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The turbulent AI era is here

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Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#301

Post by eieie1 »

green_dee wrote: post #297
suriyaG wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not an unfair comparison but i think it's the wrong model. you were always able to buy time by hiring people to do things for you. right now it's agents. i think it's an equalizer in that, $200 agent is more accessible than a $10000 human

yeah, fair on that point, that makes doing Sloppy SAAS really more accessible and that's what we're seeing On the other hand, what I see happening is: 0. corporation use AI plan ultra-X-high-pro-premium-enterprise 1. corporations firing medium-high paid developers with solid experience and experstise because low-medium paid developers are performing well with ultra-X-high-pro-premium-enterprise plan 2. AI models evol…

I’m a CEO not a dev and this is just patently false.

I would never trust someone who lacks the fundamentals to create value even with the most advanced tools.

I’d prefer to pay for the senior and fire the less senior - the implicit premium is to not have to worry about the lack of fundamentals for when problems need to be solved that are nuanced.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#302

Post by eieie1 »

rickydroll wrote: post #269
iLoveOncall wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone still believe that AI will replace jobs? I get further proof every day that it never will.

I agree with you that it probably won't replace jobs, but it will let you get more done in less time. I suspect, based on some of the stuff I've read recently, that two days with AI assistance are as exhausting/wearing as five days without, because you're trying to keep up with AI speed (another argument for slower LLMs on a local machine). Unfortunately, I think we will also see corporate expectations that if you ca…

This is still a nonsense argument.

Do more of.. what? Much of what happens in software is not akin to a factory producing goods.

You need projects - projects don’t fall out the sky and value creating ones are hard to come by!

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#303

Post by largePanda9 »

220hertz wrote: post #285
drgo wrote: post #251

I am not optimistic. What we learned from history is that despite all warnings and good intentions, governments, corps and citizens will make every possible mistake before we finally arrive at another precariously stable situation. Experts are famously bad at predicting the outcomes of new technologies/policies even in times of relatively low upheaval. And plans have a way of producing many significant unintended con…

It's kind of like what us Canadians say about the U.S. sometimes — that they'll always do the right thing, after they've tried everything else.

Supposedly Winston Churchill said this, though now that I’ve been looking up a source I see that attribution is murky

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#304

Post by bsenftner »

hn_submit wrote: post #286
bsenftner wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is a farce, and is the wealth class's yet another lever to control people. UBI will not be "universal", not in this human civilization of hyper stratification. Conditions will be placed, and only certain ethnicity, and somehow certain people will receive two to ten times as much as others. If this proposed and impossible gift farce happens at all. How gullible are you to think this UBI concept has anything but wi…

Do you believe people will be able to sustain their incomes at current levels if A.I. does most of the work? Maybe by some magical means they will, but I'm far from sure that the majority will be able to stay above the poverty line.

> Do you believe people will be able to sustain their incomes at current levels if A.I. does most of the work?

Does not matter, UBI will make the situation worse.

And that "AI does most the work" is yet another fairytale. AI does the easy work, leaving only the much more difficult and the controversial work, exactly the work nobody wants to do, due to the responsibility attached. So, AI will do that, and AI will do that with a preference for the wealth class.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#305

Post by havaianaslife »

madhias wrote: post #5

> I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots. You had me here.

Make some sort of sense to me to think about it, but tbh we already pay vat on tokens and also on machinery (robots), home appliances etc. Also its something payed on possession and not use, i can use it for different things other than make profit out of it. I think it's not the correct way or at least, not the correct time to do something like that, we must see how it evolves before doing something so bold. Also taxing is a difficult matter because is different in countries, region, etc.

Already AI leading companies have problems finding how to back the enormous debt they are in. I don't think it's useful to somebody to act in a preemptive way on this topic.

First we must have the problems, only then we must solve them, like in the past five hundred years at least.

What should be done today is to make sure everyone benefit, at every latitude, and also to use it to improve security and productivity in every field. Make sure that all this debt and bubble-like aura around AI will deflate smoothly without major crisis.

The unemployment will be self-regulated after that. Like usual. Somebody will suffer in the meantime, hopefully a very small portion, okay, but nothing our society (and not only the american one) have already overcome in the past. History is beautiful only in retrospect.

But we, and our respective countries, can make this transition less painful than before, because we are much more free and connected and with better education and tools (also AI). So if something become a problem we have better instrument to adapt society to it and to protest, together, if the price to pay in term of standards of living its too high for a significant amount of people.

I think the important things to achieve in the short term are: * access to AI must be a universal right in some degree and at a reasonable price, like access to internet is today * country and community should push to decentralize power over models, data-centers location and invest in open models and open RD

The one thing about this article correct is human reserve, we must have human quota in every business or activity.

But to slow down it's not a good idea for me in general and in particular using taxes.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#306

Post by green_dee »

eieie1 wrote: post #301
green_dee wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, fair on that point, that makes doing Sloppy SAAS really more accessible and that's what we're seeing On the other hand, what I see happening is: 0. corporation use AI plan ultra-X-high-pro-premium-enterprise 1. corporations firing medium-high paid developers with solid experience and experstise because low-medium paid developers are performing well with ultra-X-high-pro-premium-enterprise plan 2. AI models evol…

I’m a CEO not a dev and this is just patently false. I would never trust someone who lacks the fundamentals to create value even with the most advanced tools. I’d prefer to pay for the senior and fire the less senior - the implicit premium is to not have to worry about the lack of fundamentals for when problems need to be solved that are nuanced.

> I would never trust someone who lacks the fundamentals to create value even with the most advanced tools.

Although I feel the value of what you're saying, I don't feel that's the mindset in the whole world.

I live in a LATAM country and I have worked for both EU (which outsourced most of the workforce, usually keeping the architects and rotating the devs (PS: pre-agentic coding)), US and now US with LATAM intermediator.

Every single one of them treated blattantly different less senior and low paid workers. EU treated so well their EU employees that even outsourced workers could actually feel as real human beings.

The US (startup) one was extremely crushing, I feel seniors were rewarded, what I take from your "the implicit premium", true, but with so much damn pressure. The only senior I saw departed was out of exhaustion, a team from 10 engineers reduced to 4 or 5, don't remember exactly.

While LATAM people is just awful. The slavery mindset is always dormant. Keep pushing, replace when exhausted, hire a whole new crew of low-paid people and push them to burn-out, that's true on small businesses and giant banks. I remember I once trained 3 interns in a pre-agentic setting, I had to push for 2 whole years so that one of the well trained, extremely dedicated and intelligent guy got hired. And he was hired only after a YEAR that the other one had been hired by a larger company. After I was gone, they kept me around consulting just some hours a week and refused to replace even the "half" me. And then I was gone. Only after some months of my departure they really hired the intelligent dude I've mentioned before and for at least a year and a half they coudln't find a replacement for the almost-slave as I was because the intelligent dude probably was starting to get used with agentic coding with a fifth of our total salaries. I haven't heard of that so far.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#307

Post by smcg »

dgellow wrote: post #293
bsenftner wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is a farce, and is the wealth class's yet another lever to control people. UBI will not be "universal", not in this human civilization of hyper stratification. Conditions will be placed, and only certain ethnicity, and somehow certain people will receive two to ten times as much as others. If this proposed and impossible gift farce happens at all. How gullible are you to think this UBI concept has anything but wi…

People think about policies day 0, meaning when they are implemented, and not how they evolve and degenerate over decades. UBI would obviously be used as a mechanism to discriminate and punish people the decision makers don’t like

doesn't sound very universal to me

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#308

Post by eieie1 »

HaloZero wrote: post #224
hypfer wrote: post #200

> But the reliability problem is being fixed quickly, as researchers create models that can check their own work and improve themselves. Soon they will be substantially better than humans at many tasks. Yes, no. They don't. They just push probabilities higher. The tech is non-deterministic.

Honestly, I think it will come down to liability. With humans in loop, the answer is obvious. It's the human who made a decision. When you have AI make a decision, who is responsible? The AI provider, the person implementing things? I was debating about this with my cousin, he's a doctor. Doctors are already using AI, but they are still the judgement maker, If the AI makes a mistake, they and the entity they work for…

[dead]

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#309

Post by hgoel »

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…

Expecting the modern American people to support any welfare system is a fairy tale. A large chunk of them will be too busy worrying about the possibility of even one undeserving person benefiting even if it means thousands starve to death.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#310

Post by nl »

Havoc wrote: post #270

The notion of AI having an equalizing effect seems absurd to me. Buying tokens is about as pay-to-win as it gets. More so than anything we’ve seen in a long time. Before everyone had the same 24hr in a day which despite inequalities grounded things a bit. Now some people can run 100+ near human ability agents while others are still wondering how to get enough calories for the day. Someone in Sudan can’t afford a frea…

> Before everyone had the same 24hr in a day which despite inequalities grounded things a bit. Now some people can run 100+ near human ability agents while others are still wondering how to get enough calories for the day. Someone in Sudan can’t afford a freakin $200 plan

I don't think this is a useful model. People struggling to survive have other priorities.

A better model for thinking about this is how cloud opened up opportunities for technical people to ship products cheaply.

Before cloud you had to hire a dedicated server and you were looking at $1000/month (in say 2000).

In 2023 if you were a non-technical person wanting to ship a software product you needed to invest some thousands of dollars to hire a software developer.

Now you can get a long way on a $30/month Codex plan

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