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

AI and the Automation of Work

ben-evans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 268 posts

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#91

Post by llogiq »

Having seen state of the art neural networks in the 70s and 80s, I am both in awe at the progress that has been made since and deeply unconcerned about AGI.

Yes, storage capacity and compute have made major leaps, but it's still only lossily compressing a semantic space. It won't generate things from thin air, and it's certainly not sentient, no matter how far you scale it up.

That said, it may be a useful tool in some cases, and we've also seen its numerous limitations, only some of which may be alleviated in the future.

As always, the problem is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#92

Post by raincole »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

I ensure you no one actually cares about what happens 1000 years later. If someone actually cares about that, we'll call them mentally disordered.

By actually I mean to expend a significant part of the resource (time & money) you own to prepare for it.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#93

Post by littlestymaar »

dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

> but for the sake of the argument, let's restrict it to manual jobs where being human doesn't matter.

This is the biggest misconception about AI and automation: manual jobs will be the last to be automated, because making robots (which is specialized hardware) is much, much more expensive than making software. That's why our 70s dreams about robots haven't materialized, despite Japan going all in on robots, and why Besos aims to “algorithmically control workers' body”.

> It doesn't look good.

Having machines do work isn't a problem in itself, in fact that's what the industrial revolution was about, the problem is power and whealth grab by a minority of people owning the means of productions…

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#94

Post by mercurialsolo »

Maybe at the end of this cycle what we really invest in is on humanization of work. New work maybe all about having a human interface with the ability to connect to the person on the other side. And the entire decisioning and thinking is done by the algorithms.

We do not want to read tweets or content created by AI's or machines, we want to connect with humans who can inform or teach us better. Maybe this would mean the liberation of humans from physical fields to digital fields where we keep plowing.

We were meant to connect, discover, roam, invent and innovate and instead ended up somehow sitting in front of a monitor and calling it work!

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#95

Post by shaunkoh »

horeszko wrote: post #60
shaunkoh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been incredibly helpful to me. It helped me figure out how to get docker containers setup. It’s even helped me figure out how to run data analysis on graph data. It’s not just made things simpler – it’s made things possible .

>"It’s not just made things simpler – it’s made things possible" Nice slogan... is this an ad?

Lol just an attempt at being pithy. It’s true though. Something about ease of functionality curves making whole classes of new use cases / customers possible.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#96

Post by verve_rat »

dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

> A security guard at an airport can be a machine gun with wheels, it is more intimidating that way.

Jesus. Fucking. H. Christ.

RoboCop (1987) should be required watching before anyone is allowed to touch AI.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#97

Post by barrysteve »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

There are many ideas that have not been covered by programming or predictive AI.

AGI sounds like Skynet, the Holodeck, the super information highway and all the buzzwords.

Wake me up in 20yrs, cause I will probably be using c++ and COBOL to sticky tape bank mainframes back together, when the boomers have finally given up on keeping those beasts alive and staving off the thirty seventh crypto revolution.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#98

Post by shaunkoh »

keyle wrote: post #65
shaunkoh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been incredibly helpful to me. It helped me figure out how to get docker containers setup. It’s even helped me figure out how to run data analysis on graph data. It’s not just made things simpler – it’s made things possible .

This is true. Particularly if you're a polgyglot working with many different stacks. You know how to do something in X and you've never done it in Y. Explain it to ChatGPT and it gets you 95% there. It's a huge time saver. Sure you could do it by browsing the web and sticking together a bunch of pieces, rewrite it twice etc.

100%. I do know it might come bite me in the ass at some point.

Already I didn’t realise my docker container was saving data to the NON-PERSISTENT data volume. But that was a greater reflection of Chatgpt taking me beyond my knowledge limits, and me being in a place where my ignorance of my ignorance can lead to not-great consequences.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#99

Post by ido »

raincole wrote: post #84
danmaz74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A security guard at an airport can be a a machine gun on wheels" - are you serious? That is a job which is 99.99% about understanding human intentions in confusing and ambiguous situations, and where making a mistake will literally kill people. It's the last job you want to automate with "AI".

It's a very good example to understand how "AI evangelists" think. Anyone with even slightest common senes would immediately understands why it's a bad idea, but AI evangelists just can't.

We had a whole series of films (RoboCop) warning us about exactly this particular Torment Nexus[0]

[0] https://twitter.com/alexblechman/status/1457842724128833538

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#100

Post by amoss »

raincole wrote: post #84
danmaz74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A security guard at an airport can be a a machine gun on wheels" - are you serious? That is a job which is 99.99% about understanding human intentions in confusing and ambiguous situations, and where making a mistake will literally kill people. It's the last job you want to automate with "AI".

It's a very good example to understand how "AI evangelists" think. Anyone with even slightest common senes would immediately understands why it's a bad idea, but AI evangelists just can't.

So AI evangelism is a role that is ripe for disruption by ChatGPT.
Post reply on HN