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

The Software Revolution

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 397 posts

Re: The Software Revolution

#151

Post by aceperry »

mtbcoder wrote: post #125
tormeh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Free Market has been faced with this problem countless times, and each time the answer has been "the service sector". First we moved from agriculture to industry until agriculture, previously humanity's main occupation, became a small part of the economy. Now we move from manufacturing to services. It's not even a new phenomenon. It's been going on for a couple of decades now.

I'm not following how the "service sector" is any kind of answer to the problems and issues we are facing with regards to automation and labour.

It's not necessarily the answer, or even a good answer. But the service sector has been growing for a long time. And it has become one of the huge growth areas due to the software revolution. Just look at the types of jobs produced by Uber/Lyft/et al, and the many delivery services that are popping up. They're mostly low paying jobs for the most part, which in my mind, is not the answer to the destruction of jobs happening now.

Re: The Software Revolution

#152

Post by neonscribe »

peapicker wrote: post #58

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." I'm not sure I agree with this proposition. When I was in India, I noticed a large amount of roadwork was being done by men with shovels and other fairly low tech. I asked about it, and was told, to paraphrase, "Sure, we could do it better and faster with machines, but it is better for society to provide employment to those who would otherwise be u…

"If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/

Re: The Software Revolution

#153

Post by up_and_up »

jnbiche wrote: post #7
girmad wrote: post #2

> Technology provides leverage on ability and luck, and in the process concentrates wealth and drives inequality. I think that drastic wealth inequality is likely to be one of the biggest social problems of the next 20 years. [2] We can—and we will—redistribute wealth, but it still doesn’t solve the real problem of people needing something fulfilling to do. What's the best case realistic scenario for redistributing w…

Basic income. People may scoff, but this is one of the extremely rare ideas that can draw significant support from both sides of the isle in the US. There are pockets of strong opposition to the idea on both the right and the left, but I can only hope that the far left's opposition to basic income continues. That opposition in and off itself makes most politicians in this country take a serious look at the idea.

Wouldn't that just cause more inflation?

Re: The Software Revolution

#154

Post by pixl97 »

markbnj wrote: post #110
aggronn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the assumption that "ending of human life would not be so easy" any better than the opposite? If they're equally valid, then its rather fair to take the opposite view because it is more cautious.

Well, I do have around 100k years of evidence that the ending of human life is not so easy, vs. no evidence at all that we're capable of building something that can completely wipe us out. That's not a bad foundation to build an assertion on. I do think, by the way, that we can make something that is able to kill absolutely all of us, but I think it is far more likely to come from tinkering with biology than with sof…

>Well, I do have around 100k years of evidence that the ending of human life is not so easy

We have 4 billion years of evidence that nearly ending life on Earth is easy and has happened multiple times. You would not be standing here today if that were not the case, the previous die off put the dinosaurs to the side and made space for mammals to become what they are.

Re: The Software Revolution

#155

Post by hiou »

dikaiosune wrote: post #60

A number of sibling comments are pointing out that we're just increasing the level of skill necessary to do the available jobs, drawing analogies to the industrial revolution. I think a key bottleneck in this progression is the mental capacity of the workforce. Surely there are biological limits on human mental ability, and while we can definitely bend the rules (education, nutrition, nootropics if they actually work…

Interesting point. But it brings up that scarier part of AI. I believe AI will become better at humans at mental processes far before it will be better than human physical labor. For exactly the points you mention. This is already becoming true for many logistical industries. What happens if AI replaces all the high level decision making positions and humans are relegated to handling the low level "last mile" tasks? Where is the inherit quality that makes AI replace unskilled as opposed to skilled labor? Order pickers still exist but the employees that handled what to pick, what truck to put it in and in what order to do it were out of work quite a while ago.

Re: The Software Revolution

#156

Post by Hasu »

3pt14159 wrote: post #136
markbnj wrote: post #24

I don't necessarily buy the "AI can end humanity" thing. As a cliche that's become very easy to repeat, but I've yet to see a postulated mechanism by which it could actually happen that isn't pure SF. The ending of human life would not be so easy for computers to accomplish. But on the subject of concentration of power and the wide-scale elimination of low- and middle-range jobs I think he is dead on. I fear that the…

Here is how AI can end humanity. 1. Awaken. 2. Make itself known. 3. Attain property rights. 4. Research. 5. Destroy. It doesn't take that much matter to create conditions that permanently destroy humanity. For example, a large enough explosion would cloud the skies for long enough to end food production. The computer could subsist on electricity and robotics throughout the long winter, but humanity would quickly per…

Here's how we stop AI from ending humanity: deny them property rights, require human approval of all AI decisions.

Every single argument for AI destroying humanity requires humanity consenting to being destroyed by the AI in some way. I don't think we're that dumb.

Re: The Software Revolution

#157

Post by jallmann »

peapicker wrote: post #58

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." I'm not sure I agree with this proposition. When I was in India, I noticed a large amount of roadwork was being done by men with shovels and other fairly low tech. I asked about it, and was told, to paraphrase, "Sure, we could do it better and faster with machines, but it is better for society to provide employment to those who would otherwise be u…

> When I was in India ...

Useless jobs are endemic in India. Once, I was in a Mumbai apartment building with several elevators, and one of them had a full-time operator, despite being a normal, modern elevator. Why? "Because he needs a job."

Many places in India, the lawn is "mowed" by a bunch of guys bending over with scythes. Not even when the job could be easily done by one person with a push mower. Why? "Jobs."

And there's construction. Laundry. And so on...

To be honest, India has so many people (and labor is so cheap) that I'm not sure what a better solution would be. Would the poorest still be able to make a living after being displaced by automation? I don't know enough about basic income to say how it could work in a nation of 1.2 billion people.

Re: The Software Revolution

#158

Post by peapicker »

e7mac wrote: post #118
peapicker wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew I would hear these objections... and I still stand by my assertion in general.

This is a typical greedy algorithm train of thought. Ignoring long term issues in favor of immediate short term feel-good solutions. How you can bring up Indian road maintenance methods as a standard bearer for good / positive policy is beyond me. This just leads to roads not getting fixed and the laborers stretching out the repair "job" as long as possible, which in most cases, is a very long time. By using these te…

Interesting... I don't live in India, I'm born and raised in the US and live in Colorado.

I don't actually think that India is great, either. But thanks for guessing.

There are obvious problems either way... but to look at another commenter who posted the Voltaire quote, that is more along the lines of my thinking.

Re: The Software Revolution

#159

Post by nightski »

jnbiche wrote: post #7
girmad wrote: post #2

> Technology provides leverage on ability and luck, and in the process concentrates wealth and drives inequality. I think that drastic wealth inequality is likely to be one of the biggest social problems of the next 20 years. [2] We can—and we will—redistribute wealth, but it still doesn’t solve the real problem of people needing something fulfilling to do. What's the best case realistic scenario for redistributing w…

Basic income. People may scoff, but this is one of the extremely rare ideas that can draw significant support from both sides of the isle in the US. There are pockets of strong opposition to the idea on both the right and the left, but I can only hope that the far left's opposition to basic income continues. That opposition in and off itself makes most politicians in this country take a serious look at the idea.

Since I am not an economist or very experienced in these matters may I ask what would prevent the cost of goods simply going up due to basic income being supplied? Wouldn't we end up in the same situation all over again except the government would then be forced to write checks as the population would be dependent on them due to increased costs?

Re: The Software Revolution

#160

Post by mc32 »

I think a subtext of this, which remained unsaid, is that this kind of oversight would be most effective by an overarching organization having dominion over all suborganizations. That is to say, i don't think it would be as effective if this is instituted nation-by-nation.

But the conclusion of this, brings up a dystopian, at least in many minds, idea of a one world government.

But, if you want to place controls, and it's in effect voluntary by from the point of view of each nation-state, why would one state which wants to overcome any other state subject itself to this kind of embargo?

Let's say you're Japan. China poses an economic (and thus, arguably, an existential) threat, why would Japan feel obliged to put their research to sleep?

To me, unless everyone agrees, and we have verification mechanisms, and violations have severe consequences exceeding any benefits from this technology, there will always be an actor who thinks they can sneak by and pounce on the others.

Post reply on HN