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AI and the Automation of Work

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Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#211

Post by wnkrshm »

ChatGTP wrote: post #174
dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

What would an economy like the one you describe look like in practice? What would be the use of an AI picking coffee beans if there is no one with a job to buy the coffee beans? There is an unresolved issue here for sure. Unless the machines are self-sustaining, there's not going to be much use for multi-billion dollar data-centers and millions of dollars in electricity bills and expensive robots if there is absolute…

Maybe it's like in the free-to-play video game business: Having one whale (person who spends more on the product) outweighs having lots of smaller customers.

The IMO dystopian move is to just let the AI employ humans as 'hands' for subsistence.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#212

Post by brightlancer »

js8 wrote: post #81
TapWaterBandit wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you mean like something you can wheel in and install or a humanoid style robot you could use in any kitchen? Cause in theory you're just talking about a dishwasher lol. If you mean a robot that could clean in any kitchen without breaking anything, I'd say at least 20 years. As in you could move it from kitchen to kitchen with no install needs. I suppose another way to look at it is this: how many businesses use ro…

I can imagine a "box", say 1x1x2 meters, that you get in your home, it will have a plexiglass on it, and inside, it will have several AI-controlled arms, and you will be able to command it to fix anything in that space. Not really sure about cooking, but you could ask for example to fix your trousers, or repair a notebook, or make a fitting for water tap, and so on, and it would autonomously do it (it would ask to or…

Things are so disposable now that I don't think most households would have a use case for a Repair-Bot; I can see it in offices and factories, OTOH.

I think we're pretty far away from a robot that can take an arbitrary problem and fix it accurately. I'll be excited when I can take my car to the mechanic and he's supervising a robot changing my oil.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#213

Post by climatologist »

IanCal wrote: post #75
climatologist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask it to write a backtracking sudoku solver with coroutines and/or fibers and let me know how it performs in your language of choice. We are nowhere near generally intelligent software systems.

I have strongly believed the best way of evaluating the state of AI is to look at what people complain it can't do. It's taken a few short years to go from "keep a coherent story over more than a sentence" to "write a multithreaded sudoku solver in one shot". Many programmers would fail to do this. I'm not even sure a randomly selected human would understand the question. And I'm wondering if you've setup any loops l…

> write a multithreaded sudoku solver in one shot

I did not say anything about threads but I did hint at the fact that coroutines can be used creatively to solve problems which require backtracking and constraint propagation. The fact that this is still controversial means a lot of people are unaware LLMs do not support backtracking, recursion, and constraint propagation. Sudoku is just an obvious example of a problem that is easy to solve if you know about these concepts and next to impossible if you don't. Such problems can also be expressed as integer programs but even fewer people know how to do that so I don't usually bring it up but it would be another good test for any software system that is claimed to be intelligent by the corporate marketing department.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#214

Post by brightlancer »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #73
FeepingCreature wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An autonomous robot cleaning the dishes on its own in an unfamiliar kitchen without breaking anything: how many years? What's your bet?

So you mean like something you can wheel in and install or a humanoid style robot you could use in any kitchen? Cause in theory you're just talking about a dishwasher lol. If you mean a robot that could clean in any kitchen without breaking anything, I'd say at least 20 years. As in you could move it from kitchen to kitchen with no install needs. I suppose another way to look at it is this: how many businesses use ro…

> I suppose another way to look at it is this: how many businesses use robot cleaners to vacuum/mop their floors? Because as far as I can tell that is already solved (basically) but it isn't done because the cost/benefit/efficacy just doesn't add up.

At least in the US, the parasitic labor unions are explicitly fighting such automation:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/autom...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-workers-jobs-inequal...

Cleaning robots may not yet be cost-efficient everywhere, but they can't be far off.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#215

Post by brightlancer »

taneq wrote: post #104
FeepingCreature wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An autonomous robot cleaning the dishes on its own in an unfamiliar kitchen without breaking anything: how many years? What's your bet?

They could call it something snappy like, I dunno, a DishWasher.

DishWasher™

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#216

Post by brightlancer »

worrycue wrote: post #115
dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

> But assume that there are jobs "high in the ladder," for amazing engineers and creatives super-charged with AI powers. IMHO such jobs won’t exist. Once AI have reach AGI level there is nothing that a human can do that the AI can’t. Might as well just add more AI. Frankly, what scares me is everyone rushing to advance AI but no one seem to be putting any effort into figuring out what to do about society once humans…

> Frankly, what scares me is everyone rushing to advance AI but no one seem to be putting any effort into figuring out what to do about society once humans can no longer trade labor for money.

Folks pay for handcrafted items today, even when there are cheaper and better mass-manufactured items available.

No matter how advanced AI is, humans will pay for things to be done by other humans.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#217

Post by brightlancer »

thatsadude wrote: post #135
shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

I'm concerned about who AGI will serve? Rich people surely!

> I'm concerned about who AGI will serve? Rich people surely!

Almost everything invented in the past 200 years was originally sold to rich people, because they were the only ones who could afford it -- then the price came down and middle-class folks could buy it, then the price came down more and virtually everyone was able to afford it.

Thanks capitalism!

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#218

Post by shepherdjerred »

apsurd wrote: post #52
shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

10 vs 1,000 years before AGI is a lifetime of difference. I liken it to "not knowing the future". All humans face the same anxiety of an unknown future. In this way, I don't think AGI is a _special_ concern to worry about any more than when your death date will be. And if the concern is "I want to do something meaningful" well... that's a whole other realm of philosophy of meaning. TLDR: I don't think meaningful work…

> TLDR: I don't think meaningful work is reserved to "influences the thousandth generation after non nonexistence".

Sorry, I put that 10 vs 1000 year generation just to focus the conversation on AGI and not whether or not it's possible in some timeframe.

I personally feel like we could be _very_ close in 10-20 years, which is within my lifetime.

> All humans face the same anxiety of an unknown future. In this way, I don't think AGI is a _special_ concern to worry about any more than when your death date will be.

This is actually very reassuring, and I think a really good way for me to frame it for myself.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#219

Post by shepherdjerred »

Shorel wrote: post #165
shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

What's the point of research if some new student can do it better than me, right now? What's the point of playing chess if Magnus Carlsen will beat me every time we play? This seems a bit absurd, but it's something I have feared since I learned I am not the best at everything.

Once we have one AGI machine wouldn't we quickly have as many as we wanted?

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#220

Post by sangnoir »

tsimionescu wrote: post #178
dontupvoteme wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you been at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in France? The security people there look like paratroopers[^1]. It's terrifying, and it's a reason I avoid that particular airport every time I fly. It sends the message "Paris is an unsafe place to be, we are very paranoid, blame the others, don't come here." The machine guns have no business among civilians, being with robots or people, period. In europe there's 1-2…

A bit ironic to talk about how ok it is to have police with guns in France given the enormous portests still underway caused by a policeman with a gun...

> France given the enormous portests still underway...

Protest is part of French tradition

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