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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

#31

Post by techpineapple »

adamnemecek wrote: post #28
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.

> unlikely to manifest Over what time period? 5 years? 100 years?

I think a lot of cool shit will happen in the next hundred years, but the “end of scarcity unlimited money/tech points hack” is unlikely to happen in the next 100 years.

And this is the core of my argument, let’s talk more about the cool shit.

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

#32

Post by ajb »

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.

Yeah

The historic benefits of technology come from eliminating the waste of human effort:

- Motors and engines removed the waste of using our muscles as an energy source

- Computers removed the waste of people's time doing calculations and admin manually

- Electronic Communications removed the waste of carrying information in physical form

What's the most prevalent form of waste today? I think it's dishonesty and corruption. And AI seems set to make more of it.

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

#33

Post by Scarblac »

therein wrote: post #8
NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. Watch a sci-fi film - nifty gadgets, robots taking care of chores, and widespread spaceflight. Real life is some unreliable chat bots. Then there's the depressing practical stuff. AI being forced down our throats. AI as an excuse lay people off. AI as an excuse for massive data hoarding. AI flooding the internet, making it harder to find good content.

I find it extra surprising that people are advocating for transitioning to using AI while their proof of concept looks like this: do { resp = callAI(input); } while (!isOutputSane(resp) && attempts++ < MAX_RETRY)

It's actually `letSlightlyDifferentAIJudgeOutputSanity()` rather than `isOutputSane()`, I think.

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

#34

Post by Scarblac »

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,…

But a solution that takes an OpenAPI spec and generates all of those things from templates would be much more reliably correct than letting an AI do it, and has already existed for years.

I think AI is a game changer but not for things that can already be automated rigirously without AI.

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

#35

Post by sterlind »

rqtwteye wrote: post #25
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.

Technical progress would be fantastic if the benefits didn't go mainly to the top. I am pretty sure in the not too far future we will have enough technology that you can live off the land somewhere with the help of some robots. Or have them do all your housework. In principle, this is great, but our society is not set up for a lot of people not working while the technology is progressed by a relatively small number o…

I wanted fully-automated luxury communism, but I got fully-automated neo-feudalism instead. It feels bad.

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

#36

Post by kingkongjaffa »

eikenberry wrote: post #18
api wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing human labor with technology is usually a wonderful thing if the gains are generally realized. It means less time spent in 'toil' and more time to pursue one's true interests and desires. The reason it feels depressing is that if recent history is any guide, 0.0001% of the human race will receive almost all the benefit. A tiny number of richer-than-rich will get even richer and everyone else will stay the sa…

Recent history is a poor guide that will give you a highly skewed view and won't really help you anticipate and plan for the future. You need to look at real history to get perspective. You don't even have to go back very far to see an tiny group of richer-than-rich people that didn't retain their power, an economic loop where this all happened before.

> Recent history is a poor guide

Wrong, It’s the most important prior.

Technology is vastly different now since your supposed “last time”, to the point where it’s an entirely different landscape for events to unfold.

Look at the state of mass apathy and lack of accountability we have in society now. That tiny group has never been more unaccountable.

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

#37

Post by beau_g »

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.

I personally think it's polarized, and either the Pentti Linkola/Ted K way of thinking that the industrial revolution (or maybe even the agricultural revolution) were a detriment to humanity is correct and there is no turning it around within that framework, or all tech progress will reach an ultimately good equilibrium, though will be unstable and have mistakes along the way. I definitely lean towards the latter. What I do not think at all is we should purposely delay tech progress through the use of violence (which is what laws/regulations effectively are) while doing some type of wait and think about it exercise. I definitely don't think anything (good or bad) that does not break the laws of physics is unlikely to manifest, quite the opposite, most things we imagine now will come to fruition in our lifetimes and many others we haven't even imagined yet both good and bad.

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

#38

Post by jgilias »

Scarblac wrote: post #34
jgilias wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

But a solution that takes an OpenAPI spec and generates all of those things from templates would be much more reliably correct than letting an AI do it, and has already existed for years. I think AI is a game changer but not for things that can already be automated rigirously without AI.

There was no OpenAPI spec. And it wasn’t all it made faster to do.

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

#39

Post by diordiderot »

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.

Feels like early industrial revolution vibes. Some of the hype turned real, just not how and a lot later than anyone expected. Same thing happened in the post-atomic age. But the gaps between revolutions are getting shorter.

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

#40

Post by yarekt »

beau_g wrote: post #37
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.

I personally think it's polarized, and either the Pentti Linkola/Ted K way of thinking that the industrial revolution (or maybe even the agricultural revolution) were a detriment to humanity is correct and there is no turning it around within that framework, or all tech progress will reach an ultimately good equilibrium, though will be unstable and have mistakes along the way. I definitely lean towards the latter. Wh…

Regulation is violence? sorry for putting my socialist hat on, but free market is efficient, so efficient that without regulation it’ll optimise away human happiness and find a way to turn tears into profits. Regulation is basically saying that you can make money in ways that benefits the humanity also, at least in theory. Lobbying and corrupt regulators muddy the waters
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