Ahh yes. AI is polling worse than ICE. Doesn't mean much since ICE would be polling quite well with much of the country. Typical low-quality journalism.
People Do Not Yearn for Automation
21–30 of 75 posts
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#22People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.
Labor-saving devices don't save labor at work. They increase productivity rather than reducing hours, and the extra value is captured by the employer.
That's the difference between your home dishwasher and the means of production.
It's also probably a big part of what worries Gen Z about when it comes to AI. They're thinking about their own employment and employment prospects, where most people probably understand they have little to gain from it long-term.
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#23I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.
I'd like to not die of Baumol's Cost Disease along the way, though.
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#24A poorly thought, as a result, a poorly-written article. Almost everyone wants to automate away the boring parts of their work and life. The author created a strawman, but that is not what AI is ("Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.")
thank you, I was hoping to write this but your comment saved me from typing it :)
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#25People totally do want to offload the drudgery. That's why there is such a thing as dishwashers, and why OpenAI has 90 million users. But they also want the drudgery to be done reliably and not require as much work checking as it would have doing it in the first place.
Majority of AI use people encounter has zero to do with "automating drudgery" and a lot to do with "producing slop fast and cheap".
I don't think those are always different things. Imagine writing copy for a store catalogue. It pays the bills but probably isn't anyone's dream job.
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#26[dead]
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#27A poorly thought, as a result, a poorly-written article. Almost everyone wants to automate away the boring parts of their work and life. The author created a strawman, but that is not what AI is ("Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.")
> A poorly thought, as a result, a poorly-written article. Almost everyone wants to automate away the boring parts of their work and life.
mm, the fact that you disagree with the article doesn't make it poorly written.
In my experience no, there are significant limits to how much automation the average person wants in their life. Even if automating something would save time, doing so could be undesirable due to other metrics such as correctness, cost, latency, flexibility, or cognitive load.
> The author created a strawman, but that is not what AI is ("Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.")
In context, what you've quoted there is not the creation of a strawman. In fact you yourself seem to have constructed a strawman out of the article.
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#28I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.
Same here. Then let's automate building vast O'Neill cylinders and habitats we can live in.
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#29Personally, it depends. If I could automate taking the trash out, I would do probably want to do it (not sure though). But what remains when everything is automated ? Well, so far we have been automating many things, and we are still busy working and living as always. It's of course impossible to automate everything - we always have things to do, by necessity by also by choice ; do we really want to be idle and contr…
> But what remains when everything is automated?
The answer has been perfectly captured in this czechoslovakian cartoon made in 1984. https://youtu.be/6Mo8gQ89aEA?feature=shared
Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Majority of AI use people encounter has zero to do with "automating drudgery" and a lot to do with "producing slop fast and cheap".
I don't think those are always different things. Imagine writing copy for a store catalogue. It pays the bills but probably isn't anyone's dream job.
Imagine using a store catalog and dealing with the product information being complete bullshit.