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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

#201

Post by baq »

Gigachad wrote: post #178
sendes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the horses' population started (slightly) rising again when they went from economic tools to recreational tools for humans. What will happen to humans?

The horse population was being boosted beyond normal numbers by human intervention. When humans stopped breeding them the numbers dropped. At least currently humans do not need AI to reproduce.

There were approximately zero horses in the wild, so it was all about what humans found useful.

Pray it’s still humans who ask these kinds of questions about AI, not the other way around.

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

#202

Post by baq »

florilegiumson wrote: post #162

If AI is really likely to cause a mass extinction event, then non-proliferation becomes critical as it was in the case with nuclear weapons. Otherwise, what does it really mean for AI to "replace people" outside of people needing to retool or socially awkward people having to learn to talk to people better? AI surely will change a lot, but I don't understand the steps needed to get to the highly existential threat th…

Capitalism gives, capitalism takes. Regulation will be critical so it doesn’t take too much, but tech is moving so fast even technologists, enthusiasts and domain researchers don’t know what to expect.

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

#203

Post by socketcluster »

I think my software engineering job will be safe so long as big companies keep using average code as their training set. This is because the average developer creates unnecessary complexity which creates more work for me.

The way the average dev structures their code requires like 10x the number of lines as I do and at least 10x the amount of time to maintain... The interest on technical debt compounds like interest on normal debt.

Whenever I join a new project, within 6 months, I control/maintain all the core modules of the system and everything ends up hooked up to my config files, running according to the architecture I designed. Happened at multiple companies. The code looks for the shortest path to production and creates a moat around engineers who can make their team members' jobs easier.

IMO, it's not so different to how entrepreneurship works. But with code and processes instead of money and people as your moat. I think once AI can replace top software engineers, it will be able to replace top entrepreneurs. Scary combination. We'll probably have different things to worry about then.

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

#205

Post by baq »

ternus wrote: post #106

Regarding horses vs. engines, what changed the game was not engine efficiency, but the widespread availability of fuel (gas stations) and the broad diffusion of reliable, cheap cars. Analogies can be made to technologies like cell phones, MP3 players, or electric cars: beyond just the quality of the core technology, what matters is a) the existence of supporting infrastructure and b) a watershed level of "good/cheap…

It’s both. A steam engine at 2% efficiency is good only for digging up more coal for itself, and barely so. Completely different story at 20%. Every doubling is a step function in some area as it becomes energetically and economically rational to use it for something.

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

#206

Post by retrac98 »

socketcluster wrote: post #203

I think my software engineering job will be safe so long as big companies keep using average code as their training set. This is because the average developer creates unnecessary complexity which creates more work for me. The way the average dev structures their code requires like 10x the number of lines as I do and at least 10x the amount of time to maintain... The interest on technical debt compounds like interest…

Unnecessary complexity isn’t much of a problem when the code is virtually free to maintain or throw away and replace.

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

#207

Post by baq »

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.

That’s what the bunkers in New Zealand are for, but if AI keeps its pace, it might not be enough anyway.

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

#208

Post by Mawr »

What is this horseshit.

What exactly does specifically engine efficiency have to do with horse usage? Cars like the Ford Model T entered mass production somewhere around 1908. Oh, and would you look at the horse usage graph around that date! sigh

The chess ranking graph seems to be just a linear relationship?

> This pink line, back in 2024, was a large part of my job. Answer technical questions for new hires.

>

> Claude, meanwhile, was now answering 30,000 questions a month; eight times as many questions as me & mine ever did.

So more == better. sigh. Ran any, you know, studies to see the quality of those answers? I too can consult /dev/random for answers at a rate of gigabytes per second!

> I was one of the first researchers hired at Anthropic.

Yeah. I can tell. Somebody's high on their own supply here.

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

#209

Post by NitpickLawyer »

8note wrote: post #129
richardles wrote: post #64

I've also noticed that LLMs are really good at speeding up onboarding. New hires basically have a friendly, never tired mentor available. It gives them more confidence in the first drafted code changes / design docs. But I don't think the horse analogy works. It's really changing cultural expectations. Don't ping a human when an LLM can answer the question probably better and faster. Do ping a human for meaningful qu…

you still lose a bit from not having those juniors' questions around - where is your documentation sucking or your code is confusing?

We are now at a point where the tech can help with both of those, today. You can have a cc session "in a loop" going through your docs / code and try to do x and y, and if it gets stuck, that's a pretty good signal that something sucks there. At least you can get a heatmap of what works ootb, and what needs more eyes.

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

#210

Post by baq »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #117
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.

Sci fi works on this topic are about as old as sci fi. I’m terrified the stories started hitting close to home in the past few years.
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