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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

#421

Post by entropyneur »

maciejzj wrote: post #353

I may have developed some kind of paranoia reading HN recently, but the AI atmosphere is absolutely nuts to me. Have you ever thought that you would see a chart showing how population of horses was decimated by the mass introduction of efficient engines accompanied by an implication that there is a parallel to human population? And the article is not written in any kind of cautionary humanitarian approach, but rather…

My experience so far has been that the knowledge of what should and shouldn't be, while important, bears no predictive power whatsoever as to what actually ends up happening.

In this instance, in particular, I wouldn't expect our preferences to bear any relevance.

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

#422

Post by M95D »

UncleMeat wrote: post #388
maciejzj wrote: post #353

I may have developed some kind of paranoia reading HN recently, but the AI atmosphere is absolutely nuts to me. Have you ever thought that you would see a chart showing how population of horses was decimated by the mass introduction of efficient engines accompanied by an implication that there is a parallel to human population? And the article is not written in any kind of cautionary humanitarian approach, but rather…

I have been completely shocked by the number of people in the tech industry who seem to genuinely place no value on humanity and so many of its outputs. I see it in the writing of leaders within VC firms and AI companies but I also see it in ordinary conversations on the caltrain or in coffee shops. Friendship, love, sex, art, even faith and childrearing are opportunities for substitution with AI. Ask an AI to create…

> no value on humanity

It's practically the definition of psychopathy.

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

#423

Post by bigfishrunning »

mattmaroon wrote: post #413
bambax wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this analogy, horses are jobs, not humans; you could argue there's not much of a difference between the two, because people without jobs will starve, etc., but still, they're not the same.

There is, at least, a way to avoid people without jobs starving. Whether or not we'll do it is anyone's guess. I think I'll live to see UBI but I am perphaps an optimist.

You'd have to time something like UBI with us actually being able to replace the workforce -- The current LLM parlor tricks are simply not what they're sold to be, and if we rely on them too early we (humanity) is very much screwed.

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

#424

Post by jeroenhd »

UncleMeat wrote: post #388
maciejzj wrote: post #353

I may have developed some kind of paranoia reading HN recently, but the AI atmosphere is absolutely nuts to me. Have you ever thought that you would see a chart showing how population of horses was decimated by the mass introduction of efficient engines accompanied by an implication that there is a parallel to human population? And the article is not written in any kind of cautionary humanitarian approach, but rather…

I have been completely shocked by the number of people in the tech industry who seem to genuinely place no value on humanity and so many of its outputs. I see it in the writing of leaders within VC firms and AI companies but I also see it in ordinary conversations on the caltrain or in coffee shops. Friendship, love, sex, art, even faith and childrearing are opportunities for substitution with AI. Ask an AI to create…

I can't say I'm shocked. Disappointed, maybe, but it's hardly surprising to see the sociopathic nature in the people fighting tooth and nail for the validation of venture capitalists who will not be happy until they own every single cent on earth.

There are good people everywhere, but bring good and ethical stands in the way of making money, so most of the good people lose out in the end.

AI is the perfect technology for those who see people as complaining cogs in an economic machine. The current AI bubble is the first major advancement where these people go mask off; when people unapologetically started trying to replace basic art and culture with "efficient" machines, people started noticing.

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

#425

Post by snarfy »

mattmaroon wrote: post #413
bambax wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this analogy, horses are jobs, not humans; you could argue there's not much of a difference between the two, because people without jobs will starve, etc., but still, they're not the same.

There is, at least, a way to avoid people without jobs starving. Whether or not we'll do it is anyone's guess. I think I'll live to see UBI but I am perphaps an optimist.

It's here today - it's owning stock that produces dividends. That's capitalism.

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

#426

Post by ToucanLoucan »

bambax wrote: post #377
JohnMakin wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’re realizing that the OP understands this, and that in this analogy, the horses are human beings

In this analogy, horses are jobs, not humans; you could argue there's not much of a difference between the two, because people without jobs will starve, etc., but still, they're not the same.

One would argue in a capitalist society like ours, fucking with someone's job at industrial scale isn't awfully dissimilar from threatening their life, it's just less direct. Plenty more people currently are feeling the effects of worsening job markets than have been involved in a hostage situation, but the negative end results are still the same.

One would argue also if you don't see this, it's because you'd prefer not to.

If we had at least a somewhat functioning safety net, or UBI, or both, you'd at least have an argument to be made, but we don't. AI and it's associated companies' business model is, if not killing people, certainly attempting to make lots of lives worse at scale. I wouldn't work for one for all the money in the world.

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

#427

Post by glenstein »

maciejzj wrote: post #353

I may have developed some kind of paranoia reading HN recently, but the AI atmosphere is absolutely nuts to me. Have you ever thought that you would see a chart showing how population of horses was decimated by the mass introduction of efficient engines accompanied by an implication that there is a parallel to human population? And the article is not written in any kind of cautionary humanitarian approach, but rather…

Honestly I can't tell if your incredulity is at the method of analysis for being tragically mistaken or superficial in some way, at the seemingly dehumanizing comparison of beloved human demonstrations of skill (chess, writing) to lowest common denominator labor, or the tone of passive indifference to computers taking over everything.

I think the comparisons are useful enough as metaphors, though I wonder at analysis, because it sounds like if someone took a Yudkowsky idea and talked about it like a human, which might make a bad assumption go down more smooth than it should. But I don't know.

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

#428

Post by Symmetry »

torben-friis wrote: post #332
shaka-bear-tree wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Yes, it’s a god of the gaps situation. We don’t know what the ceiling is. We might have hit it, there might be a giant leap forward ahead, we might leap back (if there is a rug pull). The most interesting questions are the ones that assume human…

> Are you ok with having a codebase that is effectively a black box?

When was the last time you looked at the machine code your compiler was giving you? For me, doing embedded development on an architecture without a mature compiler the answer is last Friday but I expect that the vast majority of readers here never look at their machine code. We have abstraction layers that we've come to trust because they work in practice. To do our work we're dependent on the companies that develop our compilers where we can at least see the output, but also companies that make our CPUs which we couldn't debug without a huge amount of specialized equipment. So I expect that mostly people will be ok with it.

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

#429

Post by bigfishrunning »

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.

Except it isn't thinking. It is applying a model of statistical likelihood. The real issue is that it's been sold as thinking, and laypeople believe that it's thinking, so it is very likely that jobs will be eliminated before it's feasible to replace them.

People that actually care about the quality of their output are a dying breed, and that death is being accelerated by this machine that produces somewhat plausible-looking output, because we're optimizing around "plausible-looking" and not "correct"

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

#430

Post by techdmn »

pzo wrote: post #376
maciejzj wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know what the author had in mind, but one has to really be tone deaf to let the weirdness of the discussion go unnoticed. Take a look at the last paragraphs in the text again: > And not very long after, 93 per cent of those horses had disappeared. > I very much hope we'll get the two decades that horses did. > But looking at how fast Claude is automating my job, I think we're getting a lot less. While most o…

> And not very long after, 93 per cent of those horses had disappeared. > I very much hope we'll get the two decades that horses did. Horses typically live between 25 to 30 years. I agree with OP that most likely those horses were not decimated (killed) but just died out and people stopped mass breeding them. Also as other noticed chart shows 'horses PER person in US'. Population between 1900 and 1950 increased from…

I think the phrase "fair distribution on social level" is doing a lot of work in this comment. Do you consider this to be a common occurrence, or something our existing social structures do competently?

I see quite the opposite, and have very little hope that reduced reliance on labor will increase the equability of distribution of wealth.

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