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Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

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Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

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Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides. Some People bunching crypto with AI on the usefulness scale is quite ridiculous

I will root for AI a lot more readily when we have a good alternative (UBI?) for people whos jobs are being displaced faster than they can retrain Y'all cheerleaders are going to create an underclass the likes of which you've never seen before. I hope they take up torches and pitchforks

> for people whos jobs are being displaced faster than they can retrain

Where is this mass displacement of which you speak?

Which companies are firing en masse and replacing with AI?

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#82
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides. Some People bunching crypto with AI on the usefulness scale is quite ridiculous

I root for AGI. ML and LLMs in particular are just fancy maths/statistics. Yes they are immensely useful, but also 1. overhyped / overrated, 2. facing the problem of in-breeding. AGI will work nothing like today's LLMs. AGI will stare at your question, and instead of answering, ask you: "why do you want to know that?". You can't have intelligence without curiosity.

That AGI will likely mean the end of humanity.

We will no longer be the dominant species.

If the AGI is anything like us, it might keep us around as slaves.

Not immediately, but give it 100 years. We’ll be the frog in the pot of boiling water.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#83
This study is useless, the experiment design is so fundamentally flawed that it provides virtually no real information.

As others have pointed out, mturk always had workers using automation, and the researchers set up a task that is an obvious application for LLM's, who's output makes it difficult to different humans generated output, and isn't even a good use case for mturk (since the output is free form text that would have to be validated by humans rather than an automated quorum check).

This is simply an insult to science

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#84
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from genuine curiosity, what jobs don’t compete with an AI that’s designed to mimic and surpass human capability?

It seems like it would be hard to automate being a plumber or electrician, AI isn't really being aimed at that problem. Jobs which are specifically about being a human seem like they can't be automated, like actors, waiters, athletes, sex workers. I sincerely doubt anyone would watch or care about fake AI generated sports.

It strikes me that we don't have 7 billion available jobs centered around being human

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#85
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“AI” eating itself is the best outcome for everyone. It’s a mass energy balance. The inputs equal the outputs; garbage in, garbage out.

Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides. Some People bunching crypto with AI on the usefulness scale is quite ridiculous

With society as it exists today, we can't have sudden, mass unemployment.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#86

This is not novel. Mturk has always been automated since its very first release. I remember worker forums sharing scripts to query amazon for the expected results that would get you paid. Amazon put up a bunch of very lucrative test jobs, but you only got paid if your answer matched the majority. The majority were automating, so unless you used the sometimes incorrect answers, you got nothing.

It's surreal that even when it comes to AI we still fundamentally rely on underpaid labor.

I used to think that. But when you think more about what value is, how it’s created and how we extract it to pay our insane salaries, it becomes less surprising and more sad.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#87
post #60
post #28

“AI” eating itself is the best outcome for everyone. It’s a mass energy balance. The inputs equal the outputs; garbage in, garbage out.

Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides. Some People bunching crypto with AI on the usefulness scale is quite ridiculous

> Why would you not root for AI? Its potential to improve humanity is huge even if there are potential bad sides.

That's just garbage propaganda from the hype men. I don't buy it and you shouldn't either. We don't live in a sci-fi fantasy novel.

The real end game for "AI" is power for the few, with little need for the plebs (us), so no need to share any of that power. That's what our current social structure will give us, and "AI" isn't going to change that structure.

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surreal that even when it comes to AI we still fundamentally rely on underpaid labor.

I used to think that. But when you think more about what value is, how it’s created and how we extract it to pay our insane salaries, it becomes less surprising and more sad.

Can you say more on this (value and how it’s extracted)?

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#89
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the current crop of AI at least, the upside will almost entirely be captured by a handful of rich elites who will gain even more leverage over workers. Virtually no business owner pays someone well for any reason other than they have to in order to make more money themselves. If LLMs don't flame out it will be like the dawn of offshoring except wider scale and without the upside of poor people in other countries…

This is technology in general though. Technology first benefits the rich and causes people to lose their jobs, but then in the next generation, people get different jobs and everyone’s life is better. Technology is a double edge sword in every way.

You're engaging with it as though AI is actually going to revolutionize jobs. I think that's highly unlikely.

What AI is likely to do is distract people from the continued accumulation of wealth and power. Reinforce the notion that it's "fair" (everyone else can be automated after all). And provide a cap to your wages (if the machine could do it with 50 MWh of power, then your salary will logically have to be lower than that, even if the machine doesn't actually exist YET).

Re: Mechanical Turk workers are using AI to automate being human

#90
post #79
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will root for AI a lot more readily when we have a good alternative (UBI?) for people whos jobs are being displaced faster than they can retrain Y'all cheerleaders are going to create an underclass the likes of which you've never seen before. I hope they take up torches and pitchforks

When AI can solve most problems we have, we will have UBI because most will not need to work, but pessimists will say we will all lost jobs.

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