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AI is different

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Re: AI is different

#21

Post by aurareturn »

mattnewton wrote: post #17
aurareturn wrote: post #16

We are not there, yet, but if AI could replace a sizable amount of workers, the economic system will be put to a very hard test. Moreover, companies could be less willing to pay for services that their internal AIs can handle or build from scratch. There will be fewer very large companies in terms of human size. There will be many more companies that are much smaller because you don't need as many workers to do the s…

Maybe, or 300 of those engineers will be working for 3 new companies while the other 600 struggle to find gainful employment, even after taking large pay cuts, as their skillsets are replaced rather than augmented. It’s way too early to call afaict

Because it's so easy to make new software and sell it using AI, 6 of those 600 people who are unemployed will have ideas that require 100 engineers each to make. They will build a prototype, get funding, and hire 99 engineers each.

There are also plenty of ideas that aren't profitable with 2 salaries but is with 1. Many will be able to make those ideas happen with AI helping.

Re: AI is different

#22

Post by K0balt »

BoorishBears wrote: post #2

I don't get how post GPT-5's launch we're still getting articles where the punchline is "what if these things replace a BUNCH of humans".

LLMs are limited because we want them to do jobs that are not clearly defined / have difficult to measure progress or success metrics / are not fully solved problems (open ended) / have poor grounding in an external reality. Robotics does not suffer from those maladies. There are other hurdles, but none are intractable.

I think we might see AI being much, much more effective with embodiment.

Re: AI is different

#23

Post by solarkraft »

> After all, a plateau of the current systems is possible and very credible, but it would likely stimulate, at this point, massive research efforts in the next step of architectures.

A lot of AI’s potential hasn’t even been realized yet. There’s a long tail of integrations and solution building still ahead. A lot of creative applications haven’t been realized yet - arguably for the better, but it will be tried and some will be economical.

That’s a case for a moderate economic upturn though.

Re: AI is different

#24

Post by mxwsn »

AI with ability but without responsibility is not enough for dramatic socioeconomic change, I think. For now, the critical unique power of human workers is that you can hold them responsible for things.

edit: ability without accountability is the catchier motto :)

Re: AI is different

#25

Post by jazzyjackson »

btilly wrote: post #7

In every technology wave so far, we've disrupted many existing jobs. However we've also opened up new kinds of jobs. And, because it is easier to retrain humans than build machines for those jobs, we wound up with more and better jobs. This is the first technology wave that doesn't just displace humans, but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can. Right now it can't replace human…

I don't know maybe they can grow trees and build houses.

Re: AI is different

#26

Post by jazzyjackson »

K0balt wrote: post #22
BoorishBears wrote: post #2

I don't get how post GPT-5's launch we're still getting articles where the punchline is "what if these things replace a BUNCH of humans".

LLMs are limited because we want them to do jobs that are not clearly defined / have difficult to measure progress or success metrics / are not fully solved problems (open ended) / have poor grounding in an external reality. Robotics does not suffer from those maladies. There are other hurdles, but none are intractable. I think we might see AI being much, much more effective with embodiment.

do you know how undefined and difficult to measure it is to load silverware into a dishwasher?

Re: AI is different

#27

Post by gizmo686 »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #6
BoorishBears wrote: post #2

I don't get how post GPT-5's launch we're still getting articles where the punchline is "what if these things replace a BUNCH of humans".

Salvatore is right about the fact that we have not seen the full story yet, LLMs are stalling/plateauing but active research is already ongoing to find different architectures and models. And I think the effort here can be compared in scale to the Manhattan or Apollo projects, but there is also the potential for a huge backlash to the hype that was built up and created what is arguably a bubble, so this is a race aga…

Manhattan and Apollo were both massive engineering efforts; but fundamentally we understood the science behind them. As long as we would be able to solve some fairly clearly stated engineering problems and spend enough money to actual build the solutions, those projects would work.

A priori, it was not obvious that those clearly stated problems had solutions within our grasp (see fusion) but at least we knew what the big picture looks like.

With AI, we don't have that, and never really had that. We've just been gradually making incremental improvements to AI itself, and exponential improvements in the amount of raw compute we can through at it. We know that we are reaching fundamental limits on transistor density so compute power will plateau unless we find a different paradigm for improvement; and those are all currently in the same position as fusion in terms of engineering.

Re: AI is different

#28

Post by jmathai »

aurareturn wrote: post #20
btilly wrote: post #7

In every technology wave so far, we've disrupted many existing jobs. However we've also opened up new kinds of jobs. And, because it is easier to retrain humans than build machines for those jobs, we wound up with more and better jobs. This is the first technology wave that doesn't just displace humans, but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can. Right now it can't replace human…

This is the first technology wave that doesn't just displace humans, but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can. Right now it can't replace humans for a lot of important things. But as its capabilities improve, what do displaced humans transition to? Assuming AI doesn't get better than humans at everything, humans will be supervising and directing AIs.

I’m not sure if that’s meant to be reassuring or not.

It’s hard for me to imagine that AI won’t be as good or better than me at most things I do. It’s quite a sobering feeling.

Re: AI is different

#29

Post by throwaway20174 »

Humans have a proven history of re-inventing economic systems, so if AI ends up thinking better than we do (yet unproven this is possible), then we should have superior future systems.

But the question is a system optimized for what? That emphasizes huge rewards for the few, and that requires the poverty of some (or many). Or a more fair system. Not different from the challenges of today.

I'm skeptical even a very intelligent machine will change the landscape of our dificult decisions, but will accelerate which direction we decide (or is decided for us), that we go.

Re: AI is different

#30

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #25
btilly wrote: post #7

In every technology wave so far, we've disrupted many existing jobs. However we've also opened up new kinds of jobs. And, because it is easier to retrain humans than build machines for those jobs, we wound up with more and better jobs. This is the first technology wave that doesn't just displace humans, but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can. Right now it can't replace human…

I don't know maybe they can grow trees and build houses.

The robots? I see this happening soon, especially for home construction.
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