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AI and the Automation of Work

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Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#121

Post by hutzlibu »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #106
TapWaterBandit wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you mean like something you can wheel in and install or a humanoid style robot you could use in any kitchen? Cause in theory you're just talking about a dishwasher lol. If you mean a robot that could clean in any kitchen without breaking anything, I'd say at least 20 years. As in you could move it from kitchen to kitchen with no install needs. I suppose another way to look at it is this: how many businesses use ro…

A dishwasher isn't autonomous. I'm talking about the second. I think if we don't solve general intelligence first, we should be able to get there in three to four years.

"An autonomous robot cleaning the dishes on its own in an unfamiliar kitchen without breaking anything"

" I think if we don't solve general intelligence first, we should be able to get there in three to four years"

Very unlikely. I mean you can build something that roughly does that already today, but it will break things and/or it will be so slow it is unusable. Also you have to take savety into account. The robot may not wash the cat or the kid and not accidently break them. But the level of required autonomy for the task requires a machine that can be dangerous. And the recent rise of LLMs really don't help with reliable doing tasks in an unfamiliar environment.

Making cars drive save everywhere is an equally hard target and despite all the investment, I don't see us getting there anywhere soon. And there is not the investment in making robot dishwashers, because we have common dishwashers, that do require manual labour, but they work. A humanoid robot on the other hand, that can put the dishes into the dishwasher, but requires some learning, this might be possible in a few years.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#122

Post by EGreg »

raincole wrote: post #84
danmaz74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A security guard at an airport can be a a machine gun on wheels" - are you serious? That is a job which is 99.99% about understanding human intentions in confusing and ambiguous situations, and where making a mistake will literally kill people. It's the last job you want to automate with "AI".

It's a very good example to understand how "AI evangelists" think. Anyone with even slightest common senes would immediately understands why it's a bad idea, but AI evangelists just can't.

Finally HN is starting to treat AI evangelists like Web3 evangelists

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#123

Post by krageon »

digitalengineer wrote: post #113
raincole wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very good example to understand how "AI evangelists" think. Anyone with even slightest common senes would immediately understands why it's a bad idea, but AI evangelists just can't.

It's also very... American to not think mention the absurdity of machine guns at airports, even in the hands of humans. Even if lethal force is required, would you want a security person (not a trained policeman) to "start blasting" and spraying bullets with a machine-gun?

Machine guns are in a lot of airports these days, in Europe as well. It is assuredly not strange anymore (though it does come across as hostile and extremely unsafe).

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#124

Post by scott_w »

dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

> A security guard at an airport can be a machine gun with wheels, it is more intimidating that way.

I think the last thing airports want is for their passengers to be more stressed than they already are.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#125

Post by raxxorraxor »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #61
dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

I'd be quite surprised if AI (as we've seen so far) threatens manual jobs as these have already been under quite intense pressures to automate for well over a century. The low-hanging fruit IMO are most likely to be anything that is done entirely via/inside a computer. Because interacting in the digital world is much less of an issue than having to deal with digital + physical world like manual jobs do. That's not to…

Not really afraid of that at all. On the contrary, you cannot just take an AI and make it do stuff. You need experts to parameterize and train it. It is also a bit more complicated than a pid controller where you turn a few knobs. For training you would need domain experts.

The same reason we didn't see too widespread automation in industry. You actually need a lot of engineers to automate systems for their specific purpose. Today robots sold the most primitive parts but even there rework is needed. There are exceptions where scale and value of the good allows for it.

An AI currently isn't even capable of doing excel business analysis without the data being checked. This check has to be done by an analyst as well. It cannot even do book keeping without errors and the work to check for errors surpasses doing it yourself.

We aren't there where anyone has to fear about their jobs from AI compared to general technological advancement. If so I think the first impact will hit the click generators (good) and artists (bad). Although in both cases you need people to generate new concepts. True that you cannot get rid of cooks ever though.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#126

Post by raxxorraxor »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #69
TapWaterBandit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be quite surprised if AI (as we've seen so far) threatens manual jobs as these have already been under quite intense pressures to automate for well over a century. The low-hanging fruit IMO are most likely to be anything that is done entirely via/inside a computer. Because interacting in the digital world is much less of an issue than having to deal with digital + physical world like manual jobs do. That's not to…

An autonomous robot cleaning the dishes on its own in an unfamiliar kitchen without breaking anything: how many years? What's your bet?

A month after self-driving cars.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#127

Post by cm277 »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

I agree with the article; GPT is not AGI, it's ABSI (automated BS intelligence). That's certainly useful and it will automate some jobs, but a) it's just an enabling technology for new applications, b) we haven't seen these applications yet, so we have no real idea what the impact will be.

To put it another way: the enabling tech for iPhone was (mainly) multitouch capacitive displays. I dont think anyone predicted Uber or taxi drivers being at risk because of multitouch when it was unveiled (late 90s?), but here we are.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#128

Post by [deleted] »

dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

[deleted]

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#129

Post by nucleative »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #70
ChatGTP wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They might not need it, but it might reduce the friction dramatically. I use GPT to learn things occasionally, but it’s almost always something where I don’t have the language on hand to navigate the problem space. GPT is great at opening windows and giving you the tools you need to figure something out. In my case, I usually get to a point where I think I get the topic well enough to leave ChatGPT and go out on my o…

This applies to me. GPT4 increases the speed of simple tasks significantly.

I needed a WordPress plugin but I'm not a WordPress developer and it's been a while since I spent much time in PHP. Ultimately I don't have time to come up to speed on this and I just want the plugin now.

I wrote a ChatGPT prompt explaining the plugin in great detail, and it responded with the entire plugin. I installed it and it worked on the first try. I went back and forth for a few iterations to adjust things like css and button titles and now it's running on a live site.

Had I assigned the project to someone else, I'd still have needed to write the "prompt" and I'm not sure it would have saved me any time.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#130

Post by mchaver »

dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

I'm not saying things are great now, but I am starting to understand the position of some cultures that have a "it's better to die out than change in a particular direction" attitude.
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