“As an economist, I understand productivity; people lose jobs when technology changes. But the valuations of these AI companies are literally based on the assumption that hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs and employers will buy AI services instead of labour services.”
Dr Denniss said that while much of the attention was focused on the technology itself, he was more concerned about the broader economic consequences.
“What is the ATO’s plan? What are the state government plans?” he asked the committee.
“Again, all that money that Anthropic is betting on is coming from somewhere, and that’s going to have very real consequences for individuals, for communities, for the economy, for the way Commonwealth budgets are drawn up.”
Dr Denniss also challenged the argument that Australia risked being left behind unless it rapidly embraced AI, warning that national security concerns should not be used to justify an unrestricted rollout.
@MalReynolds @tuff_wizard we definitely need to have a national conversation about what type of society we want to love in.
The uber rich need to fund it, surely there are some like Ray Dalio that can see the wealth inequality is why empires fell in the past.
Rome to Britain and now the US… Greedy buggers use debt to over leverage then something like covid or Spanish flu, or a war (unrest from inequality) causes the whole thing to go tits up.
Someone with a couple of million to spare…?