Live data from Hacker News

We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

newyorker.com

461–470 of 1001 posts

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drinking outdoors (let alone at a public park) is just not a thing outside Europe.

It is definitely a thing here in Louisiana. Drinking in public or while driving is a proud tradition. Take a trip to New Orleans for the extreme end of it, but we have drive-through Daiquiri shops all over and at least half of the people I grew up with have at least one DUI and I've never thought twice about being outside with a drink in my hand, as rarely as I do drink (I do refuse to drink and drive and am constant…

Unrelated to the conversation at hand but a strange fun fact is that it's actually legal to drink while driving in Mississippi and the Virgin Islands.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#462
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls

Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to. I think the real change is that nowadays it's just easier and more practical NOT to maintain friendships. Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.

> Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park.

This is illegal in almost all of the USA. Sometimes you can get away with it, but if the cops decide to enforce the law on a particular day you’ll get a ticket.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main discussion is on replacement rates. If this get too low, civilization eventually collapses. It's not really a 'vision' and more like the end of humanity.

no, it doesn't. With the labor productivity and automation, it is not obvious we need to maintain the current population, especially because the current social contract seems to be working class being exploited by oligarchs, while their taxes go fund boomers' retirement and overseas wars

How is it supposed to work when every working age person has two retirees to support?

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drinking outdoors (let alone at a public park) is just not a thing outside Europe.

It is definitely a thing here in Louisiana. Drinking in public or while driving is a proud tradition. Take a trip to New Orleans for the extreme end of it, but we have drive-through Daiquiri shops all over and at least half of the people I grew up with have at least one DUI and I've never thought twice about being outside with a drink in my hand, as rarely as I do drink (I do refuse to drink and drive and am constant…

Savannah Georgia is another example. Taking a "traveler" when you leave a bar is pretty common.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even few kilometers from the city homeless are unlikely even whereever you are…? Where I am all the nature and bike trails lined with homeless encampments. It's actually been quite a problem. Unless you go out on serious hike type trails you're surrounded by homeless.

may I ask where is it that bad, whereabouts are you?

Look on a US 2024 county voting map ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/2024_Uni...), and look for democratic counties in republican dominant states. Obviously the big cities are easy to spot, but look for smaller areas.

These democrat counties usually try to offer better homeless support either at the local government or NGO level. In doing so, all the red/republican counties ship their homeless using Greyhound Therapy.

Helping to make homelessness not suffer as much gets more homeless, thus flooding the system.

We've increased our homeless population by 4x in the last 5 years. It popped up hard after the ban on evictions disappeared. Turns out kicking people out of housing makes them (drumroll)... Homeless.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current system we have are as good as they get? You’re just making this statement out of thin air? Did you not notice a trendline of technological improvement of AI? > Sure, I probably could make something more effective, using non-LLM technologies (given a large enough budget), but… why would I, or anyone else, do that when it'd be obviously harmful, with no benefit? Technology will improve. The likelihood of yo…

> Did you not notice a trendline of technological improvement of AI? No, in fact I noticed a series of AI winters. In all things, progress is famously _not_ a straight line. Also I find it interesting that your argument seems to boil down to “I’m smart because line goes up, you’re dumb because you think line goes down.” Everyone Clearly can see what would happen if line went up, I just; looking at the broad history a…

>No, in fact I noticed a series of AI winters. In all things, progress is famously _not_ a straight line.

A series of winters? There's only one winter. Then after Geoffrey Hinton you can bullshit every 6 month lull into a "winter" if you want but everyone knows what the "actual" winter was. In general over a span of 10 years the line is UP.

>Also I find it interesting that your argument seems to boil down to “I’m smart because line goes up, you’re dumb because you think line goes down.” Everyone Clearly can see what would happen if line went up, I just; looking at the broad history and totality of factors(that I’m aware of) don’t think it’s inevitable.

The crazy thing is it's true. I never said that the line going up is inevitable. I said that's the most probable outcome. And you are dumb if you don't acknowledge the most probable outcome. like there's no logical way around this. You can sort of twist my argument into something that looks strange or stupid or whatever but there's no logical counter to what I said because it is factually the best answer.

>We literally stop progress all the time, every time we choose not to invest in something, crypto progress slowed from its height, Vr progress, green energy, I’d argue it’s relatively few technologies that progress forever.

You can't stop it. It can stop but you can't actually put your hand in front of it to stop it. That's what I mean. Nobody is choosing to stop progress and nobody really has this choice.

That being said you're right. No technology can progress forever. There is an upper bound. But AI. What's the upper bound? Do we have examples of the upper bound of intelligence? Do these things physically exist in reality that we can use these physical examples of Intelligence to measure how far in physical actuality and reality that we can go with AI?

No. No such examples exist. LLMs are the forefront of intelligence. There is nothing in reality more intelligent then LLMs and LLMs represent the physical limit in terms of evidence. Or is there something I'm missing here?

Yeah for certain things like space travel. It's possible we're hitting upper bounds, because we don't have physical examples of certain technologies.

But Again, intelligence? Do we have examples? What is the upper bound? Why don't you kick that brain (hint) into gear and think about it? One of the most realistic predictions of a continued upward trend in technology is in AI BECAUSE a PHYSICAL ACTUALITY of what we want to achieve both EXISTS and is reading this comment right now.

So we have a trendline that points up. And the actuality of what we want to achieve ALREADY exists. What is the most probable bet that you cannot just not acknowledge? The logic is inescapable. You must consider the outcome that AI continues to progress as that is the most likely outcome.

I'll grant you that AI not progressing and hitting another winter IS not at such a lower probability that we cannot consider it. But most of HN is just claiming we 100% hit a wall when all evidence is saying otherwise. In actuality another AI winter is the lower probability bet. Wait 10 years and come back to this comment and we'll see if you're right.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The library has become a place for drugs addicts and homeless people who use the free computers to look at porn. It’s no longer a nice or safe place to go.

This is true where I live also. This feral subset of the homeless are ruining every nice public space that we used to have. Libraries, parks, trails. Patience and tolerance is wearing thin; everything that is tried to help them is just abused and shit on (often literally). More and more people are starting to say no, we don't want to tolerate this behavior here, if that's how you want to live then do it somewhere els…

Reading this makes me extremely nihilistic about humanity.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#468
I think that loneliness is a real problem and a tragedy for many.

I think that loneliness is linked to status, perhaps tenuously. Status is generally zero sum, so those that think it is "easily solvable" (through non-automation means) may not be thinking it through.

I have hope that AI will, in many ways, address the issue. And I think that is fantastic.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parks, libraries are cheap and free and they're dead where I live, a metro area of 2+ million The only people I see out are families with grandpa in tow to pay for a mediocre overpriced wood fired pizza. No one has analog skills. Just social analysis skills. Very briefly dated a 39 year old who admitted she had never baked, boiled, or microwaved her own potato. Already got 2 kids. We reach endgame sooner in life. We…

Parks and libraries are always full where I live, a metro area of 1.5mil.

The number of US libraries going back to the 90s is basically flat while the population has kept growing over 35 years, around 38% for the same time period

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same gen (42). I feel like we have a really unique lens on all of this, too: old enough to remember being in a smoky bar, socializing (not healthy, but fun as hell), but also young enough to have had some technological exposure at a crucial time of our youth. We _leveraged_ technology for socializing in person. Our online pursuits were around organizing lighthearted social goofiness like "getting iced", LARPing, and…

> I guess at some point people started taking themselves way too seriously. Worrying about what others think, or something, I don't know. When I was a teenager, precisely one guy had videoed his teenage self waving around a broomstick like a lightsaber, and had it end up online. Video cameras and editing equipment were rare and expensive. And that one man was a cautionary tale, not to wave a broomstick like a lightsa…

A look on TikTok for "lightsaber duel" draws me to the opposite conclusion. Yeah, lightsaber kid was cringe worthy; I'm glad it wasn't me. But in the meantime, Star Wars got cool, After Effects went subscription, and there are some really cool videos of fan-made lightsaber duels up on the Internet now.
Post reply on HN