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Problems that attract smart people

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Re: Problems that attract smart people

#91

Post by vlovich123 »

corbulo wrote: post #84
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, p…

Washing machine but for office work is a great analogy. You lost me at iPhone for AI. I think I know what you mean but it can be expressed better.

OP is saying GPT is the equivalent of an old Nokia feature phone. However cellphones really blew up once Apple figured out how to make smartphones broadly appealing with multi touch (prior to that you had things like Windows CE, Blackberry and Palm, but those were extremely more limited than what the iPhone delivered).

In other words the jump ahead from GPT to broadly useful AI is akin to the jump from the old Nokia feature phone to iPhone. Don’t let the current limitations of GPT color what you think AI will be generally capable of within the next decade.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#92

Post by jackvalentine »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13
michaelt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves. If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its pro…

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, p…

> Suddenly, like the CEO of today, every one will be able to have a secretary.

I think something that was majorly lost in the past 60 years is the secretary. I agree with you that it’d be great if everyone had one - the working relationship between a secretary and the person they support can be amazingly productive.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#94

Post by mikewarot »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13
michaelt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves. If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its pro…

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, p…

>The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world

The biggest game changer was the fossil fuel that enabled that washing machine, and all the other modern devices we rely on.

That same substance is used to as chemical feedstock for fertilizers and more than double yields, and more than double the amount of "arable" land. If we were to run out, half of humanity would likely starve.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#95

Post by badpun »

sureglymop wrote: post #60
jokethrowaway wrote: post #45

The single smartest person I know (an actual genius, mensa, gifted schools, etc) works in a crappy web agency and he's chronically underpaid. Tons of smart people I know are doing mediocre jobs. The fact someone is tackling hard problems doesn't make them the smartest people in the room, you need a combination of risk taking and smart in life.

Generally what's needed to climb career ladders are social skills and networking skills. Coincidentally many smart people are not neurotypical and struggle with that. The problem is the "concept" of meritocracy. Many smart people may face significant amounts of adversity or may due to their circumstances be stuck in poverty. One example of that are people with adhd, autism, asperger's etc, many of whom score high on…

> Generally what's needed to climb career ladders are social skills and networking skills.

And also, just the will to climb. Smart people often look at the big picture and come to view the rat race as pointless, thus staying on a lower rung of the ladder for life.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#96

Post by ChatGTP »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #85
v64 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm outing myself as a so-called unintelligent person here, but I don't see how AI is a threat to creative hobbies of mine like music and writing. AI isn't going to stop me from sitting down at the piano or writing a short story. There will always be people in the world better at those things than me, so what difference does it make if an AI may or may not be better at them too? And if I can't tell the differ…

It makes it so that the actual intellectually interesting analysis of art, when viewed through the lens of an LLM, becomes a cognitively simple to understand puzzle of matching prompts to effects. There's not a lot of interesting conversation to ask about color theory or composition. The interesting stuff is asking what is an artist trying to convey or explore within the nuances of the medium they are working with: w…

I spoke to an artist the other say, he just said, in true artists style, that maybe he can collaborate with the bots, otherwise he doesn’t care about AI art.

I thought it would be upset so I kind of introduced the topic lightly.

I was relieved how much he didn’t care.

I completely agree with you. A button click image will never relate to most people like a real work of art.

I think the same about television. I think we all like Seinfeld because we know he is a real person with real experiences that we can relate too. I think this is important.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#97

Post by ChatGTP »

digging wrote: post #81
v64 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm outing myself as a so-called unintelligent person here, but I don't see how AI is a threat to creative hobbies of mine like music and writing. AI isn't going to stop me from sitting down at the piano or writing a short story. There will always be people in the world better at those things than me, so what difference does it make if an AI may or may not be better at them too? And if I can't tell the differ…

> AI isn't going to stop me from sitting down at the piano or writing a short story. There will always be people in the world better at those things than me, so what difference does it make if an AI may or may not be better at them too? The threat is that it will no longer be viable to make money from creative works. A completely trivial and laughable concern if you don't live in a society that believes you have to "…

I hate to break it to you, but are you able to name many great artists in history who died rich ?

The only artists I can think of that died with at least some money had sponsors that encouraged their work.

So I’m not sure much changes here.

If AI is supposed to stop us all from working, then those people will just be better off.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#98

Post by BiteCode_dev »

lambic2 wrote: post #87
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nokia 3310 was amazing. But compared to what we have today, it's very basic. Same for chatgpt.

Right but by that definition every thing in the universe is and will always be basic. The word becomes meaningless.

The temporality of evolution is what's important here.

The washing machine has reached a tipping point, we hit diminishing returns from now on.

The AI is in the nokia phase. It's at the primitive stage of development.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#99

Post by mercutio2 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #90
jokethrowaway wrote: post #45

The single smartest person I know (an actual genius, mensa, gifted schools, etc) works in a crappy web agency and he's chronically underpaid. Tons of smart people I know are doing mediocre jobs. The fact someone is tackling hard problems doesn't make them the smartest people in the room, you need a combination of risk taking and smart in life.

See the story of William James Sidis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis > Child prodigy, IQ assessed between 250 and 300, contemporary, classmate, and friend of Norbert Wiener (father of cybernetics, also a child prodigy), and ended up ... making a life's work of studying bus transfers. As in the tickets, not commute patterns themselves. Several HN submissions though no substantive discussion: https:/…

IQ of 250 is a meaningless statement. IQ of 200 means “better than 1/10 billion”. There aren’t enough humans to make a statement like that meaningful, and an IQ of 250 is positing something like “smarter than all humans living in the solar system centuries from now”.

Maybe when we make AGIs in bulk we’ll be able to talk about analytical capacity on some more meaningful scale than IQ, but for now, numbers like you gave attached to a human are just silly hyperbole.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#100

Post by galleywest200 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #43
agentultra wrote: post #38

I wonder how many of the developers in the groups denigrated in the author also thought they were the, "smart ones attracted to interesting problems." You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look.

> You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look. Unfortunately (unrelated to AI and co), this is also a problem; many engineers write overcomplicated solutions for simple / banal problems, because they get bored otherwise.

Then give your engineers more interesting problems. Or give them more freedom. Or give them days where they can work on whatever they want. There are plenty of options to correct that course.
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