I did not anticipate this much traffic, working on restoring it right now
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AI is making us work more
31–40 of 270 posts
Re: AI is making us work more
#32Page doesn't load for me. I'm in the UK, not sure if geoblocked. But a response to the title: "_buzzword tech_ is making us work more" - it's rarely the tech making us work more, it's normally the behaviour and attitude of businesses trying to profit from the tech that makes life hard for everyone.
"Making" can mean different things. Yes, the new technology directly increases work by introducing new categories of tasks and a new learning treadmill to consume the time savings. Yes, the new technology does indirectly make us work harder by raising the expectations from management of how much we can get done in the same amount of time.
Re: AI is making us work more
#33The absolute worst place to be right now is in a B tech startup. Not only do you need to build some kind of app or product, you also need to build some kind of AI feature into the product. The users don't want it and never asked for it. It sucks all the resources out of your actual product that you should be focusing on, doesn't actually work or works non deterministically, but you are held to the same standards if i…
> And the only lever you have to pull is a lengthy model re-training or fine tuning/development cycle.
Is this really how professionals work on such a problem today?
The times I'd had a tune the responses, we'd gather bad/good examples, chuck it into a .csv/directory, then create an automated pipeline to give us a percentage of success rate for what we expect, then start tuning the prompt, parameters for inference and other things in an automated manner. As we discover more bad cases, add them to the testing pipeline.
Only if it was something that was very wrong would you reach for model re-training or fine-tuning, or when you know up front the model wouldn't be up for the exact task you have in mind.
Re: AI is making us work more
#34site is down
Re: AI is making us work more
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The recursive self improving AI is the pipe dream.
until it works
yes… just one more data center… one more model… one million more gallons of water… it’s going to work any second now, I swear… we definitely can get human level output without human level intelligence… i promise…
Re: AI is making us work more
#36Yes, this is why it's better to be a contractor/individual right now. You need to capture this efficiency yourself. You have access to the same tools faster than BigCos, so go hard in the paint. If you estimate 3h, and it takes 15m it's up to you how to reconcile this. Personally I bill the 3h.
> You need to capture this efficiency yourself. One could simply work less. Even if you're full in the office, you can just use that extra time to learn something new.
That doesn't work if your coworkers are getting more done now. Then you get a bar performance review and you're out.
Re: AI is making us work more
#37I was never excited for automation. Automation doesn't mean we do less. It means that we do as much work, and now also the work has a higher complexity ceiling; you need to understand the systems that are being automated, and need to maintain the automation. More things are possible, but everything is more complex, and of course, you still need to work 40 hours a week. Products don't get better either, but that's more of a "shareholder value" problem than it is a specific technology problem.
And yes, I only talked about automation, but the same high-level issues apply to LLMs, but with different downsides: you need to check the LLM output which becomes a bigger topic, and then potentially your own skills stagnate as you rely on LLMs more and more.
Re: AI is making us work more
#38when the bottleneck is communication (coordination costs scale polynomial with number of nodes in the graph), the optimal strategy is to have fewer nodes working harder. If AI makes individual nodes more effective, then in terms of people we’re going to eliminate jobs and concentrate effort. The mean job effort (including the unemployed) may be halftime while the median is 996 and the mode is 0. Whether it works is m…
Could you explain how AI is going to make energy, water, food, and shelter cheaper ?
They are obviously not saying that they think this is going to happen. It is explicitly an “if-then” thought experiment: “if technology is deflationary, then avoid civil unrest”. The tone is rightly skeptical.
Re: AI is making us work more
#39I did not anticipate this much traffic, working on restoring it right now
Ah yes, the good ol' HN hug o' death.
Re: AI is making us work more
#40I was never excited for automation. Automation doesn't mean we do less. It means that we do as much work, and now also the work has a higher complexity ceiling; you need to understand the systems that are being automated, and need to maintain the automation. More things are possible, but everything is more complex, and of course, you still need to work 40 hours a week. Products don't get better either, but that's mor…
Automation is a broad topic. At home I save time because my dishwasher automates washing my dishes. The clothes washer and dryer are a lot easier than doing it by hand. The fruit and vegetable at the grocery store are a lot cheaper than they would be without automation.
I think individuals who get comfortable in their jobs don’t like automation arriving at their station because it upends the order of things just as they were feeling comfortable and stable. Being adaptable now is more important than ever.
> Products don't get better either, but that's more of a "shareholder value" problem than it is a specific technology problem.
This is broadly false. Your laptop is unquestionably better because it was constructed with the help of automated CNC machines and PCB assembly as opposed to workers manually populating PCBs.
Some companies can try to use automation to stay in place with lower headcount, but they’ll be left behind by competition that uses automation to move forward. Once that leap happens it becomes accepted as the new normal, so it never feels like automation is making changes.