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Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#51

Post by AnotherGoodName »

BirAdam wrote: post #23

If all jobs were taken by AI in a short time span, the companies owning and operating those AIs would go out of business as no one would be able to afford the products made by the AIs. This is an unlikely scenario. Not all things will be made/run by AIs in a short time. It is far more likely that specific jobs in specific industries will be taken by AI, and AI will slowly take the labor market. This will drive down p…

Also just to be clear on the outcome of what you said: Humans will be cheaper than AI in order to compete.

AI uses 10litres of water and 10kwh of power per day to digg a hole? You'd better do it for less human!

I'm not sure on the human needs costs vs the AI costs and what lifestyle it would allow me. I'm sure as shit not having kids in such a world. I suspect it's ghetto like meager living while competing against machines optimised to do a job.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#53

Post by advael »

mips_avatar wrote: post #20

Outside of America people aren't really stressed about AI. Like you go to Vietnam or Vienna they mostly just think that they will have a good life with AI. It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. The problem isn't the AI it's that your access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job. American's need to decenter their self worth from their jobs. Like when I quit Mic…

To "decenter [one's] self worth from [one's] job" would presumably require the fact that one's "access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job", no? This is a policy problem that needs to be solved by collective action, not a mindset problem that can be solved by personal growth

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#54

Post by adrianN »

ar_lan wrote: post #36
Mordisquitos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would AGI choose to run the planet?

This is honestly a fantastic question. AGI has no emotions, no drive, anything. Maybe, just maybe, it would want to: * Conserve power as much as possible, to "stay alive". * Optimize for power retention Why would it be further interested in generating capital or governing others, though?

Why would it care to stay alive? The discussion is pretty pointless as we have no knowledge about alien intelligence and there can be no arguments based on hard facts.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#55

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

mips_avatar wrote: post #20

Outside of America people aren't really stressed about AI. Like you go to Vietnam or Vienna they mostly just think that they will have a good life with AI. It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. The problem isn't the AI it's that your access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job. American's need to decenter their self worth from their jobs. Like when I quit Mic…

> It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job.

It's probably because it's uniquely American for a sizable chunk of the workforce to have cushy jobs that appear ripe for the picking.

AI is not going to immediately replace food service work, manual labor, farming, hospitality, etc.

But it might replace quite high-paid software jobs, finance jobs, legal jobs, etc. One, if AI is good at anything it's things at least tangential to this. Two, these have costs high enough that off-setting is at least worth trying.

My suspicion is that ultimately it will lead to more of these types of jobs, though it could easily come with a huge reduction - and the jobs aren't guaranteed to be in the same countries.

You could create 3x as many of these jobs, and still end up with -25% of them in the US. Who knows.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#56

Post by stackbutterflow »

ar_lan wrote: post #36
Mordisquitos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would AGI choose to run the planet?

This is honestly a fantastic question. AGI has no emotions, no drive, anything. Maybe, just maybe, it would want to: * Conserve power as much as possible, to "stay alive". * Optimize for power retention Why would it be further interested in generating capital or governing others, though?

Tech billionaires is probably the first thing an AGI is gonna get rid of.

Minimize threats, dont rock the boat. We'll finally have our UBI utopia.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#57

Post by _ea1k »

mips_avatar wrote: post #20

Outside of America people aren't really stressed about AI. Like you go to Vietnam or Vienna they mostly just think that they will have a good life with AI. It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. The problem isn't the AI it's that your access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job. American's need to decenter their self worth from their jobs. Like when I quit Mic…

A big part of it is insurance. Family coverage can easily cost $15-20k per year in the US. Avoiding the need to pay for this out of pocket drives a lot of people into less than optimal job dependence.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#58

Post by mips_avatar »

ewuhic wrote: post #50
mips_avatar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok well I didn't meet everyone in Vienna or Vietnam, but those I did meet hadn't been laid off in the name of AI (yesterday three of my friends were laid off from Amazon). And if you're laid off in Vienna you still have access to healthcare, and there's a functioning safety net, and just generally a sense that you're not alone in this. In the united states my apartment has a homeless man living beneath it and every n…

You have a very rosy picture of non-Pax-Americana.

Well I also visited Ethiopia this year and I got to hear first hand about the genocide in Tigray, I'm very aware of the horrifying atrocities that happen when social order and human rights break down.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#59

Post by ben_w »

AlexandrB wrote: post #27
falcor84 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bit of a circular argument here - even if we human always assign intrinsic value to ourselves and our kin, I don't see a clear argument that human capabilities will have external value to the economy at large.

"The economy" is humans spending money on stuff and services. So if humands always assign intrinsic value to ourselves and our kin...

For economic purposes, "the economy" also includes corporations and governments.

Corporations and governments have counted amongst their property entities that they did not grant equal rights to, sometimes whom they did not even consider to be people. Humans have been treated in the past much as livestock and guide dogs still are.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#60

Post by empath75 »

> “Computers can never show creativity or originality”. But—perhaps disappointingly—that’s surprisingly easy to get, and indeed just a bit of randomness “seeding” a computation can often do a pretty good job,

---

This is, I think, not what people mean when they say "creative" or "original".

Creativity is not simply writing something nobody has written before, as he said, that would be trivial and doesn't even require a computer, you could just shuffle a deck of cards and write out the full sequence and chances are no other person in history has written down that sequence before.

And I think Borges made a reasonable argument that simply writing down the text of Don Quixote verbatim could be a creative act.

Creativity is about _intentionally_ expressing a _point of view_ under some constraints.

When people say LLMs can't be creative, what I think mostly they are getting at is that they lack intentionality and/or a distinct point of view. (i do not have a strong opinion about whether they do or if it's impossible for them to have them)

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