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The AI backlash is only getting started

economist.com

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Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#101

Post by estearum »

adrians1 wrote: post #76

Remember the debate about how nuclear was stopped in the 70s because of NIMBYism? We are now wondering "how could people then be so stupid and shortsighted?". Well, there you go, here's history repeating before our eyes.

Not really. Nuclear power (in both the weapon and energy sense) is and always was relatively easy to manage compared to AI.

If the deployment of nuclear energy required the distribution of radioactive material to every smartphone in America and for unstable isotopes to be plugged into the core operating infrastructure of every industry, then they'd be a lot closer to analogous.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#102

Post by Marsymars »

jerf wrote: post #45
eventinbox wrote: post #2

people conflate "AI is overhyped" with "AI is useless" and neither is quite right. the backlash is mostly against the hype cycle not the tech itself. give it 2 years

We software engineers have a different experience with AI than most other fields. We have vast arrays of guardrails in our field, with unit testing, CI/CD, source control being relatively easy since we mostly produce textual artifacts, strong typing, compilers with decades of experience in giving targeted error messages, all sorts of things [1]. When AI takes two steps forward and then does something stupid, we have…

This makes me think a bit about my wife - she works in a professional field, but ends up spending a bunch of her time on clerical work because it's nearly impossible to hire and keep good assistants.

When I look at the clerical work from a software engineer's point of view, I find it nuts how few guardrails there are - clerical workers would have a far easier time producing work with a low error rate if there were some guardrails put up, but that's just not an investment/culture that the field seems to be interested in.

The two related points around AI are that 1) guardrails would make the clerical work relatively easier for AI and 2) because assistants are so error-prone anyway, the bar for AI isn't all that high.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#103

Post by tengbretson »

estearum wrote: post #92
gruez wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The untold promise of [tractors] is to replace labor. [...] Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. How's this any different than say, tractors, or the mechanical loom? After all, agricultural employment went from 90% in the past to 1% today.

Sure, here's a direct answer: Even after the mechanical loom was created, figuring out the next most important problem to work on was a job that humans did. Unless you believe there's some hard limit on AI intelligence that will constrain it below the intelligence of a particular earthbound hairless ape, then eventually AI will be perfectly sufficient and probably better at figuring out the next most important proble…

That assumes that a value-judgement can be optimally made with intelligence alone.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#104

Post by BeetleB »

dweinus wrote: post #89
estearum wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because people are angry does not make it false. > Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? Because arms race. Game dynamics and incentive structures don't cease to exist just because someone notices them.

All those devs and data scientists and PhDs make a choice though. They could quit and work somewhere else. Even in a tough market their skills are in demand. They choose to work on this every morning.

Sure, they could do that. The outcome wouldn't change, though.

If SW devs who worked on ride sharing apps didn't leave, why would you think these folks would?

If SW devs who worked on airline ticket search engines didn't leave, why would you think these folks would?

And on and on and on. The SW industry has been heavily involved in replacing jobs since its inception.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#105

Post by AnimalMuppet »

justonepost2 wrote: post #68
gruez wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the average dirt farmer in the 1800 is going to be assuaged by the prospect of almost all farm work being mechanized, because he can be a "medical and health services manager" or "data scientist" instead? https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm

In this case there is, by definition, no “medical and health services manager” or “data scientist” in the future. Nothing comes next.

"By definition"? If you define that to be the future, yes. But that's the problem with vitorfblima's statement upthread. Are we talking about all labor? That's still a very big, unproven assumption. It's an assumption that I question. And given that I don't buy the premise, I don't buy the conclusions, either.

And the farm analogy is somewhat on point. We went from 67% of people working on farms to... I think it's more like 3% than 1%, but a very small amount. That's two thirds of labor being replaced.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#106

Post by dieselgate »

phantompeace wrote: post #85
vitorfblima wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about ALL labor.

Do you really think an LLM will replace a surgeon?

I don't think so but it will not stop folks from trying. The panacea of AI is AGI which basically, in theory, will replace any human/thing.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#107

Post by tern »

Sadly, I think this is true, and it's starting to seem like my own personal political imperative is to remind people that AI can be insanely personally empowering.

Many people around me are just missing the boat, or don't care, but many are also able to finally accomplish all kinds of things they've been barred from in the past.

LLMs are best seen, I think, as an imagination amplifier. If you're in the mindset of finding ways to improve society and help other people, there is no shortage of opportunity, and increasingly, capability.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#108

Post by dwa3592 »

tengbretson wrote: post #96
dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

> Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? Say, you wouldn't happen to write software for a living, would you?

I do. developed predictive models for health monitoring of large machines and then fraud detection in health care. Why do you ask?

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#109

Post by bensyverson »

HEmanZ wrote: post #78
baron816 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just how productivity works. If people spend less time building a unit of output, then you have more output. People aren’t going to stop wanting stuff. Right now, the world can’t come close to making all the stuff people want. As long as there’s a desire for further consumption, there will be work for people to do.

I don’t think the claim is that people will be less productive, the world will be far more productive. The claim is that the value of most human labor will be at or near enough to 0 compared to deploying capital (robots, ai) to product the same goods. So humanity becomes owners living ludicrously well on highly productive capital and everyone else getting whatever “humanitarian” portion is assigned to them. And no wa…

People need to Google Jevons Paradox, smdh

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#110

Post by BeetleB »

justonepost2 wrote: post #46
gruez wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The untold promise of [tractors] is to replace labor. [...] Mere tools would never justify this kind of investment. How's this any different than say, tractors, or the mechanical loom? After all, agricultural employment went from 90% in the past to 1% today.

How do people still conflate “sectoral changes in the labor market” with “humans become zoo animals”? The scale just seems fundamentally different.

> The scale just seems fundamentally different.

Not at all. I doubt LLMs will result in a 90x drop in the overall labor workforce. The agricultural shift was likely greater than the shift due to LLMs will be.

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