The rich and powerful have hijacked progress throughout history, says Daron Acemoğlu. They did so back in the Middle Ages and also now in the age of artificial intelligence. In an interview, the MIT economist dives into the question of whether Silicon Valley is plunging humanity into destitution.
  • PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.comEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    From the article:

    Take medieval windmills, a very transformative technology. It changed the organization of textile manufacturing, but especially agriculture. But you didn’t see much improvement in the conditions of the peasants. The windmills were controlled by landowners and churches. This narrow elite collected the gains. They decided who could use the windmills. They killed off competition

    Except technological innovation didn’t benefit “us”, it benefited elites.

    Der Spiegel’s implicit argument (in the one sentence of (“But it is true that humankind has indeed benefited a lot from new technologies”) is that technological change benefited “us” over time and, therefore, technological change is good. Acemoğlu offers a different amount of time to survey to determine the effects of innovation, which challenges the idea that technological change is always good.

    • MxM111@kbin.social
      21·
      1 year ago

      I find his statement about wind mills without any merit. I am not historian and forgive me for being lazy, but if If I ask ChatGPT4 about it, here is the answer I get:

      The invention of the windmill had a substantial impact on peasant life, particularly in medieval Europe. Before windmills, much of the labor-intensive tasks like grinding grain, pumping water, and other mechanical work were done manually or with the help of animals. The introduction of windmills automated these processes to some extent, making life easier for peasants by reducing their labor burden.

      The windmill can be considered one of the key innovations that started moving societies away from purely manual labor, allowing people to focus on other tasks and thereby improving overall quality of life. While it didn’t entirely revolutionize the peasant lifestyle overnight, it was a step towards greater efficiency and productivity.

      —-

      Yes, I understand that it is not really a proof, but at least some evidence that his statement is simply hot air.

      • PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.comEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        Allow me to respond in kind.

        Here’s Perplexity.ai’s response (based on GPT-4) to your response:

        In the provided link, Daron Acemoğlu’s argument focuses on how the distribution of the impact of technological change tends to favor elites over time, as they accrue the benefits for themselves. The response you provided, however, discusses the impact of the invention of the windmill on peasant life in medieval Europe, emphasizing how it improved efficiency and productivity. This response does not address Acemoğlu’s main point about the distribution of benefits from technological change and how it is influenced by the power dynamics between elites and the general population. Instead, it focuses on the general impact of a specific technology (windmills) on the lives of peasants, which is not the central argument in Acemoğlu’s discussion.

        And then I asked Perplexity.ai to expand on the last two sentences. I thought they were too condensed.

        In the Spiegel article, Acemoğlu argues that the benefits of technological innovations tend to accrue disproportionately to elites and people in power over time. He provides historical examples like the spinning jenny and the steam engine, which initially benefited workers but over decades the gains shifted toward factory owners and capitalists as they consolidated economic and political power.

        The key point is that technology alone does not determine how the gains are distributed - it depends on the relative power dynamics between different groups. Powerful elites are often able to co-opt innovations to serve their own interests, rather than broadly sharing the benefits.

        In contrast, the response about windmills focuses narrowly on how a specific medieval technology improved efficiency for peasants through automation. It does not address the distribution of gains from windmills over time, nor does it consider how elites may have captured the benefits. The windmill example is about the general productivity impacts of technology, not the argument Acemoğlu makes about unequal distribution based on existing power structures.

        tl;dr: Technological innovation has improved the lives of elites and peasants. This is undeniable and is not under consideration. What is under consideration is who benefits from technological innovation at its introduction (or over some relatively other short time period that isn’t “the past”).

        Also, as a beneficiary of it, AI is so fucking cool.

      • theludditeEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        You can’t use ChatGPT to rebut an argument made by an expert who just wrote an entire book about the topic. He even explains in that article why this isn’t right, which the person you’re replying to quoted in their comment:

        Take medieval windmills, a very transformative technology. It changed the organization of textile manufacturing, but especially agriculture. But you didn’t see much improvement in the conditions of the peasants. The windmills were controlled by landowners and churches. This narrow elite collected the gains. [emphasis added] They decided who could use the windmills. They killed off competition