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The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

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Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#201

Post by intended »

baal80spam wrote: post #36
lukev wrote: post #17

This is a must-read series of articles, and I think Kyle is very much correct. The comparison to the adoption of automobiles is apt, and something I've thought about before as well. Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. That said, I'm more open to using LLMs in constrained scenarios, in cases where they're an appropriate tool for the job and the downsides can b…

> Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. You say it in a way that it sounds like automobiles don't have a positive effect. I don't agree - they have some negative effects but overall they have a vast net positive effect for everyone.

No - as a society we cannot say that its a “vast net” positive. The externalities that harm the commons are not accounted for.

We (or lobbyists) resist having carbon costs included in the prices we pay at the pump.

Edit: More transportation is good; I am not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, just that our accounting for costs makes things look better than they are.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#202

Post by mplanchard »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #152
ernst_klim wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to eliminate "useless eaters" It can't. It can't even deal with emails without randomly deleting your email folder [1]. Saying that it can make decisions and replace humans is akin of saying that random number generator can make decisions and can replace people. It's just an automation tool, and just like all automation tools before it it will create more jobs than destroy. All the CEOs' talks about labor replaceme…

People have this misconception that first it was one way, and then , and they'll wake up and suddenly it is another. It's a slow creep. 10 years ago there were 5 of us on a team each responsible for something specific. Now I can do all of that. Teams and companies will downsize. How do you see AI creating more jobs? (I need some hope right now lol).

My hope is that there is a sort of Cambrian explosion of small software projects built by people who have absolutely no clue what they're doing. Many such projects will go nowhere, but some percentage of them will see success and growth. My second hope is that there will always come some threshold of complexity beyond which AI cannot effectively iterate on a project without (at minimum) the prompting of an expert in the field.

The combination of these two things could lead to a situation where there is a massive, startup-dominated market for engineers who can take projects from 0.5 to 1, as well as for consulting companies or services that help founders to do the same.

Another pair of hopes is that a) the LLM systems plateau at a level where any use on complex or important projects requires expert knowledge and prompting, and b) that because of this, the hype of using them to replace engineers dies down. This would hopefully lead to a situation where they are treated like any other tool in our toolbox. Then, just like no one forces me to use emacs or vim (despite the fact that they unambiguously help me to be at least 2x more productive), no one will force me to use LLMs just for the sake of it.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#203

Post by wilsonnb3 »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #152
ernst_klim wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to eliminate "useless eaters" It can't. It can't even deal with emails without randomly deleting your email folder [1]. Saying that it can make decisions and replace humans is akin of saying that random number generator can make decisions and can replace people. It's just an automation tool, and just like all automation tools before it it will create more jobs than destroy. All the CEOs' talks about labor replaceme…

People have this misconception that first it was one way, and then , and they'll wake up and suddenly it is another. It's a slow creep. 10 years ago there were 5 of us on a team each responsible for something specific. Now I can do all of that. Teams and companies will downsize. How do you see AI creating more jobs? (I need some hope right now lol).

Massive job loss from AI requires one of two things: actual human-equivalent AGI or no increase in demand.

Focusing on option 2 and software development, teams and companies will only downsize if the demand for software doesn’t increase. Make the same amount of stuff you do now but with less people.

What I think will happen is that enough companies will choose to do things that they couldn’t afford or weren’t possible without AI (and new companies will be created to do the same) to offset the ones that choose to cut costs and actually increase the amount of people making software.

I am pretty sure these are well known economic ideas but I don’t know the specific terminology for it.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#204

Post by matusp »

Despite all the AI hype, I wonder how much it only exists in the tech bubble full of terminally online folks. Unless you spend significant part of your day online, most of the AI risks mentioned in this series are probably negligible. The most affected demographic is computer nerds that grew up enjoying utopian Web that is now turning dark.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#205

Post by srinathkrishna »

I couldn't help but resonate with a lot of what Kyle says here.

If not already, we will soon lose the ability to think if AI is helping humans (an overwhelming majority of them, not a handful), considering how we are steaming ahead in this path!

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#206

Post by grvdrm »

nothinkjustai wrote: post #193
grvdrm wrote: post #111

Two years ago, I was enjoying a drink with my wife, her friend, a very senior female VC partner, and another friend. Somehow we talked AI in some depth, and the VC at one point said (about AI): “I don’t know what our kids are going to do for work. I don’t know what jobs there will be to do.” That same VC invests in AI companies and by what I heard about her, has done phenomenally well. I think about that exchange all…

VC’s aren’t exactly known for being both wise and intelligent.

Perhaps but it’s more the concept/contrast presented that stuck with me more than the persona. That said - that VC isn’t alone along with many other capital allocators.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#207

Post by Kbelicius »

snackerblues wrote: post #162
Kbelicius wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said that that individualism is toxic

I hate toxic liberalism, toxic feminism, toxic gay rights, toxic DEI, toxic emancipation, toxic gun control, toxic abortions, etc. No it's not that I'm against any those things just the toxic applications of them.

As do I. What is your point?

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#208

Post by mason_mpls »

baal80spam wrote: post #36
lukev wrote: post #17

This is a must-read series of articles, and I think Kyle is very much correct. The comparison to the adoption of automobiles is apt, and something I've thought about before as well. Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. That said, I'm more open to using LLMs in constrained scenarios, in cases where they're an appropriate tool for the job and the downsides can b…

> Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. You say it in a way that it sounds like automobiles don't have a positive effect. I don't agree - they have some negative effects but overall they have a vast net positive effect for everyone.

one trip to Amsterdam will show you how bad our use of cars has been for us

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#209

Post by underlipton »

Ifkaluva wrote: post #154
underlipton wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna beat this drum till it breaks: General strike and bank runs. Not to collapse the economic system, but to present a credible threat of collapsing the economic system which AI development, as these elite and their platforms know it, relies on. When they're freaking out, we call for negotiations. This only works if people with "secure" livelihoods not just participate, but drive the effort. Getting paid six figure…

> layoff-proof position What? I don’t know anybody who has a layoff-proof position.

Should have been in quotes. People who think that they're secure (they're not).

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#210

Post by thfuran »

mynameisbilly wrote: post #185
spprashant wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The positive effects were immediate, and measurable. The negative effects are delayed, and hard to quantify without all the advancement in climate research since then. If everyone in 1920 knew a 100 years from now there would be climate crisis to reckon with, perhaps a few things would have changed along the way. Today we have a much better understanding of the world, so we have the means to think down the line of wh…

We did know in the 20s. We knew in the 30s. We knew in the 40s. We absolutely knew in the 50s (oil industry funded their own studies on this). We knew before we decided to direct billions into a federal interstate highway system that bulldozed countless communities of color and killed many cities' downtowns and sense of connectedness. I don't see anything positive about being forced to participate in this car-ownersh…

It was pretty well established scientifically in 1900 that increasing atmospheric CO2 would result in increasing global temperature, but I don't think it was really in the public awareness for many decades. "Global warming" wasn't coined until the '70s.
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