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AI Layoff Trap - a game theory paper from UPenn + Boston University, indicating that AI layoffs can collapse the economy
(media.piefed.zip)
paper link: [2603.20617] The AI Layoff Trap
This has been baffling me since the whole layoffs craze started in the '80s. It's incredibly obvious that high unemployment is bad at every level for everybody including the companies "saving" money by laying everybody off.
I don't understand how this needs a Ph.D. to figure out.
Henry Ford figured that out in the 1920s. At a time when it was normal to work 10 hours a day 6 days a week, Ford reduced his workers' hours to 8 hours a day 5 days a week while paying them more per week worked, because he recognised that well-paid workers with free time buy more stuff, thus making him even richer. That's especially impressive considering the union were pushing for the 8-hour day and the Jews were the ones seeking Saturday off; higher psy and shorter hours were so compelling they overcame Ford's notorious raging hatred of unions and of Jews.
The problem is that every company treats this as an externality
Indeed. It's almost as if greed and shortsightedness were a bad foundation for a society.
In this specific current case, imagine collapsing the economy is the point and purpose.
In previous decades, instability always benefits businesses. Laid off people are hungry and will take the same jobs for less pay.
This is the techno feudalism version of that.
What is the best piece of evidence (or cory doctorow article) you know that supports that AI Investment is driven by people who want to use it to supersede capitalism specifically by collapsing the economy, and not just by exactly what the paper says, which is that (because I believe that Investors are capable of creating greed at large scale because each holds only pieces of the pie) they want to use it for the canonical Stonks™ reason (and capitalism is horrible at coordination problems)? Googling Technofeudalism doesn't immediately help,but I've read that the elements of 21st C capitalism are rent-seeking, the intersection between surveillance and market research, and big tech platforms.