jarpschope
Joined 2 years ago
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Comment · 2 months ago
Comment · 2 months ago
I found this article more thorough:
https://www.reuters.com/business/google-shakes-up-ai-leaders...
Comment · 5 months ago
I guess we now have Veritasium, Jonny Harris, and the art of the problem instead.
Comment · 10 months ago
There has been extensive debate around that topic since that paper came out. Some points to discuss:
1. Even the article you shared mentions that starting in 2003, earnings has stopped tracking productivity. "Total compensation remains close until 2003, but does not follow 2003’s uptick in productivity growth (behavior which remains a topic for future research)."
2. They use average earnings and not median earnings. Average earnings include people like CEOs. This by consequence shows that inequality among workers has also increased. Check out chart 4 here to see how much smaller median wages are compared to average: (https://www.csls.ca/ipm/23/IPM-23-Mishel-Gee.pdf)
3. Apart from the average vs median difference, the biggest point of contention between that study and more recent ones is the measure of inflation used. The 2007 study you cite uses a measure of inflation that also includes things paid by employers like medical insurance. It turns out that using that one leads to significantly lower inflation. If you use consumer price index, what workers actually pay out of pocket, the difference again becomes larger. Citing page 37 of the study above: "In other words, that the prices of consumer items has risen faster than a broader index of prices that includes net exports, government goods and services, and investment goods. Therefore, for a given increase in income, the purchasing power of the consumer has fallen faster than that of business for investment goods and foreigners for U.S. exports."
The article I shared before plus this other one describe all the discrepancies (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/). Specially see chart 10 in the PDF study. That shows all possible variations of how you measure productivity and income. No matter how you look at it, the most substantiated conclusion is that income has NOT matched productivity.
Comment · 10 months ago
This is possible in theory.
I think that if we look at inflation-adjusted productivity, and inflation-adjusted average income, then that would indeed prove increasing inequality, right?
I believe the chart in this link is adjusted by inflation. Showing overall the same trend:
Comment · 10 months ago
Indeed that has not happened:
https://tinyurl.com/3dutardj
Comment · 10 months ago
Yeah, that definitely won't work at scale. The bar for what constitutes being "educated" keeps increasing. Previously it was knowing how to code, now it is having an ML PhD, for example. At the same time, AI keeps getting more and more capable, so no matter how much "education" you have, AI will eventually get to you.
In any case, the argument won't work for majority of the population without a college degree. Are you going to have 50+ year old truck drivers upskilling in a fancy new tool to keep a job? And again, how long until that new skill you upgraded them to is now done by AI as well.
Comment · 10 months ago
If productivity is increasing but not average salary, then by definition the additional wealth is being taken by the owners of capital.
Comment · 1 year ago
Thanks for the wonderful explanation brother!
Comment · 2 years ago
> Inverted triangle
That can't be the case my man. Even if there was a manager for every two employees below, the number of all managers at all levels would at most be equal to the number of employees at the lowest level given that:
x (lowest level) = x/2 (first) + x/4 (second) + x/8 (third) + ...
In reality, there are way more employees per manager and the levels of management is not infinite, so the ratio of managers to employees is way less than 1.
Comment · 2 years ago
Would a superintelligence reach the conclusion that humans are a cancer on earth that must be destroyed? That's a better example at the core of the alignment issue. Some values that humans hold in high regard, like the continued existence of billions of humans on earth, may not be there in a non-human-biased superintelligence.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/07/20/how-globa...
In the chart for section 3, how many countries have seen their share of electricity being generated by fossil fuels increase in the last 5 years? Only Canada.
Take a look at the charts for Pakistan, Australia, Nigeria, and China for the last few years. Pretty dramatic drops for fossil fuels generation.