Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

futureoflife.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 1001 posts

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#81

Post by petilon »

musicale wrote: post #76
petilon wrote: post #68

> Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? You don't necessarily need jobs because you don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that cou…

> AI & robots will generate wealth at unprecedented scale, and humans will reap the benefits, the same way Alaskans reap the benefits of their natural resources. Vast wealth will certainly be delivered to owners of the robots and AI systems. What reason is there to believe that they would share the wealth with ordinary citizens? A typical alternative to the Alaska model is one where oil companies extract all of the w…

A lot of people are already benefiting from ChatGPT. I know I am, and I am only paying $20 a month for a digital assistant that is expert in everything.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#82

Post by AlbertCory »

layer8 wrote: post #64
m_ke wrote: post #41

GPT-4 might be close to the best we'll get on the general LLM model front for a while since they trained on a huge chunk of web text. Next real advances will probably be in tuning them for specific applications in medicine, law, accounting, marketing, coding and etc. As someone running a one man company I can't wait for the cost of accounting, legal and copywriting to approach 0. Cost of shipping products will also g…

I wonder how it will be able to do that for the tech that will be current in 10 years, if mostly everyone will be using AI by then instead of asking on Stack Overflow.

Stack Overflow is headed for oblivion? What's the downside?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#85

Post by kelseyfrog »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #67

I'm really disappointed to see the HN reaction of straight up scoffing at this like it's irreversible and so let's just step on the gas. It's some weird combination of techno-utopianism and nihilism and good old elitism.

AGI is a break-capitalism lottery ticket I'm willing to entertain. If the marginal cost of labor collapses to zero then either we'll get robot police or finally be free to pursue lives of leisure.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#86

Post by thomasahle »

petilon wrote: post #68

> Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? You don't necessarily need jobs because you don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that cou…

> Because of productivity gains humans will work very little, and yet live comfortably.

Wouldn't this imply humans should already be working very little compared to pre industrial revolution? Instead it seems we work more [1]. And with less fulfilling work. I agree however that we have may have more stuff (or wealth).

So going by this projection, in the future we'll have even more stuff, and work even more in even less fulfilling work. That is, assuming the people who control the AI/robots are willing to share the wealth generated.

[1]: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#87

Post by tree_enjoyer »

Animats wrote: post #55
JohnFen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think laughing at people for their concerns is helpful. Especially when you don't seem to be bothered by the possibility that this is a civilization-ending development. For the record, I don't think it is, personally. But people are terrified, and not taking their fear seriously and dealing with it compassionately is a recipe for serious, and unnecessary disaster.

A civilization-ending development, no. A job-ending development for many people, yes. The chattering classes see themselves becoming obsolete. Fast. They're freaking out. From professors of English literature to op-ed writers, word slingers are in trouble. Not novelists, though; none of these systems can hold a story together for any great length. If everything you get paid for goes in and out over a wire, you're in…

If you were to eliminate 10% of jobs with no replacements available, in the span of say a year, that would likely be a civilization ending development. People unable to feed their families tend to take drastic actions.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#88

Post by JohnFen »

jakeinspace wrote: post #58
m_ke wrote: post #41

GPT-4 might be close to the best we'll get on the general LLM model front for a while since they trained on a huge chunk of web text. Next real advances will probably be in tuning them for specific applications in medicine, law, accounting, marketing, coding and etc. As someone running a one man company I can't wait for the cost of accounting, legal and copywriting to approach 0. Cost of shipping products will also g…

I’m not sure I’m looking forward to the politics that would come out of 10-20% of the previously middle class becoming instantly redundant and out of (middle-salary) work. That’s the fast path to fascism, unless we’re able to quickly implement UBI and other major societal overhauls.

> unless we’re able to quickly implement UBI and other major societal overhauls.

Which are not going to happen.

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#89

Post by isx726552 »

dougmwne wrote: post #3

[flagged]

> Please stop outcompeting us. Sincerely, The Losers

Are there going to be any non-“losers”? AGI has the potential to put everyone, literally everyone, out of work. Permanently.

Who is going to be left to do the laughing and call others “losers”?

Re: Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

#90

Post by davesque »

sp527 wrote: post #77
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #67

I'm really disappointed to see the HN reaction of straight up scoffing at this like it's irreversible and so let's just step on the gas. It's some weird combination of techno-utopianism and nihilism and good old elitism.

Almost everyone here will be fine in a world in which only certain non-renewable scarce resources have any value, combined with impending massive currency deflation. Even a rank and file tier 2/3 engineer will manage to live a princely life in that new reality assuming (s)he saved up enough. Hardly anyone in the tech community is capable of truly empathizing with the vast majority of people, who are born with none of…

> Hardly anyone in the tech community is capable of truly empathizing with the vast majority of people

This is a gross exaggeration.

Post reply on HN