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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

#131

Post by [deleted] »

traverseda wrote: post #35
ible wrote: post #5

People are not simple machines or animals. Unless AI becomes strictly better than humans and humans + AI, from the perspective of other humans, at all activities, there will still be lots of things for humans to do to provide value for each other. The question is how do our individuals, and more importantly our various social and economic systems handle it when exactly what humans can do to provide value for each oth…

I'd be more worried about the implicit power imbalance. It's not what can humans provide for each-other, it's what can humans provide for a handful of ultra-wealthy oligarchs.

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by esafak »

xlbuttplug2 wrote: post #102
kgk9000 wrote: post #82

I think the author's point is that each type of job will basically disappear roughly at once, shortly after AI crosses the bar of "good enough" in that particular field.

I think the turning point will be when AI assisted individuals or tiny companies are able to deliver comparable products/value as the goliaths.

That would be the ideal scenario; when you can build a small business more easily.

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

#134

Post by twodave »

adventured wrote: post #16

It's astounding how subtly anti-AI HN has become over the past year, as the models keep getting better and better. It's now pervasive across nearly every AI thread here. As the potential of AI technical agents has gone from an interesting discussion to extraordinarily obvious as to what the outcome is going to be, HN has comically shifted negative in tone on AI. They doth protest too much. I think it's a very clear c…

I’m not anti-AI; I use it every day. But I also think all this hand-wringing is overblown and unbalanced. LLMs, because of what they are, will never replace a thoughtful engineer. If you’re writing code for a living at the level of an LLM then your job was probably already expendable before LLMs showed up.

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

#135

Post by xeonmc »

jordwest wrote: post #57
traverseda wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more worried about the implicit power imbalance. It's not what can humans provide for each-other, it's what can humans provide for a handful of ultra-wealthy oligarchs.

Yeah, from the perspective of the ultra-wealthy us humans are already pretty worthless and they'll be glad to get rid of us. But from the perspective of a human being, an animal, and the environment that needs love, connection, mutual generosity and care, another human being who can provide those is priceless. I propose we break away and create our own new economy and the ultra-wealthy can stay in their fully optimis…

Charlie Chaplin's speech is more relevant now than ever before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

ghssds wrote: post #72
ible wrote: post #5

People are not simple machines or animals. Unless AI becomes strictly better than humans and humans + AI, from the perspective of other humans, at all activities, there will still be lots of things for humans to do to provide value for each other. The question is how do our individuals, and more importantly our various social and economic systems handle it when exactly what humans can do to provide value for each oth…

People are animals.

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by somenameforme »

twodave wrote: post #126

Horses eat feed. Cars eat gasoline. LLMs eat electricity, and progress may even now be finding its limits in that arena. Besides the fact that just more compute and context size aren’t the right kind of progress. LLMs aren’t coming for your job any more than computer vision is, for a lot of reasons, but I’ll list two more: 1. Even if LLMs made everyone 10x as productive, most companies will still have more work to do…

Yip, the famous example here being John Maynard Keynes, of Keynesian economics. [1] He predicted a 15 hour work week following productivity gains that we have long since surpassed. And not only did he think we'd have a 15 hour work week, he felt that it'd be mostly voluntary - with people working that much only to give themselves a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

Instead our productivity went way above anything he could imagine, yet there was no radical shift in labor. We just instead started making billionaires by the thousand, and soon enough we can add trillionaires. He underestimated how many people were willing to designate the pursuit of wealth as the meaning of life itself.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

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

#138

Post by enduser »

twodave wrote: post #126

Horses eat feed. Cars eat gasoline. LLMs eat electricity, and progress may even now be finding its limits in that arena. Besides the fact that just more compute and context size aren’t the right kind of progress. LLMs aren’t coming for your job any more than computer vision is, for a lot of reasons, but I’ll list two more: 1. Even if LLMs made everyone 10x as productive, most companies will still have more work to do…

This is a very insightful take. People forget that there is competition between corporations and nations that drives an arms race. The humans at risk of job displacement are the ones who lack the skill and experience to oversee the robots. But if one company/nation has a workforce that is effectively 1000x, then the next company/nation needs to compete. The companies/countries that retire their humans and try to automate everything will be out-competed by companies/countries that use humans and robots together to maximum effect.

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

#139

Post by raldi »

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…

Food and clothes are much cheaper. People used to have to walk or hitchhike a lot more. People died younger, or were trapped with abusive spouses and/or parents. Crime was high. There was little economic mobility. It really sucked if you weren’t a straight white man. Houses had one bathroom. Power went out regularly. Travel was rare and expensive; people rarely flew anywhere. There was limited entertainment or opportunities to learn about the world.

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

#140

Post by shaka-bear-tree »

twodave wrote: post #126

Horses eat feed. Cars eat gasoline. LLMs eat electricity, and progress may even now be finding its limits in that arena. Besides the fact that just more compute and context size aren’t the right kind of progress. LLMs aren’t coming for your job any more than computer vision is, for a lot of reasons, but I’ll list two more: 1. Even if LLMs made everyone 10x as productive, most companies will still have more work to do…

Funny the original post doesn’t mention AI replacing the coding part of his job.

There seems to be a running theme of “okay but what about” in every discussion that involves AI replacing jobs. Meanwhile a little time goes by and “poof” AI is handling it.

I want to be be optimistic. But it’s hard to ignore what I’m doing and seeing. As far as I can tell, we haven’t hit serious unemployment yet because of momentum and slow adoption.

I’m not replying to argue, I hope you are right. But I look around and can’t shake the feeling of Wile E. Coyote hanging in midair waiting for gravity to kick in.

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