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Why does AI feel so different?

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Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#41

Post by actionfromafar »

eru wrote: post #35
jama211 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I now get my work done in half the time and spend the rest of my newfound time with my family. It’s gonna be hard to convince me that isn’t a fantastic productivity increase.

That's interesting! Historically (at least for the last century or so) we mostly stopped lowering working hours and instead focused on increased output. Eg people still work eight hours a day, but get paid vastly more in real terms than in the 1950s. Instead of working only one hour a day (or fewer years or whatever) and taking a 1950s compensation package. Of course, this is merely a statistical observation. There a…

Funny how a 1950s compensation package could pay for a house and family though.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#42

Post by politelemon »

eru wrote: post #33
crystal_revenge wrote: post #16

AI feels different because quietly we are all aware, to differing degrees of comfort, that the world around us is collapsing. We see the escalating effects of climate change impacting day-to-day life in ways we were told would only happen in the far future, witnessing genocide become a normal part of the news critique of which can mean serious personal consequences, we're watching the United States transform into Sta…

> AI feels different because quietly we are all aware, to differing degrees of comfort, that the world around us is collapsing. We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. What collapse are you talking about? Yes, climate change is gonna knock a few percent points off global GDP, but it's not gonna be the end of the world. It's no worse than living in the UK rather than the US in these terms…

> We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity.

Golden ages are fictional constructs, applied retroactively as part of an agenda. There is no such thing as living in a current golden age without knowing the future.

I also doubt the statements about peace and prosperity. These just sound like pithy phrases to dismiss concerns.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#43

Post by eru »

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #3

Replacing our thinking with a few monopolistic tech companies... What could go wrong!

Where's the monopoly (or rather oligopoly) you are talking about?

There's many models offered by many companies and labs that are close enough to state of the art. Many of them are completely open source or at least have open weights.

You might complain about outsourcing your thinking to a machine, sure. But there's no monopoly nor oligopoly.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#44

Post by actionfromafar »

incone123 wrote: post #20
bm3719 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thinking-averse outnumber the thinking-inclined. They've tried this thinking thing, and want nothing to do with it. They all went to public school, after all, and the rare times thinking happened it was painful and had to be forced upon them. Their ideal of Being is to react to content, experience positive emotional immediacy, or dull their intellects: all feeling, no thinking. They'll win in the short term, due…

They all went to public school?

Yeah, that stuck out to me too.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#45

Post by tannhaeuser »

ec109685 wrote: post #17

These are poor examples: > Why do I need to know what quarks are, or how steam engines work? Why do I need to know anything about anything? I can just look it up with AI Literally all possible with Google and YouTube.

Go to Google Search and literally ask "How do steam engines work?", and an AI-generated answer is exactly what it will show you, along with a Wikipedia link/excerpt followed by an endless list of links to clickfarms with lede talking about steam engines in general terms to lure you onto their ad-cluttered pages (btw, Duck Duck Go/Bing is just the same).

Shouldn't you rather say "go to Wikipedia straight", or push for Wikipedia to improve their search with all their money already? Isn't a choice of using local open-weight LLMs not actually progress over "googling" and Google's rotten algorithms, or even freaking YouTube and their even worse ad feeds?

So what's your point (I'm tempted to insert "boomer" here)?

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#46

Post by eru »

actionfromafar wrote: post #41
eru wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting! Historically (at least for the last century or so) we mostly stopped lowering working hours and instead focused on increased output. Eg people still work eight hours a day, but get paid vastly more in real terms than in the 1950s. Instead of working only one hour a day (or fewer years or whatever) and taking a 1950s compensation package. Of course, this is merely a statistical observation. There a…

Funny how a 1950s compensation package could pay for a house and family though.

1950s houses are no longer legal in most places.

Both because in the US new construction is basically outlawed. But also because 1950s style houses and goods in general are so shoddy, you can no longer legally produce or buy them. In many cases, no one would even take them off your for free, even if they were still legal.)

On a global scale, the times between perhaps 1940s to 1970s had some of the harshest inequality ever. It's been since about the 1980s that inequality has gone down markedly.

Remember how India and China used to be on the verge of famine (or outright in famine). Nowadays obesity is the bigger problem.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#47

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #3

Replacing our thinking with a few monopolistic tech companies... What could go wrong!

> What could go wrong?

> "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

- F Herbert, 1965

I want to emphasise the "other men with machines" part. Mr Herbert wasn't talking about an AI takeover. He was talking about a techbro takeover.

He didn't even believe in the agency of machines, just human potential - an inanimate thing that does not want, will not want to take over. It is a tool for the people who command it and do.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#48

Post by yobbo »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #25

I recently saw a good example of how LLM's can be really useful. A friend of mine, who always found learning difficult, now works as a plumber and installer with his own one-person company. One of his clients is the local community pool. He took over the job from an older man who showed him how everything worked. My friend noticed a lot of inefficient (manual) use of energy and resources, but the previous installer t…

This is an interesting example but it can't be scaled up to have meaningful impact on the level of the economy or society.

The effect right now of LLMs is reducing friction for some people with certain problems, but big important problems are already optimised to much higher levels.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#50

Post by eru »

politelemon wrote: post #42
eru wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI feels different because quietly we are all aware, to differing degrees of comfort, that the world around us is collapsing. We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. What collapse are you talking about? Yes, climate change is gonna knock a few percent points off global GDP, but it's not gonna be the end of the world. It's no worse than living in the UK rather than the US in these terms…

> We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. Golden ages are fictional constructs, applied retroactively as part of an agenda. There is no such thing as living in a current golden age without knowing the future. I also doubt the statements about peace and prosperity. These just sound like pithy phrases to dismiss concerns.

> Golden ages are fictional constructs, applied retroactively as part of an agenda. There is no such thing as living in a current golden age without knowing the future.

That's a weird self contradiction. I just contemporarily applied the Golden Age moniker, so your assertion is just plain wrong.

People have never been as rich as today, even poor people. Wars are a bit bursty, but if you smooth it out a bit, but the probability for an average human to become a casualty in a war has been going down over the centuries, and is still going down over the last decades.

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