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The AI backlash is only getting started

economist.com

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Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#201

Post by ben_w »

dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

> Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he will be replaced by a machine fully; imagine that taxi driver thinking that there are slick graduates from top schools who wake up everyday (waymo, tesla, zoox) with one goal in mind - let's automate this taxi driver.

Back when self-driving cars still seemed imminent and Musk hadn't started losing his teflon coating, I asked an actual taxi driver his thoughts about self-driving.

He was looking forward to it.

This surprised me, until I found LLMs were automating coding and found I felt not too different about my own career.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#202

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

phantompeace wrote: post #85
vitorfblima wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about ALL labor.

Do you really think an LLM will replace a surgeon?

Why not?

Surgeons already perform remote surgery, so physical dexterity isn't the issue.

What do you think the moat is? Computer vision? Surgical technique? Surgical knowledge? Medical knowledge?

Maybe surgeons will be smart enough not to allow AI to be trained to do what they do, but it seems that training data is the only real barrier.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#203

Post by BeetleB »

fireflash38 wrote: post #199
BeetleB wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think that happened bloodlessly with everyone very happy about it? Do you not think the ultimate outcome was worth it?

Where is the glut of food and consumer products from AI?

Where was the glut of food and consumer products 4 years into the Industrial Revolution?

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#204

Post by monocasa »

gruez wrote: post #173
monocasa wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

AFAIK that was massively flawed because it doesn't account for time spent doing various household chores or maintenance tasks. If you spent 4 hours making a shirt, that wouldn't count towards "hours worked", but if you worked a 2 hour job to buy a shirt it would.

Except that kind of work would have been split up by gender. The etymology of "woman" is literally "weaving person", and those kinds of tasks were up to the mostly adult women who also wouldn't have been working in the fields, so it ends up being a wash when painting with a wide brush.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#205

Post by adrians1 »

estearum wrote: post #189
adrians1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren't wrong just once, 40 years ago. That's just one example, but the Luddites and doomers were wrong every time something new was invented. Check this out: https://x.com/PessimistsArc

This train of thought is hilariously rife with selection bias. There is an infinitely long list of technologies that "Luddites and doomers" tried to block and were thankfully successful in doing so. CFCs and ozone. Leaded gasoline. Thalidomide. Offensive bioweapons. I'm not claiming Luddites and doomers are always or usually right (they're often wrong), but your claim they were wrong every time is just total epistemo…

Oh, sorry. 99% of the time.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#206

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

ben_w wrote: post #201
dwa3592 wrote: post #64

People have been made to believe by very influential people (dario, sam, elon etc) that AI will replace them. As a result people are getting angry. Who did not see this coming? Why da f*#$ do they have to continue developing a technology which they think will replace droves of people by machines?? There is nothing sexy about it. There is nothing cool about it either. Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he…

> Imagine a taxi driver facing his family knowing he will be replaced by a machine fully; imagine that taxi driver thinking that there are slick graduates from top schools who wake up everyday (waymo, tesla, zoox) with one goal in mind - let's automate this taxi driver. Back when self-driving cars still seemed imminent and Musk hadn't started losing his teflon coating, I asked an actual taxi driver his thoughts about…

Presumably your POV depends on whether you believe the capability of AI will somehow stop at coding, so you'll still have your job with a cool new tool, or whether AI will replace your job altogether, in which case perhaps you are planning a career pivot to taxi driver?

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#207

Post by watwut »

spwa4 wrote: post #183
ndiddy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the Industrial Revolution was objectively a worse deal for the average worker. The average preindustrial peasant worked 8-12 hour days, but had Sundays off and at least 120 rest days and holidays. Depending on how good wages were at the time, they may have only had to work between 120 and 180 days per year. Compare that to the 70+ hour weeks workers were made to work all year in factories during the period immed…

No, it wasn't. And it wasn't because of government regulation. The land you require for preindustrial peasanting was, of course, tightly regulated and owned by ... well, not you. Read the whole "tragedy of the commons", especially the part about government deciding to just sell the whole thing to the highest bidder, which instead of fixing the problem, set off another wave of city migration. If you stayed on the land…

Pretty much all historians writing about industrial revolution are claiming completely opposite of what you do. Industrial revolution was a catastrophe for an average worker. The child mortality went up during industrial revolution. Social problems went up. It took quite a lot of violence for things to settle.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#208

Post by estearum »

adrians1 wrote: post #205
estearum wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This train of thought is hilariously rife with selection bias. There is an infinitely long list of technologies that "Luddites and doomers" tried to block and were thankfully successful in doing so. CFCs and ozone. Leaded gasoline. Thalidomide. Offensive bioweapons. I'm not claiming Luddites and doomers are always or usually right (they're often wrong), but your claim they were wrong every time is just total epistemo…

Oh, sorry. 99% of the time.

Just like seatbelts are categorically stupid and can be ignored because 99% of the time they lock, you're not actually in a collision.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#209

Post by watwut »

monocasa wrote: post #204
gruez wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK that was massively flawed because it doesn't account for time spent doing various household chores or maintenance tasks. If you spent 4 hours making a shirt, that wouldn't count towards "hours worked", but if you worked a 2 hour job to buy a shirt it would.

Except that kind of work would have been split up by gender. The etymology of "woman" is literally "weaving person", and those kinds of tasks were up to the mostly adult women who also wouldn't have been working in the fields, so it ends up being a wash when painting with a wide brush.

Women were working fields and were working with farm animals too. They did not done work that required physical strength unless they had no choice, but that does not mean they did not "worked fields".

Second, work being split by gender does not matter here. Women are, by definition, people too. And weaving, sewing, candles crafting were all literal necessity. A weaving woman would sell or exchange results of her work if she had an excess of it. They were not bored SAHM hobbies they way they would be now. This was economic activity just like any other.

Re: The AI backlash is only getting started

#210

Post by gruez »

monocasa wrote: post #204
gruez wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK that was massively flawed because it doesn't account for time spent doing various household chores or maintenance tasks. If you spent 4 hours making a shirt, that wouldn't count towards "hours worked", but if you worked a 2 hour job to buy a shirt it would.

Except that kind of work would have been split up by gender. The etymology of "woman" is literally "weaving person", and those kinds of tasks were up to the mostly adult women who also wouldn't have been working in the fields, so it ends up being a wash when painting with a wide brush.

> The etymology of "woman" is literally "weaving person"

[citation needed]

>Except that kind of work would have been split up by gender.

It's still work. It doesn't magically have zero value because it was done by women. The methodology cited by the book counts only counts hours worked if it's farming or wage employment, but doesn't count any household labor, which means anything that's shifted from being made at home to being bought would could as extra hours worked, even if it saves time overall.

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