Tech investor Bill Gurley says AI doomers are ignoring a lesson from the Industrial Revolution

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Tech investor Bill Gurley says AI doomers are ignoring a lesson from the Industrial Revolution

The veteran VC says innovation has historically created prosperity, and he believes AI will too.

TL;DR

Bill Gurley compares current fears of AI job displacement to concerns during the Industrial Revolution, which ultimately did not materialize as predicted.
He cites historical data showing that the Industrial Revolution led to higher living standards, shorter workweeks, increased real wages, longer life expectancy, and reduced poverty.
Gurley believes that AI, like previous technological innovations, will ultimately lead to greater human prosperity and does not expect it to break this historical pattern.
While some companies have cited AI in recent layoffs, other factors like overhiring, interest rates, and inflation are also at play.
Gurley advises individuals to become 'AI-enabled' to best position themselves in the evolving job market.

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Elon Musk reposted

EIońomyX

Elon Musk:

“I don't think most people understand just how quickly machine intelligence is advancing.

It's much faster than almost anyone realizes, even within Silicon Valley and certainly outside Silicon Valley. People really have no idea.” https://t.co/SF7rFdyEs9

Yann LeCun reposted

Daniel Jeffries

A pause continues to be utter and complete nonsense and it always will be.

1. Let's make planes safer by not making planes!

2. What exactly happens in a "pause"? Do labs get to keep working and we all just get to sit on our hands waiting for this eureka moment?

I guess someone gets to keep their checks while we just bring the economy to a crashing halt based on a few people's vague ideas about some imaginary future problems that they came up with while huffing glue and reading Dune!

3. Who will fund the labs when they are not putting out new products?

I guess VCs will continue to just give them 100s of billions out of the goodness of their hearts!

4. What actually justifies a pause?

Apparently, the wonderful world of imagination! Theoretical future problems that haven't happened yet.

Like massive job losses! Um, jobs are increasing including in the areas most affected by AI, like coding, so I guess not that.

So what? I know the jobs apocalypse is coming because I can imagine it and imagination is reality, right?

Maybe advanced AI weapons?

Ah, so the government will pause weapons research too?

Well no, they will keep doing that anyway because they always do that. It's what governments do.

Okay so we're going to ban Chat Bots while the government keeps making weapons? That should solve everything we're worried about with AI!

Well then what about recursively improving models that grow to superintelligence overnight?

Yeah that's not really a thing. That's the plot of an Avengers movie.

Models are bound by the same real world constraints we are like compute (brains/chips) and time (will this drug have side effects in twenty years can only be known in twenty years) and fuzzy multiplicity (not right or wrong but right-ish and wrong-ish means you can't make a reward signal for "is this the right decision for my business") and the subject/object paradox (the thing improving is judging its own improvement. Yeah chew on that one for a bit.)

But I imagined AI overcoming every real world constraint instantly so it's true!

5. How would we know we did everything we needed to do in a pause? How do we know when it's over?

We dont. We just want a pause now because we want it! Don't you see my pause ⏸️ emoji? It's nice right!

6. Who gets to decide we are ready to unpause?

The government or the people!

Great, because vague ass platitudes like this always go well for concrete policy design.

Looks, none of this is real.

It's theater.

It's not real policy. It has no basis in reality. It's a mass hallucination.

It's pushed by people who believe in magic and magical solutions.

And anything that comes out of it will do infinitely more damage than the imaginary thing they were trying to protect us from in the first place.

Yann LeCun reposted

Steven Pinker

"We Have to Stop Freaking Out About A.I." warns Nobel laureate Robert Shiller. Depressions, formerly called panics, are caused by self-fulfilling fears (the only thing we have to fear is fear itself), i.e., common knowledge about those very fears. https://t.co/eSQ0VW8Ckd

Satya Nadella reposted

Brad Smith

.@gordonritter makes an important point: the most automated decade in business history will reward the companies that invest in their people, not those that replace them. https://t.co/SnEQPBJsL9

As Gordon points out, the lasting value of AI won't reside in any single model, but in human judgment, creativity, and expertise that’s amplified by AI and compounds inside their organizations. This is the foundation for an AI economy and Frontier Ecosystem that works for everyone, where every company, industry, and community can build and own its unique advantage, and where the benefits are broadly shared, not narrowly held.

Yann LeCun reposted

Daniel Jeffries

I can't blame regular, every day folks from being scared or angry about AI.

Too many AI execs were out there shouting about how AI would take all the jobs, eat your children, and kill your puppies.

If I heard that as I regular person, I'd go, "Uh, WTF? No way, we don't want that! How do we stop that?"

There are also actual lunatics whose job it is to scare them. They get paid to write books and go on podcasts and the news and talk crazy town about AI killing us all and how only mass authoritarianism can save them.

In any other time before social media they would be confined to the lunatic fringe. But today, any crazy train can get 1M followers.

Unfortunately, what regular people are worried about with AI is not grounded in reality. They've been terrified by scary bedtime stories by highly neurodivergent folks who read too much sci-fi and thought it was a documentary or who are just hallucinating like Tim Leary on a bad bender that they're rational when they're totally irrational.

Let's be clear, there are real fears about AI. But they're not the ones anyone is talking about. They are:

Mass surveillance and war.

Not one thing is being done about either and it will not be because government will always reserve the right to do both and will never restrict themselves on either front. Full stop.

Or how about, privacy?

Nothing being done about it.

Talk to your AI about your pending divorce and watch it show up in court. We are going in the opposite direction and people are cheering it on like it's a good thing.

When you see the complaints about AI, they make no sense because they make no sense at the surface level. They are nonsense arguments but you can't understand those arguments based on the content of the argument. You have to understand that it is a deeper fear that is rising from the well and the person has no context or compass to express it clearly and rationality so they come up with something, anything, to express that fear, even if it makes no sense.

In essence, all they are saying is: "I'm scared and I don't like this."

The actual complaints are not tethered to reality. But they are real emotions.

And that fear was created by an astroturfed info war campaign, deeper fears about powerful people and big business and the very things people in the industry said coming back to haunt them like chickens coming home to roost.

It's irrational. But it makes sense. It's understandable.

We've got to do much better as an industry and show people a powerful and positive future.

Nobody riots against a future they can see themselves in.

We've got to show them a better one.