Kereru [he/him]

  • 3 Posts
  • 70 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2020

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  • That certainly seems like the idea most techbros have, turn white-collar workers into quality checkers rather than producers. The thing is I’m not sure the output of a lot of white collar jobs can be treated the same as manufacturing output.

    If you replace half your labour in manufacturing a TV, the value of a TV drops and with competition between firms prices & profits tend to drop too. But you can slow down this profit loss due to competition with anti-competitive behaviour: patents, cartels etc.

    If you replace your graphic designers with AI, the value of graphic design drops but what you were really trying to “produce” with your fancy branding and packaging was a sense of perceived quality (value). Now that this is lower, consumers adjust their perceptions quickly and you have to demonstrate your product quality by spending money on things AI can’t replicate yet e.g. in-person experiences, or even just video promotion (in the short term at least).


  • I quite like Ed’s writing for a cathartic rant against the stupidity of AI.

    Has anyone got any reading recommendations on the LLM insanity from a marxist perspective though? Assuming AI can replace labour in some industries, it immediately comes up against the LTV, with the value of the output immediately going to almost zero. Companies therefore have to maintain monopolistic false scarcity, which of course tech companies are already trying to do, but it seems to have wider implications for the economy - technofeudalism I guess.