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What will be left for us to work on?

normaltech.ai

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Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#241

Post by win311fwg »

customguy wrote: post #240
win311fwg wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the fact that you get wildly different output for the same input with LLM, not so for compilers. Quite so. It is true that most compilers allow you to opt in to reproducible output, but it is generally not the default [iirc, gc is the only mainstream compiler that makes always reproducible output a design requirement]. There are advantages to not have to worry about reproducible output, like performance gains i…

> gc is the only mainstream compiler that makes always reproducible output a design requirement This is just splitting hairs. And temperature = 0 is not comparable either, because the we will not keep models trained on data of a specific point in time around forever. > Implementation details are immaterial, but when you don't understand the implementation it stands to reason that one would want to focus on that facet…

> And temperature = 0 is not comparable either, because the we will not keep models trained on data of a specific point in time around forever.

Equally, if you replace one compiler with another, it is almost certain that the output will not remain stable, even when you have enabled reproducible builds. You are not going to find a difference on the outside, even if implementation may differ under the hood.

> You told me nothing I didn't know or didn't expect

What's in it for you, then? I have been able to learn about your character, which is quite fascinating. Technology is pretty boring, which is why nobody else was talking about a technology implementation to begin with, but HN accounts are quite interesting to learn about. Seems to me like a complete waste of time if you cannot learn anything from it.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#242

Post by RandomLensman »

lelanthran wrote: post #237
RandomLensman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, "who" not "how". If we are just talking about the physical environment then totally fine - a rock doesn't care about me, for example. Humans tend to care about humans at least in some situations on average, though.

> Humans tend to care about humans at least in some situations on average, though. Look, I actually agree : humans do care about humans, on average. The problem is that power tends to concentrate to those who don't care about humans. When almost all jobs can be replaced by machines, the owners of those machines are unlikely to be much different from Sam Altman and Co. They aren't going to sit down and say "Well, look…

How much of any gains the machinr owners could keep isn't just up to them - I think they look more powerful than they are.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#243

Post by threethirtytwo »

rwyinuse wrote: post #149
threethirtytwo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The utility of AI is too high for the opposition to be real. It's like money or heroin. Someone who says money is the root of all evil will likely take a billion dollars if offered if for free. Everybody says they hate heroin but once you try it, you can't get enough of it.

You can simultaneously hate something and be addicted to it. Addiction and liking are not the same thing.

You can also simultaneously hate AND like something. People addicted to heroin, believe it or not, both love and hate it.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#244

Post by sarchertech »

lelele wrote: post #206
mlrtime wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The un-hidden secret is that QA and real testing doesn't exist much anymore. People aren't surprised when things break, they just want it fixed quickly, and AI can do that.

P.S. Again, it all boils down to AGI not being with us yet. I guesstimate that AI writes at least 95% of my code, but given how often LLMs come up with inefficient or ineffective solutions, I'd never entrust my reputation to a vibe-coded app. Startups may have little to lose vs much to gain from a shorter time to market, but an established company?

>much to gain from shorter time to market

Is that true anymore when anyone can vibe code? Seems to me that quality, correctness, and performance will be huge differentiators in a see of vibe coded slop.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#245

Post by sarchertech »

hattmall wrote: post #55
zerobees wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because people are going to realize you don’t need to pay someone $400k per year to hand out advice about moderate exercise and which antibiotic is appropriate for a sneeze-cough with yellow mucus. Who is going to realize that? The same forces that prevent you from walking into a pharmacy and asking for antibiotics based on what you found on WebMD will prevent you from doing it with a ChatGPT printout in hand. Lawy…

It's basically a formality now to get a prescription for what you read on WebMD. Every Insurance has telemedicine, you just call, read the symptom list and get the prescription. Some even let you just email. There's a doctor or at least person with subscribing ability in the loop, but they are barely doing more than rubber stamping hundreds of requests per day.

Only for less regulated drugs and for drugs with minimal side effects, or drugs that are relatively cheap.

Mostly for drugs that should probably be OTC anyway. Try doing that for a narcotic, or for an expensive biologic.

You could always lie to a doctor about your symptoms.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#246

Post by sarchertech »

red75prime wrote: post #50
mminer237 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been able to Google your symptoms and get a maybe answer for twenty years. I don't see how AI replaces doctors any more than WebMD did.

By achieving the same or a higher level of effectiveness than doctors, obviously.

My wife is a pediatric ER doctor. She’s board certified in pediatrics and pediatric emergency medicine. Here’s a scenario that regularly plays out.

Someone she’s knows calls her up late and says their child has a minor fever, upset stomach or some other mild symptom. They ask “should I go to the ER or can I just wait till tomorrow to go to the pediatrician?”

My wife says it’s totally fine to wait until tomorrow. That is not an emergency. And frequently she’ll tell them they don’t even need to go to their pediatrician unless it gets worse or continues for several days.

9/10 what happens is that the person goes to the ER or their pediatrician first thing in the morning and calls my wife to tell her “you were right, it wasn’t an emergency”.

Despite that my wife is more highly trained than either their pediatrician or a non-pediatric ER doctor, and they know and trust her, they still wanted to see someone in person.

It doesn’t matter how accurate AI diagnosis gets, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#247

Post by Retric »

vkou wrote: post #107
Retric wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only metric that matters is total medical care provided on a national / global scale. It may take vastly more training but on average a full annual physical provides less benefit on average than a 30 second vaccination requiring minimal training. Value creation and skill are wildly different things in the medical profession.

After you've had that 30 second vaccination, the second same 30 second vaccination provides next-to-no added benefit, but the physical does.

The day after your physical doing another physical provides next to no benefit.

Healthcare is a world of diminishing returns at ever increasing costs. But that doesn’t mean the low effort first steps are less valuable.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#248

Post by ndiddy »

frozenseven wrote: post #175
lelanthran wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very short-sighted, and exceedingly common, take. Until the machines aren't owned by anyone (or owned by everyone, take your pick on the phrasing), the owners of the machine have no need to keep you alive. This take is basically "Don't worry, people like Sam Altman are looking out for us"...

>owners of the machine have no need to keep you alive And what reason do they have for killing everyone else? Where is this abject nonsense even coming from? You can't just assert that the "owners of the machine" are all cartoonishly evil for some unknown reason. All else being equal, at least Sam Altman et al. aren't constantly making up fantasies about exterminating people.

Nobody's saying they'd actively round up and kill everyone, they would just have no reason to keep the "unnecessary" people alive. The elite class is generally in favor of doing things that worsen human suffering and cause additional deaths if doing so helps their financial position. See the recent cuts to SNAP and Medicaid for an example. If large swaths of the population got laid off from their jobs because they were no longer economically necessary, what incentive would the people benefiting from AI have to make a little less money in exchange for funding programs to keep the former white collar workers fed and healthy? They didn't do anything to help the former blue collar workers after they pushed for free trade deals that decimated the blue collar workforce.

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#249

Post by nullorempty »

I think eventually things will work themselves out, but our immediate future appears to be bleak. The elites, including political elites, use AI to acquire more wealth, to become more efficient at war. They already don't give a flying fuck about what the peoples think as you can not hold them accountable for their actions. Admit it! You can't hold them accountable in the West.

So they are running unchecked to get richer, get more power, get more stuff. What needs to happen for that to change?

Re: What will be left for us to work on?

#250

Post by eudamoniac »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #176
burningChrome wrote: post #15

The other issue is Gen Z and Gen A are now very much opposed to AI. I'm wondering with those two sets of generations who already have a very negative view of AI, how AI can survive that coming tsunami of change. According to WRITER’s 2026 Enterprise Adoption Survey, 44% of Gen Z employees admit to sabotaging their company's AI strategy in at least one way compared to 29% of employees overall. Sabotage behaviours incl…

> The other issue is Gen Z and Gen A are now very much opposed to AI. They say they are, but they have actually been using it so much that they can't even do they homework without AI at this point.

Goomba fallacy
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