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Cake day: December 20th, 2024

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  • Although layoffs have jumped, the nation’s unemployment rate remains historically low at 4.2% and hiring has remained steady. The Department of Labor is set to release its June employment report on Thursday, with economists forecasting payroll gains of roughly 115,000 in May, according to financial data provider FactSet.

    I literally don’t even know how to interpret things like this at this point. I hear that everything is falling apart and it’s extremely difficult to find a job (which matches my experience) and that jobs I general are getting worse (also matches my experience), and then I read that unemployment is “historically low” and companies are hiring. Maybe it’s true by the numbers as we measure them, but then we need a new way to measure these things because the numbers are not matching the reality.


  • I’ve been thinking a lot about the point that capital is incapable of producing value on its own and that only labor can create new value. Capital like tools, machines, etc. just transfers the value it holds due to past labor, while living labor is the only possible source of surplus value.

    But I’m wondering how this principle holds up under the (potential, eventual) development of advanced AI. The question is more about how the theory would explain a capitalist society which had achieved true “abundance” and post-scarcity, even without solving the distribution problem and it’s not meant to imply that I believe these capabilities are right on the horizon or anything, but if we assume they exist it can help to understand the theory a little bit better, I think.

    If a neural network could carry out intellectual tasks like writing, coding or creative work and if robots could carry out physical ones the what does the labor theory of value look like at that limit point? Is AI just dead labor like other machines, or is there (theoretically) something qualitatively different at that end point?

    Can AI ever create surplus value in the Marxist sense? And if not, what are capitalists extracting when they profit from these theoretical fully AI-based supply chains?