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

What if useful AI is a fantasy?

lzon.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–66 of 66 posts

Re: What if useful AI is a fantasy?

#61

Post by nomel »

hermitShell wrote: post #53
nomel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Determinism is NOT a requirement, as proven by your existence of software devs. Again, shift the perspective to the people you work for, or to your fellow dev. They get along fine with you , who are also not deterministic. They check your output by setting requirements that you can prove are true in a way that satisfies them. You yourself guarantee correctness by tests , because you learned long ago that you yourself…

Do you think this necessarily sends us as a society (as a species) towards a future where we eventually stop understanding technology and science itself? Like in Asimov's Foundation or Liu Cixin's 'Taking Care of God'. Maybe we need two tiers of technology. Human in the loop up to the point of AI, and then the AI layer which depends on the human stack.

As knowledge progresses, less and less people will be able to understand it, as has always been the case with the progression of technology. This is an inevitability since intelligence is something that can only be slightly learned [1]. The passionate, high intelligence, nerds will continue to do what they've always done, being the only, very very small, percentage of society that bothers to understand any of it.

Most humans are dumb, from a science perspective. The ability to be successful in science has an intelligence threshold of somewhere around 120 [2], with true innovation requiring much more (as history has shown).

Do you see any alternative to 'Taking Care of God', if we continue progressing?

But, for coding specifically, coding as an unfortunate consequence of working with computers. We've been increasing abstraction since their inception, so we can do the actual work with them that we're trying to implement with code as a means to implement it. Go ask and older programmer, and he'll say the same sort of "kids these days don't understand computers", because he had to wire up the logic on a breadboard and write machine code in a hex editor, where you use a javascript library without even knowing how to implement an adder!!!

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6480791/

Re: What if useful AI is a fantasy?

#62

Post by bluefirebrand »

FloorEgg wrote: post #60
bluefirebrand wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does the person want to develop or practice a skill, or do they just want it done I'm probably biased, but I think when it comes to professional work it should always, 100% of the time be the former. People who "just want it done" are the reason every piece of commercial software is becoming dogshit > So far it seems that we can't all be good/capable at everything Sure, but then stay the fuck out of the area I'm go…

Whether or not it's a shitty deal is ultimately up to you. For all of history the environment has put evolutionary pressure on living things. If you choose to make a deal with the universe that you get what you want without having to adapt to changing circumstances then you're going to get a shitty deal. If you embrace what's outside your control and adapt gracefully you will get a good deal. What that means in this…

> My point is more so that a big source of unnecessary suffering is wanting the universe to be something that it's not.

Thanks. I'll change my attitude about it so that when I'm inevitably starving on the streets I can look back and think "thank god I didn't suffer unnecessarily before when I was worried about this outcome"

Re: What if useful AI is a fantasy?

#63

Post by FloorEgg »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #62
FloorEgg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not it's a shitty deal is ultimately up to you. For all of history the environment has put evolutionary pressure on living things. If you choose to make a deal with the universe that you get what you want without having to adapt to changing circumstances then you're going to get a shitty deal. If you embrace what's outside your control and adapt gracefully you will get a good deal. What that means in this…

> My point is more so that a big source of unnecessary suffering is wanting the universe to be something that it's not. Thanks. I'll change my attitude about it so that when I'm inevitably starving on the streets I can look back and think "thank god I didn't suffer unnecessarily before when I was worried about this outcome"

That is not at all what I meant.

I mean that if you accept that the market demand for software development is evolving and you evolve with it you won't end up starving on the streets.

If you assume it's inevitable that you will become useless and starve then it's a lot more likely to happen.

There is a concept in racing "don't stare at the wall". It means when taking a corner at top speeds of you focus on what you're afraid you will crash into you're more likely to crash into it. So instead the idea is to look at where you want to go (around the corner).

So what I'm saying is that if you accept the universe for what it is and focus on what kind of life you want to have and what you need to do to have it you're more likely to get it.

It seems like there is unlimited demand for software, and software engineers who maintain skills relevant to the current market will find work.

Re: What if useful AI is a fantasy?

#64

Post by hermitShell »

nomel wrote: post #61
hermitShell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this necessarily sends us as a society (as a species) towards a future where we eventually stop understanding technology and science itself? Like in Asimov's Foundation or Liu Cixin's 'Taking Care of God'. Maybe we need two tiers of technology. Human in the loop up to the point of AI, and then the AI layer which depends on the human stack.

As knowledge progresses, less and less people will be able to understand it, as has always been the case with the progression of technology. This is an inevitability since intelligence is something that can only be slightly learned [1]. The passionate, high intelligence, nerds will continue to do what they've always done, being the only, very very small, percentage of society that bothers to understand any of it. Mos…

I take your point, statistically we're already there. Unless humanity was to bootstrap its own biological intelligence to be consistently higher, there's little point in any individual attempting to safeguard the tech stack to first principles. Accept AI or don't accept AI, history tells us that if it works, people will move to the higher abstraction layer.

I can imagine an organization that devotes itself to preservation of the history of technology... like monastic groups that copied texts endlessly. In a post-scarcity world, that would be a sensible outcome... people are free to devote themselves to art or science or debauchery as they please...

Re: What if useful AI is a fantasy?

#65

Post by [deleted] »

hermitShell wrote: post #64
nomel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As knowledge progresses, less and less people will be able to understand it, as has always been the case with the progression of technology. This is an inevitability since intelligence is something that can only be slightly learned [1]. The passionate, high intelligence, nerds will continue to do what they've always done, being the only, very very small, percentage of society that bothers to understand any of it. Mos…

I take your point, statistically we're already there. Unless humanity was to bootstrap its own biological intelligence to be consistently higher, there's little point in any individual attempting to safeguard the tech stack to first principles. Accept AI or don't accept AI, history tells us that if it works, people will move to the higher abstraction layer. I can imagine an organization that devotes itself to preserv…

[deleted]

Re: What if useful AI is a fantasy?

#66

Post by slimtrees »

bluegatty wrote: post #8
slimtrees wrote: post #2

So-called "agentic" AI is definitely a fantasy. It's like saying a calculator can do your taxes. Doesn't work that way. But grifters gonna grift

Millions of developers all day every day doing that for real, at some of the best companies in the world, but sure, you have the deep insights they have not figured out?

[flagged]
Post reply on HN