181–190 of 251 posts
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They're not making my life miserable. I definitely wouldn't want to go back to the tech we had in the 90s. You don't have to use social media. Advertising is annoying but it's not really any worse than TV ads back in the day.
You don't think the political situation is a teensy bit worse now?
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It posits that the tools at their disposal will be far more powerful and wide reaching than just Gmail or even modern social networks. The good ol' AGI and then ASI singularity everyone likes to talk about. To be fair, it is possible.
It's vogue on HN to sometimes criticize critically so I want to try and be as constructive as possible: I work for one of these companies. I also have pay bills to pay. I'd like to understand what a real, good alternative is. Frontier labs such as Google DeepMind are not just going to shutter their doors because 10% of the peons dropped their jobs. I believe, at least, that we should be demanding political accountabi…
What other modern society has existed and prosperous where you could quit a job and have positive return?
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> Not even art, because that's among the things gen AI is displacing the most effectively. Kinda, but also no. Yes, there's a lot of people (including me) who genuinely enjoy the output of these models; but art isn't only aesthetics, I observe it also being a peacock's tail, where the cost is the entire point. Why are originals more valuable than reproductions? Nobody who understands the tech can seriously claim that…
People boycott AI art in indie games, music, etc. but it's still finding massive use everywhere across most industries, and by and large companies are getting away with it. > would never command as much money as the original unless someone deliberately mixed them up so that nobody would even know which was which. That is based on current sensibilities which are capable of change. Give it 20 years of PR campaigns and…
Use, yes. I find it on packaging, on billboards. "Massive" use? Not so clear, e.g. how much is this just a substitute for clip art and stock photography? I.e. stuff that was already low-value.
But even there, to the extent they get away with it, that's due to people like me who care about aesthetics.
To illustrate the difference:
Know what I don't care for? Der Kuss[0], the Mona Lisa[1], everything Van Gogh is famous for[2], likewise Pollock, Frida Kahlo, Monet, and Gauguin.
Know what's expensive? All of those things I don't care for.
> That is based on current sensibilities which are capable of change. Give it 20 years of PR campaigns and who knows where we end up.
Peacock tails are, necessarily, expensive signals.
When there's a thousand indistinguishable replicas of the Mona Lisa, the original becomes worthless, the replicas don't gain value.
The effort is the point, it's the reason for the price. When an expensive thing becomes cheap, it stops being an expensive signal (and vice-versa).
[0] the woman's head looks like it's been severed, rotated 90°, her ear placed where the stump of her neck ought to be. Most of Klimt's other stuff is better.
[1] her smile is not "mysterious", it's just the resting face of someone who had to keep still for long enough to get painted
[2] the stuff he's not famous for is, IMO, generally better than the stuff he is famous for.
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You think that these ridiculously high wages that companies like Mercor are paying for data generation are "tanking" bargaining power? Its the complete opposite: there is now a massive sector of highly skilled, specialized labor that produces the very data which trains these models, a task that will not end as long as there is demand for newer and better and more specially trained models. That is a massive amount of…
Ridiculously high wages for jobs whose explicit purpose is to make human workers(including those partaking in those jobs) obsolete. THE reason why they pay so high is because their end-goal is not having to pay anyone anymore ever again. (or at least, only pay a comparatively tiny amount of people for producing the data)
I would say they are making the current cost of one's labor "obsolete". Most jobs are like this. If you work for yourself, you're trying to make the cost of your labor obsolete in place of cheaper work. If you work for a company, the company will be trying to make the cost of your labor obsolete in place of cheaper work. Any value captured in the arbitrage of product price and employee pay is seen as the value of management.
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geohot's not a regular joe, he's founded multiple companies and is a leader in our community. This is like a general being like "why are you letting the enemy win?" while he sits comfortably in his study managing his cigar collection.
I still don't think it precludes him from having this opinion. Could he be doing more? Sure, but having found success in this system doesn't make his criticisms of it invalid.
This is a real threat that is not discussed enough. If labor could be completely automated, then the value and political power of workers tends to zero.
capitalism has always moved in the direction of automation, yielding booming progress and prosperity for much of mankind. the technological comforts we have today far exceed those of a thousand years ago, no one can dispute. but at some point, if there are no more jobs due to "full automation" then the promise of capitalism bringing most people out of poverty will start to fall short. it's a real question, what do we…
My point being is that modern capitalist society has brought all the technology innovation we see today including the best medical technology/care we've ever had.
This is a real threat that is not discussed enough. If labor could be completely automated, then the value and political power of workers tends to zero.
I feel like the people who post this sentiment have never done any plumbing, electrical wiring or really just any sort of actual creative manual labor. Show me the robot that can plumb a new sink in, or brick up an old doorway... Because I'd really like to buy it, those things are hard and time consuming!
Smaller tools might be better, humanoid robots can HELP with this but it will still be a tool that we command.
I just fixed a leaking sprinkler, would love to have had a humanoid help me dig the hole, help me turn on/off the shutoff, cut the pipe, glue it back, etc...
When there is nothing to lose but your chains … as the saying goes
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> Not even art, because that's among the things gen AI is displacing the most effectively. Kinda, but also no. Yes, there's a lot of people (including me) who genuinely enjoy the output of these models; but art isn't only aesthetics, I observe it also being a peacock's tail, where the cost is the entire point. Why are originals more valuable than reproductions? Nobody who understands the tech can seriously claim that…
People boycott AI art in indie games, music, etc. but it's still finding massive use everywhere across most industries, and by and large companies are getting away with it. > would never command as much money as the original unless someone deliberately mixed them up so that nobody would even know which was which. That is based on current sensibilities which are capable of change. Give it 20 years of PR campaigns and…
An economics counter argument: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/plentiful-high-paying-jobs-in-... Also, my p(doom) is 1.0-epsilon under the status quo without AGI/ASI, due to old age and disease. Under some assumptions, self-interest says that I may as well roll the dice.
Thanks for posting the article, it's really well written and worth reading! I think he raises some important points in the `“Possible” doesn’t mean “guaranteed”` section. His argument is based on comparative advantage, and he says "The key difference here is that everyone — every single person, every single AI, everyone — always has a comparative advantage at something!". This is why everyone in the world has a job a…
We are all scifi geeks (I am so generalizing) so I think we get a rush by doing it, but I think 99% of the predictions in this topic will be wrong.