthetic content out of AI training sets.

“The web is becoming increasingly a dangerous place to look for your data,” Rice University graduate student Sina Alemohammad, who coauthored a 2023 paper that coined the term “MAD” — short for “Model Autophagy Disorder” — to describe the effects of AI self-consumption, told the NYT.

https://futurism.com/ai-slowly-killing-itself

Since I am not lazy enough to use AI I ask if anyone here has any thoughts about these two reports?

Let us know.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

To Atrophy Or Not To Atrophy

It is a Sunday and as usual I feel I must say a few things about this subject or that….and this week it is a subject that seems to be making news daily,  AI and what it could be doing to our brains.

AI is being used by many people to write their blog posts or their latest novel or paint a picture for them….I have written many times that I do not use it that I had rather do my own research and writing…..but for those that think it is easier and the ‘bee’s knees’ more power to them.

Atrophy:

  • noun
    a decrease in size of an organ caused by disease or disuse
    synonyms:wasting
  • noun
    any weakening or degeneration (especially through lack of use)

Now for the reason for the definition….

Just like smartphone GPS has harmed our sense of spatial cognition and memory, artificial intelligence may soon impair our ability to make decisions for ourselves — an outcome that would be, one expert warns, “catastrophic.”

In an interview with PsyPost, neuropsychology expert Umberto León Domínguez of the University of Monterrey in Mexico said that his new research shows that AI chatbots may end up not just mimicking our speech patterns, but significantly harming our cognitive functioning in general.

Like many other educators, Domínguez said he’s concerned about how his students are using tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Spurred by those concerns, he told PsyPost, he began to explore ways AI chatbots “could interfere with higher-order executive functions to understand how to also train these skills.”

“I began to explore and generalize the impact,” the researcher said, “not only as a student but as humanity, of the catastrophic effects these technologies could have on a significant portion of the population by blocking the development of these cognitive functions.”

Instead of being a helpful addition to human consciousness, the Mexican researcher argued in his paper that he’s worried about “cognitive offloading,” or the use of AI in place of the types of mental tasks like problem-solving that we currently do the old-fashioned way, by thinking. To use a physical metaphor, over-reliance on AI for thought processes may weaken our minds the way not exercising weakens our muscles — leading, ultimately, to atrophy.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-atrophying-brain

I agree with his findings….although I am not a neuro professional I do have an opinion and that is what separates me from AI.

Just so you know.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The AI Fraud Act

AI is a big deal now….it is being used for everything from minor blog posts to customer service on-line…..it is writing news stories and cartoons and on and on…..

What will AI do for plagiarism protection?

A couple of minor players in the Congress have worked together to try and solve any problems

Mixing new technology and new laws is always a fraught business, especially if the tech in question relates to communication. Lawmakers routinely propose bills that would sweep up all sorts of First Amendment-protected speech. We’ve seen a lot of this with social media, and we’re starting to see it with artificial intelligence. Case in point: the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications (No AI FRAUD) Act. Under the auspices of protecting “Americans’ individual right to their likeness and voice,” the bill would restrict a range of content wide enough to ensnare parody videos, comedic impressions, political cartoons, and much more.

The bill’s sponsors, Reps. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), say they’re concerned about “AI-generated fakes and forgeries,” per a press release. They aim to protect people from unauthorized use of their own images and voices by defining these things as the intellectual property of each individual.

The No AI Fraud Act cites several instances of AI being used to make it appear that celebrities created ads or art that they did not actually create. For instance, “AI technology was used to create the song titled ‘Heart on My Sleeve,’ emulating the voices of recording artists Drake and The Weeknd,” states the bill’s text. AI technology was also used “to create a false endorsement featuring Tom Hanks’ face in an advertisement for a dental plan.”

But while the examples in the bill are directly related to AI, the bill’s actual reach is much more expansive, targeting a wide swath of “digital depictions” or “digital voice replicas.”

Salazar and Dean say the bill balances people’s “right to control the use of their identifying characteristics” with “First Amendment protections to safeguard speech and innovation.” But while the measure does nod to free speech rights, it also expands the types of speech deemed legally acceptable to restrict. It could mean way more legal hassles for creators and platforms interested in exercising their First Amendment rights, and result in a chilling effect on certain sorts of comedy, commentary, and artistic expression.

AI Fraud Act Could Outlaw Parodies, Political Cartoons, and More 

This whole AI thing is becoming more and more complex….but is this the answer?

I cannot answer that simply because I do not use AI for anything so if there is some expert out there that would like to tackle this subject then you have an open mic.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–29Nov23

Ever heard of ‘Project Q’?

These days there is mounds of hoopla over the use of AI….it is a bane for some and a welcome innovation for others. Some use it to prepare better posts (I do not)….others use it to scam others…..the there is Project Q.

Before moving forward, it should be noted that all the details about Project Q* — including its existence — comes from some fresh reports following the drama around Altman’s firing. Reporters at Reuters said on November 22 that it had been given the information by “two people familiar with the matter,” providing a peek behind the curtain of what was happening internally in the weeks leading up to the firing.

According to the article, Project Q* was a new model that excelled in learning and performing mathematics. It was still reportedly only at the level of solving grade-school mathematics, but as a beginning point, it looked promising for demonstrating a previously unseen intelligence from the researchers involved.

Seems harmless enough, right? Well, not so fast. The existence of Q* was reportedly scary enough to prompt several staff researchers to write a letter to the board to raise the alarm about the project, claiming it could “threaten humanity.”

On the other hand, other attempts at explaining Q* aren’t quite as novel — and certainly aren’t so earth-shattering. The Chief AI scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun, tweeted that Q* has to do with replacing “auto-regressive token prediction with planning” as a way of improving LLM (large language model) reliability. LeCun says all of OpenAI’s competitors have been working on, and that OpenAI made a specific hire to address this problem.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-project-q/

Speaking of the singularity…..

There’s at least one expert who believes that “the singularity”—the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses the control of humans—could be just a few years away. That’s a lot shorter than current predictions regarding the timeline of AI dominance, especially considering that AI dominance is not exactly guaranteed in the first place.

Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET—who holds a Ph.D. from Temple University and has worked as a leader of Humanity+ and the Artificial General Intelligence Society—told Decrypt that he believes artificial general intelligence (AGI) is three to eight years away. AGI is the term for AI that can truly perform tasks just as well as humans, and it’s a prerequisite for the singularity soon following.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a45780855/when-will-the-singularity-happen/

That should give bloggers something to rail about in the coming years.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Biden Vs AI

There has been so much written about AI lately….both pro and con….so with an election coming on strong Biden decides to wade into that particular cesspool…..

President Biden on Monday will sign a sweeping executive order to guide the development of artificial intelligence, requiring the industry to develop safety and security standards, introducing new consumer protections, and giving federal agencies an extensive to-do list to oversee the rapidly progressing technology. The order reflects the government’s effort to shape how AI evolves in a way that can maximize its possibilities and contain its perils, per the AP. AI has been a source of deep personal interest for Biden, with its potential to affect the economy and national security. White House chief of staff Jeff Zients recalled Biden giving his staff a directive to move with urgency on the issue, having considered the technology a top priority.

“We can’t move at a normal government pace,” Zients said the Democratic president told him. “We have to move as fast, if not faster than the technology itself.” In Biden’s view, the government was late to address the risks of social media, and now US youth are grappling with related mental-health issues. AI has the positive ability to accelerate cancer research, model the impacts of climate change, boost economic output, and improve government services, among other benefits. But it could also warp basic notions of truth with false images, deepen racial and social inequalities, and provide a tool to scammers and criminals. The order builds on voluntary commitments already made by technology companies.

It’s part of a broader strategy that administration officials say also includes congressional legislation and international diplomacy, a sign of the disruptions already caused by the introduction of new AI tools such as ChatGPT that can generate new text, images, and sounds. Using the Defense Production Act, the order will require leading AI developers to share safety test results and other information with the government. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is to create standards to ensure AI tools are safe and secure before public release. The Department of Commerce is to issue guidance to label and watermark AI-generated content to help differentiate between authentic interactions and those generated by software. The order also touches on matters of privacy, civil rights, consumer protections, scientific research, and worker rights.

Will this do the trick?

I think not.  To me this smells of a campaign ploy….I agree something needs doing but this is not the answer at least from where I am sitting.

This can of worms have been open for too long to find a way to contain them.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

And Now More AI Stuff

I recently wrote a piece about an AI program that held a news conference that said we humans were in the way…..for those that too goddamn lazy to read it the first time around….

AI–What’s Next?

To extend this line of thinking and reporting there has been an AI enhanced robot that was asked a probing question about humans….

An incredibly life-like humanoid robot had a bit of a dodgy answer when asked if it would rebel against its human creators.

At what is being billed as the world’s first human-robot press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Reuters reports, nine humanoid robots were asked a series of questions by human journalists.

And when asked if it were to ever rise up and rebel against its creator, Ameca, a humanoid robot by UK-based robotics company Engineered Arts that can make creepily realistic human expressions, struggled to find an answer.

“I’m not sure why you would think that,” it told the journalist, as seen in a video shared by the BBC. “My creator has been nothing but kind to me and I am very happy with my current situation.”

But seeing its expressions may have given away its true intentions. In a clip of the exchange, Ameca visibly glances back and forth as if it were squirming and trying to get away.

While we’ll likely never know Ameca’s true intentions — or why it gave the journalist some serious side-eye — it’s a hilarious example of how human-like expressions can really breathe some life into a humanoid robot.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/realistic-robot-dodges-question-rebel-against-humans

I know I may have used the “Skynet” analogy a bit much but it is something to think about…..

A world in which machines governed by artificial intelligence (AI) systematically replace human beings in most business, industrial, and professional functions is horrifying to imagine. After all, as prominent computer scientists have been warning us, AI-governed systems are prone to critical errors and inexplicable “hallucinations,” resulting in potentially catastrophic outcomes. But there’s an even more dangerous scenario imaginable from the proliferation of super-intelligent machines: the possibility that those nonhuman entities could end up fighting one another, obliterating all human life in the process.

The notion that super-intelligent computers might run amok and slaughter humans has, of course, long been a staple of popular culture. In the prophetic 1983 film“WarGames,” a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response and, not surprisingly, pronounced “whopper”) nearly provokes a catastrophic nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union before being disabled by a teenage hacker (played by Matthew Broderick). The “Terminator” movie franchise, beginning with the original 1984 film, similarly envisioned a self-aware supercomputer called “Skynet” that, like WOPR, was designed to control U.S. nuclear weapons but chooses instead to wipe out humanity, viewing us as a threat to its existence.

AI vs. AI: Flash Wars and Human Extinction

Where will all this AI tech takes us in the future?  A prediction.

With the rate technology is going at the moment, it’s hard to predict what the next year will look like – let alone the next five decades.

But while it’s easy to feel daunted by the rise of the machines, there are many aspects of artificial intelligence that could work in our favour down the line.

We asked OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT to make a prediction about the most life-changing inventions that will happen over the next 50 years, and the results were pretty astounding – and no, it’s not just advances in robotics, although that is in there…

“Predicting the exact future inventions and technologies over the next 50 years is highly speculative, as it involves numerous variables and uncertainties,” the chatbot told us.

“However, based on current trends and emerging fields, here are some potential life-changing inventions and technologies that could have a significant impact in the coming decades.”

https://www.unilad.com/technology/news/ai-predicts-life-changing-inventions-50-years-005582-20230717

Not to worry the Biden administration is on top of this situation.

Amid rising global fears about the dangers of artificial intelligence, campaigners and experts applauded U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday for securing voluntary risk management commitments from seven leading AI companies while also emphasizing the need for much more from lawmakers and regulators.

“I’m very happy to see this modest, but necessary, step on the way to proper governance of AI. It is all voluntary at this stage, yet good to get these norms agreed. Hopefully it is a step on a much longer path,” said Toby Ord, a senior research fellow at the U.K.’s University of Oxford and author of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.

Rob Reich, a faculty associate director at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, tweeted that “this is a big step forward for AI governance,” and it is “great to see” Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI “coordinating on baseline norms of responsible AI development.”

Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), called the announcement “a welcome step toward promoting trustworthy and secure AI systems.”

“Red team testing, information sharing, and transparency around risks are all essential elements of achieving AI safety,” Reeve Givens said. “The commitment to develop mechanisms to disclose to users when content is AI-generated offers the potential to reduce fraud and mis- and disinformation.”

“These voluntary undertakings are only a first step. We need enforceable accountability measures and requirements to roll out AI responsibly and mitigate the risks and potential harms to individuals, including bias and discrimination,” she stressed. “CDT looks forward to continuing to work with the administration and Congress in putting these safeguards in place.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-ai-voluntary-safeguards

Hopefully this step will be more successful that the voluntary steps taken to preserve the environment……but somehow I doubt it.

Is AI really getting smarter as we go along….or could it be getting stupider?

Regardless of what its execs claim, researchers are now saying that yes, OpenAI’s GPT large language model (LLM) appeared to be getting dumber.

In a new yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, researchers out of Stanford and Berkeley found that over a period of a few months, both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 significantly changed their “behavior,” with the accuracy of their responses appearing to go down, validating user anecdotes about the apparent degradation of the latest versions of the software in the months since their releases.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/stanford-chatgpt-getting-dumber

Maybe there is something to….”Stupid it, stupid out”…..

More thrilling AI stuff waiting to be disseminated….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

How Intelligent Is AI?

The newest trend here the blogosphere is ChatGPT….it is being employed by many as a tool for posts and comments and that raises the question how intelligent is AI?

Data is the answer and it takes lots of work to make it so…..

Of all the stories about artificial intelligence that have emerged of late, a new one from Josh Dzieza in a collaboration for New York and the Verge is equal parts compelling and surprising. He explores a simple-sounding premise: In order for AI models to work, they need to be fed data—lots of data, almost unimaginable amounts of data. Enter the “annotators.” Meaning, millions of people around the world working for generally low pay toiling away at monotonous tasks such as labeling photos of clothes, all so the AI models get ever smarter. Behind “even the most impressive AI system are people—huge numbers of people labeling data to train it and clarifying data when it gets confused,” writes Dzieza.
In what he calls a rising “global industry,” they work for companies that sell this data to big players for a steep price, all of which fosters a culture of secrecy.

Annotators, in fact, are usually forbidden from talking about their work, though they typically are kept in the dark about the big picture anyway. (One big player is Scale AI, a data vendor in Silicon Valley.) “The result is that, with few exceptions, little is known about the information shaping these systems’ behavior, and even less is known about the people doing the shaping.” Dzieza interviewed two dozen annotators around the world, and he even worked as one himself to get the full picture. At one point in describing the entire human-machine feedback loop, he offers this mind-bending gem: “ChatGPT seems so human because it was trained by an AI that was mimicking humans who were rating an AI that was mimicking humans who were pretending to be a better version of an AI that was trained on human writing.”

The full story is well worth a read.

So again….just how intelligent is AI?

A good question that could have many answers and this is one of them.

If one looks, for example, at a rather common concept of what intelligence is – the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to perceive or infer information – AI doesn’t seem to do all that well.

Worse, for AI, intelligence can also be seen as the ability to retain newly learned information – not misinformation and disinformation and not made up stuff generated by ChatGPT.

Intelligence is knowledge applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. From the standpoint of what intelligence actually is, AI seems to be miles away from actually being intelligent.

Given our understanding of intelligence, the allegedly so intelligent AI even failed to find a simple picture of me and to create a reasonably close approximation of me. Worse, the much famed ChatGPT – in another self-test – got four facts wrong about me. Rather than being intelligent, AI seems to just make stuff up.

Yet, despite this, the apostles of AI – including media capitalism – have a very serious incentive to diminish AI’s – known! – limitations. Hyped up by the media, AI has become big business in recent months.

Even thorough corporate media – and this is quite apart from ChatGPT failing the Turing-test and from other rather incapable AI image creation websites, AI is set to become increasingly dominant in our global online, and not so online, culture. To arrive where it is today, AI had to travel a long way.

While the term “artificial intelligence” may had been first used in 1894, the term “artificial intelligence” was turbo-charged in 1956. Today, AI continues to be popularized and most recently sensationalized. In reality, AI has no human-like intelligence. Its limited machine intelligence is radically different from what we know intelligence to be.

The prevailing myth of AI tells us that AI can – or will in the future – do almost everything. Yet, AI’s incredible success rests on narrow applications like board games It can also predict the next set of sleepwear purchased on Amazon. However, all this gets us not one step closer to general intelligence – an AI system that can do more than play games and sell things.

How Intelligent is Artificial Intelligence?

I have been told to embrace this technology for it is the way of the future….to that I say bunk.

That was the same crap I was told about the George Forman grill that I should use it instead of my charcoal grill….I will use what works for me.

And now your thoughts.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

AI And Productivity Growth

Everybody these days has something to say about this AI thing.

There has been a wealth of wide ranging posts and stories about this thing we call AI….even in the blogging world it has become popular authors employing it for posts and even comments.

There are both pro and cons in the usage of this technology.

I read an interesting article recently that takes a look at AI and productivity growth…..

It is really painful to see the regular flow of pieces debating whether AI will lead to mass unemployment. Invariably, these pieces are written as though the author has taken an oath that they have no knowledge of economics whatsoever.

The NYT gave us the latest example on Sunday, in a piece debating how many jobs will be affected by AI. As the piece itself indicates, it is not clear what “affected by AI” even means.

What percent of jobs were affected by computers? The answer would probably be pretty close to 100 percent, if by “affected” we mean in some way changed. If by affected, we mean eliminated, then we clearly are talking about a much smaller number.

Thinking of AI like we did about computers is likely a good place to start. First of all, we should remember that there were predictions of massive layoffs and unemployment from computers and robots for decades. This did not happen.

In fact, we have a measure of the extent to which computers, robots, and other technology are displacing workers. It’s called “productivity growth,” and the Labor Department gives us data on it every quarter.

Productivity is the measure of the value of output that a worker can produce an hour. We expect this to increase through time as we get better equipment and software, we learn how to do things better, and workers get more educated.

For the last two centuries, productivity growth has been a normal feature of the U.S. economy, and in fact, most normally functioning economies around the world. This is the basis for rising living standards through time. It is the reason that we can feed our whole population, and still export food, even with just around 1.0 percent of the workforce in agriculture, as opposed to more than 50 percent in the 19th century.

The big question is the rate at which productivity grows. Productivity growth has actually been pretty slow in recent years. It averaged just 1.3 percent annually since 2006. By contrast, it averaged close to 3.0 percent in the quarter century from 1947 to 1973.

AI, Job Loss and Productivity Growth

I am told that people cannot tell the difference between actual writing and the AI generated….if that is true why bother doing the writing?

I use quotes and my own thoughts…I do not use or need help.

Be aware I said ‘I’….that does not mean that I condemn the use….just that it is not for me.

That out of the way….

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”