Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth

Software engineer at IBM, cloud & gen AI professional

[Sam Altman @sama]

The Intelligence Age: https://t.co/vuaBNwp2bD

[bhagchan @bhagchan]

Forget MAGA or FAANG, here's what you need for the next 10 years:

MAGNET

Microsoft
Amazon
Google
Nvidia
Ethereum
Tesla

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Why AI Won't Cause Unemployment

"In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of [running] a business." -- George McGovern

Fears about new technology replacing human labor and causing overall unemployment have raged across industrialized societies for hundreds of years, despite a nearly continual rise in both jobs and wages in capitalist economies. The job apocalypse is always right around the corner; just ask the Luddites.

We had two such anti-technology jobs moral panics in the last 20 years — “outsourcing” enabled by the Internet in the 2000’s, and “robots” in the 2010’s. The result was the best national and global economy in human history in pre-COVID 2019, with the most jobs at the highest wages ever.

Now we’re heading into the third such panic of the new century with AI, coupled with a continuous drumbeat of demand for Communist-inspired Universal Basic Income. “This time is different; AI is different,” they say, but is it?

Normally I would make the standard arguments against technologically-driven unemployment. And I will come back and make those arguments soon. But I don’t even think the standand arguments are needed, since another problem will block the progress of AI across most of the economy first.

Which is: AI is already illegal for most of the economy, and will be for virtually all of the economy.

How do I know that? Because technology is already illegal in most of the economy, and that is becoming steadily more true over time.

How do I know that? Because, see the chart.

This chart shows price changes, adjusted for inflation, across a dozen major sectors of the economy.

As you can see, we actually live in two different economies.

The lines in blue are the sectors where technological innovation is allowed to push down prices while increasing quality. The lines in red are the sectors where technological innovation is not permitted to push down prices; in fact, the prices of education, health care, and housing as well as anything provided or controlled by the government are going to the moon, even as those sectors are technologically stagnant.

We are heading into a world where a flat screen TV that covers your entire wall costs $100, and a four year college degree costs $1 million, and nobody has anything even resembling a proposal on how to fix this.

Why? The sectors in red are heavily regulated and controlled and bottlenecked by the government and by those industries themselves. Those industries are monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels, with extensive formal government regulation as well as regulatory capture, price fixing, Soviet style price setting, occupational licensing, and every other barrier to improvement and change you can possibly imagine. Technological innovation in those sectors is virtually forbidden now.

Whereas the sectors in blue are less regulated, technology whips through them, pushing down prices and raising quality every year.

Note the emotional loading of the interplay of production and consumption here. What do we get mad about? With our consumer hat on, we get mad about price increases — the red sectors. With our producer hat on, we get mad about technological disruption — the blue sectors. Well, pick one; as this chart shows, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Now think about what happens over time. The prices of regulated, non-technological products rise; the prices of less regulated, technologically-powered products fall. Which eats the economy? The regulated sectors continuously grow as a percentage of GDP; the less regulated sectors shrink. At the limit, 99% of the economy will be the regulated, non-technological sectors, which is precisely where we are headed.

Therefore AI cannot cause overall unemployment to rise, even if the Luddite arguments are right this time. AI is simply already illegal across most of the economy, soon to be virtually all of the economy.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

It could also stifle the development of the #crypto industry, which has been thriving due to a lack of clear regulations.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

South Africa's inclusion on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list is a major reputational setback for the country and could impact its #crypto market, which has been showing rapid growth in recent years.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

The grey-listing could make it difficult for South Africa to obtain loans from foreign banks, leading to an economic slowdown.

[Base @base]

🔵 All your Base are belong to you.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

Despite its rigidities, MiCA has been met with moderate optimism by the #crypto industry, which anticipates a more robust approach to be taken with future technical standards and guidelines.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

The final vote on the EU’s comprehensive #crypto framework, the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, has been deferred to April 2023 due to technical difficulties.

https://t.co/4hULB3fN0T

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

Stakeholders are concerned that #MiCA lacks a distinct section dedicated to decentralised finance (DeFi) and crypto lending and staking, and may fail to prevent future failures.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

Despite the IMF's opposition, many in the crypto community remain bullish on the future of #crypto assets as legal tender, seeing it as a historical moment and a step towards a more decentralised world.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

The IMF opposes #crypto assets becoming legal tender and has endorsed a framework that doesn't grant them this status. The move is aimed at safeguarding monetary stability, according to the IMF's executive board.

https://t.co/Ep6eeokHF5

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

The IMF has a history of opposing #crypto as legal tender, and recently put pressure on El Salvador to reconsider its plans to adopt #Bitcoin, sparking mixed reactions from the crypto community.

[Cameron Winklevoss @cameron]

And it will mean missing out on shaping and being a foundational part of the future financial infrastructure of this world (and beyond).

[Cameron Winklevoss @cameron]

Any government that doesn't offer clear rules and sincere guidance will be left in the dust. Quickly. This will mean missing out on the greatest period of growth since the rise of the commercial Internet.

[Cameron Winklevoss @cameron]

My working thesis atm is that the next bull run is going to start in the East. It will be a humbling reminder that crypto is a global asset class and that the West, really the US, always only ever had two options: embrace it or be left behind. It can't be stopped. That we know.

[StarkWare 🥷 @StarkWareLtd]

Ethereum scales - StarkEx minted 96M NFTs since June 2020 with no effect on gas prices.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

Kwon and Terraform then supposedly made misleading statements about how #UST's peg to the dollar was restored, the SEC alleged.

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

Do Kwon, co-founder of Terra, has been charged with fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, which led to billions of losses for investors. #Terra #UST #crypto

[Nick Lamb | nicklamb.eth @0xNickLamb]

After #UST dropped 10 cents below $1, Kwon’s company Terraform Labs persuaded an unnamed US trading firm to buy UST to restore the peg, in exchange for #Luna tokens.