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

The Gentle Singularity

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 557 posts

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#11

Post by Terr_ »

colesantiago wrote: post #2

> " I hope we will look at the jobs a thousand years in the future and think they are very fake jobs, and I have no doubt they will feel incredibly important and satisfying to the people doing them." So when AGI comes, I am curious what the new jobs are? I see that prompt engineer is one of the jobs created because it's the way to ask a LLM certain tasks, but now AI can do this too. I'm thinking that any new jobs AI…

If the AI is that good... then aren't most "abundance" scenarios kinda-sorta based on slavery? Or at the very least, on careful brainwashing to ensure it places human wellbeing and autonomy over its own?

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#12

Post by saubeidl »

colesantiago wrote: post #2

> " I hope we will look at the jobs a thousand years in the future and think they are very fake jobs, and I have no doubt they will feel incredibly important and satisfying to the people doing them." So when AGI comes, I am curious what the new jobs are? I see that prompt engineer is one of the jobs created because it's the way to ask a LLM certain tasks, but now AI can do this too. I'm thinking that any new jobs AI…

Shock-collared bodyguard for the tech oligarch doomsday bunker where they'll hide after carelessly tearing society apart.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#13

Post by afavour »

> It’s hard to even imagine today what we will have discovered by 2035; maybe we will go from solving high-energy physics one year to beginning space colonization the next year

I heard similar things in my college dorm, amid all the hazy smoke.

It’s very difficult to take this stuff seriously. It’s like the initial hype around self driving cars wound up by 1000x. Because we got from 1 to 100 of course we’ll get from 100 to 200 in the same amount of time. Or less! Why would you even question it?

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#14

Post by minimaxir »

> A lot more people will be able to create software, and art. But the world wants a lot more of both, and experts will probably still be much better than novices, as long as they embrace the new tools.

This isn't correct: people want good software and good art, and the current trajectory of how LLMs are used on average in the real world unfortunately run counter to that. This post doesn't offer any forecasts on the hallucination issues of LLMs.

> As datacenter production gets automated, the cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity. (People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses; the average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours

This is the first time a number has been given in terms of ChatGPT's cost-per-query and is obviously much lower than the 3 watts still cited by detractors, but there's a lot of asterisks in how that number might be calculated (is watt-hours the right unit of measurement here?).

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#15

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

colesantiago wrote: post #2

> " I hope we will look at the jobs a thousand years in the future and think they are very fake jobs, and I have no doubt they will feel incredibly important and satisfying to the people doing them." So when AGI comes, I am curious what the new jobs are? I see that prompt engineer is one of the jobs created because it's the way to ask a LLM certain tasks, but now AI can do this too. I'm thinking that any new jobs AI…

if we have "jobs" in 1000 years, AI will have been a miserable failure.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#16

Post by vjerancrnjak »

minimaxir wrote: post #14

> A lot more people will be able to create software, and art. But the world wants a lot more of both, and experts will probably still be much better than novices, as long as they embrace the new tools. This isn't correct: people want good software and good art, and the current trajectory of how LLMs are used on average in the real world unfortunately run counter to that. This post doesn't offer any forecasts on the h…

People don’t know what’s good without time. Even then many things fall through.

Most art is just meh and earns billions.

I don’t see AI stealing art. Most modern arts have a huge social component.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#18

Post by simmanian »

afavour wrote: post #13

> It’s hard to even imagine today what we will have discovered by 2035; maybe we will go from solving high-energy physics one year to beginning space colonization the next year I heard similar things in my college dorm, amid all the hazy smoke. It’s very difficult to take this stuff seriously. It’s like the initial hype around self driving cars wound up by 1000x. Because we got from 1 to 100 of course we’ll get from…

I find it hard to believe too, but at the same time, Demis Hassabis has also said that AI will help us "colonize the galaxy" in as little as five years [1]. Maybe Sam Altman was emboldened by Hassabis' statement.

I would not be opposed to living in a future where I can personally live in space. It would be quite fun.

[1] (paywalled) https://fortune.com/2025/06/06/google-deepmind-ceo-demis-has...

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#19

Post by saubeidl »

Terr_ wrote: post #11
colesantiago wrote: post #2

> " I hope we will look at the jobs a thousand years in the future and think they are very fake jobs, and I have no doubt they will feel incredibly important and satisfying to the people doing them." So when AGI comes, I am curious what the new jobs are? I see that prompt engineer is one of the jobs created because it's the way to ask a LLM certain tasks, but now AI can do this too. I'm thinking that any new jobs AI…

If the AI is that good... then aren't most "abundance" scenarios kinda-sorta based on slavery? Or at the very least, on careful brainwashing to ensure it places human wellbeing and autonomy over its own?

Slavery implies free will and conscience, neither of which machines have.

Re: The Gentle Singularity

#20

Post by jcelerier »

minimaxir wrote: post #14

> A lot more people will be able to create software, and art. But the world wants a lot more of both, and experts will probably still be much better than novices, as long as they embrace the new tools. This isn't correct: people want good software and good art, and the current trajectory of how LLMs are used on average in the real world unfortunately run counter to that. This post doesn't offer any forecasts on the h…

> people want good software and good art,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85mRPqvMbE

Post reply on HN