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Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

epoch.ai

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Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#201

Post by abyssin »

ozim wrote: post #165
techpineapple wrote: post #2

Does anyone else find techno-optimism really depressing? I guess one for the more common reason that it’s displacing humanity with technology, but the second reason is just you can’t get excited about a hype that is unlikely to manifest. It feels very ungrounded from tangible benefits to society.

In Europe we have less and less people. Automation is a must have because we will need those people in areas that cannot be automated. Transformation will be painful as it is hard to re-train people or get people to do stuff that is not really their forte.

In Europe we already have the technology for everyone to live and retire comfortably. What we don’t have is the governments whose goal is for everyone to do so. I don’t see how more technology would solve a political issue.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#202

Post by aksbfjdjsbabs »

worldsayshi wrote: post #62
techpineapple wrote: post #2

Does anyone else find techno-optimism really depressing? I guess one for the more common reason that it’s displacing humanity with technology, but the second reason is just you can’t get excited about a hype that is unlikely to manifest. It feels very ungrounded from tangible benefits to society.

We should also be displacing hierarchies. Why does it only benefit the very few? Because they get to somehow keep their moats. So how can we displace those moats?

[flagged]

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#203

Post by patrick451 »

jgilias wrote: post #30
jajko wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody sane and smart I know is advocating for AI now . All keep saying 'one day', 'soon' etc. Our megacorp very effectively blocked all of this and we don't have anything internal yet, but we are in specific market. And basically all I saw so far was a snake oil from people trying to push it or benefit from it, even here. Trust me bro... well no, show me some hard facts and we can start building trust. Sure assistan…

Advocate or not, it’s here to stay. And if you’re not adjusting to it, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Last week I did the amount of work that would’ve taken me give or take a month. A significant part of it was writing an API client for a system I needed to use. Pretty run of the mill stuff. Doing this ‘by hand’ just takes time. Go look at the docs, type out your data structures, wire things up for the new call,…

You have to balance this time savings with all the times the LLM is just making shit up. I can't the number of times I ask "how do I do X?", and says "call function Y" or "Use command line argument Z". Turns out Y doesn't exist and CLI doesn't take argument "Z". The frustration from that lying is immense. I'd rather take a little longer on some tasks and never deal with this lying.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#204

Post by goatlover »

treis wrote: post #196
somenameforme wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple litmus test for these sort of nearish future dystopias - how long before you have an 'AI plumber' or an 'AI electrician'? I'm not just listing random skilled trades, but listing jobs that are extremely complex, 100% context sensitive in a way that just doesn't generalize well, requires a mixture of high dexterity and high strength, and a million other things. To say nothing of the numerous [oft extre…

I don't think we're that far away but I also think it looks different than humanoid robots. I can see a drain plumbing system that maps out a new construction home and some sort of automated robot that builds out large sections of pipe. It wouldn't completely eliminate the plumber. But it'd change it from something like measuring, cutting, and gluing 100 times to walking around with a camera for 5 minutes and then gl…

That's just for new construction though. What about all the existing homes that need repairs?

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#205

Post by rchaud »

ctoth wrote: post #154
rchaud wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to think of any technological advancement in the past 20 years that's saved me time. The only real change has been a shift to WFH, but that happened independently of technological change in that era. Even things like screen sharing and remote desktop were possible before that time. 25 years ago, sure: online shopping/banking, email and chat -- these are all things my Blackberry or Nokia could handle. T…

Tell me you never called for a taxi and waited two hours for it only not to show up without telling me. Uber has saved me a remarkable amount of time. More-generally: https://gwern.net/improvement

No, I haven't. I live in a city, a cab took 15 mins to arrive after calling the dispatch service. Uber can take just as long, because the request bounces around different drivers in the area, the time to arrive is dependent on which driver accepts the offered rate and how far away they are. I've had to request rides more than once because the Uber-set price was rejected by all nearby drivers.

When I lived rurally (in college) cabs had to be booked in advance, that's just common sense.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#206

Post by goatlover »

luckydata wrote: post #132
somenameforme wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple litmus test for these sort of nearish future dystopias - how long before you have an 'AI plumber' or an 'AI electrician'? I'm not just listing random skilled trades, but listing jobs that are extremely complex, 100% context sensitive in a way that just doesn't generalize well, requires a mixture of high dexterity and high strength, and a million other things. To say nothing of the numerous [oft extre…

You need more to maintain a house, drywaller, gardener, carpenter, painter. The most important robotic help though will be cleaner and nurse. As our population ages and shrinks home help will become scarce and we'll desperately need an alternative to take care of ourselves as we age.

Immigrants from countries whose populations aren't shrinking could fill that role.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#207

Post by authorfly »

scarface_74 wrote: post #151
dragontamer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wealth gap growing, and the median person being better off aren't mutually exclusive. The wealth gap was growing since 1980. Is the median person better today when the median person cannot afford a college education or a house? Both of those were easily afforded in the 80s. Also remember: the average job didn't require a college education back then either. College has become a gatekeeper due to its rising costs…

Why is “affording a house” the marker of a success? I would say just the opposite. Owning a home decreases mobility and the ability to move to where the jobs are. That being said, the home ownership rate in the US is 65% and almost anyone who wants to go to college can via loans and scholarships. Only around 40% of people in the US have a college education. But that doesn’t mean that the other 60% are homeless and st…

Well inability to own a house was a major prelude to the 1930s economic and later conflict issues, particularly in western Europe (where it was more expensive in places like Britain to buy a house than even today, about 10-14x salary vs 8x today). House prices have been how they are now before: in the 1920s... (America is a bit of an exception because of all the expansion into California etc in the early 1900s).

Male crime rates correlate with economic opportunity too, so even if you don't care about the 1930s and the economic reset of WW2 and its rebuilding (and WW1, but to a lesser extent), you should care about the possibility of crimes rates continuing to regress. Serious crimes don't get solved at a much higher rate than in the past, even if they have decreased since the 90s.

Home ownership is a lagging indicator and doesn't show the whole picture: If people used to buy a home at 25 and move into it, but today they wait and live in their parents house until 30 before moving into a home, the stats might appear the same. The quality of life won't be. Home ownership rate needs context too, in some countries rent is low and house prices are high(er than the US), where many people rent through retirement, and where the implication of rising house prices is not as bad unless rent also raises.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#208

Post by goatlover »

rqtwteye wrote: post #150
Isamu wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes actually robotics is still in its infancy, it needs machine learning advances to become anything like the generalized problem solving worker that farms need, especially small family farms. Source: I have worked on both robots and small farms.

Agreed. But I expect huge progress in the next years/decades. It feels like a lot of things are finally coming together. The same happened in the 90s with the internet or the 2000s with cell phones. People are doing research in a lot of different areas and you see some not so great products that implement them. But then you have a point where all components come together in one really compelling product.

But why would individuals own farms instead of big agriculture just using the robots to make food production even cheaper and more efficient? Of course some people will, but most people will live in urban areas and shop at grocery stores. That's been the trend since farming started being automated.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#209

Post by colesantiago »

The techo-optimistic people really need to answer the question on the middle classes and on the poor’s minds.

How can anyone be techno-optimistic about the future where AI is mass replacing their jobs to the point they cannot pay their rent?

How would anyone pay their rent or taxes when they get mass laid off by AI in this age and where job postings get less and less, where businesses push for efficiency. Here, I see businesses and startups will try to copy Elon’s style of layoffs and try to get away with it.

I don't think UBI works here either especially with rent increases, rent, childcare, taxes, etc and it sounds too unfeasible and utopian.

Also there is a narrative of “There will be new jobs created in the AI era” but I just don’t see this happening since AI will replace jobs faster than they are created. Case in point with prompt engineering.

Seems like those who are techno optimistic are the rich, investor class invested in the very things that push their narrative and where money isn’t a problem at all.

This class of people haven’t thought about this nor that they care when AI job replacement happens since they are already invested in it.

Re: Most AI value will come from broad automation, not from R & D

#210

Post by goatlover »

pjmlp wrote: post #120
jgilias wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples where “architect, no coders” is here already? Asking, because I’d rather try and adjust to the new world, than pretend it’s not happening!

Not yet on that front, rather voice actors, artists producing digital assets on games, iconography for applications, decorating motives for clothing and furniture. On IT industry specially, I think LLMs generating code are going to become as transformative as compilers were to Assembly developers. Yes, currently they still go through "generate language XYZ" as intermediary step, however they eventually will improve t…

The assembly programmers gave way to many more higher level programmers, as it became possible for more people to program, and more kinds of programs to be written.
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