Homework was always a horrible idea whether involving LLMs or not, as explained by Alfie Kohn in 2012: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alfiekohn.org%2Farti...
"After spending all day in school, our children are forced to begin a second shift, with more academic assignments to be completed at home. This arrangement is rather odd when you stop to think about it, as is the fact that few of us ever do stop to think about it. Instead of assuming that homework should be a given, or that it allegedly benefits children, I've spent the last few years reviewing the available research and talking to parents, teachers and students. My findings can be summarized in seven words: Homework is all pain and no gain. ..."

Grades are evil too: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alfiekohn.org%2Farti...
"You can tell a lot about a teacher's values and personality just by asking how he or she feels about giving grades. Some defend the practice, claiming that grades are necessary to "motivate" students. Many of these teachers actually seem to enjoy keeping intricate records of students' marks. Such teachers periodically warn students that they're "going to have to know this for the test" as a way of compelling them to pay attention or do the assigned readings - and they may even use surprise quizzes for that purpose, keeping their grade books at the ready. Frankly, we ought to be worried for these teachers' students. In my experience, the most impressive teachers are those who despise the whole process of giving grades. Their aversion, as it turns out, is supported by solid evidence that raises questions about the very idea of traditional grading. ..."

Even before LLMs, computing technology has made schools-as-we-know-them obsolete (as far as educating people as any of joyful healthy humans, engaged citizens, or even skilled independent workers), as I wrote about in 2007: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpatapata.sourceforge.n...
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change. ...
        So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."

For any school teacher who can accept these ideas, you have my sympathy for trying to make the best of the situation for yourself and your students. John Taylor Gatto is a good example there:
"The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2FTh...

So, yes, LLMs and other AI may accelerate the slow-motion crisis of all this.

I like your idea of encouraging people to use LLMs as tutors. CMU was doing intelligent tutoring work in the 1980s. Looks like they have made some general progress since:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cmu.edu%2Fnews%2Fstori...
"Intelligent tutoring systems have been shown to be effective in helping to teach certain subjects, such as algebra or grammar, but creating these computerized systems is difficult and laborious. Now, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown they can rapidly build them by, in effect, teaching the computer to teach."

The biggest thing conventional schooling has going for it is that it is a community. It might be a dysfunctional community in many regards, but it is still a community. The biggest thing I have seen from my own experiments with recent AI and other sources is that it undermines community. For example:
"StackOverflow activity down to 2008 numbers"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fsingu...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.slashdot.or...

If schools can help community survive in the age of AI, that at least would be a very good thing.

As I outlined in 2008: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pdfernhout.net%2Fpos...
""""
Some comments on the PU Economics department and related research directions from a post-scarcity perspective

The PU economics department, of course, should be abolished as part of this transition. :-)

OK, that will never happen, so it should be at least "strongly admonished" for past misbehavior. :-(

What misbehavior? Essentially, the PU Economics department has taken part in a global effort to build an economic "psychofrakulator". How does a psychofrakulator work? Consider a paraphrase of something Doc Heller says in the movie Mystery Men:
        http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
"Dr. Heller: It's a psychofrakulator. They used to say it couldn't be built. The equations were so complex that most of the scientists that worked on it wound up in the insane asylum [in Chicago]. ... It creates a cloud of [dollar denomiated] radically-fluctuating free-deviant chaotrons which penetrate the synaptic relays [via television]. It's concatenated with a synchronous transport switch [of values from long term seven generation life-affirming love of caring to short-term immediate profit and immediate gratification suicidal death-affirming love of money] that creates a virtual tributary [back to large corporations]. It's focused onto a biobolic reflector [of the elite controlled mass media] and what happens is that [economic] hallucinations become reality and the [global] brain [and global ecosystem] is literally fried from within."

Or in other words:
        "Screwed: What 30 Years of Conservative Economics Feels Like"
        https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...
Or:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
And:
        "Obituary: Conservative Economic Policy"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...
"Conservative economic policy is dead. It committed suicide. Its allegiance to market solutions, tax cuts and spending cuts, supply-side nonsense, manipulative and corrosive ties to industry and the rich, have left it wholly unable to cope with the challenges we face. Its terribly limited toolbox simply cannot address the economic insecurities and opportunities generated by today's global, interconnected, polluted, insecure, dynamic, bubble-prone economy. ..."...

From Schumacher:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...
"Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind of metaphysical blindness, assuming that theirs is a science of absolute and invariable truths, without any presuppositions. Some go as far as to claim that economic laws are as free from "metaphysics" or "values" as the law of gravitation. We need not, however, get involved in arguments of methodology. Instead, let us take some fundamentals and see what they look like when viewed by a modern economist and a Buddhist economist."

Should the PU economics department wish to stay intact rather than move en masse to another university, the calculus of infinites mentioned at the start of this essay is one new direction for their research and teaching.

But, if PU economists still want to make charts and theories about finite things (they're good at that, obviously, and it is labor that they seem to love to do, see Schumacher :-), then what they need to start looking at and charting are physical concepts like Ray Kurzweil considers here:
        "The Law of Accelerating Returns"
        https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

PU economists could graph historical trends over time like:
* increasing computation delivered per unit mass of silicon,
* the increasing amount of freely licensed software and other content,
* the increasing percentage of human attention devoted to free content,
* the increasing electrical energy captured per unit mass for windmills,
* the increasing incarceration rate per capita in the USA,
* the decreasing amount of time it takes a solar collector to repay the energy used in its manufacture,
* the decreasing ground crew size per space rocket launch,
* the decreasing topsoil depth per capita,
* the decreasing global biodiversity, and so on.

Obviously, they'd also want to look at other things at websites like this for more ideas:
        "Redefining Progress: Shifting public policy to achieve a sustainable economy, a healthy environment and a just society"
        https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

Like Kurzweil, PU economists could start applying their skills to charting trends in the real basis of prosperity. They need to move beyond charting derived trends that are social constructions like fluctuations in fiat currency. They need to start admitting that as a fiat currency system breaks down with a transition to the emerging post-scarcity economy, dollars are no longer a very good way to measure things (if they ever were). They need to remember that currency is as arbitrary system related to a current economic control system which is rapidly becoming obsolete. Fiat dollars are essentially ration units, and rationing is becoming obsolete as part of the emerging post-scarcity society. For example, personal internet bandwidth use and server disk space are now so cheap as to be effectively "too cheap to matter" except in the most extreme cases for some small number of individuals. So, PU economists need to get back to basics and start charting real physically measurable (or estimateable) things. And then they need to think about the interrelations of those real things. Essentially, they can still use a lot of their old skills at analysis, but rather than apply them to one thing, money, they need to apply them to thousands of individual measurements of aspects of life-support and production. And the challenge will be in seeing how to make predictions about systems where these thousands of factors are difficult to interchange for each other (for example, topsoil depth versus sewing machine production).

The historic focus of PU economists on charting changes in social constructions (fiat dollars) instead of changes in technological capacity that is one cause of PU economists failing to predict a post-scarcity society. It is no surprise it took someone like Ray Kurzweil to be able to handle both the mathematical content and the technological content to provide his analysis of the timing of a post-scarcity transition (or even broader singularity). However, just because Kurzweil is good at seeing the trends leading up to a singularity in our society, does not mean that he can see beyond it (and he admits this). So it is important to understand that the policy proposals Kurzweil suggests come out of his own longstanding conservative/libertarian financial perspective as a self-made technology millionaire.

The exact shape of a future society in terms of what core priorities and values it reflects is still up in the air, and may well be very different then the propertarian approach Kurzweil assumes:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
as opposed to, say, libertarian socialism:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
or something else much broader as a gift economy:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
or something much narrower as an internet mediated central planning like Chile's Cybersyn pioneered in the 1970s:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

There could be a fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration between PU economists with their charting skills for historical trends and PU engineers with their technical knowledge of what physical characteristics of systems are important to production.

In general, economists need to look at what are major sources of *real* cost as opposed to *fiat* cost in producing anything. Only then can one make a complete control system to manage resources within those real limits, perhaps using arbitrary fiat dollars as part of a rationing process to keep within the real limits and meet social objectives (or perhaps not, if the cost of enforcing rationing for some things like, say, home energy use or internet bandwidth exceeds the benefits).

Here is a sample meta-theoretical framework PU economists no doubt could vastly improve on if they turned their minds to it. Consider three levels of nested perspectives on the same economic reality -- physical items, decision makers, and emergent properties of decision maker interactions. (Three levels of being or consciousness is a common theme in philosophical writings, usually rock, plant, and animal, or plant, animal, and human.)

At a first level of perspective, the world we live in at any point in time can be considered to have physical content like land or tools or fusion reactors like the sun, energy flows like photons from the sun or electrons from lightning or in circuits, informational patterns like web page content or distributed language knowledge, and active regulating processes (including triggers, amplifiers, and feedback loops) built on the previous three types of things (physicality, energy flow, and informational patterns) embodied in living creatures, bi-metallic strip thermostats, or computer programs running on computer hardware.

One can think of a second perspective on the first comprehensive one by picking out only the decision makers like bi-metallic strips in thermostats, computer programs running on computers, and personalities embodied in people and maybe someday robots or supercomputers, and looking at their characteristics as individual decision makers.

One can then think of a third level of perspective on the second where decision makers may invent theories about how to control each other using various approaches like internet communication standards, ration unit tokens like fiat dollars, physical kanban tokens, narratives in emails, and so on. What the most useful theories are for controlling groups of decision makers is an interesting question, but I will not explore it in depth. But I will pointing out that complex system dynamics at this third level of perspective can emerge whether control involves fiat dollars, "kanban" tokens, centralized or distributed optimization based on perceived or predicted demand patterns, human-to-human discussions, something else entirely, or a diverse collection of all these things. And I will also point out that one should never confuse the reality of the physical system being controlled for the control signals (money, spoken words, kanban cards, internet packet contents, etc.) being passed around in the control system.

The above is somewhat inspired by "cybernetics".
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

So, I'd suggest, should the PU Economics Department faculty be kept on, the department should be renamed the "Princeton University Cybernetics Department" with there being an "historical economics" subsection all the current economics faculty are assigned to, and one faculty member each from the PU Department of Religion, the PU Department of History, and the PU department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering be put in as an acting team triumvirate leadership of the larger department. :-) As economics faculty broaden their research, then they could move into other new Cybernetics department sections. See also:
        "The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society" by Norbert Wiener
        http://www.amazon.com/Human-Us...

What is more pressing in understanding a post-scarcity economy is seeing what real physical limits exist currently and how they could change over time. This requires examining physical production from first principles, since only when one understands the physical limits of a system does a discussion of various control systems and their strengths and weaknesses make sense.

The essentials to producing anything in general are:
* Human time (or other decision making time)
* Energy
* Raw Materials
* Tooling
* Transportation
[* Knowledge -- like C. H. Douglas talked about justifying "Social Credit"]

Plus there is maybe the effort involved in cleaning up environmental or social damage. In classical economics there is also "rent" for access to money or land or copyrights or patents and so on, but for the sake of a physical analysis we can ignore that because rent is an arbitrary social construction related to rationing, and so is a higher level concept.

On replacing human time with computers and automation in a couple decades, see, for background:
        "Kurzweil says, by the 2020s we'll be ... building machines as smart as ourselves."
        http://science.slashdot.org/ar...

And to see what is happening right now:
        "Supercomputer Simulates Human Visual System"
        http://tech.slashdot.org/artic...

What cool things can be done with the 100,000+ cores of the first petaflop supercomputer, the Roadrunner, that were impossible to do before? Because our brain is massively parallel, with a relatively small amount of communication over long distances, and is made of unreliable, imprecise components, it's quite easy to simulate large chunks of it on supercomputers. The Roadrunner has been up only for about a week, and researchers from Los Alamos National Lab are already reporting inaugural simulations of the human visual system, aiming to produce a machine that can see and interpret as well as a human. After examining the results, the researchers 'believe they can study in real time the entire human visual cortex.' How long until we can simulate the entire brain?

It's amazing to me how quickly sci-fi supposedly set in the 24th century is becoming reality:
        "Star Trek TNG: The Game (episode)"
        https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmemory-alpha.fandom.co...
"Wesley and Robin investigate the [video game] device in sickbay, [using a computer simulation of the human visual system and other brain systems] and determine that it has a psychotropically addictive side-effect, and that it stimulates increased serotonin production. Most worryingly, it also stimulates the brain's higher reasoning area."

And it doesn't take human level AI or vision to do the kind of things ants can do -- gather materials and process them chemically. So we will see big changes before human AI, even if human level AI for some reason was impossible or undesirable.

Looking at things from this perspective, how can everything become free as computer costs decrease? Well, if you use robotics and automation, the human time goes away as a necessity. If human-equivalent time is free, then there is no human time cost to the other items as well. So, say for energy, with free labor, you only need the other categories to make more energy producing equipment, at which point you have all the free energy you want. So, with free labor and free energy, to get free raw materials all you need is tooling and transportation. And with free labor, energy, and raw materials, you get tooling if you you have transportation, But with free labor, energy, raw materials, and tooling, then you have the ingredients for free transportation. And with free everything else, the robots and computers are free too. Ultimately, there are only two costs to anything -- labor and rent (ignoring the destruction of environmental capital). Since rent is societally determined, if labor is free (via computer driven robots) then everything can be free eventually. Granted, there are *physical* limits involving how fast you can do something with the robots or 3D printers on hand. Those physical time limits and their interdependencies are well worth studying by a new breed of post-scarcity economists. But in practice, if you look at nature, the long term limits are more like incident sunlight and our planet has tens of thousands times more incident sunlight then our current society would need if it was all electric. Most materials can be recycled and so do no pose limits. So as computing replaces labor, everything can eventually be "free", as long as physical capital is produced faster than it wears out or is consumed. No doubt many of the mathematical techniques economists have developed for thinking about imaginary things like fiat dollar return on investment may have some applicability to more complex models considering energy return on an investment of energy, or computational return on an investment of mass, or the sustainable yield of consumer product mass from a productive physical system with a certain target growth rate of mass and energy converted into robots given tooling wear, and so on. Here is a paper prototype of such an analysis system which considers tool wear in relation to expanding industrial capacity:
        http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
""""

My comments from 2000 on that: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdougengelbart.org%2Fcoll...
""""
========= machine intelligence is already here =========

I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces can destroy it.

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival.

These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient. People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the political/social process of its own ends).
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is in the best interest of *society* for corporations to exist.

But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it will get harder when corporations don't need people to run themselves. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

I'm not saying the people in corporations are evil -- just that they often have very limited choices of actions. If a corporate CEOs do not deliver short term profits they are removed, no matter what they were trying to do. Obviously there are exceptions for a while -- William C. Norris of Control Data was one of them, but in general, the exception proves the rule. Fortunately though, even in the worst machines (like in WWII Germany) there were individuals who did what they could to make them more humane ("Schindler's List" being an example).

Look at how much William C. Norris ( https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F19... ) of Control Data got ridiculed in the 1970s for suggesting the then radical notion that "business exists to meet society's unmet needs". Yet his pioneering efforts in education, employee assistance plans, on-site daycare, urban renewal, and socially-responsible investing are in part what made Minneapolis/St.Paul the great area it is today. Such efforts are now being duplicated to an extent by other companies. Even the company that squashed CDC in the mid 1980s (IBM) has adopted some of those policies and directions. So corporations can adapt when they feel the need.

Obviously, corporations are not all powerful. The world still has some individuals who have wealth to equal major corporations. There are several governments that are as powerful or more so than major corporations. Individuals in corporations can make persuasive pitches about their future directions, and individuals with controlling shares may be able to influence what a corporation does (as far as the market allows). In the long run, many corporations are trying to coexist with people to the extent they need to. But it is not clear what corporations (especially large ones) will do as we approach this singularity -- where AIs and robots are cheaper to employ than people. Today's corporation, like any intelligent machine, is more than the sum of its parts (equipment, goodwill, IP, cash, credit, and people). It's "plug" is not easy to pull, and it can't be easily controlled against its short term interests.

What sort of laws and rules will be needed then? If the threat of corporate charter revocation is still possible by governments and collaborations of individuals, in what new directions will corporations have to be prodded? What should a "smart" corporation do if it sees this coming? (Hopefully adapt to be nicer more quickly. :-) What can individuals and governments do to ensure corporations "help meet society's unmet needs"?

Evolution can be made to work in positive ways, by selective breeding, the same way we got so many breeds of dogs and cats. How can we intentionally breed "nice" corporations that are symbiotic with the humans that inhabit them? To what extent is this happening already as talented individuals leave various dysfunctional, misguided, or rouge corporations (or act as "whistle blowers")? I don't say here the individual directs the corporation against its short term interest. I say that individuals affect the selective survival rates of corporations with various goals (and thus corporate evolution) by where they choose to work, what they do there, and how they interact with groups that monitor corporations. To that extent, individuals have some limited control over corporations even when they are not shareholders. Someday, thousands of years from now, corporations may finally have been bred to take the long term view and play an "infinite game".

========= saving what we can in the worst case =========

However, if preparations fail, and if we otherwise cannot preserve our humanity as is (physicality and all), we must at least adapt with grace whatever of our best values we can preserve or somehow embody in future systems. So, an OHS/DKR to that end (determining our best values, and strategies to preserve them) would be of value as well. ...
""""

Note: I may think more options are possible now -- including a perspective shift as implied in my sig from scarcity thinking to abundance thinking in how we use AI, robotics, the internet, biotech, nanotech, nuclear energy, bureaucracy, and other tools or abundance. And as I expand on here:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Frecogni...
"Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

"The internet is probably going to basically collapse at least a section of it that produced all the free content we've been enjoying. The AI bullshit will consume it but then the internet will be full of AI slop and nothing else and then as things change the AI won't have anything to train itself on except more slop."

See also to support your point: "The Dark Forest and Generative AI: Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmaggieappleton.com%2Fai-...
"There's a swirl of optimism around how these models will save us from a suite of boring busywork: writing formal emails, internal memos, technical documentation, marketing copy, product announcement, advertisements, cover letters, and even negotiating with medical insurance companies . But we'll also need to reckon with the trade-offs of making insta-paragraphs and 1-click cover images. These new models are poised to flood the web with generic, generated content. ... Weâ(TM)re about to drown in a sea of pedestrian takes. An explosion of noise that will drown out any signal. Goodbye to finding original human insights or authentic connections under that pile of cruft. Many people will say we already live in this reality. Weâ(TM)ve already become skilled at sifting through unhelpful piles of âoeoptimised contentâ designed to gather clicks and advertising impressions. ... But I think the sheer volume and scale of what's coming will be meaningfully different. And I think we're unprepared. Or at least, I am. ..."

Thank you for posting on these important issues. You might like this (main CG website is gone, sadly):
"The Mythology of Wealth by conceptualguerilla.com"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkai-zen.livejournal.co...

As an analogy, I spent decades commenting (including on Slashdot) about the exponential growth of solar power -- while just about everyone denied the implications. Even major solar energy finance predictors would draw graphs where the exponential line suddenly turned flat at the current year and they did this for *decades*. Meanwhile "Peak Oil" hysteria rages during that time with many people going on about the "Mad Max" future we faced from running out of oil. Now I can buy a 100 watt solar panel from Amazon that is about US$50 delivered. I have to wonder if the same thing is happening with people denying the societal implications oft the exponential growth of AI and other automation?

And, as another energy-related analogy, other people went on -- and still do - -about global climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, when any reasonable (to my mind) "grid parity" projection showed that solar (admittedly with problematic-but-improving batteries) was being reached and surpassed for electricity and eventually also for heat (in conjunction with energy efficiency and heat pumps). Grid parity from the continuing drop of the cost of solar power (and other renewables like wind) essentially means that even with the massive subsidies fossil fuels have from depletion allowances and military defense spending for long supply lines and ignoring most environmental damage from fossil fuels, it will just be financially foolish to burn fossil fuels for power in the near future even in the current economic system. So it seems to me that global climate change due to burning fossil fuels is about to end in the next decade or two for these economic reasons. Again, is this persistent denialism of the likely effects of AI (and other automation etc) the same sorts of thing?

The video "Humans Need Not Apply" suggests most humans will sooner be as unemployable as horses generally are now. (The title of which echoes a joking sign in an image from an earlier video I made on "The Richest Man in the World" essentially suggesting a basic income as one solution.) A follow-up:
"Is AI Still Doom? (Humans Need Not Apply - 10 Years Later)"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

Granted, there is a lot of hype about AI and especially LLMs -- but the undeniable fact is that Machine Learning in general is making continual progress and is increasingly used throughout the economy. A recent comment I made elsewhere on that:
"Amara's law & rates of AI and robotic change"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsoylentnews.org%2Fcommen...

While there may be legitimate-seeming reasons why MIT wants that paper pre-print removed, I have to wonder if the request is in part because of the conclusion of that paper that AI used at work makes most workers unhappier? And maybe that clashes with university research funding goals about promoting AI?

Langdon Winner was denied tenure at MIT decades ago in part because he claimed that the very nature of the educational process at MIT prevented MIT students from seeing the social consequences of what they were doing. Presumably most other MIT professors and administrators really disliked that suggestion.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
"In 1980 Winner proposed that technologies embody social relations, i.e. power. To the question he poses "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Winner identifies two ways in which artifacts can have politics. The first, involving technical arrangements and social order, concerns how the invention, design, or arrangement of artifacts or the larger system becomes a mechanism for settling the affairs of a community. This way "transcends the simple categories of 'intended' and 'unintended' altogether", representing "instances in which the very process of technical development is so thoroughly biased in a particular direction that it regularly produces results heralded as wonderful breakthroughs by some social interests and crushing setbacks by others" (Winner, p. 25-6, 1999). It implies that the process of technological development is critical in determining the politics of an artifact; hence the importance of incorporating all stakeholders in it. (Determining who the stakeholders are and how to incorporate them are other questions entirely.)
      The second way in which artifacts can have politics refers to artifacts that correlate with particular kinds of political relationships, which Winner refers to as inherently political artifacts (Winner, p. 22, 1999). He distinguishes between two types of inherently political artifacts: those that require a particular sociological system and those that are strongly compatible with a particular sociological system (Winner, p. 29, 1999). A further distinction is made between conditions internal to the workings of a given technical system and those that are external to it (Winner, p. 33, 1999). This second way in which artifacts can have politics can be further articulated as consisting of four 'types' of artifacts: those requiring a particular internal sociological system, those compatible with a particular internal sociological system, those requiring a particular external sociological system, and those compatible with a particular external sociological system."

So does AI technology also "embody social relations, i.e. power"? Is it possible that for the same reason MIT wanted Langdon Winner gone, maybe MIT wants a paper critical of the social implications of AI removed?

I have not read the criticized paper, so this is just speculation -- and maybe someone might argues it is also a bit of sour grapes MIT bashing since they turned down my undergrad application when Caltech accepted me (even if I did not go there either).

From the sadly late Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" series from 2003 or so:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmarshallbrain.com%2Frobo...
"With most of the rank and file employees replaced by robots and eliminated from the payroll, all of the money flowing into a large corporation has only one place to go -- upward toward the executives and shareholders. The concentration of wealth will be dramatic when robots arrive."

I believe the most important aspect of dealing with the perils and promises of AI and other technological advances is a change of heart from a scarcity perspective to an abundance perspective. That is similar to what Albert Einstein said about nuclear weapons:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Finteltoday.org%2F2018%2F10...
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
(Of course, digital watches these days probably have more computing power than the computers used to design the first atomic weapons, and time tracking itself has other concerns, so even watchmaking is not completely morally free-of-conflicts...)

Here are some of my thoughts on all this from circa 2010 outlining about fifty options (both positive and negative ones):
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Fbeyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

Other thoughts on this from 2008:
"Post-Scarcity Princeton"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pdfernhout.net%2Fpos...
"Wikipedia. GNU/Linux. WordNet. Google. These things were not on the visible horizon to most of us even as little as twenty years ago. Now they have remade huge aspects of how we live. Are these free-to-the-user informational products and services all there is to be on the internet or are they the tip of a metaphorical iceberg of free stuff and free services that is heading our way? Or even, via projects like the RepRap 3D printer under development, are free physical objects someday heading into our homes? If a "post-scarcity" iceberg is coming, are our older scarcity-oriented social institutions prepared to survive it? Or like the Titanic, will these social institutions sink once the full force of the iceberg contacts them? And will they start taking on water even if just dinged by little chunks of sea ice like the cheap $100 laptops that are ahead of the main iceberg?
        These four projects all represent post-scarcity trends relating to a small local investment yielding huge results globally. A few million US dollars on Wikipedia turned into millions of person-hours of global labor (taken mostly from TV viewing) to yield a global multi-lingual resource that is changing the face of education worldwide. A college student (and grandson of a poet) named Linus Torvalds developed Linux in Finland, and, along with others' contributions (both volunteer and done while on payrolls), that free software now makes possible huge server farms and huge supercomputers (which previously were slowed by the inability to customize proprietary software, as well as essentially a tax per CPU); those supercomputers are promising all sorts of wonders including new medicines. A few million dollars spent developing WordNet at Princeton has led to a "cognitive revolution" in software that can process text. GNU/Linux and WordNet together made possible Google as it is now. While Google may have annual operating costs in the billions of dollars, it is saving trillions of dollars worth of time spent researching, and it is also improving the quality and timeliness of information used to make important decisions globally. In each case, a relatively small initial investment has produced enormous global benefits. Encyclopedic knowledge is no longer scarce. End-user modifiable software is no longer scarce. The ability to intelligently process text is no longer scarce. Timely answers to certain questions are no longer scarce.
        And those trends continue to the point where, say, for *only* US$600 billion (plus some more for communications infrastructure in some places) everyone on the planet can have a personal laptop with access to all these services and others, including free-to-the-user voice communications. US$600 billion is about a fifth of the current projected total cost of the Iraq war. And if a family shares one laptop, this might only cost about $200 billion, or about the size to a recent mailing of "rebate" checks to US Americans intended to prevent recession. And the potential benefits of a connected planet to help everyone become prosperous together in a diverse and democratic way is enormous. Even just one breakthrough innovation, like, say, a general cure for cancer, developed by, say, a woman in Africa studying pond water who might otherwise not have received an education, might pay back that $200 billion investment a hundred fold. And, if $200 billion still sounds too expensive right now for a chance at world peace and prosperity, extrapolating from Moore's law, in another ten years, it might only cost US$20 billion ($10/laptop) to give every family such a laptop. And in ten years after that, US$2 billion ($1/laptop, same as some electronic greeting cards now integrating paper, printing, and circuitry). Or, essentially, at that point twenty years from now, the laptops are free, compared to the benefits and other cost savings (like not needing to mail paper as often).
        And, as will be mentioned later, everything that digital computing touches is seeing falling cost trends. Even food, despite the current grim news of food shortages from speculation, can and will get cheaper through agricultural robots and precision farming, and with another benefit of less environmental impact.
        http://www.google.com/search?h...
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
        These exponential trends in rising capacity and dropping costs illustrate a very different future than the increasingly competitive gloom and doom ones most conventional economists tend to paint for the short term. They even suggest a future where money itself may be less and less important as a control system for day-to-day activities. As Ray Kurzweil [and before him, Roy Amara] puts it:
        http://www.kurzweilai.net/arti...
        "Most technology forecasts ignore altogether this "historical exponential view" of technological progress. That is why people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we tend to leave out necessary details), but underestimate what can be achieved in the long term (because the exponential growth is ignored)."
        We are witnessing a historic end to scarcity of many things (maybe not all, but enough to be a new global Renaissance). But is Princeton University helping prepare either students or the rest of society for these changes? Or is it instead an institution under stress, crashing into these trends instead of moving with them? Or is it perhaps conflicted in how it sees itself and its future, and so trying to do both these conflicting approaches at once? :-) "

Maybe I should have instead (or also) have written "Post-Scarcity MIT"? :-)

Another humorous perspective-shifting attempt by me from 2009: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fg%2Fop...
====
Dialog of alternatively a military officer and Hitler:
"It looks like there are now local digital fabrication facilities here, here, and here."
"But we still have the rockets we need to take them out?"
"The rockets have all been used to launch seed automated machine shops for self-replicating space habitats for more living space in space."
"What about the nuclear bombs?"
"All turned into battery-style nuclear power plants for island cities in the oceans."
"What about the tanks?"
"The diesel engines have been remade to run biodiesel and are powering the internet hubs supplying technical education to the rest of the world."
"I can't believe this. What about the weaponized plagues?"
"The gene engineers turned them into antidotes for most major diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, cancer, and river blindness."
"Well, send in the Daleks."
"The Daleks have been re-outfitted to terraform Mars. There all gone with the rockets."
"Well, use the 3D printers to print out some more grenades."
"We tried that, but they only are printing toys, food, clothes, shelters, solar panels, and more 3D printers, for some reason."
"But what about the Samsung automated machine guns?"
"They were all reprogrammed into automated bird watching platforms. The guns were taken out and melted down into parts for agricultural robots."
"I just can't believe this. We've developed the most amazing technology the world has ever known in order to create artificial scarcity so we could rule the world through managing scarcity. Where is the scarcity?"
"Gone, Mein Fuhrer, all gone. All the technologies we developed for weapons to enforce scarcity have all been used to make abundance."
"How can we rule without scarcity? Where did it all go so wrong? ... Everyone with an engineering degree leave the room ... now!"
[Cue long tirade on the general incompetence of engineers. :-) Then cue long tirade on how could engineers seriously wanted to help the German workers to not have to work so hard when the whole Nazi party platform was based on providing full employment using fiat dollars. Then cue long tirade on how could engineers have taken the socialism part seriously and shared the wealth of nature and technology with everyone globally.]
"So how are the common people paying for all this?"
"Much is free, and there is a basic income given to everyone for the rest. There is so much to go around with the robots and 3D printers and solar panels and so on, that most of the old work no longer needs to be done."
"You mean people get money without working at jobs? But nobody would work?"
"Everyone does what they love. And they are producing so much just as gifts."
"Oh, so you mean people are producing so much for free that the economic system has failed?"
"Yes, the old pyramid scheme one, anyway. There is a new post-scarcity economy, where between automation and a a gift economy the income-through-jobs link is almost completely broken. Everyone also gets income as a right of citizenship as a share of all our resources for the few things that still need to be rationed. Even you."
"Really? How much is this basic income?"
"Two thousand a month."
"Two thousand a month? Just for being me?"
"Yes."
"Well, with a basic income like that, maybe I can finally have the time and resources to get back to my painting..."
====

Example paradoy clip by someone else: "Blu-ray has won!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

As I suggested in 2010: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Frecogni...
====
Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?

Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?

Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?

These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. ...

Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...

There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ....

The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.

We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working"). ...
====

... when using technologies of abundance. Otherwise, rules and regulations can't fix the irony of scarcity-minded people using advanced technology to destroy what people have and create more artificial scarcity instead of create abundance for all. Nothing can be "reasonable" if it is all ironic. See: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Frecogni...

Or a little ironic story I wrote in 2010 about trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide from scarcity fears called "Burdened by Bags of Sand" (sadly, all too predictive of some current US political winds):
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Fburdene...
====
  "You there, on the bridge, with the USA T-shirt and the bags tied to yourself, stay where you are."

            "I'm going to jump!"

            "Don't do it. Have some hope and optimism. Things could get better."

            "No they can't! I'm so poor and burdened! I've cut back on everything, but I'm still poor! And I'm forced to carry these darn heavy sand bags around everywhere! Life's just too hard!"

            "Those heavy looking bags you have tied to yourself -- they are labeled sand but they look a little pointy for sand?"

            "Oh, they are bags of Intel Core i7s and bags of solar cells -- basically just congealed sand, so disgusting."

            "But how can you be poor when you have bags of expensive refined silicon ingots!"

            "Don't you get it? I'm poor! The world is poor! In fact, just carrying these sand bags around all the time for years has made my life a living hell and made it hard for me to get and keep a job as a clerk or an oil well roustabout. These sand bags are so heavy I can't do anything I want to do anymore. You don't know what it's like with a burden like this to carry around these heavy sand bags all the time everywhere I go. I am so cursed!"

            "But why don't you sell the bags or give them away?"

            "Don't you get it, I'm POOR! We're all POOR! What would be the point? Who would want sand? We're all going to die from Peak Information and Peak Oil soon, anyway, so everyone is buying guns and Spam, and so no one is going to buy sand!"

            "I'm going to come up to give you a hand getting down safely. Hang on to hope."

            "Don't come any closer or I'll throw this bunch of old congealed sand I found in my attic at you!"

            ["That looks like that Chinese vase found in attic that fetched $83 million."]

            And so on...

====

As I say in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

If we develop and/or use AI from a scarcity perspective, it will certainly be our doom. If we develop it and use it from an abundance perspective we might survive and thrive with it.

More on all that by me:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Fbeyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Frecogni...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security [and economic] thinking. Those "security" [and economic] agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure [and potentially impoverished amidst plenty]. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, [bad economic policy,] or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. '''
      The big problem is that all these new war machines [and economic machines] and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military [and economic] uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."

See also Marshall Brain's "Manna", Frederik Pohls' "The Midas Plague", and James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear", Ursual K. Le Guin's "Always Coming Home", and "Reweaving Our Human Fabric: Working Together to Create a Nonviolent Future" by Miki Kashtan for (fictional) examples of how things could be different (among many other stories of possibility).

On a tangent, we need to keep in mind "The Optimism of Uncertainty":
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Farti...
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
      I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
      There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
      What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability."

Search also on "Radical Abundance" for the later writings of K. Eric Drexler as well as others coming at this from a different perspective. As Drexler points out, given atomic precision manufacturing, so many of the things people are worried about now are just non-issues. Now, that may never happen, but the same is true for so many lesser advances we are making like progress towards inexpensive solar energy and better batteries or even maybe fusion energy someday. It is sad that so often all that real progress in so many areas towards making the world a healthier and happier place for everyone gets lost in the political noise and surrounding mainstream economic anxiety.

Or as Douglas Adams put it: "This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

Inspired by (the late, deep sigh) Marshall Brain's excellent Manna story about automating "Burger-G" and beyond: Let's say you own a hamburger restaurant employing 10 people (as one of ten burger restaurants in a town all owned by different people, each restaurant employing ten people, for a total of 100 people employed flipping burgers in the town), and you decide to automate it with AI and robotics. To use round numbers, before automation, let's say it costs $9 to produce a meal and you sell it for $10 (same as your competitors) for a profit of $1 a meal while employing those 10 people. After automation, you sell the meal for $9 and it costs you $5 to produce, for a profit of $4 a meal, with reduced costs from flaying off half the staff, so you only employ 5 people now. But -- as the crucial point -- with your reduced costs and accumulated capital from increased profits, you drive all your competitors out of business and scale up to handle the total demand of the entire town of 10X what your company was producing initially. So, to scale up, you hire 45 more people, for a total of 50 employees, but each is twice as productive as before. You trumpet this in the newspapers about how AI has both decreased the cost of meals (true, and good for customers) and increased employment in your company to 5X what it was before you automated (also true). But what is missed in the newspapers articles touting how much AI and robotics increases employment is that there used to be 100 people total employed in the town at burger restaurants and now there are only 50 people total employed in them (all in your restaurants), with the other 50 people going on unemployment and then welfare paid for by the tax payers. The other nine owners of burger restaurant owners besides you also are out of work and see the value of their restaurant investments destroyed. So, you have successfully privatized the gains from AI while socializing the costs (welfare) and risks (e.g. what if your now-huge burger chain is targeted by malware to produce no food so people go hungry or to produce harmful food so people get sick?) You also pocket 39X more profits per day than before (since you make 4X more profits per burger on 10X the burgers, less the original 1X profit -- ignoring the costs of automation) -- so you become very wealthy very quickly. Yes, you might have competitors eventually; I am ignoring this right now, including with some hand-waving that perhaps your successful company with all that money sues startup competitors out of existence while lobbying for laws protecting your business model. Granted, the money that customers save on burgers could go to buy other products and create some other jobs, an important complexity ignored here -- which would then take us into questions of whether demand for goods and services can indeed be infinite on a finite planet with finite humans and a finite ecosystem and so on. And there are some new jobs producing and maintaining robots and AI systems used in your restaurants -- until those are perhaps also mostly automated away.

So, by analogy, maybe IBM is indeed hiring more programmers related to the success of their AI effort. But that does not necessarily mean the total number of programmers in industry is going up in either the short term or the long term.

One tangential point is that once unemployment in some areas is cut in half, the remaining employed workers may become very compliant and accepting of lower wages and terrible working conditions -- because they see how much the other workers who were laid off are struggling financially and becoming desperate to do whatever it takes to take away jobs from the currently employed.

Now, it doesn't have to be this way; automation does not have to lead to misery for many. See for example the "Social Credit" ideas of C.H. Douglas:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
"While he was reorganising the work of the Royal Aircraft Establishment during World War I, Douglas noticed that the weekly total costs of goods produced was greater than the sums paid to workers for wages, salaries and dividends. This seemed to contradict the theory of classic Ricardian economics, saying that all costs are distributed simultaneously as purchasing power.
        Troubled by the seeming difference between the way money flowed and the objectives of industry ("delivery of goods and services", in his view), Douglas set out to apply engineering methods to the economic system.
        Douglas collected data from more than 100 large British businesses and found that all except those becoming bankrupt, spent less in salaries, wages and dividends than the value of goods and services produced each week: the workers were not paid enough to buy back what they had made. He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine English Review where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of accountancy which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a technical impossibility." The reason, Douglas concluded, was that the economic system was organized to maximize profits for those with economic power by creating unnecessary scarcity. Between 1916 and 1920, he developed his economic ideas, publishing two books in 1920, Economic Democracy and Credit-Power and Democracy, followed in 1924 by Social Credit.
        The basis of Douglas's reform ideas was to free workers from this system by bringing purchasing power in line with production, which became known as social credit. His proposal had two main elements: a national dividend to distribute money (debt-free credit) equally to all citizens, over and above their earnings, to help bridge the gap between purchasing power and prices; also a price adjustment mechanism, called the "just price", to forestall inflation. The just price would effectively reduce retail prices by a percentage that reflected the physical efficiency of the production system. Douglas observed that the cost of production is consumption; meaning the exact physical cost of production is the total resources consumed in the production process. As the physical efficiency of production increases, the just price mechanism will reduce the price of products for the consumer. The consumers can then buy as much of what the producers produce that they want and automatically control what continues to be produced by their consumption of it. Individual freedom, primary economic freedom, was the central goal of Douglas's reform."

See also:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmarshallbrain.com%2Fmann...
"With half of the jobs eliminated by robots, what happens to all the people who are out of work? The book Manna explores the possibilities and shows two contrasting outcomes, one filled with great hope and the other filled with misery."

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmarshallbrain.com%2Frobo...
"Robots will turbocharge the concentration of wealth." (explained on the robotic-freedom page)

Some options for AI-driven unemployment I put together in 2010:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Fbeyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

Trash Trout looks so cool! From the brochure: "Utilizing the flow of the waterway, flotation and a mesh gate, we're able to seize floating garbage and contain it until it's ready to be cleaned out. The device doesn't contain a top or bottom to allow creatures to pass through without harm. The 3/4 openings in the mesh gate keep smaller benthic critters from becoming entangled in the trash."

Thanks for sharing your inspiring success story!

Some rambles on all that:

Of course, if we exist in a multiverse or a simulation, I guess it's theoretically possible those people and their companionable LLMs are all actually right for this plane of existence? :-)

And even if we aren't in a multiverse or simulation, I guess it's still theoretically possible ChatGPT has tapped into or created a cosmic gateway to some higher realm? :-)

Seems pretty unlikely to me though? :-) Especially if there is money involved...

But it may also point to a certain missing religious aspect of awe in modern mainstream US American life -- along with dysfunctional physical, online, and family/economic environments that can make it hard to make and keep good friends?
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inc.com%2Fjessica-st...
"âoeSociologists have kind of identified the ingredients that need to be in place for us to make friends organically, and they are continuous unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability,â University of Maryland psychologist Marisa Franco told Bostonâ(TM)s NPR news station, WBUR. âoeAs we become adults, we have less and less environments where those ingredients are at play.â"

From a Christian-biased writer:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dazeddigital.com%2Fl...
"More and more young people are embarking on spiritual journeys. While back in 2019, just 22 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK said they believed in God, by early 2025 that number had more than doubled to 45 per cent. More young adults are attending church, curious about what Christianity might have to offer them, with new research commissioned by the Bible Society revealing that since 2018 the number of young men attending church has increased from 4 per cent to 21 per cent, while young womenâ(TM)s attendance has risen from 3 per cent to 12 per cent. Dr Rob Barward-Symmons, co-author of the report, believes that âoewith much of the population struggling with mental health, loneliness and a loss of meaning in life, church appears to be offering an answer.â
        That was certainly my story when I decided to become a Christian at 13. Now Iâ(TM)m 29, I can see looking back that I was often sad and lonely as a child. I didnâ(TM)t have many genuine friends, and since our family moved from Ghana to (a very white) Brighton when I was nine, I struggled to fit in. ..."

MAGA and Trump have apparently tapped into that social hunger too:
"Theyâ(TM)re Donald Trumpâ(TM)s Most Loyal Voters. I Didnâ(TM)t Understand Why. After a Weekend in the Woods With Them, That Changed."
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Flifestyl...
" ... The retreat made it perfectly clear how many men hunger for relationships with other men who will love them as they really are. You donâ(TM)t have to be a Jungian to believe that menâ(TM)s unmet hunger for love from other men is going to come out somewhere. If they have to go to right-wing spaces to get it, they will.
        Indeed, they already are. This fall, just before the election, I reported on a Trump rally in rural Virginia. Because doing so involved registering my phone number, I was flooded with promotional texts. One I saved: âoeFrom Trump: THIS TEXT IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. Youâ(TM)re getting it because I love you, Nathaniel.â
        At the weekendâ(TM)s closing banquet, after the last exercises to reclaim my masculine soul, it seemed perfectly clear why so many of these Christian men had fallen for Trump while also championing unconditional love. The format of Trumpâ(TM)s offer to voters was identical to what the Crucible Project had offered me: We wonâ(TM)t tell you exactly whatâ(TM)s coming, but weâ(TM)ve got some secret plans that have your well-being at heart. Trust us. We know best."

Tangential on the "The Great Mystery" and limited messiahs and preaching in many Native (North) American traditions -- so maybe ChatGPT has not been trained much on Native American philosophy? Maybe it should be? :-)
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.warpaths2peacepipe...
"The original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the "Great Mystery" that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in this life. Also refer to the Great Spirit.
        The worship of the "Great Mystery" was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.
        There were no temples or shrines save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seasâ"He needs no lesser cathedral!
        The solitary communion with the Unseen which was the highest expression of our religious life is partly described in the word bambeday, literally "mysterious feeling," which has been variously translated "fasting" and "dreaming." It may better be interpreted as "consciousness of the divine. ..."

Also tangential -- considering how isolated people tend to not live very long in the wild (given it takes a village/tribe to survive well in nature and ideally also to raise children well, and religions can help bring people together even as they can also cause conflicts too between groups):
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
"Cognitive scientists underlined that religions may be explained as a result of the brain architecture that developed early in the genus Homo in the course of the evolutionary history of life. Nonetheless, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold:
* either that religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage
* or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations."

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.discovermagazine.c...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Feowilsonfoundation.org...
"Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Wilson argues that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to appreciate the long, complicated evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least seventeenâ"among them the naked African mole rat and sponge-dwelling shrimpâ"have developed advanced societies based on similar levels of altruism and cooperation found among humans. A key component of that is Wilsonâ(TM)s own groundbreaking work in the areas of eusociality (where species evolve along hierarchical, role-specific lines) and group selection, that help explain why societies innately survive and thrive not just by means of war-like or aggressive behavior, but also via its nurturers and team builders."

As I suggested in 2001: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Fopen-le...
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fsingu...
"Eric Schmidt says "the computers are now self-improving, they're learning how to plan" - and soon they won't have to listen to us anymore. Within 6 years, minds smarter than the sum of humans - scaled, recursive, free. "People do not understand what's happening.""

A comment or says it is from here:
"Dr. Eric Schmidt [on AI and the near future]"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

Yes, we will likely see a "Gartner hype cycle" wave on AI as we have before.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

And granted, Eric Schmidt has financial reasons to be an AI booster/hyper.

But as others have posted about before, in at least the short term, the question is not what AI will do to people but what people using AI will do to other people. You don't need human-level AI for that. So even if Schmidt is wrong on the timeline, big changes are still happening related to that. Right now, AI is pulling up the ladder of entry-level jobs.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weforum.org%2Fstorie...
"But as AI reshapes the career ladder, these early entry points could be increasingly at risk, according to Bloomberg. ... Technology, overall, is projected to be the most disruptive force in the labour market, with trends in AI and information processing technology expected to create 11 million jobs, while simultaneously displacing 9 million others. As entry-level roles decline, salary expectations are also shifting, with remaining hires expected to take on roles supported by AI for less money. A recent survey found that 49% of US Gen Z job hunters believe AI has reduced the value of their college education in the job market. ..."
[I can question the job creation expectations there...]

In a way, I see current LLMs not so much about "AI" in terms of reasoning but more about having distilled the world wide web into instantly accessible knowledge (given, with some hallucinations).

But more and more AI will be developed now that so many people are excited about it. As I have written elsewhere, it's possible our direction out of any singularity may have a lot to do with our moral direction going into one. So, we should be doing everything we can right now to make this world a better place that works for everyone -- before an AGI singularity.

So what can we do? Try to build a better world ASAP while educating people about the irony mentioned in my sig (or similar ideas stated in other ways) to try to help people move to a world-view and morality based more on abundance than on scarcity.

More ideas collected by me circa 2010 on dealing with the AI & Automation tidal wave:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfernhout.net%2Fbeyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.remineralize.org%2F
"REMINERALIZATION utilizes finely ground rock dust and
  sea-based minerals to restore soils and forests, produce higher yields and more nutritious food, and store carbon in soils to stabilize the climate."

"We can move from an economics based on scarcity using fossil fuels to an economics of abundance
  through remineralization... "

"Through our education, outreach, research, and advocacy, Remineralize the Earth facilitates a worldwide movement that brings together gardeners and farmers, scientists and policymakers and the public to create better soils, better food, and a better planet."

Earliest Internet Archive snapshot is from 2003:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...

I have pointed people to this website over the years, most recently five days ago here:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fi...
"Ground up rock dust can be surprisingly effective to restore soil fertility: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.remineralize.org%2F
In general: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F%3Fq%3Drock... "

Searching now, I see these other people have a website back to 2012:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Frockdustlocal.com%2Finde...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20...
"Rock Dust Local is the first company in North America specializing in the local sourcing and delivery of the BEST (Broad Elemental Spectrum Tectonic) rock dusts for remineralization, and enhanced weathering, with the technical knowhow to build these materials into biological management systems at any scale.
Maintains the worlds most extensive catalog of local sourcing and nation-wide delivery of the highest value rock dust products. .... Meet or exceed USDA/NOP standards for certified organic production where required ...
        "... a one-pound stone might have a surface area of 12 square inches. Ground to about 200 mesh, it would have a surface area of about 8 acres. One ton would therefore have a surface area of 16,000 acres. The significant thing about that 16,000 acres is that it is all freshly-broken stone with the useful elements exposed right on the surface. These elements are readily available for extraction by the microorganisms." - John Hamaker The Survival of Civilization"

I was program administrator for a year for NOFA-NJ organic farm certification program in the late 1980s. "Greensand" was popular then. In general, rock dust is old news. Even very old news. That's why, say, Romans built town on the side of Vesuvius like Pompeii to benefit from volcanic ash promoting soil fertility for vineyards. But people finally broadly acknowledging the value of rock dust is good new news!

Related: "Why was Pompeii built near a volcano?"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncesc.com%2Fgeograph...
"Pompeii was built near a volcano because of several factors. One of the main reasons was the fertile soil in the region, which was enriched by the volcanic ash and minerals from Mount Vesuvius. The settlers of Pompeii valued the agricultural fertility of the area and recognized that the volcanic deposits made the soil more productive for farming compared to traditional soil. Additionally, Pompeiiâ(TM)s history dates back to the 7th century BC when the Oscan people created an agricultural society in the Sarno Valley, taking advantage of the volcanic ash from Vesuvius."

"The Most Important Soil Amendment No One Ever Talks About"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.growingagreenerwor...
"One of the keys to restoring the health of our soils is through the process of remineralization. As proficient as plants are, they canâ(TM)t make the minerals that are essential to human health and nutrition. We also canâ(TM)t rely on Mother Natureâ(TM)s old âoestandbys,â i.e., volcanoes, glaciers and floods, to do the work for us.
        The modern day solution is to add mineral fragments back to the soil with rock dust.
        Also known as rock minerals, rock flour, rock powder, stone dust, soil remineralizer and mineral fines, rock dust is finely crushed rock containing micronutrients and trace elements that are important to the life cycle of plants and which enhance the ability of beneficial microbes to flourish.
        Simply stated, rock minerals are the building blocks of healthy soil.
        Results include improved plant structure, increased resistance to pests and disease, and more intense flavor profiles for fruits and vegetables.
        Although some retailers classify rock dust as a fertilizer, it does not have the necessary amounts of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus (N-P-K) to qualify as such. Instead, rock dust contains minerals like calcium and trace elements like iron and manganese which are difficult to replace once theyâ(TM)ve been depleted from the soil as a result of natural weathering and/or over-farming."

The very slow weathering of rocks in soil helps to keep it fertile. As does organic matter. A great book on all this from 1987 (which has great diagrams showing how when you add too much nitrogenous fertilizer you reverse the polarities on micelles which hold nutrients, and then all your micro-nutrients get leached away by water -- producing unhealthy plants who then need pesticides and such to survive):
"Towards holistic agriculture : a scientific approach" by Widdowson, R. W
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Fto...
"This book systematically deals with the different aspects of organic farming : fertilization; pests and diseases; rotations and crops; grassland and animal husbandry"

Also related (but mostly on "night soil" returned to the land):
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gutenberg.org%2Feboo...
""Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan" by F. H. King is a scientific publication written in the early 20th century. The book explores the agricultural practices and wisdom of Eastern cultures, particularly those of China, Korea, and Japan, highlighting their sustainable farming techniques developed over millennia. It aims to inform a Western audience about the efficient use of land and resources in these densely populated regions."

And similar: "The one-straw revolution : an introduction to natural farming" by Masanobu Fukuoka
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2FTh...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fopenlibrary.org%2Fbooks%2F...
"Six decades ago in postwar Japan, long before Michael Pollan or Alice Waters, Masanobu Fukuoka, a laboratory scientist who had studied plant enzymes and rhizomes in Tokyo laboratories and had worked with poisonous wartime chemicals during the devastations of the Second World War, headed back to the land his father's family farmed for nearly 1,400 years. There he painstakingly recovered and developed a method of farming that aligned itself as closely as possible with natural principles. While Japan set itself on a breakneck course toward modernization, Fukuoka grew rice in the opposite way, refusing to farm with chemicals that would annihilate even something as small as a leaf beetle. Call his book "Zen and the Art of the Wild Cucumber," or see Fukuoka as a Japanese Thoreau tending the whole universe in a beanstalk -- however you approach Fukuoka's rich philosophical side, it's important also to notice that his deep spiritual wisdom was co-terminous with his genius as a farmer. Without fertilizers or even tilling, he nonetheless harvested some of the greatest rice yields per acre in all of Japan. By the late '70s, when The One Straw Revolution was translated into English, Fukuoka had become a guru and disciple in seemingly radical -- but eminently sensible -- ways of approaching food, gardening, farming, and eating. His book is an early cult classic in organic and natural farming circles, but its implications stretch beyond them and continue to resonate as a global food crisis looms. Fukuoka believed that fertilizers and pesticides caused the very problems that they proposed to solve; that rather than annihilating pests, they invited them. He argued that natural foods, grown without these costly additives, should be the cheapest; and that the body living closest to the land and aligning itself with the seasons would be the healthiest. Thirty years later, as this book is re-released, Fukuoka's message -- now more urgent than ever -- remains a deeply nourishing clarion call."

The theory there is that healthy soils (with enough minerals and such like from remineralization and from adding organic matter) produce healthy plants -- plants which can resist pests and which produce healthy people when eaten.

Sadly, like most early promoters of ideas, I'd suppose the remineralize.org folks will get left out of the financial benefits of acknowledgement... Along with all the others long promoting organic farming methods including, say, the Rodale Institute.

Like I've written elsewhere, early promoters of innovative ideas are (sadly) a bit like a light turned on in a pitch-black kitchen when you wander into it for a midnight snack. The lightbulb is just too bright to look at directly for your dark-adapted eyes, even as you benefit from the light eventually. Later in the day, after the sun rises and natural sunlight floods the kitchen, you may no longer even notice you left the light on all night and it is still on.

I hope someday that at least I get to feel that way about my sig -- ignored, because it is by then so "obvious" that everyone takes the idea for granted: :-) "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."