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Slop Terrifies Me

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Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#161

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

Davidzheng wrote: post #101
beardyw wrote: post #10

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects. A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately…

"People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much" how is this possible? are the less advanced economies protected from outside influences? are they also protected from immigration?

Not OP, but assuming I am following the argument correctly, I think parent is referring to something else. Advanced economies have participants, who function well in that environment and are shaped by it to a large degree. As a result, if one was to ask them to get food in an environment, where it is not as easily accessible as it is today, they might stumble. On the other hand, in the old country, a lot of people I knew had a tendency to have a little garden, hunt every so often, forage for mushrooms and so on. In other words, more individuals may be able to survive in less developed economies precisely, because they are less developed and less reliant on convenience today brings.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#162

Post by direwolf20 »

fragmede wrote: post #77
danaris wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us have a perfectly good game plan for that. It's called Universal Basic Income. It's just that many powerful people have a vested interest in keeping the rest of us poor, miserable, and desperate, and so do everything they can to fight the idea that anything can ever be done to improve the lot of the poor without destroying the economy. Despite ample empirical evidence to the contrary.

We can (and should) provide for those among us who aren't able to provide for themselves, without also firing everyone in the welfare department. UBI is shit. People need to do something in order to recieve money, even if the something is begging on the side of the freeway or going into the welfare office to claim benefits. Magic money from the sky is not the answer.

What if you have to dig holes and fill them back in to get the money?

And some more people can do the useless work of tracking who filled and dug how many holes.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#163

Post by pixl97 »

afavour wrote: post #85
Der_Einzige wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way, well, de nile ain't just a river in egypt. Also yes LLMs are indeed AGI: https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-... This was Peter Norvig's take. AGI is a low bar because most humans are really stupid.

> If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress I don’t understand this perspective. There are numerous examples of technical progress that then stalls out. Just look at batteries for example. Or ones where advancements are too expensive for widespread use (e.g. why no one flies Concorde any more) Why is previous progress a guaranteed indicator of future progress?

Just think of this as risk management.

If AGI doesn't happen, then good. You get to keep working and playing and generally screwing off in the way that humans have for generations.

On the other hand if AGI happens, especially any time soon, you are exceptionally fucked along with me. The world changes very rapidly and there is no getting off Mr Bones wild ride.

>Why is previous progress a guaranteed indicator of future progress?

In this case, because nature already did it. We're not just inventing and testing something whole cloth. And we know there are still massive efficiencies to be gained.

For me the Concorde is an example of how people look at stuff incorrectly. In the past we had to send people places very quickly to do things. This was very expensive and inefficient. I don't need to get on a plane to have an effect just about anywhere else in the world now. The internet and digital mediums give me a presence at other locations that is very close to being there. We didn't need planes that fly at the speed of sound, we needed strings that communicate at the speed of light.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#164

Post by coldtea »

zozbot234 wrote: post #124
coldtea wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replacing this with AI is a welcome development. Not if you fed your kid doing it, and now you can't. > As for jobs like translator, graphic designer and journalist, it's only the extremely low-end work that can possibly be replaced with LLMs. Not an issue if they move upmarket. Yes, fuck the 90% of those working in that space, and let's hope the 10% gets an "upmarket" gig there. All this grand-visioning sounds dev…

> Not if you fed your kid doing it, and now you can't. Which happens all the time anyway. There just aren't that many people for whom being a call center worker is their long-term career, they'll just switch to some other job.

There are millions upon millions of people where there is no "long-term career" period, just regular shitty and more shitty gig jobs and low end work like this, from factories and workcenters to burger flipping, to deliveries, loading, to cleaning, and everything in between. And they are getting increasingly squeezed and out of options.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#165

Post by pixl97 »

coldtea wrote: post #98
Der_Einzige wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way, well, de nile ain't just a river in egypt. Also yes LLMs are indeed AGI: https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-... This was Peter Norvig's take. AGI is a low bar because most humans are really stupid.

> If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way There's no "rapid acceleration of progress". If anything there's a decline, and even an economic decline. Take away the financial bubbles based on deregulation and huge explosion of debt, and the last 40 years of "economic progress" are just a mirage filling a huge bubble with air in actual advancement terms - unlike the previous millenia.

Lol, wut?

The world can produce more things cheaper and faster than ever and this is an economic decline? I think you may have missed the other 6 billion people on the planet getting massive improvements in their quality of life.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#166

Post by coldtea »

azan_ wrote: post #128
coldtea wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way There's no "rapid acceleration of progress". If anything there's a decline, and even an economic decline. Take away the financial bubbles based on deregulation and huge explosion of debt, and the last 40 years of "economic progress" are just a mirage filling a huge bubble with air in actual advancement terms - unlike the previous millenia.

That’s completely wrong. There was barely any progress in previous millennia. There was even economic Nobel prize for showing why!

The GDP per capita of the world has been slowly increasing for several millenia. Same for the advancements in core technology.

The industrial revolution increased the pace, but it was already there, not flat or randomly flunctuating (think ancient hominids versus early agriculture vs bronge age, vs ancient Babylon and Assyrian empires, vs later Greece, and Persia, later Rome, later Renaissance and so on).

Post 1970s most of the further increase has been based on mirages due to financialization, and doesn't reflect actual improvement.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#167

Post by [deleted] »

kryogen1c wrote: post #151
djoldman wrote: post #108

Now that generative AI products are becoming more widely used, it's a little depressing how folks don't seem to view the world with a broad historical context. The "AI effect" on the world has many similarities to previous events and in many ways changes very little about how the world works. > I'm terrified of the good enough to ship—and I'm terrified of nobody else caring. For almost every product/service ever offe…

It should also be noted that most companies that make high quality (last decades) low volume goods go out of business; people vote with their dollars and dont want the capex. Put another way, who here wants a car that costs more than their house? Or shoes that cost 2000$?

[deleted]

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#168

Post by doctorwho42 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #153
djoldman wrote: post #108

Now that generative AI products are becoming more widely used, it's a little depressing how folks don't seem to view the world with a broad historical context. The "AI effect" on the world has many similarities to previous events and in many ways changes very little about how the world works. > I'm terrified of the good enough to ship—and I'm terrified of nobody else caring. For almost every product/service ever offe…

> For example, it's possible to make hiking boots that last a lot longer than others. But if the requirement is to have it last for just 20 miles, it's better to pay less for one that won't last as long. Sure, but the OP's concern is whether this chokes off innovation. Is there some better kind of hiking boot, longer-lasting and cheaper and maybe more comfortable, that we've never found because the shoemakers who'd b…

Exactly: is the local max or min for (hiking boots) currently the global max or min. And does the way LLMs work limit future exploration because it increases the activation cost of getting out of the local min/max due to the effects on society/workforce/corporate direction caused by LLMs?

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#169

Post by pixl97 »

sunrunner wrote: post #83
Der_Einzige wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way, well, de nile ain't just a river in egypt. Also yes LLMs are indeed AGI: https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-... This was Peter Norvig's take. AGI is a low bar because most humans are really stupid.

> rapid acceleration Who was it who stated that every exponential was just a sigmoid in disguise? > most humans are really stupid. Statistically, don't we all sort of fit somewhere along a bell curve?

The bell curve of IQ and being stupid probably don't have much to do with each other.

Think of stupidity as the consequences of interacting with ones environment with negative outcomes. If you have a simple environment with few negative outcomes, then even someone with a 80 IQ may not be considered stupid. But if your environment rapidly grows more complex and the amount of thinking you have to do for positive outcomes increases then even someone with a 110 IQ may find themselves quickly in trouble.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#170

Post by coldtea »

pixl97 wrote: post #165
coldtea wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way There's no "rapid acceleration of progress". If anything there's a decline, and even an economic decline. Take away the financial bubbles based on deregulation and huge explosion of debt, and the last 40 years of "economic progress" are just a mirage filling a huge bubble with air in actual advancement terms - unlike the previous millenia.

Lol, wut? The world can produce more things cheaper and faster than ever and this is an economic decline? I think you may have missed the other 6 billion people on the planet getting massive improvements in their quality of life.

>I think you may have missed the other 6 billion people on the planet getting massive improvements in their quality of life.

I think you have missed that it's easy to get "massive improvements in your quality of life" if you start from merely-post-revolution-era China or 1950s Africa or colonial India.

Much less so if you plateaud as US and Europe, and live off of increased debt ever since the 1970s.

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