461–470 of 830 posts
"I could retrain, but my core skills—reading, thinking, and writing—are squarely in the blast radius of large language models." Yes. For the lifetime of almost everyone alive now, reading, thinking, and writing have been valued skills which moved one up in society's hierarchy. This is a historical anomaly. Prior to 1800 or so, those skills were not all that useful to the average farmer. There were more smart people t…
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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 possibl…
We are already hitting the limits of demand in many areas of life. The fundamental currency that is not growing is human attention.
Sure, now you can be a musician and use AI to help you make an album in a weekend. Great. So can a million other people. Who's going to listen to them? Everyone is already inundated with more music than they could ever listen to in a lifetime.
Now someone who's never written a line of code can vibe code an app and upload it to an app store. Great. So can a million other people. Who's going to install those apps? When was the last time you found yourself thinking, "I wish I had more unmaintained apps on my phone!"?
Now someone who aspires to be a "writer" but lacks the willpower to craft sentences can throw a couple of bullet points at an AI and get a thousand word article out. Great, so can a million other people. Who wants to read more AI slop text on the web? There are already a million self-published authors whose books never get read. That's not going to get better when there are a billion of them.
All of us, every single one of us, is already drowning in information overload and is stressed out because of it. The last thing any of us want is more stuff to pay attention to. All of this AI generated stuff will just be thrown into the void and ignored by most.
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We pretty much did with aviation.
Our civilization does not depend on aviation very much, it's a specialized service. If all planes disappeared tomorrow, we will weather it pretty well. Cars are a completely different animal: they are ubiquitous and don't really have an alternative in many cases.
Less than a century ago, so within living memory (albeit only just), literally nowhere on Earth was car dependent.
I fear that outside of cataclysmic global warfare or some sort of butlerian jihad (which amounts to the same) this genie is not going back into the bottle. This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it, and almost all of the negatives cited by Kyle and likeminded (such as myself) are in fact positives for them in context of massive population reduction to eliminate "useless eaters" an…
Here are the articles in this series that got significant HN discussion (in chronological order for a change): ML promises to be profoundly weird* - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47689648 - April 2026 (602 comments) The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Part 3 – Culture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703528 - April 2026 (106 comments) The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyance…
If you enjoyed reading these and would like more, very few folks read sections 2, 4, or 6. They might be up your alley: 2. Dynamics - https://aphyr.com/posts/412-the-future-of-everything-is-lies... 4. Information Ecology - https://aphyr.com/posts/414-the-future-of-everything-is-lies... 6. Psychological Hazards - https://aphyr.com/posts/416-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...
The next time someone asks me where I think AI is going, I'll just point them at this series.
"I could retrain, but my core skills—reading, thinking, and writing—are squarely in the blast radius of large language models." Yes. For the lifetime of almost everyone alive now, reading, thinking, and writing have been valued skills which moved one up in society's hierarchy. This is a historical anomaly. Prior to 1800 or so, those skills were not all that useful to the average farmer. There were more smart people t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cars are not popular becuase people pushed them. Cars are popular because the utility is undeniable. This is true for any kind of transformative technology. Marketing and lobbying can only get you so far. If something has enough utility, it will be used regardless of what people say they want.
> Cars are not popular becuase people pushed them. Cars are popular because the utility is undeniable. I think this is somewhat of a chicken and egg problem. Cars' utility is undeniable partially because society has twisted itself thoroughly around The Car being an assumed part of it. This societal change was both pulled (by car customers) and pushed (by car manufacturers).
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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 possibl…
There are more options: Mass unemployment, consolidation of all AI-related benefits in the hands of a few, an increase in demand that doesn't outpaced the loss of employment, increase in capabilities (not AGI) that mean a few chosen people can do most things without hiring other people, etc.
I know it is the classic sci-fi dystopia where somehow despite endless advances in tech and automation, the masses can't figure out how to make it work for themselves and end up living in shanty towns on top of each other waiting for gifts from the elite, or scraping in dirt outside the cities, but come on... I just don't see that as being credible.
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Point is, if an AGI becomes powerful and capable enough of replacing 99.999% of humanity, the likes of Sam Altman and Elon Musk won't be able to control it.
An electrician with access to a circuit breaker will be able to control it.
From here in the Uk the site just says: "Unavailable Due to the UK Online Safety Act [...] Now might be a good time to call your representatives." So I fired-up a vpn, and it appears to be a personal blog. About ai risks. The geo-block is kind of a shame, as the writing is good and there appears to be nothing about the site that makes it subject to the OLSA.
The regulators of OSA say otherwise. Or at any rate, they refuse to agree and won't rule it out.
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For the geo-blocked, reproducing relevant content [0]:
> A few months back I wound up concluding, based on conversations with Ofcom [1] that aphyr.com might be illegal in the UK due to the UK Online Safety Act.
> [...] This blog has the same problem: people use email addresses to post and confirm their comments. I think my personal blog is probably at low risk, but a.) I’d like to draw attention to this legislation, and b.) my risk is elevated by being gay online
[0] https://aphyr.com/posts/395-geoblocking-multiple-localities-...
[1] https://blog.woof.group/announcements/updates-on-the-osa