Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

robinsloan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#21

Post by lelanthran »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

Overall, I love this essay. However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through: > Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Is this correct? I don't feel qualified to say. But if it's wrong... well, then there's a missing pixel in the magic circle, and flood fill will make the whole thing unrecogniz…

> However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through:

>> Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon.

Okay, lets presume he is correct; the conclusion is still "We will do the unthinking manual work requiring physical dexterity while the computers will direct us".

That's not a positive outcome.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#22

Post by foota »

I've been having much the same thoughts. What will work look like, say, 10 years from now? I'm beginning to think that we might have all the knowledge worker type jobs largely filled, or filled with significantly less workers, (hopefully) more free time for everyone, and the remaining people working in more physical positions.

In many ways, I think this is probably better for society than the opposite, since in general there are fewer knowledge workers than not.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#23

Post by lemoing »

I’ve taken the last year off from software engineering and have worked a mix of jobs that primarily exist outside the magic circle of the internet. I think one thing that surprised me was just how little computers were used; there was some basic scheduling and retail management software, but the meat of the job was in the real world. Not only that, but most of the community was similar: their jobs were based in the physical world and computers were kept at an arm’s length. Even bookings were made over the phone, not online. It was eye-opening coming from my service-based economy bubble just how little computers (and because of that, LLMs) affected life in certain pockets of the world, some of them very large. A step further than that is to realize that all the value we extract at the software level comes from value produced in the real world at some stage.

What the article says about sprinkling in a bit of the physical world into your work was one of my takeaways from my year off as well; even without worrying about AI and job security, it just feels more rewarding.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#24

Post by bananaflag »

> Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon.

Well, the one and only thing which is constantly improving robots is human ingenuity, and if that is replaced by (yes, symbols-in, symbols-out) artificial superintelligence, I expect that improving to improve quite fast.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#25

Post by nkrisc »

foxylad wrote: post #19
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

Overall, I love this essay. However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through: > Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Is this correct? I don't feel qualified to say. But if it's wrong... well, then there's a missing pixel in the magic circle, and flood fill will make the whole thing unrecogniz…

His (compelling) evidence for that assertion is that printers still jam after 40 years. For humans, writing something on a piece of paper is absolutely trivial, and if something goes wrong, grabbing a new piece of paper or a pen is also trivial. Computers _can_ now write on paper tolerably fast and well, but they absolutely can't handle even simple failure modes. And the real world is _massively_ failure-prone, in co…

I like to think about it this way: why do printers need me to give it more paper? Why do I need to go buy paper from the store? These at the most trivial real-world things a human can do but I can’t imagine any robot doing that for a very long time.

Forget self-driving cars, how about a printer I don’t have to unjam or fill with paper?

But I doubt that kind of thing will happen in my lifetime.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#26

Post by direwolf20 »

lelanthran wrote: post #21
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

Overall, I love this essay. However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through: > Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Is this correct? I don't feel qualified to say. But if it's wrong... well, then there's a missing pixel in the magic circle, and flood fill will make the whole thing unrecogniz…

> However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through: >> Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Okay, lets presume he is correct; the conclusion is still "We will do the unthinking manual work requiring physical dexterity while the computers will direct us". That's not a positive outcome.

It turns out there's a counter–magic circle, and that's the economy. Even if people are happy to move to a commune without internet, they won't produce efficiently, so they won't be able to pay property taxes. The system consumes everything that doesn't already follow it.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#27

Post by nkrisc »

lelanthran wrote: post #21
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

Overall, I love this essay. However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through: > Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Is this correct? I don't feel qualified to say. But if it's wrong... well, then there's a missing pixel in the magic circle, and flood fill will make the whole thing unrecogniz…

> However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through: >> Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Okay, lets presume he is correct; the conclusion is still "We will do the unthinking manual work requiring physical dexterity while the computers will direct us". That's not a positive outcome.

Which brings us neatly to why many people are opposed to “AI” and automation.

We’re automating away the pleasurable work and leaving the drudgery for humans, when it should be the other way around.

Robots should be toiling while humans create art and music and whatever else they desire.

AI image generation doesn’t “democratize” art. Art has always been available to everyone. Anyone can learn to make art. AI image generation devalues artists and robs everyone else of the desire to learn art skills themselves.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#28

Post by michaelt »

juancn wrote: post #11
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #4

Overall, I love this essay. However, the entire argument hinges on one assertion, buried about halfway through: > Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Is this correct? I don't feel qualified to say. But if it's wrong... well, then there's a missing pixel in the magic circle, and flood fill will make the whole thing unrecogniz…

The sensing part is really really hard. Hands, mechanically are fairly simple to mimic, touch? the way skin feels micron-level shifts and subtle temperature changes is plain tough.

> Hands, mechanically are fairly simple to mimic

I can assure you they are not.

Human hands have absolutely crazy performance. Human hands have 15+ degrees of freedom. Sub-millimeter precision, no backlash. Strong enough to lift 100 lbs. Gentle enough to catch a thrown egg without breaking it. Rigid enough to hammer a nail without dropping the hammer. A compact forearm for reaching into tight spaces. Water- and dust-proof. Oh, and it'll last for decades without maintenance.

Even a $100k robot hand like a Shadow Hand can't compare.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#29

Post by emil-lp »

bananaflag wrote: post #24

> Robots are improving fast, but I do not believe that this cute fellow will be stuffing envelopes or affixing stamps anytime soon. Well, the one and only thing which is constantly improving robots is human ingenuity, and if that is replaced by (yes, symbols-in, symbols-out) artificial superintelligence, I expect that improving to improve quite fast.

Someone has been sipping from Tegmark's cool-aid.

Re: Flood Fill vs. The Magic Circle

#30

Post by enricozb »

lemoing wrote: post #23

I’ve taken the last year off from software engineering and have worked a mix of jobs that primarily exist outside the magic circle of the internet. I think one thing that surprised me was just how little computers were used; there was some basic scheduling and retail management software, but the meat of the job was in the real world. Not only that, but most of the community was similar: their jobs were based in the p…

What sorts of jobs, out of curiosity?
Post reply on HN