Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

geohot.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 496 posts

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#421

Post by blackmesaind »

zozbot234 wrote: post #361
sarchertech wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The skilled trades are better than unskilled work. Better than retail or food service, but they certainly aren’t a replacement for white collar jobs. The median salaries for skilled trades aren’t great. You can make good money if you are willing to work a ton of overtime, or if you can manage to get one of the very limited union spots in the right city. Or if you become a business owner (and accept the corresponding…

> Let’s say AI comes along and forces 25% of the white collar workers out of a job Yeah, this is not going to happen. New job positions will open up instead, and white collar workers will be well placed to fill them since supervising an AI agent swarm is not that different from supervising the work of other humans - which is what white collar workers do as their job.

I disagree. Not all white collar workers are managers, and while I do think AI-supervision will be a growing field, it won't generate anywhere close to enough roles to replace how many ICs are going to be displaced. Companies are going to hit capital & scope resource limits (especially as model companies start extracting more value) way before they hire thousands of laid off white collar workers as additional AI supervisors.

I'm equally dubious about other white collar roles filling the gap, but I'm willing to hear out any arguments. To be honest I'm kind of desperate to hear one that would convince me otherwise..

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#423

Post by still-learning »

YCpedohaven wrote: post #265
10xDev wrote: post #179

You will get laid off but you won't if you create value and you will create value if you don't care about money and it will go recursive but it won't go recursive because there are limits. It won't change anything but it will change everything. No one knows what he is actually saying (see comments) but at least he managed to compress the entire discourse on AI impact into a blog post.

[dead]

Most western jobs are higher up the value chain, although it might not feel like it a software engineer or finance bro generates more value than a manufacturer or farmer.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#424

Post by dragonwriter »

still-learning wrote: post #423
YCpedohaven wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Most western jobs are higher up the value chain, although it might not feel like it a software engineer or finance bro generates more value than a manufacturer or farmer.

More specifically, they generate value for people who are already relatively rich (often vastly so), and a consequence of declining marginal utility—which applies to money the same as any good— is that the it takes less actual utility value when you do that to produce any given amount of monetary value.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#425

Post by torginus »

cardanome wrote: post #362
keiferski wrote: post #318

As is often the case, the title is a bit misleading and implies a universality that I don’t think the author intended. He is specifically talking about AI, and saying (in my understanding) that you shouldn’t worry too much about whether your specific thing will be overwritten by AI, as long as you focus on actually creating true, real value with your work. I agree with that completely and can see it happening in my o…

The problem is that with generative AI, I have no means of protecting my work from being stolen. It does not matter what license I put up. It doesn't even matter if I make it publicly available or not. LLMs have been trained on pirated material, they don't even have the decency to buy a copy. Even if I show my project to no one and just have a private repo on Github the code might still be used to train LLMs. Your GP…

AI will be the straw that breaks the camel's back on copyright Imo. We've known since 90s Napster music piracy that copyright is broken in the information age, and its just a flimsy set of unprincipled edicts meant to protect those with power and money.

Nowadays AI companies have more money and lawyers than most movie studios, so

I predict that there will be a billion dollar company/ies (probably exist even now in stealth mode), whose business model will be to slopfork existing software - after all AI has proven to be very capable at that.

With trillions of dollars both supporting and opposing this business model, something will probably change in some way wrt copyright, and hopefully in a way that's an improvement to the average person.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#426

Post by keybored »

> This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns.

No. This is the time to abandon naive dogooderism.

The capitalists said that they don’t need labor any more. Fine. Prepare for that potentiality by not giving jack shit away for free. That includes permissively licensed open source software. But it goes way beyond that.

In the long term maybe we can get rid of the labor-employee relation so that people who do honest work don’t have to worry about their work becoming automated. Let the ones who engage in dishonest pseudo-work (capital accumulation) worry about their pseudo-productivity becoming null and void.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#427

Post by devsda »

DangitBobby wrote: post #367
devsda wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system I was wondering if that would come up and HN delivers without fail. Anyway, you are free to interpret it as you see fit. The guidance was for someone who was struggling with a moral dillema on facing relatives in war and undecided over action. It is not a diktat to work or provide unquestion la…

What is the point of a job if not the results? How can you be responsible for your actions but not the consequences of your actions?

> What is the point of a job if not the results?

The idea is to not fret over results and give your best with dedication. E.g. An athlete shouldn't be worrying about their results while playing and should focus on the play.

> How can you be responsible for your actions but not the consequences of your actions

I only mentioned control of consequences not responsibility. It doesn't mean you are absolved of responsibility from consequences of your actions.

Take driving. You can only control your actions but you cannot control what happens on the road. You are still responsible for your actions.

Should the fear of the unknown on the road stop you from driving? Absolutely not.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#428

Post by capricio_one »

I don’t quite get the amount of supposed subtext that others see in this piece, so the flippant attitudes here are off putting. Geohotz has already commented here that people are putting words into his mouth.

I agree with what is being said: AI will consolidate otherwise nonsensical jobs/roles/companies into fewer (probably more profitable?) ones, so if there’s a time to jump ship from one of these (assuming worst case scenarios), do it while you’re employed and you can land somewhere else that’s hopefully more stable.

This to me is a fairly no-nonsense piece over all. AI itself and tools like LLM are damn good though, limitations aside. We get to do a lot of things we haven’t had time to do before.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#429

Post by darth_avocado »

keiferski wrote: post #346
harimau777 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still seems super naive, at least if its extended to software engineering. Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded. I don't see how AI will improve that.

I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. If you are but still get canned, then you’re just dealing with irrational management, and that predates AI.

> I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable.

Employees in knowledge work don’t generate constant value at all times. And companies want value at all times (that needs to be ever increasing). You’re not disposable at all point in time if you’re providing value at that point in time.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#430

Post by jeffbee »

Why does HN take this guy seriously? OK, he got pacman running on a PS3. Great. Remember the time he stood up on a stage discussing the path to Level 5 autonomous driving? Comma.ai actually produces a barely-adequate lane keeping system for obsolete cars. Remember fixing Twitter search in 12 weeks? This guy is a total charlatan.

On the question of whether Hotz knows what AI can or cannot do, the answer is demonstrably "no".

Post reply on HN