If the idea is that humans retain comparative advantage by being cheaper at doing certain tasks compared to an ai/llm, it would stand to reason those who live in countries with lower costs of living and lower average wages would see less competition from LLMs. Their labor is already cheaper.
FT article about a world bank report that is more optimistic about the impacts of AI on the developing world than many. Workers in developing countries are largely less susceptible to AI automation than their counterparts in high income nations. In addition, the use of AI can provide valuable benefits such as improved weather forecasting, medical imaging, and clearing of court backlogs. The advancement of small models that can work with less compute and less electricity compounds this factor.
Frankly I think this sub is sometimes borderline bigoted when talking about AI and the developing world. Like they’re too poor and stupid to be able to make use of this technology to their benefit or adapt to the disruptions it causes. In fact the developing world is likely much better suited to taking advantage of such novel technologies, as well have seen with the catch up effect of adopting novel technologies in other fields before. Even just improved weather forecasting will be a major boon to a massive number of people on the developing world especially as climate change makes monsoons less predictable and more fierce.
>The trend has reversed in the past month as investor doubts about the speed of the AI investment boom have increased, with the Indian gauge up 12 per cent while the Korean market has fallen by about a fifth.
This misdiagnoses why the Korean/American markets fell. The driving force behind both the Korean/American semiconductor stock losses was deleveraging from retailers that were largely investing with leveraged ETFs. In fact, because [these leveraged retailers have mostly exited](https://www.chosun.com/english/market-money-en/2026/07/21/H43UFKXYCVDYHCKRHKULTVTESY/), the price gains in semiconductor stocks from now on should be more resilient.
Civ_Nuclear_Gandhi on
By and lagrge, its true, given my observations here in India. But here, people just hold an insane amount of optimism for anything and everything, so take from that what you will.
Another thing is that people in the Anglosphere are just too rise averse now I fear. Thats partially why SK, China, Taiwan and Japan pulled ahead in Semiconductor manufacturing.
nebffa on
Somewhat orthogonal to the point of the article – I think a lot of AI discourse ignores the much greater risk which is:
* Recursive self-improvement is reached in the next few years
* Alignment research does not keep pace (it is currently considered by experts to be ‘behind’)
* The resulting superintelligence is unaligned with human values
which will probably kill us all.
I feel like there needs to be a serious effort to move the Overton window so that we can begin to meaningfully cooperate and address this risk.
5 Comments
If the idea is that humans retain comparative advantage by being cheaper at doing certain tasks compared to an ai/llm, it would stand to reason those who live in countries with lower costs of living and lower average wages would see less competition from LLMs. Their labor is already cheaper.
[archive link](https://archive.is/20260804132430/https://www.ft.com/content/33c20c4e-6a25-42da-9f1e-6664c8388957)
FT article about a world bank report that is more optimistic about the impacts of AI on the developing world than many. Workers in developing countries are largely less susceptible to AI automation than their counterparts in high income nations. In addition, the use of AI can provide valuable benefits such as improved weather forecasting, medical imaging, and clearing of court backlogs. The advancement of small models that can work with less compute and less electricity compounds this factor.
Frankly I think this sub is sometimes borderline bigoted when talking about AI and the developing world. Like they’re too poor and stupid to be able to make use of this technology to their benefit or adapt to the disruptions it causes. In fact the developing world is likely much better suited to taking advantage of such novel technologies, as well have seen with the catch up effect of adopting novel technologies in other fields before. Even just improved weather forecasting will be a major boon to a massive number of people on the developing world especially as climate change makes monsoons less predictable and more fierce.
[Read the world bank report here](https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2026)
>The trend has reversed in the past month as investor doubts about the speed of the AI investment boom have increased, with the Indian gauge up 12 per cent while the Korean market has fallen by about a fifth.
This misdiagnoses why the Korean/American markets fell. The driving force behind both the Korean/American semiconductor stock losses was deleveraging from retailers that were largely investing with leveraged ETFs. In fact, because [these leveraged retailers have mostly exited](https://www.chosun.com/english/market-money-en/2026/07/21/H43UFKXYCVDYHCKRHKULTVTESY/), the price gains in semiconductor stocks from now on should be more resilient.
By and lagrge, its true, given my observations here in India. But here, people just hold an insane amount of optimism for anything and everything, so take from that what you will.
Another thing is that people in the Anglosphere are just too rise averse now I fear. Thats partially why SK, China, Taiwan and Japan pulled ahead in Semiconductor manufacturing.
Somewhat orthogonal to the point of the article – I think a lot of AI discourse ignores the much greater risk which is:
* Recursive self-improvement is reached in the next few years
* Alignment research does not keep pace (it is currently considered by experts to be ‘behind’)
* The resulting superintelligence is unaligned with human values
which will probably kill us all.
I feel like there needs to be a serious effort to move the Overton window so that we can begin to meaningfully cooperate and address this risk.