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The Software Revolution

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The Software Revolution

#171

Post by aceperry »

fragsworth wrote: post #114
pradn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually many government programs in India that are expressly designed to provide guaranteed employment for laborers for a set number of days each year.

Then it should be no wonder why they, as a nation, have so much trouble catching up economically.

I wouldn't blame India for its condition due to having a jobs program. They started off far down the hole when they became a nation after securing their freedom from colonization. They have progressed in many ways, including some of the best schools in the world (IIT), some of the best entrepreneurs and engineers, and some the most advanced technologies (nuclear weapons, modern military, space program). But there is large disparity between rich and poor, partly due to technology enriching some few. Kind of similar to what is happening here in the US, except that the US has/had a much large middle class.

Re: The Software Revolution

#172

Post by lgieron »

msandford wrote: post #131
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…

Someone makes an AI whose goal is to maximize shareholder revenue bar none. No conscience, no idea that people might be valuable somehow in some abstract sense, nothing. Shareholder revenue (as measured with a stock price!) and nothing else. It doesn't take the AI long to figure out that trading in various markets is the most profitable endeavor and the one best suited to its skills. And it starts to maximize away an…

If the AI is making money via trading on various markets, effectively eradicating 99.9% of the population would make the markets (and thus the profits) much smaller, which would impact AI's bottom line.

Re: The Software Revolution

#173

Post by _lce0 »

dnautics wrote: post #82
minthd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes biology is complicated. But we are starting to understand it reasonably well,and more importantly ,we're starting to design it even without understanding. For example, there's a company that produces microbes that create certain materials(genomatica), and uses evolution(with the goal being yield per bacteria) to evolve much more efficient strains - even without deeply understanding how the cell work.And i believe…

I'm just going to say what should be obvious: One is not going to be able to engineer a dangerous plague that will wipe out the human race in one shot. One would have to do experiments, and those experiments will be noticed, because people will get sick and die. I did get lucky and design, from first principles, a 4-fold increase in enzyme activity once, but I am not sure that is something I could repeat.

> One is not going to be able to engineer a dangerous plague that will wipe out the human race in one shot.

I believe that what you said is true, plus we could say that the fact that we haven't been exterminated with a plague makes us not so much experienced (as a race) on how detect whenever such situation will lead to being wiped out

I feel that HIV/AIDS is our only experience, at least that I'm aware of

Re: The Software Revolution

#174

Post by bsbechtel »

A few points here that I never see anyone acknowledge on this forum about technology displacing jobs:

1) 100 years ago, >50% of the population was illiterate, now it is something like 98%. People can, and always will, have the ability to learn new skills...even complex technology. It just takes some longer than others. We have the capacity to teach displaced workers new skills, and doing so is not more overwhelming nor more impossible than teaching our entire population how to read.

2) The more efficient, i.e., fewer man-hours required, every job in the world economy required means additional man-hours that can be devoted to higher level work, such as finding cures for obscure diseases, exploring further beyond our own plant, developing cleaner energy sources, etc.

There are certainly always short-term fears and challenges with technology revolutions displacing jobs, but there is also an immense amount of knowledge about our world and work to be done still. Making the wrong choices in the short-term about these things only will delay us achieving those goals mentioned above.

Re: The Software Revolution

#175

Post by jimjimjim »

brandonmenc wrote: post #124
gaius wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What useful work could a manual labourer do, if you automated his job away tomorrow? It sounds harsh but not everyone can be a Javascript developer or whatever the current fashionable thing is. And what's to stop that useful thing being automated away next?

I should've been more explicit. I meant that it's better to just give them the money than to make them work for it.

Unfortunately no, people need to feel like they are physically making a difference to there own lives. If people don't have a mechanism to improve their situation relative to those that they compare themselves to a general sense of futility will eventually development. and with that and too much idle time comes all the things that governments don't want when controlling populations e.g class envy, unrest, civil disturbances, crime. etc all imho ofcourse

Re: The Software Revolution

#176

Post by pyb »

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…

The AI apocalypse scenario is basically a red herring, in a sense. All the terrifying weapons that we imagine in such a scenario might come to exist, but they'll be commissionned and controlled by humans.

Re: The Software Revolution

#177

Post by aceperry »

jallmann wrote: post #157
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." A…

Funny that you mention elevator operator. When I moved to San Francisco, I saw a few elevator operators in some of the city's buildings. Where did you get the idea that the elevator operator in India had a job "Because he needs a job."?

Re: The Software Revolution

#178

Post by roneesh »

abtinf wrote: post #51

The last few posts from Sam Altman have been deeply troubling and make me worried for the future of YC. He presents leftist ideas as fact without evidence of serious critical thought or even basic economic education. "The previous one, the industrial revolution, created lots of jobs because the new technology required huge numbers of humans to run it." This is factually wrong, but its easier to demonstrate with a tho…

Rather than drawing such a broad conclusion (a troubled future for YC), it could be that's he's just trying to emulate the very informative and enjoyable essays of PG, and still trying to find his footing as a writer. I think that's a simpler more likely explanation.

Re: The Software Revolution

#179

Post by logfromblammo »

alexfarran wrote: post #28
azakai wrote: post #22

> In human history, there have been three great technological revolutions and many smaller ones. The three great ones are the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the one we are now in the middle of—the software revolution. Arguably the control of fire was a great revolution as well.

And the wheel, that was revolutionary.

It certainly played an important role in history.

Re: The Software Revolution

#180

Post by puranjay »

shin_lao wrote: post #127

"The previous one, the industrial revolution, created lots of jobs because the new technology required huge numbers of humans to run it." That's not that simple. The industrial revolution initially destroyed a lot of jobs because it replaced human labor with steam machines. It created new qualified jobs, it is true, because these new intricate machines would require advanced skills to be maintained - a reminiscence o…

The problem is that it was relatively easy to master the technologies of the industrial revolution.

It isn't the same for the software revolution.

You can take virtually any adult from any part of the world and teach him how to work in a factory within a few months of study.

You can't take any random adult and teach him how to code. It requires way higher intellect and time to master coding.

I think of myself as relatively smart but I've struggled with learning how to code. The learning curve is steep, even for someone as familiar with technology as I am.

I'm sure I could learn how to operate a lathe at a factory within weeks. But I'm not sure a lathe operator at a factory could learn how to code within the same time frame (if at all)

So no, it isn't apples and oranges. The software revolution will leave a huge group of people permanently unemployable.

The 50 year old weaver in 1800 Manchester could learn how to operate a machine at a mill - it is largely a mechanical process, after all.

But the 50 year old truck driver in 2015 isn't going to learn how to write code - not within a reasonable time frame anyway

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