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Raising Children on the Eve of AI

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Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#121

Post by timeon »

keiferski wrote: post #37
alumic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove around today listening to the most recent Lex Fridman podcast, in which the founder of Boston Dynamics was describing replacing human labor with machines that were capable of learning by seeing. I have family in the trades. I pursued tech and fell in love with the field. Listening to the interviewee, I began to feel sick to my stomach at the glib description of what amounts to ripping away peoples' livelihood…

For autonomous robots to replace the millions of tradesmen and workers, it would require vastly more resources than are being put toward this now. I wouldn’t expect human labor to be replaced in this way for a century or two.

Manual labor is not going to be completely replaced that quickly - this process is happening from down of civilization. Office work on the other hand can be replaced much quicker.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#122

Post by inference-lord »

keiferski wrote: post #99
duccinator wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have autonomous robots you can use those robots to build more robots leading to an exponential curve. The day they make the first one, we will reach a million in 2-3 years and a billion in 2-4 years after that.

The laws of physics and the material cost of creating robots still exist. Real life isn’t a sci fi movie.

It almost makes me wonder if something really intelligent (which is where we are heading according to some) would mean we need as much labor, or things would just be much more efficient ?

I get the feeling less "conventional" robots might be needed someday, rather than more.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#123

Post by ben_w »

vasco wrote: post #114
ben_w wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If robots actually replaced all human labour and left nothing for humans to be employed at, then the robots necessarily can do their own resource extraction. The current cost of a Boston Dynamics Spot is around a year's income, give or take whose income you're measuring against. If it were able to do any human task at the same rate as a human — and yes, I know it isn't, this is just a anchoring point for the discussi…

These robots can also teleport and charge anywhere or do you predict an expedition to some mine in Africa when they are at the stage where they need some cobalt? I'm just finding it funny thinking of 15 Spots queuing for a flixbus / greyhound bus because they need to go get some raw material across the continent.

I expect cobalt to be mined in the cheapest possible way.

If that's humans, humans have work[0]. If humans don't have work, the only alternative to robots is, what, well-trained squirrels?

> I'm just finding it funny thinking of 15 Spots queuing for a flixbus / greyhound bus because they need to go get some raw material across the continent.

Me too.

But I expect actual logistics to be much like current logistics, so it would be more like a few Spots loading a standardised intermodal shipping container, a Tesla semi taking it to the port (which is guarded by drones), an automated gantry that puts the container on a cargo ship, a few more robots guarding the cargo ship from pirates (who may well also be robots), the same in reverse at the other end.

[0] You may point to the current conditions of cobalt mines and go "this is bad"; but once was a time when other forms of mining were seen as good solid work, and those with those jobs protested against their mines being closed down. Almost broke the UK when they did that protest, too.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#124

Post by [deleted] »

safety1st wrote: post #58
inference-lord wrote: post #12

I became a parent about a year ago, completely unprepared for this future. My Son was born around the time ChatGPT-4 was released and I remember all the Geoffrey Hinton interviews which were really apocalyptic sounding, he is has a kind of kookie mad scientist vibe about him too. I remember thinking, like what the fuck just happened? Like I just woke up in a movie. I've learned to accept the situation, and realize th…

I'm not going to worry too much about my career being snuffed out by AI until AI actually exists. Right now we have LLMs and they're a very far cry from any form of AI that could replace a software engineer wholesale. In my little corner of the software engineering universe I have not seen any credible hiring manager say they were going to fire developers and replace them with LLMs (I have seen this threat from one o…

[deleted]

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#125

Post by the8472 »

safety1st wrote: post #58
inference-lord wrote: post #12

I became a parent about a year ago, completely unprepared for this future. My Son was born around the time ChatGPT-4 was released and I remember all the Geoffrey Hinton interviews which were really apocalyptic sounding, he is has a kind of kookie mad scientist vibe about him too. I remember thinking, like what the fuck just happened? Like I just woke up in a movie. I've learned to accept the situation, and realize th…

I'm not going to worry too much about my career being snuffed out by AI until AI actually exists. Right now we have LLMs and they're a very far cry from any form of AI that could replace a software engineer wholesale. In my little corner of the software engineering universe I have not seen any credible hiring manager say they were going to fire developers and replace them with LLMs (I have seen this threat from one o…

> I'm not going to worry too much about my career being snuffed out by AI until AI actually exists.

Can you explain what underpins this position? Is it about timelines, likelihoods, not taking preparative actions in general or what?

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#126

Post by plastic3169 »

inference-lord wrote: post #39
bbor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like our careers could just be snuffed out instantly with little recourse available. You’ve likely heard this sentiment before but it’s the right one so I’ll be the one to post it today: your job is not your purpose, and the economy is not the society. Obviously your whole comment is well founded and relatable, but I think this is the only cure for your anxieties. The world is a beautiful, beautiful place, w…

What do you suppose we all do during the transition to utopia? How do we feed our families once we've been laid off and while we wait for the arrival of paradise? People already going through this now.

When large swaths of people no longer can employ themselves based on their skills their political views will start to slide. There will be a new mainstream view that maybe tax base needs to be expanded to take into account the new reality. It will be tough to fight back the majority of this size in a democracy. Maybe even in more authoritarian systems.

When machines can replace most of the low end labor it becomes increasingly unuseful to keep people in poverty. Imagine being one of the few megarich alive, being able to produce teslas like it was a SaaS business, amazing margin, great moat, but 99% of your fellow humans were on poverty not even able to dream about having a car.

There is always the technodystopian path, but to get there is not so easy either. You need to keep people relatively happy for long enough that you have manufactured enough killerbots. Most humans want to preserve civilization.

The idea that your job provides for you is 100% fabricated construction that is great local maxima for this society. When technology changes what is possible we will reorganize the beehive of humanity to take into account that these new machines exist.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#127

Post by ianlevesque »

unsigner wrote: post #117

This feels incredibly detached from my reality. In my reality, there’s a brutal land war two countries over, and I’m agonizing whether I’m dooming my children by not teaching them battlefield first aid, trench digging and FPV drone piloting.

Oh it's detached from global reality too.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#128

Post by Nevermark »

vasco wrote: post #114
ben_w wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If robots actually replaced all human labour and left nothing for humans to be employed at, then the robots necessarily can do their own resource extraction. The current cost of a Boston Dynamics Spot is around a year's income, give or take whose income you're measuring against. If it were able to do any human task at the same rate as a human — and yes, I know it isn't, this is just a anchoring point for the discussi…

These robots can also teleport and charge anywhere or do you predict an expedition to some mine in Africa when they are at the stage where they need some cobalt? I'm just finding it funny thinking of 15 Spots queuing for a flixbus / greyhound bus because they need to go get some raw material across the continent.

They can just hire a human, until there are enough of them to fully set up global automated distribution systems.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#129

Post by ardaoweo »

keiferski wrote: post #13

I think kids are a lot more prepared for this future than professional technologists probably realize. If you ask them today what profession they want to be, you often get “YouTuber” as an answer. Which might seem like a joke, but I think it’s actually quite accurate in terms of future professions. The jobs at most risk from AI are “anonymous” ones in which the creator of the work is unknown to its consumer. Writing,…

I agree on social skills. However, I think that the most obvious job in the future is going to be nursing, which already has a severe labor shortage in most countries. Dropping birth rates ensure that there are always more old people to take care of than there are workers. We're also still a long way from cost-effective robotics that are reliable enough not to accidentally kill old people who need physical help in their daily lives. It's also a profession where mere human presence and social contact is valuable itself.

Re: Raising Children on the Eve of AI

#130

Post by ben_w »

keiferski wrote: post #110
ben_w wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If robots actually replaced all human labour and left nothing for humans to be employed at, then the robots necessarily can do their own resource extraction. The current cost of a Boston Dynamics Spot is around a year's income, give or take whose income you're measuring against. If it were able to do any human task at the same rate as a human — and yes, I know it isn't, this is just a anchoring point for the discussi…

The discussion is about robots replacing laborers and tradesmen, not all human work. It seems far more likely than humans will maintain control of the corporations that manufacture the robots. The rest of this is just sci-fi speculation.

> The discussion is about robots replacing laborers and tradesmen, not all human work.

If that's all they did, it would be just another change to the nature of work, and humans would simply find other roles to fill.

Rapid change is scary, but can be managed, has been managed before — this kind of thing has historically grown the metaphorical economic pie, making everyone better off. If it's either one of "just muscle power" or "just brain power", the other leaves opportunities for humans.

Only a total replacement of all human work causes such a break that we're fumbling around in the dark. ("Fumbling around" is how I see the discussion of UBI: even if it turns out to be right, we don't yet have anything like a good enough model for the details).

> It seems far more likely than humans will maintain control of the corporations that manufacture the robots.

Will they, though? We've already got people (unwisely IMO) putting AI on boards of directors. Yes, it's as much a stunt as anything else, the law prevents them from being treated as "people", but the effect is the same: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Artificial-intelligence-get...

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