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AI China Education The Almighty Buck United States Technology

AI Could Devastate the Developing World (bloomberg.com) 165

Posted by BeauHD from the traditional-vs-non-traditional-routes-to-prosperity dept.
Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and author of "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order," reports of the devastating impacts artificial intelligence could have on the developing world. An anonymous reader shares the report from Bloomberg: In recent decades, China and India have presented the world with two different models for how such countries can climb the development ladder. In the China model, a nation leverages its large population and low costs to build a base of blue-collar manufacturing. It then steadily works its way up the value chain by producing better and more technology-intensive goods. In the India model, a country combines a large English-speaking population with low costs to become a hub for outsourcing of low-end, white-collar jobs in fields such as business-process outsourcing and software testing. If successful, these relatively low-skilled jobs can be slowly upgraded to more advanced white-collar industries. Both models are based on a country's cost advantages in the performance of repetitive, non-social and largely uncreative work -- whether manual labor in factories or cognitive labor in call centers. Unfortunately for emerging economies, AI thrives at performing precisely this kind of work.

Without a cost incentive to locate in the developing world, corporations will bring many of these functions back to the countries where they're based. That will leave emerging economies, unable to grasp the bottom rungs of the development ladder, in a dangerous position: The large pool of young and relatively unskilled workers that once formed their greatest comparative advantage will become a liability -- a potentially explosive one. Increasing desperation in the developing world will contrast with a massive accumulation of wealth among the AI superpowers. AI runs on data and that dependence leads to a self-perpetuating cycle of consolidation in industries: The more data you have, the better your product. The better your product, the more users you gain. The more users you gain, the more data you have. Lee says the best thing emerging economies can do is to "recognize that the traditional paths to economic development -- the China and India models -- are no longer viable." Countries with "less-educated workers" are advised to build up human-centered service industries.

"At the same time, developing countries need to carve out their own niches within the AI landscape," Lee writes. "... governments need to fund the AI education of their best and brightest students, with the goal of building local companies that employ AI."
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AI Could Devastate the Developing World More

AI Could Devastate the Developing World

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  • More FUD clickbait (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2018 @11:32PM (#57345950) Journal
    'nuff said.

  • "Name one ecosystem that is better off for having agriculture moved into it?" Toby Hemenway http://bit.ly/1pnapoW [bit.ly]

    "[Civilization] is all about living through our concepts... our idea we've imposed on reality & when reality doesn't behave according to our idea, what do we do? We input... we can never input enough to make our false concept correct." http://bit.ly/1GnbtAA [bit.ly]

  • Article doesn't have anything to do with AI. Someone throw an icy snow ball at whomever posted this...

    • It's not third world countries that have the most to fear, it's the first world developed countries. If they don't have jobs they don't have money to buy from AI. Third world countries will always have subsistence farming and hunter-gather to fall back on.

      • Third world countries will always have subsistence farming and hunter-gather to fall back on.

        Why can't the first world also go back to subsistence farming?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by bjwest ( 14070 )

          Why can't the first world also go back to subsistence farming?

          Because big Agra has has it all locked up here.

        • We could, but don't expect it to be pretty.

          • We could, but don't expect it to be pretty.

            Well, everyone going back to subsistence farming is such an obvious response to improvements in technology, that I just don't see what else we can do.

            • Re:Do nothing (Score:4, Funny)

              by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @02:38AM (#57346452)

              We could kill each other? We've mastered that skill pretty well.

            • Re:Do nothing (Score:4, Insightful)

              by ranton ( 36917 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @09:29AM (#57347452)

              Well, everyone going back to subsistence farming is such an obvious response to improvements in technology, that I just don't see what else we can do.

              Food production is one of the most efficient industries of our modern economy. The US has went from 90% of our population being farmers in 1800 to 2% today, and we export about 20% of what we produce. Subsistence farming is a hobby, not a practical way for citizens in the developed world to feed themselves. Some form of basic income which covers necessities such as food is far more realistic than a return to subsistence farming.

              • Food production is one of the most efficient industries of our modern economy.

                It's efficient if you measure by man-hours, or by profit produced for big ag, but it is not efficient in literally any other way. It depletes topsoil, it consumes vast quantities of energy both in production and in transport, and it uses more acres per unit of food actually consumed.

        • Re:Do nothing (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @05:51AM (#57346844)

          Because subsistence farming in Europe would lead to a famine that makes the Irish famines of the 1840s look like a family picnic. There's WAY more people living there now than the continent itself can feed with low yield subsistence farming. And if history taught us one thing, then that societies with starving populations aren't too stable.

          • There's WAY more people living there now than the continent itself can feed with low yield subsistence farming.

            That's a straw man. The simple fact is that planting crops in guilds leads to higher per-acre yields than factory farming, not lower ones. Monocultures are inefficient, and we only use them so that we can utilize large, heavy, hardpan-creating machinery for cultivation — not because they produce more food per acre. It's more food per man-hour. But if people aren't working, they'll have time to grow food. And if we continue using factory farming, they'll have to grow food, because those mass monocultur

        • Why can't the first world also go back to subsistence farming?

          As Opportunist mentioned, the population has grown past the carrying capacity of subsistence farming to a level that only high-yield farming methods can sustain. But even local farming to supplement high-yield farming is a non-starter so long as NIMBYs remain unwilling to repeal zoning ordinances that prohibit urban dwellers from running a victory garden. Consider Oak Park, Michigan, which dropped misdemeanor charges against Julie Bass only after the city's threat against her vegetable garden made national [huffingtonpost.com]

      • Nobody actually wants to go back to subsistence farming except for hippie moms who have never actually had to live that way. If we can add artificial intelligence to our own, everybody wins, in both the developed and developing world. New ideas, new methods, new forms organization to try out.

    • Yes it's not technically AI (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @12:22AM (#57346136)
      it's automation with a bit of machine learning, but it's easier to say "A.I." as shorthand for it. If this stuff works then yeah, China & India are pretty boned. They're going to have massive surplus populations and nothing to do with them. But they're also going to be straddled with a "if you don't work you don't eat" culture. They'll end up with dictators and massive wars. Eventually the US will get dragged into it too, just like we did with WWII. Same for the EU.

      There's basically two scenarios where this doesn't happen. 1st, the tech doesn't actually work. That doesn't seem to be the case. The tech works just fine it just takes time to roll it out. Hence the timelines given in TFA. 2nd China & India pass laws blocking the tech roll out and retarding development in order to preserve jobs. There's a third possibility, which is make work projects, but that means paying taxes for people to do useless things, which the gov'ts will get called out on in most cases. #2 might actually happen though, but again, it's tough to get it past people. Again, people don't like paying for things they don't have too, and that includes paying for workers who could be replaced.

      What this means is that the dystopia scenario is by far the most likely. And it's not like it's sci-fi even. The same thing happened during the last industrial revolution. Luddites weren't just scared of tech, they lost their livelihoods. There was nearly 80 years of technology unemployment until WWI & II came along and blew up enough stuff that we had to pay folks to put it back together.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        You are describing the outcome for the entire world. Where an insane few who own the robots demand, everyone just up and fucking die. Why would we, allow corporations to own the robots that would enslave us, the idea is insane.

        Sure the countries lacking in primary resources or more specifically insufficient primary resources to sustain themselves and their robot labour force, that also includes the US the biggest parasite nation on the planet, feeding upon the rest of the world to our extinction.

        Psychopat

        • they're just going to ignore us. Same as we currently ignore people suffering all around the world. Seriously, go google what's going on in Yemen right now. Or Flint, MI's water. Or the 45,000 people who die of preventable diseases in America every year. It's easy. Out of sight out of mind.
          • Agreed. They've already started. Gated communities [businessinsider.com] anyone? The rich are increasingly protecting themselves [cnn.com]. Problem is the French tried that [theanarchistlibrary.org]. Before the French revolution the rich aristocrats all hired private guards. They were mostly foreigners without any skin in the local political system. The trouble was, that when 3000 angry revolutionaries showed up at the door, the guards said "Fuck this shit!" and left or hunkered down like the idiots at the Bastille did. Eventually the angry populace stormed those

        • Your insane psychopath world will be put down to be replaced by what ever real democracy, and real associations between people, will produce, once the psychopaths have been removed from where they do harm.

          Good luck with that.
          Those "psychopaths" will own all the big weapons, including flying robosoldiers,
          and we will have no chance against them.

      • Re:Yes it's not technically AI (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Karmashock ( 2415832 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @02:15AM (#57346390)

        As to surplus populations, we'll see what happens. If the communists are not entirely intellectually and ethically bankrupt then they'll take care of the proletariat. Either way, it will be fun to watch. As to surplus population outside of the China etc, I could wax on with several positive scenarios that address those issues. We are entering a socio-technological paradigm shift. This is a change we went through when we went from hunter gather to agrarian farmers... and then again when we went from that to urban industrial... This is a big move. Every time it happens there is suffering. Gods die... the way and what people worship. Political systems collapse. Very volatile stuff.

        But none of us has a crystal ball on it. If you are interested in my crystal ball gazing... I can share that... if not, then I'll keep it to myself.

        As to everything being bad before WW1 and 2... the stats don't support that position. We can go through the historical economic data if you want.

        • on the historic data. We're talking the late 1800s and early 1900s. That was not, by all accounts, a good time to be alive. America in particular was trapped in a permanent Japan style depression. Pre WWI Europe was reeling from multiple violent revolutions and brewing more of them. And Post WWI Germany was a hell hole crushed by war reparations that led to the populace looking the other way for the Nazis. If you want to tell me that was good times comparable to the 50s, 60s and 70s and they hey day of Unio

        • "Surplus populations"? What an insane way to frame the problem - that thinking implies that if society does not need any more labor, a person is expendable. In reality, that person should be thought of as "free from servitude" and our goal should be to move everyone into that category.

          If all of humankind's needs can be met via technology and no human labor, then we just need to figure out a different way to allocate resources, because if everything is free, then a hell of a lot of people will want a giant m

      • But they're also going to be straddled with a "if you don't work you don't eat" culture.

        You say that like it's a bad thing. Let's look at the opposite to see if that's good - you do nothing and we'll take care of you. Does that sound like a good sustainable path to you?

        • given the massive amount of automation we're currently doing. We're going to run out of work here. When that happens we either take care of people who do nothing or let them starve. If you do that in a country with an army you'll have wars. Big ones. They'll come to your house to take your stuff. Or you'll get conscripted into an army to do the taking. Meanwhile you'll have fascist dictatorships spring up when they promise food to the starving masses.

          You're talking about billions of people with nothing

          • given the massive amount of automation we're currently doing. We're going to run out of work here. When that happens we either take care of people who do nothing or let them starve. If you do that in a country with an army you'll have wars. Big ones. They'll come to your house to take your stuff. Or you'll get conscripted into an army to do the taking. Meanwhile you'll have fascist dictatorships spring up when they promise food to the starving masses. You're talking about billions of people with nothing to lose and access to modern military weapons. That's not going to end well for anybody.

            I keep hearing about the end of jobs yet when I look around I see no end of things that need to be done. What I hate about UBI is that it's something for nothing, which is never a good policy. If we're going to pay people, why not get something back? For example there are literally millions of lonely old people. Make them visit them and keep them company to qualify for UBI. Make them pick up litter or clean up graffiti. No end of tasks, just an unwillingness to ask something because it's easier to jus

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nasch ( 598556 )

              I keep hearing about the end of jobs yet when I look around I see no end of things that need to be done.

              The question is how long will there be enough jobs that people are willing to pay enough to get done?

              Make them visit them and keep them company to qualify for UBI. Make them pick up litter or clean up graffiti. No end of tasks, just an unwillingness to ask something because it's easier to just write the check rather than make the world a better place.

              Those are great ideas, and I'm sure there are many many more. Work that doesn't get done based on market forces, but would benefit society. I'd say it kills two birds with one stone too, because while leisure time is great, people also benefit from having something productive to do.

              If we could avoid a huge stigma of accepting one of these UBI jobs that would be great. I could see people with "normal"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        China & India are pretty boned.

        India has long has a strategy of not being dependent on manufacturing outsourcing for their economy, It's a very different economy than China, attempting to be more self-sufficient. They might be pretty boned if tech immigration is ended, though.

        They're going to have massive surplus populations

        You are using the language of genocide. Please stop. People are a resource, not a problem. Education can be a problem. Totalitarian regimes can be a problem. People per se are not a problem.

        But they're also going to be straddled with a "if you don't work you don't eat" culture. They'll end up with dictators and massive wars.

        China is communist, India socialist. China already has a dictator.

      • Again, people don't like paying for things they don't have too

        You are thinking from a scarcity mindset. If "paying" just means devoting some of the robots work for the benefit of others, many people would do it gladly. Just follow any open-source software development mailing list, and you might find people ready to "pay" a lot that they "don't have too". Many of them are not prepping their resumes for searching a job.

        Software development is one of the recent development in the history of mankind where one can give without losing anything. Time would flow anyway at the

    • I think this may be the actual article [bloombergquint.com].

    • Someone throw an icy snow ball at whomever posted this...

      Not sure where you live, but most countries don't expect any snow before a couple months...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by orlanz ( 882574 )

      The post is just more BS, and I am sure the book isn't as doom and gloom (not linked). We have had automation of "repetitive" and "labor intensive" tasks for 50+ years. And the cost hasn't changed much in the last two decades. All that has changed is the computing power that allows more flexible boundaries, and specification tolerances (the machine "learns via trial & error" to get back to tight tolerances).

      But even though it was entirely feasible in the last 20 years to replace 80% of what China and

      • You don't have to convince me. I want the automation to happen. The existing paradigm is going to lead to war if it doesn't collapse.

        Things need to change to save our silly civilization. I'm all for it.

  • AI and robots make more living models viable (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2018 @11:47PM (#57346016)

    Developing cultures are some of the most helped by the rise of AI and robotics.

    The improvement to a place like the U.S. is somewhat marginal. But for a small village without many resources, what does it mean when suddenly one AI agricultural unit can help plant 24x7 while a farming AI linked to global weather can make informed planting choices for them? That or some kind of on-site vet AI to diagnose issues with livestock and recommend quarantine much faster than it might hav happened otherwise.

    All of this could easily be possible with no outside links and just a small solar generation capability. We could literally see enabling many more people to live a subsistence lifestyle than could have otherwise.

    Why drag them full-on into an American or Chinese model if they do not have to go?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well, as with any other technology, what actually gets done with it is very different from what possibly could get done with it.

      We've long had the technology for some time to eliminate many, many problems the poor of the world have. For example malaria kills half a million people around the world annually and debilitates hundreds of millions more, but we've had the scientific knowledge to eradicate it for decades now.

      The problem is that poor people don't have the money to pay for it. That's always the prob

      • What do you propose to do against malaria? DDT? The situation isn't the same when the US sprayed it everywhere, resistance is in the genetic junk code now, it will evolve far faster. It's doubtful the same success could be had with DDT again. Solutions now require discipline, organization and persistence.

        Also we can only really help them with money, unless you propose colonizing third world shitholes and directing the labour ourselves. If they can't form a slightly sane government they are shit out of luck.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          House based spraying of permethrin and permethrin impregnated bed nets. DDT would be potentially useful, but it has to at all costs be kept from being stolen and diverted to agricultural use. Believe me, I know, I worked for years in vector borne disease control and it's feasible and I was asked to look into the feasibility of promoting the use of DDT for household applications. DDT could be useful, but is neither necessary nor sufficient, and is a management can of worms.

          You don't have to colonize, a mo

          • It takes a lot of supervision to get uncorrupted labour in the third world. Mosquito nets still have some commercial value (plain permethrin even more).

            • Everything has some value, but the point is to glut the market with free (or nearly free) mosquito nets.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hey! ( 33014 )

              None of this is unknown, and none of this is that hard to solve with a little money.

              The big problem with DDT is that it is *highly* valuable to people who don't have very much making it inevitable that some of it will be stolen. That's true of permethrin, but you can just write that off. Permethrin treated bed nets, even more so. What are people going to use them for? Exactly what you bought them for.

  • Africa (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They are talking about Africa, the last major area to "develop. And kind of ironic coming from a Chinese CEO; all the work China is doing in Africa is largely being done by Chinese construction crews. Can't lose a job to AI if you never had it in the first place

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      "all the work China is doing in Africa is largely being done by Chinese construction crews"

      There's a reason for that, but in todays politically correct west we're not allowed to say it. The chinese are less bothered by PC bullshit however which is why they'll probably triumph economically in the end.

      • "all the work China is doing in Africa is largely being done by Chinese construction crews"

        There's a reason for that, but in todays politically correct west we're not allowed to say it.

        Why wouldn't you be allowed to say that the Chinese don't want the Africans to have the skills to build the factories they're going to work in, because the Chinese want to get paid for that work?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by quenda ( 644621 )

          "all the work China is doing in Africa is largely being done by Chinese construction crews"

          There's a reason for that, but in todays politically correct west we're not allowed to say it.

          Why wouldn't you be allowed to say that the Chinese don't want the Africans to have the skills to build the factories they're going to work in, because the Chinese want to get paid for that work?

          No. I've spent some time in Africa. The reason the Chinese are doing the work now, is the same reason why the British colonies in Africa imported Chinese and Indian labour at great expense a hundred years ago. The local population is often just not willing or not capable.

        • The Chinese think they will avoid nationalization by getting 99 year leases on ports etc.

          They should look at the 'Suez Canal Corporation' to see their future. Their investments will be nationalized by kleptocracies, same as the Brit's and Frog's were.

          • Their investments will be nationalized by kleptocracies, same as the Brit's and Frog's were.

            Kleptocracy is what we've got here in America, where corporations are stealing our future and selling it to us at a steep markup, while we pay for the externalities.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            The chinese arn't particularly concerned about human rights or international law, they're very much into gunboat diplomacy. Ask the tibetans. If some tinpot dictator in africa nationalised chinese assets he'd be dead within a month and his palace a smouldering ruin.

  • In the book "Why Nations Fail" by Acemoglu and Robinson, they would call this a microeconomic solution which in the end has little effect on the prosperity of a nation. That is unless AI is what they call a "critical juncture" - an event or change which is so disruptive that it changes the path of history. Examples of such changes include the industrial revolution; colonization; the Black Death; the French and various other national revolutions. However, I'm doubtful that it will include AI and more Alexa-s

    • Re:Why nations fail (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MtHuurne ( 602934 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @12:49AM (#57346216) Homepage

      Different things are called "AI" these days. Thinking machines are still very primitive, there hasn't been a breakthrough there. What is starting to show results are statistical models on large data sets, that are constructed at least partially automatically.

      But these depend on having a large data set, which means that whatever company has the most data will likely have the best model, which in turn attracts more users, allowing them to collect more data. So it's hard for a newcomer to gain traction.

      In any case, the point I think the authors were making (the wrong article is linked so I can't easily verify it) is that AI will make it harder for developing nations to improve their economies, rather than making their current economies worse. So it's more a case of AI undermining evolutionary development than it being a revolution in itself.

      • In any case, the point I think the authors were making (the wrong article is linked so I can't easily verify it) is that AI will make it harder for developing nations to improve their economies, rather than making their current economies worse. So it's more a case of AI undermining evolutionary development than it being a revolution in itself.

        Agreed. Even before the recent cache of AI, there was a lot of concern that increasing industrial productivity (what a lot of folks refer to as Industry 4.0 [wikipedia.org]) driven by automation, additive manufacturing, robotics, big data, and AI, is disrupting the export-oriented economic development model that a lot of nations used to grow in the 20th century. Think Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and most recently China. The idea was you leverage cheap labor to work your way up from cheap, commodity exports to designing

  • People will always want to own physical things such as houses, cars, computers, clothing, cell phones, etc. Even with the advent of robotic manufacturing these material things require some labor to make and the cheaper the labor the more likely that's where things will be manufactured, regardless of tariffs. Robots help, but look at the recent experience of Tesla in making their new car - there appeared to be too many robots and not enough human hands in the process. There's at least one reason many high te

    • I was working with some profs on setting up a large research project preparing grant proposals (we already had 1 big funding source) to create an open source cheap farming robot to do organic farming.

      We had many practical ideas to begin with; many of which I still do not see being used out there... when the smart phone came out years later it seemed like it would have been perfect timing. Other university projects (especially MIT ones) were embarrassingly bad so we would have had something... we still woul

  • We're lazy - we need AI to take over...

  • The uncomfortable conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @12:27AM (#57346152) Homepage

    After another 30-50 years when we finally have robotics and AI, we simply won't need workers any more. Robots will do the job of all but a few of the working class, and AI will do the job of all but a few of the middle class. There will be a small number of people necessary, and the rest will be superfluous. So what to do with all these useless eaters?

    I see it ending badly. The ruling class isn't going to have any of it. Throughout history, they always considered us deplorable but always needed us to create their wealth for them. Sort of like how a farmer might not like his animals, but needs them. So he has to feed them, tend fields for them, heal them when they're sick, etc., regardless of how he feels about them. But what happens when the farmer gets robot animals that produce just as well as the regular kind, but don't need hugely expensive housing or hospitals or EBT cards?

    Especially considering the negative impact that massive numbers of humans have on the environment, and the negative outcomes that occur when these humans are allowed to vote their own interests (Brexit, Italexit, Trump) then I just don't get why we'll be allowed to continue in the current way. Once automated weapons can be commanded directly without all those generals, colonels, captains, sergeants and privates being required, our ruling class can at last do whatever it wants without restriction. It will be a great day for them, the realization of a dream thousands of years old. Imagine people like Donald Rumsfeld or Pol Pot able to implement their agendas with no restrictions.

    • The problem for the elite is asymmetric warfare. Yes, robot armies can massacre most of the world ... but so can biological weapons. As long as we have our brains, they can't go to war against us because we can take them down with us. The first order of business for the neofeudal elite if they wanted to thin us out should be to dumb us down and convince us not to breed except with low IQ partners.

      So turn on the TV, have some fluoridated water and vote for mass immigration.

  • Right now some nations are competitive and some are not. The same goes for individuals some are competitive and many are not. We can not ignore the soon coming changes that will leave almost everyone unemployed and neither can the developing nations. The degree of change that we must create to keep the non competitive people up and running and having real spending money is at hand. If they do not have money they can not support business nor can they support a nation a they have so little to pay taxes

    • we now have Jaguars in Arizona as it is now warm enough for them to make their home.

      I think there have been Jaguars in Arizona for a long time.
      I can remember seeing an E-type in Tempe 40 years ago.

  • Many jobs will gradually require less people due to machine learning. Often it can support human specialists with analytical lookup work that woukd be done otherwise by people.
    I have young twin children and I sometimes wonder what direction they should grow their capabilities to have a happy life with an interesting job.
    I think that tasks like setting up a communication or marketing campaign will not immediately be replaced, and having an enterpreneurial attitude will be useful too, but difficult to make
  • The only people to do well are the AI owners but what makes you think things will get that far? People won't sit idly as jobs disappear.

  • Now that "Made in" means "China", they have the factories. They are already using more and more robots. There is a huge demand for robots in China. So there will be lots of opportunities for Chinese AI companies.

    Once you outsource manufacturing, you also outsource manufacturing technologies.

    • china has manufacturing with smog and dumping.
      Shipping can pull things back and with no labor costs they will just have no safety to play with.

    • There's an even bigger demand for robots where labor is expensive.

      If a developed country can build its widgets locally, it can avoid many costs that come with manufacturing remotely where labor is cheap: lower shipping costs, shorter time delays, less dependency on other governments and their dysfunctions, etc. When you control your own manufacturing (via local robots), you can more readily redesign and tailor your widgets to better serve the needs & interests of local customers. Eventually, all econo

  • AI Could Devastate the World

    ftfy
  • ... on average, I estimate (and maybe even estimate badly, but that's my guess) something else is claiming the underdeveloped countries are in danger from X and we must therefore give them money Y.

    It's not exactly like clockwork, but more like the tides versus a clock. Not regular, but repeated.

  • Don't go into production and undercut our salaries! That's what we do with the US, we did it first!

  • In the version I'm seeing, the Bloomberg attributes the piece to Michael Schuman (credited as "the author of The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth and Confucius and the World He Created").

    I see no reference to Kai-Fu Lee at all.

    Upside: superior click-bait.

    Downside: not actually associated with the article.

  • There is an important point here, but it's not limited to the developing world.

    AI (to the extent that it works) will drastically increase the productivity of people who own AI, while not affecting the productivity of people without AI.

    This means a drastic increase in inequality - both between countries and within a single country.

    And to the extent that some people are entirely unable to compete with AI (for example, a truck driver, whose only current job skill is image processing, i.e. being able to stay wi

  • So these countries are realizing the competition and have launched the PR campaign to shame the West into slowing down the AI adoption. It is "unethical", we are told, to use AI militarily. It is "unfair" to use it elsewhere.

    The motivation for groups and countries unable to do something advantageous to talk those who can out of it is understandable. But why would Slashdot be part of that PR campaign? I'd hope, the company at least profits from this, rather than doing their "useful idiots" part for free...

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