Sanders: Government should break up OpenAI

The argument sounds like he believes AI (+ robotics) will take jobs, and breaking up OpenAI could slow it down

Historically the most productive countries are the most prosperous - I think there is a big landscape of local maxima/minima in how healthy & happy a country/economy is, but shunning new technology has never been the path to Quality of Life. The only future where the US maintains its relative success involves American leadership in AI and robotics, with humans supporting them

That doesn't mean that technology has to be shoveled out to the public by the truckload. A country can have a productive pharmaceutical industry without being full of drug addicts. Also, there can be technological advances without having them concentrated in a small number of companies.

The most productive countries are the most prosperous for the owner class. Ask a random citizen from West Virginia how much they've benefited from the market share of Nvidia increasing

> The only future where the US maintains its relative success involves American leadership in AI and robotics, with humans supporting them

I never understood this take. It strikes me more as "faith in our lord and savior AI" without actual evidence to support this.

Almost every advantage we have over every other country, we owe to technology. (Well, that and a couple of oceans, I suppose.) Historically, Americans have been better at taking every possible advantage of automation, computation, and tech in general than anyone else.

Do you expect that to change, and if so, how?

So why don’t we build some damn factories then? Our infrastructure stack is woefully outdated and yet all we seem to be funding is AI and other SaaS.

> So why don’t we build some damn factories then? Our infrastructure stack is woefully outdated and yet all we seem to be funding is AI and other SaaS.

The short answer: 1) Veto power vested in too many NIMBYs, in various flavors; and 2) Wall Street is rewarded on — and therefore chases — short-term results that goose the stock price.

> why don’t we build some damn factories then?

America remains a massive manufacturer. China is bigger. But they’re approaching the same demographic constraints we did.

> we owe to technology

That, and the American economy's pernicious habit for making money doing nothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

When will that become problematic, you tell me...

That doesn't sound responsive, actionable, or meaningful in general. Did you mean to reply to a different post?

Ah yes, the magic job fairy. Because there were jobs in the past, there will be jobs in the future.

There were also skid rows after industrialization in the US. Lots of people didn't make it out of them to the post ww2 jobs everyone thinks about when they say 'industrialization brought good jobs'.

There were also flop houses post industrialization, where you could rent yourself your own section of rope to lean on for the night.

But yep, after WW2 there were lots of jobs in the US. When did industrialization happen though? Why do we ignore all those that didn't make it out of skid row/flop houses and jump to an implied 1940s+ jobs market?

Ah yes, rust belt towns, midwest towns with huge disgusting meat processing plants and countless shuttered plants they would love re-opened. Notorious NIMBYs.

I don't think the person you were replying to was necessarily strongly implying that many or perhaps most Americans wouldn't become permanently unemployed or unemployable.

Hamstringing productivity and technology because of possible job loss - even loss of nearly all jobs, yes - just is not a sensible move. Moves certainly need to be made, but the best action is definitely not deindustrialization and degrowth and luddism. The dock worker unions demanding a ban on port automation is a microcosm of how we will slowly decay as a country.

Even the smart communists understand this. The goal should be wellbeing and prosperity and lack of scarcity for all. The end goal is not "ensure everyone can do these painstaking jobs which non-humans can do exponentially better and faster and cheaper". This is an artificial goal because of vague worries about "purpose". Yes, people need purpose, but placing objects onto locations or pressing buttons on a screen is not the pinnacle of what it means to be a sentient entity.

Not all technology is adopted equally, though. Traditionally we pick and choose which technologies to adopt based on their usefulness and efficiency, rather than adopting absolutely everything because it falls under the banner of "technology".

It's true that currently US technology is among the forefront, but having a single economic pillar is fragile and bound to break, the same is happening with the automotive industry in Germany right now.

But a primary problem is financial. There is too much financial wealth that is desperately looking to find lucrative opportunities which do not exist. So everybody follows the hype and creates the largest bubble we have seen in human history. And those who don't invest in AI, are largely bound in private equity or real estate, which extracts wealth from everybody without giving anything in return. This makes all other businesses less competitive.

It's a huge bottom-up scheme because the incentives are wrong, lacking transparency and unchecked financial power. This is simply not sustainable and nothing but a systemic change is needed.

In the lie for search of productivity, the west didn't become more efficient. We simply outsourced lower-margin industries to Asia and we are now faced with: Lost knowledge, lacking infrastructure, vulnerable supply chains and people without jobs.

AI cannot and will not change this.

Edit: Not sure why you got downvotes, I think it is a valid question.

I am a +1 for productivity. Personal productivity. Countries with the highest productivity equating to highest prosperity is fine but it overlooks the acceleration income disparity. I struggle to reconcile with that.

Don't worry, it gets clearer when you're older.

How many years off is your pension, perchance? If you still think "technology" is going to bankroll your retirement, you've got more faith than I do.

Couple of issues - "a single economic pillar is fragile". I don't think anyone is suggesting shutting the US economy and just doing AI.

"largest bubble we have seen in human history" - the sums involved are not the largest - the railway bubble was larger as percent of GDP. Also it's not even clear it is that much of a bubble - the AI may come through and produce more value than the sums invested. If you can double the workforce by matching humans with AI/robots how much is that worth?

Wall Street has been around since ~1700. It's always had intermittent problems and always continued.

> During the 18th century, the location served as a slave market and securities trading site... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street

kind of illustrates that.