[HN Gopher] Will wealthier people access better AIs?
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Will wealthier people access better AIs?
Today, billionaires and middle-class everyday people use the same
phones. Will that be the case with AIs?
Author : parisivy
Score : 9 points
Date : 2023-03-28 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
| shams93 wrote:
| In california the social safety net is so shredded that basically
| if you cannot create a profit for a company as a human you're
| dead. They'll pay half the population to kill off the other hald
| until police can be automated and then they'll use machines to
| kill the remaining half.
| coxomb wrote:
| > Today, billionaires and middle-class everyday people use the
| same phones
|
| Don't assume the rich have just one phone. It is common to
| compartment with several different phones for different purposes.
| One you only give to family/friends, another for strictly
| business topics, another for social media, another for giving out
| publicly on business cards, and the list goes on.
| thfuran wrote:
| You seem to be conflating phones and phone numbers. I guess I
| don't know for certain that is not common to be juggling half a
| dozen physical phones, but it seems unhelpful and easily
| avoided.
| Casteil wrote:
| They'll typically have an IT guy that handles things for the
| family. They'd be the one to set up call-forwarding and/or
| another tidy way of handling multiple numbers via one phone.
| Haven't done it myself but I'm sure there are numerous ways.
| Nevermark wrote:
| An interesting exercise, is to flip that question upside down:
|
| Assuming everyone gets access to the same quality of AI, how will
| rich people maintain their compounding advantages over the non-
| wealthy?
|
| The first way, is by having more computing resources. The same
| AI, but with more computing resources, is going to come up with
| equal or higher quality results.
|
| The second, is being able to requisition more physical resources.
| The same AI can help a wealthy person set up a business, by
| quickly acquiring physical and IP assets, or labor, vs. someone
| without the wealth to do that.
|
| The third, is by having better information. Small differences in
| information, such as having a market's trading history just a
| fraction of a second before someone else, can translate into a
| lot of economic power. Wealthy people can pay for better
| information, or put systems into place to get better information.
|
| The fourth, is risk tolerance. Even with an AI helping someone
| making choices, some choices with the highest expected return
| also come with the highest volatility or risk. Someone with
| resources can tolerate a lot of individual risks. But a low
| resource person will have to play it safe and forgo those
| opportunities.
|
| Conclusion: The efficiencies delivered by AI will intensify
| existing compounding effects, and the inequality those already
| generate.
|
| Even if AI access was somehow kept even.
| stuven wrote:
| I love that you added a conclusion at the end of your list.
| Adding conclusions to the end of lists is one of ChatGPT's
| favorite things to do.
| smt88 wrote:
| AIs are already incredibly expensive. There's no reason to think
| the current best AIs will be democratized across economic
| classes. M
| qrio2 wrote:
| was said about computers only 50 years ago, it's worth thinking
| about (tho probably too speculative at this point)
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Sure, computers are, but the really important ones - the ones
| that can perform the biggest calculations, make the fastest
| trades, mine bitcoin fastest, and now run the heaviest AI
| models - aren't. Capital always gives advantages, many of
| which are sizeable. There's a reason that the new AI hotness
| has investments in the billions.
| Ekaros wrote:
| On other hand we are currently hitting limits or at least we
| see them. And we have some picture how much resources is
| required to train and run these models. So I think we could
| draw some conclusions with spending let's say 1000 and a
| million to run one or have one available.
| alfonmga wrote:
| I would pay millions for an uncensored AI if I were super
| wealthy.
| s1k3s wrote:
| Seriously, why?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Sometimes you need someone to write really racy fan fiction
| for you.
| codpiece wrote:
| I think you will see private, maybe even self-hosted AI. Think
| about using online stock trading versus having a Bloomberg
| terminal.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| Ask yourself the same question but for web services, games, etc.
| A wealth gap will exist wrt access to better AI.
| [deleted]
| chatmasta wrote:
| Is that the analogy you're choosing? I'm not sure much of a
| wealth gap exists in software in general. In many ways software
| is the most egalitarian product in history, since it costs
| nothing to copy it. Sure, not everyone can afford a $60 game,
| but there are no $6,000 games.
|
| I think a better analogy (or perhaps a _more specific_ one,
| since you did mention "web services") would be computing
| services, i.e. rich startups with hundreds of thousands in
| credits and funding vs. single bootstrapped founder with a
| little bit of cash.
| wsgeorge wrote:
| > In many ways software is the most egalitarian product in
| history,
|
| Indeed, and that's kind of my point. Even in the most
| egalitarian product in history, a bit of a wealth gap exists.
| It's inescapable. That $60 game may not cost $6,000, but it
| won't run on cheap hardware. And it'll probably depend on a
| good, high speed Internet connection to acquire in the first
| place...
|
| Current AI is either relatively low cost but centralized, or
| very expensive to run locally. I believe AI will be more
| egalitarian than software in general (as Stanford Alpaca
| showed), if a lot of work is done to make inference at the
| edge practical.
|
| The open community shouldn't lose sight of this.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah, I think the underlying theme here is that there is a
| wealth gap in _early adoption_ of new technology. Nowadays
| you can buy a Chromebook for $200, but in the late 1990s
| you 'd be lucky to get a computer for under $2000. That led
| to wealthier kids getting earlier access to computers,
| which gave them an advantage in early development as
| compared to their peers who never had the same
| opportunities. I agree we'll probably see a similar curve
| with AI.
|
| It's probably worth anticipating and finding a way to
| mitigate it. In the early days of computers and the
| internet, schools and libraries had computer labs that were
| a decent equalizer for kids who didn't have them at home.
| Maybe we should be thinking about how to make early AI
| similarly accessible.
| Ekaros wrote:
| A 200 and 2000 computer has power difference of a few times for
| example for gaming. And that is single machine where scaling is
| hard. With AI you can and actually have to throw more resources
| at.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Once trained, incremental inference costs are very cheap.
| Instead, everyone will have access
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