This. I wonder if people will react to this the same they do when human-made metrics don't make any sense.

>“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”

On the flip side, the companies that embodied this ethos were disrupted out of existence over the course of decades, to the point where IBM ran out of customers and sold off their declining hardware business.

Any damage this does in the short-term will self correct in 30 years.

Sure, but if you measure 30 years, let’s say starting at 20 for a young adult - that all the way until they are 50 they will have to deal with this. We as a society are basically saying at least one generation of people are a lost generation.

Like all the people that slaved during Industrialization without workers protection or quality of life fixes, or all the millions that died in WW1/2 because we couldn’t understand what a world war actually was.

There will be a lost generation to Ai, we simply can’t see it because right now it makes digital art from funny text prompts.

Not saying you're wrong[1], but if it weren't AI it'd be something else.

Attempting to solve really hairy problems with a simple, universally applicable solution is a tale as old as time.

[1] Although I suspect a sea of AI-generated bullshit metrics would be closer in impact to outsourcing/insourcing cycles or whatever the hell we've allowed HR to become than WW2.

I don't know for the US worker, they seems to be able to take any abuse and ask for more free market in their ass. But that stuff would not fly in places where workers have some leverage and can influence policies. ( Or let's be more real : influence policies roll-out and eventually stopping them for a few years )

Citations needed.

As someone who works in an international environment and routinely taveles between sites run by international conglomerates workers in Europe for example are not better protected than workers in the US, they've simply ceded more control to government.

The real difference between European and US workers is in sheer productivity. Sure, Americans work more hours but they also get more done in those hours. The difference in regulatory and cultural overheads is significant.

> Citations needed

I come to that at this end.

I will start by giving the at-will contract example of poor US worker protection. Those at-will contract are not contracts. They describe in great lengths that you don't have any relationship with your employer. No string attach! Great, I wonder who benefit more from it?

That has deep consequences, and the result is when I work in the US i feel a Damocles sword upon me, while in Europe I feel deeply secure. ( for the

The why comes down to those questions.

- Can you be fired without cause and not get compensated?

- What is your level of compensation if you do get fired ( with or without cause)? For how long?

- Does your employers have to contribute to your retirement funds?

- What happen to your retirement fund if the economy goes to shit? Where was the money all along?

- What are your recourse in case of a disagreement with your employers? Can you realistically exercise those resources on a tie budget and limited time ( eg: single mother working full time for minimal wage )

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The fun part :

> Sure, Americans work more hours but they also get more done in those hours.

No.

Pretty sure you are mislead. From memory the most productive place on earth is some western European country like Luxembourg or Belgium. They work less but produce a similar output of GDP.

Let me find a source on that.

Yeah. GPD per hour: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-prod...

The US is just behind France. In 8th position.

French workers contribute $79.70 to the GDP (PPP) per hour worked. France’s workweeks are the fifth-shortest among OECD countries at 38.9 hours. France’s productivity is about 25% higher than the OECD average and EU averages.

While

US workers contribute $79.60 to the GDP. American full-time employees work 41.5 hours per week, and about 11.1% of employees work over 50 hours per week.

So, that for productivity, seems comparable in term of GDP. But then ...

A macdonald worker has 5 week vacation / years, per law in France. That's a starting point.

The work week is 35h/week, per law. ( people work 40h, but they get 5h/week of extra vacation on top of the mandatory 5 weeks )

So, to build on that example, French work less but the holy-GDP per hour worked is slightly better than the US.

And they get slightly more respect show to them in the form of predictable, enforceable and protective contracts.

I don't know what's wrong with the US. I looks like diminishing return on pressuring your worker into more work?

The PPP adjustment is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Real (non-PPP adjusted) GDP per capita in the US is ~50% higher than France's.

Correct. In the context of productivity, I think a 'per hour' metric is more appropriate.

France and western Europe in general have comprehensive social nets that will allow a larger part of the population to be idle/unemployed. A GDP per capita will be lower for all those places.

I think we don't really care if a country is deciding to support non-productive citizen. Here, we want to compare the productivity of people who do work. And that the 'per hour' metric I choose for that.

Looking at the 'per capita' ranking, you see a lot of tax haven like cayman islands, Bermuda or Macau that are weeded out in the per hours view.

Yes, but even your "per hour" metric is massively distorted by being adjusted for PPP (i.e. local cost of living, etc. which is somewhat subjective and why you'll find drastically different indexes for PPP from different sources. Even if it could be reliably measured it's still different then a measure of raw production). The average American only works ~7% more hours per week than the average Frenchman, but the GDP output per capita (without adjusting for PPP) is about 50% greater, which means American GDP per hour worked is way higher than French GDP per hour worked.

Sorry you lost me there. Can you point that out in the numbers? Also I realised that I don't understand what you mean by PPP adjusted. I thought we were talking about adjusting GDP per capita vs per hours.

Oh, Purchasing Power Parity. I see.

Well, I disagree here but that out of my depth. I think without adjustment those metrics would measure how your currency is faring on the currency market. Not the house you can buy, the food you can put on the table and so on.

But I see your point, if we talk about productivity, we should compare Apple to Apple and not "Adjusted Apple" to "Apple".

It also depends who is seen as the repository for this productivity. The worker? Or the economy.

If it's the later we should talk in USD with a date on it. I agree.

If it's the worker, well, I care about what I can buy with the money deposited in my bank account, not what I could buy if I was living in Hungary or Japan. Then PPP make sense. It's also common practice in statistic to harmonize your data in order to make meaningful comparison.

Last thing on your last comment, I really think the GDP per capita make little sense here. Labour input is defined as total hours worked of all persons engaged in production. A GDP per capita is not measuring that.

> the GDP output per capita is about 50% greater

Let find the same thing per hours worked, without PPP adjustment.

Well, PPP is apply to every data I found. But this more recent trend might make you feel better. On 2010-USD + PPP, france went to 102 while the US is at 107. ( On the 2017-2021 period )

https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm

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Here is my anecdotal and personal experience. I spend half of my life in France, and the other in the US. Quality of life is comparable. French works less. Their country is not crumbling. Heck, it's in pretty good shape infra-wise. They have billionaire and large mega corporations as well if that's a metrics. I pay similar taxes here and there.

Maybe french are annoying enough to get away with it? Maybe they are living on credit. Idk. But also maybe the US worker are being abused and stretch tin for diminishing returns. Is that worth it for such a slim difference?

Actually I gave it some thought. PPP makes sense and that what should be used.

Let’s take the fictional example of a team of builder building a house. The exact same, basic house.

The same team of people, build 3 houses One in the Silicon Valley somewhere full of rich tech folks that they are gonna overcharge.

One other in Columbia ( same exact house )

One other in Germany ( Same exact house, built in 2000 man hours all 3 of them )

The productivity of that fictional team of builder is the same. They output one single house in 2000 man hours.

But they might sell the house for 10 times more USD in the SV than in Columbia and 5 more than Germany.

Skewing the measure of their raw productivity.

Hope it makes sense

I don't think there's a 'will' about it... the people who grew up with social media at every age already have a mental health crisis that society wasn't prepared for.

Nothing human makes it out of the near future. Can what’s playing you make it to level two?

Agreed. I think people warning of an esoteric singularity AI will be wrong. It won't even be called an AI perhaps, it will be little agents that try to quantify everything. Data analysts as prostitutes of special interest will set up metrics so that management can nudge workers towards a certain direction. In the vast majority of cases it will be metrics to quantify individual productivity. This then becomes a new religion. People like the idea of being able to reduce complexity of anything down to a number and what they want to believe will become reality to them.

There is no logic to madness, but there certainly is to stupidity. It is rigid and predictable.

Competition is going to love predictable competitors.

We see how this plays out already in search: you need a surprisingly large human staff to manage the adversarial side. If "the algorithm" is predictably gameable, then malicious actors will take the value; so it needs to be constantly adjusted to keep ahead of them.

Yeah, but they also like price fixing and exploitation. Look at the transport industry how it implemented surveillance. One participant extracted more from their employees by putting them on a tighter schedule so that taking a leak became something relevant. Others have to adjust to these measures.

On how many established industries can you wake up tomorrow and start a competing company?

Part of the archetypal vampire trope was that peasants would carry grains of wheat or barley in their pocket, so that if they were being pursued by vampires, they could throw down the grains of wheat, and the vampire would be transfixed and obsessively start trying to count the grains, allowing the peasant to escape.

We don’t have to blame AI for metrics that do not include comfort and job satisfaction. The effects you described are not inherent to AI but to goals that upper people impose on lower people through a pyramid of management. Everyone there cares about profits and efficiency, nobody gives a fuck about workers living on the edge. Maybe stripping this paradigm naked is a good thing and a way to something else.

You've reduced a large swath of humanity to propaganda talking points.

The key point you fail to grasp is that this isn't going to be a stripping back but rather a consentration of power and focus around those you vilify. There will be less transparency and fewer chances for humanity to intervene on its behalf.

I’m aware of this point, but I don’t believe that our traditional system is based on a personal desire to make someone suffer. You see those in power as all-knowing all-controlling evil beings. I see them as the best at flimsily balancing on a shitty system that is built-in/inherent to humans. Only non-human rule can change it, imo, similar to how chess, go and starcraft bots can change how the game is played. Maybe your prediction is correct, but chances that we can master business “ourselves” to optimize it for human comfort and dignity are basically zero.

I’m always amused by these takes because they are implicitly submissive. It only makes sense if you posit the world as some kind of omnipotent power structure imposing things on an other powerless strata. I think Americans are drawn to these ideas because they have a somewhat individualistic culture.

Meanwhile society is fundamentally built on exchange and community. Strictly antisocial structures like the one you described are doomed to fail because if you set aside the majority, you become a minority trend.

That’s in a way the paradox at the heart of modern capitalism. A system which alienates everyone expect a few is a dead system.

Deleuze has a good really short essay called Postscript on Societies of Control[1] on the machinic nature of capitalism.

maybe we are saying the same thing, and I absolutely agree that Americans have a fundamentally individualist viewpoint.

however I still see your argument as being rooting in human perspective. capitalism is a human institution as much as our human body is a cellular institution. apoptosis is as fundamental to a functioning human body as exploitative labor relations are to capital.

I don't see it as submissive because in a control society, governed by computers and machine learning models, humans are in fact freed in a certain way, channeled toward production. this is coupled with ideology which is already present to make it feel less alienating, even preferable.

however capital is far from dead. and whatever human individual or institutional churning happens in the next 30 years due to tech I don't see having a significant impact.

1. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gilles-deleuze-posts...

Except that most of the time you won't even know what metrics it is making judgements on, and neither will most of the people who made the model

That is why you must get rich with crypto or startups before the AI panopticon comes for you. Become who you are. Free yourself from capitalism.

That’s the first step.

That is to say, you become a super-human; someone who cannt be financially pressured into serfdom.

The AI panopticon, once it is unleashed, will scan your mind, read all your thoughts, and extract all your emotions and goals. Only the wealty will be able to afford freedom ftom the panopticon.