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Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

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Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#261

Post by misnome »

avereveard wrote: post #196
enduser wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very insightful take. People forget that there is competition between corporations and nations that drives an arms race. The humans at risk of job displacement are the ones who lack the skill and experience to oversee the robots. But if one company/nation has a workforce that is effectively 1000x, then the next company/nation needs to compete. The companies/countries that retire their humans and try to auto…

Overseeing robot is a time limited activity. Even building robot has a finite horizon. Current tech can't yet replace everything but many jobs already see the horizon or are at sunset. Last few time this happened the new tech, whether textile mills or computers, drove job creation as well as replacement. This time around some component of progress are visibile, because end of the day people can use this tech to creat…

> because end of the day people can use this tech to create wealth at unprecedented scale

_Where?_ so far the only technology to have come out widespread for this is to shove a chatbot interface into every UI that never needed it.

Nothing has been improved, no revelatory tech has come out (tools to let you chatbot faster don’t count).

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#262

Post by zwnow »

shaka-bear-tree wrote: post #140
twodave wrote: post #126

Horses eat feed. Cars eat gasoline. LLMs eat electricity, and progress may even now be finding its limits in that arena. Besides the fact that just more compute and context size aren’t the right kind of progress. LLMs aren’t coming for your job any more than computer vision is, for a lot of reasons, but I’ll list two more: 1. Even if LLMs made everyone 10x as productive, most companies will still have more work to do…

Funny the original post doesn’t mention AI replacing the coding part of his job. There seems to be a running theme of “okay but what about” in every discussion that involves AI replacing jobs. Meanwhile a little time goes by and “poof” AI is handling it. I want to be be optimistic. But it’s hard to ignore what I’m doing and seeing. As far as I can tell, we haven’t hit serious unemployment yet because of momentum and…

> There seems to be a running theme of “okay but what about” in every discussion that involves AI replacing jobs. Meanwhile a little time goes by and “poof” AI is handling it.

Any sources on that? Except for some big tech companies I dont see that happening at all. While not empirical most devs I know try to avoid it like the plague. I cant imagine that many devs actually jumped on the hype train to replace themselves...

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#263

Post by pmg101 »

underyx wrote: post #121
namesbc wrote: post #53

Software engineers used to know that measuring lines of code written was a poor metric for productivity... https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

Ctrl-F 'lines', 0 results Ctrl-F 'code', 0 results What is this comment about?

"The LLM can write lines of code, sure, but can it be productive?" is, I think, the implied question.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#264

Post by impossiblefork »

enduser wrote: post #138
twodave wrote: post #126

Horses eat feed. Cars eat gasoline. LLMs eat electricity, and progress may even now be finding its limits in that arena. Besides the fact that just more compute and context size aren’t the right kind of progress. LLMs aren’t coming for your job any more than computer vision is, for a lot of reasons, but I’ll list two more: 1. Even if LLMs made everyone 10x as productive, most companies will still have more work to do…

This is a very insightful take. People forget that there is competition between corporations and nations that drives an arms race. The humans at risk of job displacement are the ones who lack the skill and experience to oversee the robots. But if one company/nation has a workforce that is effectively 1000x, then the next company/nation needs to compete. The companies/countries that retire their humans and try to auto…

I think the big problem here though, is that humans go from being mandatory to being optional, and this changes the competitive landscape between employers and workers.

In the past a strike mattered. With robots, it may have to go on for years to matter.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#265

Post by [deleted] »

zarzavat wrote: post #260
piekvorst wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crucial observation is the fact that automation has historically been a net creator of jobs, not destroyer.

Sure, if you're content to stack shelves. AI isn't automation. It's thinking . It automates the brain out of human jobs. You can still get a job that requires a body. My job doesn't require a body, so I'm screwed. If you're say, a surgeon or a plumber, you're in a better place.

[deleted]

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#266

Post by timClicks »

anon7000 wrote: post #169
schmichael wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productivity gains are more likely to be used to increase margins (profits and therefore value to shareholders) then it is to reduce work hours. At least since the Industrial Revolution, and probably before, the only advance that has led to shorter work weeks is unions and worker protections. Not technology. Technology may create more surplus (food, goods, etc) but there’s no guarantee what form that surplus will rea…

> Productivity gains are more likely to be used to increase margins (profits and therefore value to shareholders) then it is to reduce work hours I mean, that basically just sums up how capitalism works. Profit growth is literally (even legally!) the only thing a company can care about. Everything else, like product quality, pays service to that goal.

Sorry if this is somewhat pedantic, but I believe that only US companies (and possibly only Delaware corporations?) are bound by the requirement to maximize shareholder value and then only by case law rather than statue. Other jurisdictions allow the directors more discretion, or place more weight on the company's constitution/charter.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#267

Post by [deleted] »

pcrh wrote: post #177
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this sort of misses the point. I didn't think the primary thrust of his article was so much about the specific details of AI, or what kind of tasks AI can now surpass humans on. I think it was more of a general analysis (and very well written IMO) that even when new technologies advance in a slow, linear progression, the point at which they overtake an earlier technology (or "horses" in this case), happen…

For what it's worth, the decline in use of horses was much slower than you might expect. The model T Ford motor car reached peak production in 1925 [0], and for an inexact comparison (I couldn't find numbers for the US) the horse population of France started to decline in 1935, but didn't drop below 80% of its historical peak until the late 1940's down to 10% of its peak by the 1970's [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.or…

[deleted]

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#268

Post by d4rkn0d3z »

It might be better to think about what a horse is to a human, mostly a horse is an energy slave. The history of humanity is a story about how many energy slaves are available to the average human.

In times past, the only people on earth who had their standard of living raised to a level that allowed them to cast there gaze upon the stars were the Kings and there courts, vassals, and noblemen. As time passed we have learned to make technologies that provide enough energy slaves to the common man that everyone lives a life that a king would have envied in times past.

So the question arises as to whether AI or the pursuit of AGI provides more or less energy slaves to the common man?

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#269

Post by plufz »

baq wrote: post #192
vlovich123 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve missed the point. Cars replaced horses - it wasn’t cars+horses that won. Computers replaced humans as the best chess players, not computers with human oversight. If successful, the end state is full automation because it’s strictly superhuman and scales way more easily.

Humans still play chess and horses are still around as a species. (Disclaimer: this is me trying to be optimistic in a very grim and depressing situation)

I try to be optimistic as well. But obviously horses are almost exclusively a hobby today. The work horse is gone. I think the problem is political to a part, if we manage to spread the wealth AI can create we are fine. If we let it concentrate power even more it looks very grim.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#270

Post by somenameforme »

odo1242 wrote: post #181
somenameforme wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A study [1] I was looking at recently was extremely informative. It's a poll from UCLA given to incoming classes that they've been carrying out since the 60s. In 1967 86% of student felt it was "essential" or "very important" to "[develop] a meaningful philosophy of life", while only 42% felt the same of "being very well off financially." By 2015 those values had essentially flipped, with only 47% viewing a life phil…

Well, keep in mind students at UCLA at 1967 were probably among the most wealthy in the country. A lot more average people at UCLA nowadays. Of course being financially well off wouldn't be the most important thing if you were already financially well off.

Interesting question that the study can also answer, because it also asked about parental income!

---

1966 Median Household Income = $7400 [1].

51% of students in the $0-9999 bracket

Largest chunk of students (33%) in $6k-$9999 bracket.

Percent of students from families earning at least 2x median = 23%

---

2015 Median Household Income = $57k [1].

65% of students came from families earning more than $60k.

Largest chunk of students (18%) in $100k-$150k bracket.

Percent of students from families earning at least 2x median = 44%

---

So I think it's fairly safe to say that the average student at UCLA today comes from a significantly wealthier family than in 1966.

[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1967/demo/p60-05...

[2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N

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