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Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

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Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#111

Post by wyre »

davidw wrote: post #71
tyre wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we had less regulation of insurance companies, do you think they’d be cheaper? (I pick this example because our regulation of insurance companies has (unintuitively) incentivized them to pay more for care. So it’s an example of poor regulation imo)

Health care is the more complicated one of the examples cited, but housing definitely is an 'own goal' in how we made it too difficult to build in too many places - especially "up and in" rather than outward expansion. Stuff like this isn't Wall Street or Billionaires or whatever bogeyman - it's our neighbors: https://bendyimby.com/2024/04/16/the-hearing-and-the-housing...

Health care is complicated, but I don't think it would hard to understand how less regulations could lower prices. More insurers could enter markets, could compete across state lines, and compliance costs could be lowered.

However regulation is helpful for those already sick or with pre-existing conditions. Developed countries with well-regulated systems also have better health outcomes than the US does.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#113

Post by tomxor »

Terrible comparison.

Horses and cars had a clearly defined, tangible, measurable purpose: transport... they were 100% comparable as a market good, and so predicting an inflection point is very reasonable. Same with Chess, a clearly defined problem in finite space with a binary, measurable outcome. Funny how Chess AI replacing humans in general was never considered as a serious possibility by most.

Now LLMs, what is their purpose? What is the purpose of a human?

I'm not denying some legitimate yet tedious human tasks are to regurgitate text... and a fuzzy text predictor can do a fairly good job of that at less cost. Some people also think and work in terms of text prediction more often than they should (that's called bullshitting - not a coincidence).

They really are _just_ text predictors, ones trained on such a humanly incomprehensible quantity of information as to appear superficially intelligent, as far as correlation will allow. It's been 4 years now, we already knew this. The idea that LLMs are a path to AGI and will replace all human jobs is so far off the mark.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#114

Post by actionfromafar »

jordwest wrote: post #92
actionfromafar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it really, though? Dollars aren't meant to be held.

I think the idea of dollars as purely a trading medium where absolute prices don't matter wouldn't be such an issue if wages weren't always the last thing to rise with inflation. As it is now anyone with assets is only barely affected by inflation while those who earn a living from wages have their livelihood eroded over time covertly.

Exactly as the current owners… ahem, leaders of this country want it.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#115

Post by hsuduebc2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give backing i’m from Australia which has ~2.5x the median wealth per capita of US citizens but a lower average wealth. This shows through in the wealth of a typical citizen. Less homelessness, better living standards (hdi in australia is higher) etc. Compare sorting by median vs average to get a sense of the issue; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... This is a recent development where…

I think by the time the wealthy realize they're setting themselves up for the local equivalent of the French Revolution it will be a bit late. It's a really bad idea to create a large number of people with absolutely nothing to lose.

Moreover when you acting absolutely relentlessly like certain car maker.

People usually change their behavior after some pretty horrific events. So I would predict something like that in future. For both Europe and US too.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#116

Post by overfeed »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give backing i’m from Australia which has ~2.5x the median wealth per capita of US citizens but a lower average wealth. This shows through in the wealth of a typical citizen. Less homelessness, better living standards (hdi in australia is higher) etc. Compare sorting by median vs average to get a sense of the issue; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... This is a recent development where…

I think by the time the wealthy realize they're setting themselves up for the local equivalent of the French Revolution it will be a bit late. It's a really bad idea to create a large number of people with absolutely nothing to lose.

I suspect the wealthy think they can shield themselves by exerting control over mass media, news outlets, the press, and domestic surveillance, all amplified by AI.

If all that fails, they have their underground bunkers on faraway islands and/or backup citizenships.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#117

Post by hsuduebc2 »

websiteapi wrote: post #22

funny how we have all of this progress yet things that actually matter (sorry chess fans) in the real world are more expensive: health care, housing, cars. and what meager gains there are seem to be more and more concentrated in a smaller group of people. plenty of charts you can look at - net productivity by virtually any metric vs real adjusted income. the example I like are kiosks and self checkout. who has encoun…

It's interesting to see Cyberpunk 2077 became somehow relatable more and more.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#118

Post by copypaper »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #77
websiteapi wrote: post #22

funny how we have all of this progress yet things that actually matter (sorry chess fans) in the real world are more expensive: health care, housing, cars. and what meager gains there are seem to be more and more concentrated in a smaller group of people. plenty of charts you can look at - net productivity by virtually any metric vs real adjusted income. the example I like are kiosks and self checkout. who has encoun…

>in the real world are more expensive: health care, housing, cars. Think of it another way. It's not that these things are more expensive. It's that the average US worker simply doesn't provide anything of value. China provides the things of value now. How the government corrected for this was to flood the economy with cash. So it looks like things got more expensive, when really it's that wages reduced to match real…

Yep. My grandma bought her house in ~1962 for $20k working at a factory making $2/hr. Her mortgage was $100/m; about 1 weeks worth of pay. $2/hr then is the equivalent of ~$21/hr today.

If you were to buy that same house today, your mortgage would be about $5100/m-- about 6 weeks of pay.

And the reason is exactly what you're saying: the average US worker doesn't provide as much value anymore. Just as her factory job got optimized/automated, AI is going to do the same for many. Tech workers were expensive for a while and now they're not. The problem is that there seems to be less and less opportunity where one can bring value. The only true winners are the factory owners and AI providers in this scenario. The only chance anybody has right now is to cut the middleman out, start their own business, and pray it takes off.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#119

Post by wyre »

actionfromafar wrote: post #85
namesbc wrote: post #53

Software engineers used to know that measuring lines of code written was a poor metric for productivity... https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

So, a free idea from me: train the next coding LLM to produce not regular text, but patches which shortens code while still keeping the code working the same.

gonna tell claude to write all my code in one line

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#120

Post by refactor_master »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #55
websiteapi wrote: post #22

funny how we have all of this progress yet things that actually matter (sorry chess fans) in the real world are more expensive: health care, housing, cars. and what meager gains there are seem to be more and more concentrated in a smaller group of people. plenty of charts you can look at - net productivity by virtually any metric vs real adjusted income. the example I like are kiosks and self checkout. who has encoun…

Those are all expensive because of artificial barriers meant to keep their prices high. Go to any Asian country and houses, healthcare and cars are priced like commodities, not luxuries. Tech and AI have taken off in the US partially because they’re in the domain of software, which hasnt bee regulated to the point of deliberate inefficiency like other industries in the US.

> Go to any Asian country and houses, healthcare and cars are priced like commodities, not luxuries.

What do you mean? Several Asian cities have housing crises far worse than the US in local purchasing power, and I'd even argue that a "cheap" home in many Asian countries is going to be of a far lower quality than a "cheap" home in the US.

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