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AI is different

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Re: AI is different

#341

Post by Joeri »

schneems wrote: post #69
chrisco255 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can What makes you think that? Self driving cars have had untold billions of dollars in reaearch and decades in applied testing, iteration, active monitoring, etc and it still has a very long tail of unaddressed issues. They've been known to ignore police traffic redirections, they've run right through construction barriers, and recently…

A few months ago I saw one driverless car maybe every three days. Now I see roughly 3-5 every day. I get that it’s taken a long time and a lot of hype that hasn’t panned out. But once the tech works and it’s just about juicing the scale then things shift rapidly. Even if you think “oh that’s the next generation’s problem” if there is a chance you’re wrong, or if you want to be kind to the next generation: now is the…

UBI could easily become a poverty trap, enough to keep living, not enough to have a shot towards becoming an earner because you’re locked out of opportunities. I think in practice it is likely to turn out like “basic” in The Expanse, with people hoping to win a lottery to get a shot at having a real job and building a decent life for themselves.

If no UBI is installed there will be a hard crash while everyone figures out what it is that humans can do usefully, and then a new economic model of full employment gets established. If UBI is installed then this will happen more slowly with less pain, but it is possible for society to get stuck in a permanently worse situation.

Ultimately if AI really is about to automate as much as it is promised then what we really need is a model for post-capitalism, for post-scarcity economics, because a model based on scarcity is incapable of adapting to a reality of genuine abundance. So far nobody seems to have any clue of how to do such a thing. UBI as a concept still lives deeply in the Overton window bounded by capitalist scarcity thinking. (Not a call for communism btw, that is a train to nowhere as well because it also assumes scarcity at its root.)

What I fear is that we may get a future like The Diamond Age, where we have the technology to get rid of scarcity and have human flourishing, but we impose legal barriers that keep the rich rich and the poor poor. We saw this happen with digital copyright, where the technology exists for abundance, but we’ve imposed permanent worldwide legal scarcity barriers to protect revenue streams to megacorps.

Re: AI is different

#342

Post by mofeien »

chrisco255 wrote: post #42
btilly wrote: post #7

In every technology wave so far, we've disrupted many existing jobs. However we've also opened up new kinds of jobs. And, because it is easier to retrain humans than build machines for those jobs, we wound up with more and better jobs. This is the first technology wave that doesn't just displace humans, but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can. Right now it can't replace human…

> but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can What makes you think that? Self driving cars have had untold billions of dollars in reaearch and decades in applied testing, iteration, active monitoring, etc and it still has a very long tail of unaddressed issues. They've been known to ignore police traffic redirections, they've run right through construction barriers, and recently…

> What makes you think that? Self driving cars [...]

AI is intentionally being developed to be able to make decisions in any domain humans work in. This is unlike any previous technology.

The more apt analogy is to other species. When was the last time there was something other than homo sapiens that could carry on an interesting conversation with homo sapiens. 40,000 years?

And this new thing has been in development for what? 70 years? The rise in its capabilities has been absolutely meteoric and we don't know where the ceiling is.

Re: AI is different

#343

Post by juniperus »

andrepd wrote: post #339
juniperus wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the economic situation in Europe is much more dire than the US...

Yet people live better. Goes to show you shouldn't optimise for crude, raw GDP as an end in itself, only as a means for your true end: health, quality of life, freedom, etc.

In many of the metrics, yeah. But Americans can afford larger houses and more stuff essentially, which isn't necessarily a good replacement for general quality of life things.

Re: AI is different

#344

Post by pmg101 »

morsecodist wrote: post #153
atleastoptimal wrote: post #80

This is an accurate assessment. I do feel that there is a routine bias on HN to underplay AI. I think it's people not wanting to lose control or relative status in the world. AI is an existential threat to the unique utility of humans, which has been the last line of defense against absolute despotism (i.e. a tyrannical government will not kill all its citizens because it still needs them to perform jobs. If humans a…

> I do feel that there is a routine bias on HN to underplay AI It's always interesting to see this take because my perception is the exact opposite. I don't think there's ever been an issue for me personally with a bigger mismatch in perceptions than AI. It sometimes feels like the various sides live in different realities.

It's a Rorschach test isn't it.

Because the technology itself is so young and so nebulous everyone is able to unfalsifiably project their own hopes or fears onto it.

Re: AI is different

#345

Post by freehorse »

BoorishBears wrote: post #321
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goalpost will be when you can buy one and drive it anywhere. How many cities are Waymo in now? I think what they are doing is terrific, but each car must cost a fortune.

The cars aren't expensive by raw cost (low six figures, which is about what an S-class with highway-only L3 costs) But there is a lot of expenditure relative to each mile being driven. > The goalpost will be when you can buy one and drive it anywhere. This won't happen any time soon, so I and millions of other people will continue to derive value from them while you wait for that.

> I and millions of other people

People "wait" because of where they live and what they need. Not all people live and just want to travel around SF or wherever these go nowadays.

Re: AI is different

#346

Post by amanaplanacanal »

dsign wrote: post #334
mycentstoo wrote: post #266

I am just not having this experience of AI being terribly useful. I don’t program as much in my role but I’ve found it’s a giant time sink. I recognize that many people are finding it incredibly helpful but when I get deeper into a particular issue or topic, it falls very flat.

The argument goes like this: - Today, AI is not incredibly useful and we are not 100% sure that it will improve forever, specially in a way that makes economic sense, but - Investors are pouring lots of money into it. One should not assume that those investors are not making their due diligence. They are. The figures they have obtained from experts mean that AI is expected to continue improving in the short and mediu…

Investors are frequently wrong. They aren't getting their numbers from experts, they are getting them from somebody trying to sell them something.

Re: AI is different

#347

Post by brap »

xg15 wrote: post #328

> Nor is it possible to imagine a system where a few mega companies are the only providers of intelligence Why not? This seems to be exactly where we're headed right now, and the current administration seems to be perfectly fine with that trend. If you follow the current logic of AI proponents, you get essentially: (1) Almost all white-collar jobs will be done better or at least faster by AI. (2) The "repugnant concl…

I find it extremely hard to believe that ASI will still require enormous investments in a post-ASI world.

The initial investment? Likely. But there have to be more efficient ways to build intelligence, and ASI will figure it out.

It did not take trillions of dollars to produce you and I.

Re: AI is different

#348

Post by juniperus »

andrepd wrote: post #322
juniperus wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point, language can be tricky. Technically, the state confiscating wealth derived from your labor through taxes is a form of robbery and slavery. It used to be called corvée. But the words being used have a connotation of something much more brutal and unrewarding. This isn't a political statement, I'm not a libertarian who believes all taxation is evil robbery and needs to be abolished. I'm just p…

> Technically, the state confiscating wealth derived from your labor through taxes is a form of robbery and slavery. Without the state, you wouldn't have wealth. Heck there wouldn't even be the very concept of property, only what you could personally protect by force! Not to mention other more prosaic aspects: if you own a company, the state maintains the roads that your products ship through, the schools that educat…

To a large extent, yes. That's why the arrangement is so precarious, it is necessary in many regards, but a totalitarian regime or dictatorship can use this arrangement in a nefarious manner and tip the scale toward public resentment. Balancing things to avoid the revolutionary mob is crucial. Trading your labor for protection is sensible, but if the exchange becomes exorbitant, then it becomes a source of revolt.

Re: AI is different

#349

Post by Raphael_Amiard »

c0balt wrote: post #72
_jab wrote: post #59

I'm skeptical of arguments like this. If we look at most impactful technologies since the year 2000, AI is not even in my top 3. Social networking, mobile computing, and cloud computing have all done more to alter society and daily life than has AI. And yes, I recognize that AI has already created profound change, in that every software engineer now depends heavily on copilots, in that education faces a major integri…

> in that every software engineer now depends heavily on copilots That is maybe a bubble around the internet. Ime most programmers in my environment rarely use and certainly aren't dependent on it. They do also not only do code monkey-esque web programming so maybe this is sampling bias though it should be enough to refute this point.

Came here to say that. It’s important to remember how biased hacker news is in that regard. I’m just out of ten years in the safety critical market, and I can assure you that our clients are still a long way from being able to use those. I myself work in low level/runtime/compilers, and the output from AIs is often too erratic to be useful

Re: AI is different

#350

Post by boulos »

tfourb wrote: post #206
schneems wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago I saw one driverless car maybe every three days. Now I see roughly 3-5 every day. I get that it’s taken a long time and a lot of hype that hasn’t panned out. But once the tech works and it’s just about juicing the scale then things shift rapidly. Even if you think “oh that’s the next generation’s problem” if there is a chance you’re wrong, or if you want to be kind to the next generation: now is the…

I guess you live in a place with perfect weather year round? I don’t and I haven’t seen a robo taxi my entire life. I do have access to a Tesla though and it’s current self-driving capabilities are not even close to anything I would call „autonomous“ und real world conditions (including weather). Maybe the tech will at some point be good enough. At the current rate of improvement this will still take decades at least…

Our next vehicle sensor suite will be able to handle winter weather (https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...).
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