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AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

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Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#481

Post by emp17344 »

topocite wrote: post #374
emp17344 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. It’s basic economics - technology that boosts productivity results in higher salaries and more jobs.

You obviously haven't thought about economics much at all to say something this simplistic. There are so many counter examples of this being wrong that it is not even worth bothering. I love economics, but it is largely a field based around half truths and intellectual fraud. It is actually why it is an interesting subject to study.

Denial of economic truths is denial of science. Not sure what to tell you. What parts do you reject?

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#482

Post by tracker1 »

loudmax wrote: post #438
GuB-42 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdoh. And unless the user is a competent programmer, at least in spirit, it will look like the creation of the 3-year-old next door, not like Wallace and Gromit. It may be fine, but the difference is that one is only loved by their parents, the other gets millions of people to go to the theater. Play-Doh gave the power of sculpting to everyone, includ…

It really depends what kind of time frame we're talking about. As far as today's models, these are best understood as tools to be used as humans. They're only replacements for humans insofar as individual developers can accomplish more with the help of an AI than they could alone, so a smaller team can accomplish what used to require a bigger team. Due to Jevon's paradox this is probably a good thing for developer sa…

I don't expect exponential growth to continue indefinitely... I don't think the current line of LLM based tech will lead to AGI, but that it might inspire what does.

That doesn't mean it isn't and won't continue to be disruptive. Looking at generated film clips, it's beyond impressive... and despite limitations, it's going to lead to a lot of creativity, that doesn't mean someone making something longer won't have to work that much harder to get something consistent... I've enjoyed a lot of the StarWars fan films that have been made, but there's a lot of improvements needed in terms of the voice acting, sets, characters, etc that arre needed for something I'd pay to rent or see in a thaater.

Ironically, the push towards modern progressivism and division from Hollywood has largely been a shortfall... If they really wanted to make money, they'd lean into pop-culture fun and rah rah 'Merica, imo. Even with the new He-Man movie, the biggest critique is they bothered to try to integrate real world Earth as a grounding point. Let it be fantasy. For that matter, extend the delay from theater to PPV even. "Only in theaters for 2026" might actually be just enough push to get butts in seats.

I used to go to the movies a few times a month, now it's been at least a year since I've thought of going. I actually might for He-Man or the Spider-Man movies... Mixed on Mandalorean.

For AI and coding... I've started using it more the past couple months... I can't imagine being a less experienced dev with it. I predict, catch and handle so many issues in terms of how I've used it even. The thought of vibe-coded apps in the wild is shocking to terrifying and I wouldn't wany my money anywhere near them. It takes a lot of iteration, curation an baby-sitting after creating a good level of pre-documentation/specifications to follow. That said, I'd say I'm at least 5x more productive with it.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#483

Post by Gud »

alwillis wrote: post #475
Gud wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this optimistic take. Unfortunately, I believe the following will happen: By positioning themselves close to law makers, the AI companies will in the near future declare ownership of all software code developed using their software. They will slowly erode their terms of service, as happens to most internet software, step by step, until they claim total ownership. The point is to license the code.

> the AI companies will in the near future declare ownership of all software code developed using their software. Pretty sure this isn’t going to happen. AI is driving the cost of software to zero; it’s not worth licensing something that’s a commodity. It’s similar to 3D printing companies. They don’t have IP claims on the items created with their printers. The AI companies currently don’t have IP claims on what thei…

1. Commodities are huge business.

2. Show me these open source models that cost me $20/month to operate, because that’s what I pay for ChatGPT/Claude.

3. This is not at all similar to “3D printing”.

4. Nobody cares about some solitaire game

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#484

Post by koe123 »

wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

For me this is the outcome of the incentive structure. The question is if we can seize the everything machine to benefit everyone (great!) or everything becomes cyberpunk and we exist only as prostitutes and entertainers for Dario and Sam.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#485

Post by wiseowise »

credit_guy wrote: post #479
wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

Let's pursue your idea a bit further. Up to a certain ELO level, the combination between a human and a chess bot has a higher ELO than both the human and the bot. But at some point, when the bot has an ELO vastly superior to the human, then whatever the human has to add will only subtract value, so the combination has an ELO higher than the human's but lower than the bot's. Now, let's say that 10 or 20 years down the…

There’s no AI, wake up. It’s all the same tech bros trying to get rid of you. Except now they have a mother of all guns.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#486

Post by moreice »

wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

I agree with you. This generation of LLMs is on track to automate knowledge work.

For the US, if we had strong unions, those gains could be absorbed by the workers to make our jobs easier. But instead we have at-will employment and shareholder primacy. That was fine while we held value in the job market, but as that value is whittled away by AI, employers are incentivized to pocket the gains by cutting workers (or pay).

I haven't seen signs that the US politically has the will to use AI to raise the average standard of living. For example, the US never got data protections on par with GDPR, preferring to be business friendly. If I had to guess, I would expect socialist countries to adapt more comfortably to the post-AI era. If heavy regulation is on the table, we have options like restricting the role or intelligence of AI used in the workplace. Or UBI further down the road.

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#487

Post by cindyllm »

wiseowise wrote: post #485
credit_guy wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's pursue your idea a bit further. Up to a certain ELO level, the combination between a human and a chess bot has a higher ELO than both the human and the bot. But at some point, when the bot has an ELO vastly superior to the human, then whatever the human has to add will only subtract value, so the combination has an ELO higher than the human's but lower than the bot's. Now, let's say that 10 or 20 years down the…

There’s no AI, wake up. It’s all the same tech bros trying to get rid of you. Except now they have a mother of all guns.

[dead]

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#488

Post by poisonfountain »

wcfrobert wrote: post #464

Ultimately, AI is meant to replace you, not empower you. 1 - This exoskeleton analogy might hold true for a couple more years at most. While it is comforting to suggest that AI empowers workers to be more productive, like chess, AI will soon plan better, execute better, and have better taste. Human-in-the-loop will just be far worse than letting AI do everything. 2 - Dario and Dwarkesh were openly chatting about how…

We should be fighting back. So far I have been using Poison Fountain[1] on many of my websites to feed LLM scrapers with gibberish. The effectiveness is backed by a study from Anthropic that showed that a small batch of bad samples can corrupt whole models[2].

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Poison Fountain or its creators, just found it useful.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46926485

[2] https://www.anthropic.com/research/small-samples-poison

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#489

Post by AntiDyatlov »

Havoc wrote: post #131

The amount of "It's not X it's Y" type commentary suggests to me that A) nobody knows and B) there is solid chance this ends up being either all true or all false Or put differently we've managed to hype this to the moon but somehow complete failure (see studies about zero impact on productivity) seem plausible. And similarly kills all jobs seems plausible. That's an insane amount of conflicting opinions being help i…

It's possible we actually never had good metrics on software productivity. That seems very difficult to measure. I definitely use AI at my job to work less, not to produce more, and Claude Code is the only thing that has enabled me to have side-projects (had never tried it before, I have no idea how there are people with a coding full time job that also have a coding side project(s)).

Re: AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton

#490

Post by ok_dad »

Frieren wrote: post #375

100% exoskeleton is a great analogy. An exoskeleton is something really cool in movies that has zero reason to be build in reality because there are way more practical approaches. That is why we have all kind of vehicles, or programmable robot arm that do the job for themselves or if you need a human at the helm one just adds a remote controller with levers and buttons. But making a human shaped gigantic robot with a…

An exoskeleton is not a human-shaped giant robot with a human inside, that would be a Jaeger.

An exoskeleton exists today, in many forms, for example: https://www.festool.com/campaigns/microsites/exoactive

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