Safe Bet

I was listening to Wired Magazine's interview with LinkedIn founder Reed Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman is an "A.I." optimist, who understands the technology is going to give everyone who uses it "superpowers." But he notes that there's going to be disruption, and there's going to be pain.

What he didn't say is that there's going to be neither disruption nor pain for Reed Hoffman.

Like a lot of technology boosters, not to mention outright utopians, the costs and benefits are always conceived of in the aggregate. Okay, so there are costs, and there are benefits; but as long as the costs outweigh the benefits on, say, the national level, then everyone wins.

But this isn't the way that many people experience costs and benefits of technology in their day-to-day lives. If a factory closes, and the work is sent overseas, to use an easily accessible example, yes, the former factor worker now has access to the goods they once helped make at a discount, perhaps even a substantial one. But their income takes a significant hit, and their other local costs don't decrease. So while the benefits of the change are spread out over many millions of people, the costs tend to be concentrated on the specific people whose careers suddenly ended, and the people who made their livings from their disposable income.

Mr. Hoffman believes that people can use generative automation to create even greater value, and thus head this off, but I'm not sure that he's accurately calibrated for human nature here. He gives the example of a musician he knows, whom he calls "Sarah." Sure, people can now use generative automation to create Sarah-sounding music to listen to, but now Sarah can use automation to make even better music. But the reason why people would use automaton to make Sarah-sounding music in the first place is that even if it falls squarely into the category of "A.I. slop," it's still good enough. And it comes a lot cheaper than paying Sarah.

It's entirely possible to buy legitimately hand-crafted items today. The reason so many of them are so expensive isn't that artisans are greedy; it's that the lower end of the market was disrupted ("collapsed might be a better term) by automation, and if someone can only count on selling two tables a month, each table needs to pay all of their expenses for a two week+ period of time.

And sure, the people who now cater to the lower end of the market could use generative automation to raise their output quality, and look to the higher end of the market, but there are only so many customers in those market segments... and if a lot of people are chasing them, it becomes a matter of who can avoid starving long enough to wait out the other competitors.

Reed Hoffman, being wealthy well past the need to ever work again, is never going to have this problem. Worst case scenario, he starts his comfortable retirement earlier than he expected to. The level of disruption that forces him to wonder how he's going to keep a roof over his head, or put food on the table will have demolished a lot of lives well before it reached him.