Douglas Doane
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Douglas Doane has not written any posts yet.
Douglas Doane has not written any posts yet.
I think you're right that when evaluating how automated systems will affect economics going forward, standard assumptions and models will not hold. I'd argue the most important factor going forward is agency retention regarding humans, companies, and entities. Because agency is an upstream assumption, you get drastically different results when humans lose agency. To keep human economics meaningful, we need to ask the question: Who takes responsibility for an agent's actions?
I think you're right that "confused" is the wrong word, but this comes from one specific mistake: attributing agentic qualities to systems that don't actually exhibit these qualities.
Agency implies self-sufficiency. One that persists, maintains itself, sets its own goals, and acts without coercion. Thermostats act independently, but we don't call them agents. They don't set their own goals. They respond when prompted. Within the infrastructure that humans built, maintain, and direct.
When the discourse treats these systems as if they're approaching genuine agency, it suggests assumptions about autonomy, self-sufficiency and the need for corrigibility. But that may not apply to something that was never self-sufficient in the first place. You... (read more)