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AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

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Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#191

Post by dahart »

Herval_freire wrote: post #116
dahart wrote: post #84

At some level it’s tautological. Initially I had a similar negative reaction other commenters had, but I think I’m deciding I like the people framing. Obviously this is not an either-or. It’s not a question of AI vs people, it’s both AI+people. But only people are making the choices. People are building AI, people who can use AI will choose to use it, and people who run businesses will choose to allow it and/or incor…

No it's not healthy in my opinion. A drug addict doesn't exactly have a choice when he uses drugs. Aspects of human behavior in aggregate are so predictable it's basically deterministic. If AI one day matches or surpasses human intelligence it is obvious humanity will exploit that AI as it already is doing now. There is no actual "choice" here. Just an illusion of it.

Initially I didn’t like the drug addict analogy, but maybe it’s a good one, maybe you’re right. A drug addict did have a choice, and exercised it, and addiction was the consequence. With AI we’re at the first stage where we’re not yet addicted, but once we become addicted, it will be very very hard to wean ourselves off of it if/when we find out it’s doing more damage than good. We do have a choice right now, but you might be right that we’ll lose it soon.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#192

Post by mdkfof9rl »

Herval_freire wrote: post #116
dahart wrote: post #84

At some level it’s tautological. Initially I had a similar negative reaction other commenters had, but I think I’m deciding I like the people framing. Obviously this is not an either-or. It’s not a question of AI vs people, it’s both AI+people. But only people are making the choices. People are building AI, people who can use AI will choose to use it, and people who run businesses will choose to allow it and/or incor…

No it's not healthy in my opinion. A drug addict doesn't exactly have a choice when he uses drugs. Aspects of human behavior in aggregate are so predictable it's basically deterministic. If AI one day matches or surpasses human intelligence it is obvious humanity will exploit that AI as it already is doing now. There is no actual "choice" here. Just an illusion of it.

Good thing LLMs don't have any intelligence at all, since they lack agency. We're no closer to AI that can be meaningfully exploited than we were when Asimov dreamt up the positronic brain

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#193

Post by vitehozonage »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #64
snarf21 wrote: post #10

This is a nonsense headline. This is the equivalent of "Factory automation won't steal your job, companies that buy factory automation will." Democratization of AI tools will have upsides and downsides but non researchers weren't playing around with AI text/chat generation before this last round of simple to use tools came out.

I think it’s absurd as well. Jobs won’t be stolen, different jobs will be created. At a certain point we will move past scarcity, and maybe we won’t have to labor to not die. What’s so important about a job? Humans need meaning, but meaning doesn’t have to be delivered by PayChex at the expense of the human soul.

>At a certain point we will move past scarcity, and maybe we won’t have to labor to not die.

Society seems to be globally showing very decisively that it wont allow that to happen. Productivity has already increased massively. Society could have already used that productivity to decrease the hours that each person has to work to survive. Instead, society's structure pushes those profits to the owners of the businesses that run the technology.

'Working class people must work full time' is still such a fundamental part of culture that it is literally the Federal Reserve's mandate to maximise employment.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#194

Post by falcolas »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #167
Herval_freire wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not healthy in my opinion. A drug addict doesn't exactly have a choice when he uses drugs. Aspects of human behavior in aggregate are so predictable it's basically deterministic. If AI one day matches or surpasses human intelligence it is obvious humanity will exploit that AI as it already is doing now. There is no actual "choice" here. Just an illusion of it.

We've changed collective human behavior before though, outlawed slavery etc.

And yet, even in countries where slavery is outlawed, it's still done - sometimes out in the open, sometimes behind closed doors.

e.g. the US, where people in jail are exempt from all our progressive slave labor laws.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#195

Post by js8 »

proc0 wrote: post #166

Seems like a pedantic argument. Obviously there is always a human behind it unless it's sentient and can make its own decisions, at which point there are much bigger ethical considerations to discuss first.

But that's the point of stating it, isn't it? The people like Yudkowski or Musk who warn against AI are typically worried about the later scenario, not about "it will take jobs".

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#196

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

the_doctah wrote: post #168
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying this, pointing out the "mistakes with confidence" aspect of LLMs, but as someone who is continually amazed by ChatGPT and finds it very useful in my day-to-day, it's hard for me to take this objection seriously if presented as a reason not to use AI . That is, for me, the output of ChatGPT or other AI tools is the starting point of my investigation, not the end output. Yes, if you just blindly past…

Maybe you haven't used it enough. ChatGPT is wrong all the time for me, sometimes insultingly wrong. The confidence in it's incorrect answers just makes it that much worse. I can't buy any of this hype for a "word-putting-together" algorithm. It's not real intelligence.

Please give some examples then. I've found the GPT-4 version to be remarkably accurate, and when it makes mistakes it's not hard to spot them.

For example, I commented last week that I've found ChatGPT to be a great tool for managing my task list, and for whatever reason the "verbal" back-and-forth works much better for my brain than a simple checklist-based todo app: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35390644 . But, I also pointed out how it will get the sums for my "task estimate totals by group" wrong. But it's so easy to see this mistake, and after using it for a while I have a good understanding for when it's likely to occur, that it doesn't lessen the value I get from using the tool.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#197

Post by alex_sf »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #158
alex_sf wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the same way you make decisions on any piece of information. You should not be blindly trusting a single source.

I was too vague I think. The only place where I can see it being acceptable right now is code because I have a whole other system that will call out failures - I can rely on my IDE and my own expertise to hopefully catch issues when they appear. Outside of the code use case, what should I rely on ChatGPT for that won't have me also looking for the information somewhere else? I suppose subjective soft things, like wri…

Again, the idea that you should rely on any single source for information is the issue. Nothing changes with ChatGPT other than the apparent expectation that it is infallible.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#198

Post by marginalia_nu »

falcolas wrote: post #194
marginalia_nu wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've changed collective human behavior before though, outlawed slavery etc.

And yet, even in countries where slavery is outlawed, it's still done - sometimes out in the open, sometimes behind closed doors. e.g. the US, where people in jail are exempt from all our progressive slave labor laws.

Be that as it may, the collective behavior and shape of society has undeniably changed.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#199

Post by ben_w »

tricksforfree wrote: post #77
lolsowrong wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the calculator. Floating point imprecision is well documented.

That's true. But we know exactly why it can't do it.

How important is the "knowing why" if the mistakes are still there? And in reverse, we "know" GPT doesn't use a calculator unless specially pointed at one.

Floating point errors creeping in is why we have to use quaternions instead of matrixes for 3D games. Apparently. I'd already given up on doing my own true-3D game engine by that point.

In some sense we "know why" humans make mistakes too — and in many fields from advertising to political zeitgeist we manipulate using knowledge of common human flaws.

On this basis I think the application of pedagogical and psychological studies to AI will be increasingly important.

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