From Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets by Todd McGowan pg 95:
Commodities that require a greater quantity of labor have more value than those that require less. The laws of supply and demand cover small variations in price, but labor time remains the source of value itself and will quickly outstrip the changes produced by these variations. The amount of labor invested in a product tells us how much we are willing to sacrifice for it. The more time someone will sacrifice to create a commodity, the more value it has. If no one will or has to work to produce something, capitalism ascribes no value at all to it.
He goes on to quote Lionel Robbins (!) observing that “The time at our disposal is limited. There are only twenty-four hours in the day. We have to choose between the different uses to which they may be put”. This is exactly why GAI will inevitably be approached through the prism of saving time*, but the inverse of that consideration is that other people will disregard the output because it doesn’t involve the sacrifice of time. The implications for how we distinguish between ideas and outputs, the cognitive objects which we give form to and externalise through creative activity, fascinate me and are difficult to pin down.
*Which I think is often a mistaken. In many uses it can save time but at the cost of quality and reliability. Explaining what you want a system to do in a sufficiently clear way is by its nature time consuming. It’s the same problem as delegating some tasks involving much of the cognitive labour involved in actually doing them yourself, at least without sufficient scaffolding to assume the person you’re delegating to can immediately pick it up without instruction.
Mark Carrigan 