Phil Trammell
Economist working on the economics of transformative AI; head of economics at Epoch AI and a research scholar at Stanford.
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Their wordsthere's a sense in which nothing's yet been completely automated. If you look at the network-adjusted factor shares of a good, which is to say you look down the supply chain and say not just like the final step, but how much of that is done by capital and labor, but what went into the machines that can automate that final step. You'll find that labor's adding a lot of value down the supply chain.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 5th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsI do think there's this qualitative shift that we I think we agree is coming, which is that there will be at least some goods whose network-adjusted capital share goes to one, right? Because the whole supply chain can be automated and there's no part in it that we care intrinsically about having a human do. Um, so that'll be a, you know, that'll be a qualitative shift. Interestingly, the implications of that shift for the overall capital share are ambiguous
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 6th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsthen the quantity of everything that's not a ballerina, say, goes to infinity, but our the marginal utility in that stuff goes to zero faster than the quantity is rising.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 7th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsbut of course, that's not what's happened, because as we've accumulated more wealth and you know, more advanced machines and and so on, we've expanded the range of things other than singers to spend our money on, and the share spent on singers has stayed sort of negligible. Um so likewise, that's sort of my central prediction about how future unfolds, though I it could go either way.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 9th of 33 in this recording
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Our reading
The rules that keep judges, juries and licensed professionals human are transitional, not permanent.
Their wordsall of these frictions on um the political type decisions that we are accustomed to only trusting human you know, only having humans for like legislation and being a judge, being a jury or all the licensing thing that keeps certain professions human that all strikes me as transitional, right?
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 18th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsThen the person who doesn't satiate in capital is going to have if they're being rational they're going to have a higher savings rate.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 20th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsthe capital stock could grow quickly, but the price of capital goods relative to consumption goods could be falling faster than the capital stock is growing.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 22nd of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsIt might be that every robot now can turn into, you know, 100 robots next year, right? So, in units of robots the interest rate is 10,000%.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 23rd of 33 in this recording
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Their wordshere prices are adjusting in this interesting way that too many macro models don't allow for, right? So, that what what a what's happening is what would be called investment specific technical change where yeah, the price of capital is like falling relative to the price of consumption instead of like the standard doing the standard macro thing of saying there's just output.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 24th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordswhen I think about why it might be good to have a lot of wealth in the future as a good classical utilitarian, to me, the value is or at least one way you could have a kind of almost unsatiating uh utility function in in having wealth in the future is to create new happy beings, right? They just add to the total welfare of the world.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 25th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsthings have to go really wrong for us to like just get over the threshold of uh you know, capital being productive enough to automate lots of work, but not be productive enough that that the interest rate is high and or the price of capital produced goods is falling a lot, okay? So, even without redistribution, a little bit of savings will save a lot of people.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 27th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsI would prioritize trying to index, but just given how fast AI could, you know, hit the world. But, um I definitely wouldn't just rely on that because like it could the the sort of um messy middle type cases or the just a long timelines cases on which like you we don't get it anything like AGI all that soon.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 30th of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsit's already not that hard to index. So it's not There's been a bit of an increase in the privatization of returns but it's still like you know well under 20% of the total market cap of um non-non-tiny companies in in the US is is a private.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 31st of 33 in this recording
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Their wordsif I had to guess I would guess that the kind of long kind of general trend of just like lowering those frictions and making it easier for more and more people to index more and more will continue despite the recent bump in the other direction.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 32nd of 33 in this recording
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Their wordssome people think either uh frontier AI gets commoditized and we all enjoy the benefits, but there might be some risk because like it's the market's really competitive and cutthroat, or um things are safer because there's a big gap between the leader and the laggard, but that means that the leaders get fantastically wealthy. No, like you could just have a relatively big gap, but it's a public company ownership and it's widely distributed.
↗The better AI gets, the smaller its share of the economy might get – Alex Imas and Phil Trammellyoutube.com 33rd of 33 in this recording