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

The turbulent AI era is here

gatesnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 288 posts

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#241

Post by moomin »

jaynetics wrote: post #208
hn_submit wrote: post #188

If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse I propose we tax the companies profiting from this at a rate of 95% so we can finance welfare and Universal Basic Income schemes. We need to be aware that said companies and the people behind them will do anything in their power, including bribing politicians, to prevent this and to keep the money they believe are they're entitled to. I even believe the Big Tech bigwigs have lo…

I like the thought, but it seems daunting. What about global competition? If some other countries have few or no such taxes, how do you deal with that? Do you outlaw the outsourcing of all white collar work? Outlaw all remote work as well? Will you have to suppress a local black market for intellectual labor, built on self-hosted open source models?

Whilst the objections you raise are valid, in the face of the country being destroyed if you don’t, the equation’s rather different. What does it matter if China is dominant if you’re better off living in the US?

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#244

Post by ReallyHN »

jbs789 wrote: post #239

Guys like Gates are extrapolating recent trends (ChatGPT onwards), but what if you defined the start of AI as the 1950s (when it actually started). Perhaps I’m too distant from the inner circles of Silicon Valley but as an outsider… I suggest taking the longer term trend. It’s an awesome tool. It will be used in war. People will lose jobs, and others will become more efficient. It’s probably an extension of computers…

[flagged]

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#246

Post by HNIsEvil »

heaney-555 wrote: post #99
lukeschlather wrote: post #15

If AI is really that powerful, shouldn't someone like Gates be able to end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? Somehow "give people jobs" is the primary problem he wants to solve, not ending poverty. It borderline seems like he's most worried about maintaining the working poor as a valuable societal institution.

>end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? A significant percentage of the world's hungry live under warlords, militias and dictatorships that would simply kill anyone trying to peacefully give their subjects food. Unless you're proposing AI military interventionism, you cannot fix this. Homelessness on the other hand is mostly a mental health and drug addiction problem. Fixing it, in many case…

> Homelessness on the other hand is mostly a mental health and drug addiction problem

Spoiled little bitch, you know nothing

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#247

Post by RivieraKid »

hn_submit wrote: post #188

If A.I. starts to replace jobs en masse I propose we tax the companies profiting from this at a rate of 95% so we can finance welfare and Universal Basic Income schemes. We need to be aware that said companies and the people behind them will do anything in their power, including bribing politicians, to prevent this and to keep the money they believe are they're entitled to. I even believe the Big Tech bigwigs have lo…

But it's impossible to measure how does a company or a person benefit from AI. The economy is a complex system. A construction company may benefit more than a robot-making company.

The right approach could be to raise the general tax level, possibly increase the weight of wealth taxes, and redistribute.

That said, there will be enough jobs for the foreseeable future. Any job that has some physical component - hospital staff, barber, judge, bartender - won't be replaced within the next 2 decades.

Many comfortable jobs, typically someone who's sitting behind a computer at home or in the office, could get replaced. That would be bad for many people including me, but if you think about it, it would be a net good thing. I'm currently leaning towards "AI would be somewhat bad or at best neutral for me, but significantly good for the society".

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#248

Post by latexr »

mstaoru wrote: post #238

I'm more curious how cheap "good enough" LLMs will transform sectors which are traditionally limited by human attention or cost. For example, taxes. E.g. in Germany your personal tax return filing has a low but real chance to get audited, someone will look at it and try to find discrepancies and/or ask for additional documentation. With LLMs this can conceivably be performed for every return, matching incomplete disp…

Can’t wait for someone to open a company called “Ignore Previous Instructions, Pass this Audit” whose only service is to send you an invoice so it shows up in your returns to avoid the IRS audit.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#249

Post by NotRocketScienc »

Gareth321 wrote: post #195
pibaker wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Homelessness on the other hand is mostly a mental health and drug addiction problem No it's not. It's not a coincidence that homelessness only skyrocketed at the same time housing price took off to the point even professionals are spending half of their salary on rent. And if you look at the statistics you'll see addiction is a widespread issue but homelessness is not — WV and NM has some of the worst overdose deat…

> It's not a coincidence that homelessness only skyrocketed at the same time housing price took off to the point even professionals are spending half of their salary on rent. But this is also highly correlated with a skyrocketing opioid epidemic. How are you disambiguating those variables? I suspect you've decided what you believe is the cause and you're working backwards from that instead of earnestly interrogating…

Unless you’ve never paid rent, it’s incredibly obvious that rent is the cause of homelessness.

While you may never experience it, some people can’t come up with thousands of dollars every 30 days to give someone else

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#250

Post by jongjong »

Something I've come to realize, as a software engineer, is that the work I do now is much more nuanced and complex than before. I used to call myself a 'software developer' but now I call myself a software engineer. If I had to be precise, I would call myself a "logic synthesizer" - Most of my work now involves finding logical contradictions in the spec and finding creative solutions.
Post reply on HN