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

AI and the Automation of Work

ben-evans.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 268 posts

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#51

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

99_00 wrote: post #44
shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

>What's the point of research if some AI might do it better than me in 10-20 years? You said you enjoy learning and working.

There's research of the lab variety, and research of the library variety. It's valid to feel a sense of loss if all that remains for us is the library kind.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#52

Post by apsurd »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

10 vs 1,000 years before AGI is a lifetime of difference. I liken it to "not knowing the future". All humans face the same anxiety of an unknown future. In this way, I don't think AGI is a _special_ concern to worry about any more than when your death date will be.

And if the concern is "I want to do something meaningful" well... that's a whole other realm of philosophy of meaning. TLDR: I don't think meaningful work is reserved to "influences the thousandth generation after non nonexistence".

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#53

Post by pulvinar »

climatologist wrote: post #30
pulvinar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to your source, or particular examples, since they (or at least GPT-4) seem to me to be rather decent at planning. E.g., for writing code.

Ask it to write a backtracking sudoku solver with coroutines and/or fibers and let me know how it performs in your language of choice. We are nowhere near generally intelligent software systems.

If you're saying it's not perfect, then sure: it required one iteration before the Python program it spat out worked. It also when asked gave a 2-page description of the code.

And how many humans can do this? Those poor exhausted goalposts.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#54

Post by climatologist »

jtmoulia wrote: post #48
climatologist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good attempt but the coroutine solution is incorrect. See if you can figure out why and how to improve it. You can also ask it to propagate constraints and see what happens.

Sigh classic LLM -- without you, the expert, I can't quickly tell from the code / output how the answer the LLM produced is wrong. I also asked it to solve sudoku by "propagating constraints" and the answer seemed to work for me :/ Again, I'd guess the soln produced is wrong because I trust you more than the LLM but I don't have the mental horsepower to figure it out without resorting to tests & debugging.

If you are happy with the tool then continue using it. My point was a simple one, any generally intelligent software system would have given you an optimal solution by accounting for what people know about backtracking and constraint propagation but the solution presented did not account for how to optimally use coroutines to propagate constraints.

I'll repeat what I said previously in a different way, LLMs are useful but they are nowhere near what is required to achieve generally intelligent software systems. I'm sure they will continue to improve as engineers and companies learn how to utilize them in their workflows but let's temper the hype a little bit because statistical autocompletion is not enough to achieve general intelligence.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#55

Post by abhaynayar »

I had bought into the GPT-4 hype. I used GPT-4 on ChatGPT Plus for two months, but then I unsubscribed because I wasn't using it as much as I thought I would.

It's certainly a very interesting technology. But in it's current form, I just don't see it replacing most jobs. Will it replace jobs if we scale further? I don't know, but my intuition says no. I feel that we will need some other major breakthroughs in AI to get there.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#56

Post by esafak »

29athrowaway wrote: post #23
mdale wrote: post #6

I think the "sparks of AIG" presentations are compelling. It does feel like there are a just a few remaining big problems away from AGI level capabilities where it was more futuristic unclear projections in the past. If the issues as synthetic data conversations like alpha go but for LLMs; setting much longer token contexts (or dramatically cheaper training on custom data sets) And scaling via software and hardware a…

Yann LeCun says human intelligence is not "general intelligence".

Is monkey intelligence or dolphin intelligence qualitatively different? What is general intelligence, then?

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#57

Post by shaunkoh »

abhaynayar wrote: post #55

I had bought into the GPT-4 hype. I used GPT-4 on ChatGPT Plus for two months, but then I unsubscribed because I wasn't using it as much as I thought I would. It's certainly a very interesting technology. But in it's current form, I just don't see it replacing most jobs. Will it replace jobs if we scale further? I don't know, but my intuition says no. I feel that we will need some other major breakthroughs in AI to g…

It’s been incredibly helpful to me. It helped me figure out how to get docker containers setup. It’s even helped me figure out how to run data analysis on graph data. It’s not just made things simpler – it’s made things possible.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#58

Post by climatologist »

_gabe_ wrote: post #46
climatologist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask it to write a backtracking sudoku solver with coroutines and/or fibers and let me know how it performs in your language of choice. We are nowhere near generally intelligent software systems.

Ask a random college freshman in computer science to write a backtracking sudoku solver with coroutines and/or fibers in their language of choice. Oof, only 1 out of 10 can do it...? I guess 9 out of 10 college freshmen aren't generally intelligent? (I mean, I certainly wasn't very intelligent as a college freshman, but I'm pretty sure that's not the way you're using that word here). Anyways, these kinds of strawmen…

I think everyone should have a test in their back pocket for testing claims made by companies making AI tools. Mine is backtracking sudoku solver with constraint propagation but that's because I know LLMs are incapable of recursion and backtracking. Usually people get the point I'm making but sometimes I have to elaborate further.

LLMs are cool toys but calling them intelligent is stretching the definition of "intelligent" way too far. It's important to be clear about what the words actually mean because if people start thinking these software systems can be substituted for their own thinking then we end up with all sorts of unnecessary confusion around what they're actually capable of achieving.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#59

Post by calderwoodra »

msla wrote: post #42
calderwoodra wrote: post #35

> But if it becomes cheaper to use a machine to make, say, a pair of shoes, then the shoes are cheaper, more people can buy shoes and they have more money to spend on other things besides, and we discover new things we need or want, and new jobs. This sounds really similar to trickle down economics.

No, because what he described actually works. Clothing used to be hugely expensive: https://www.bookandsword.com/2017/12/09/how-much-did-a-shirt... > So the shirts of humble servants at Henry VIII’s court cost between 3 and 10 days’ income. That would be similar to someone who earns 10 dollars or Euros an hour spending 240 to 800 dollars or Euros on an item today. (Of course, in the 15th and 16th century, people spen…

I agree with you that innovation "works". But whether it's through innovation or tax cuts, the result is that the business has more capital to work with. So I'm really wondering why tax cuts don't work.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#60

Post by horeszko »

shaunkoh wrote: post #57
abhaynayar wrote: post #55

I had bought into the GPT-4 hype. I used GPT-4 on ChatGPT Plus for two months, but then I unsubscribed because I wasn't using it as much as I thought I would. It's certainly a very interesting technology. But in it's current form, I just don't see it replacing most jobs. Will it replace jobs if we scale further? I don't know, but my intuition says no. I feel that we will need some other major breakthroughs in AI to g…

It’s been incredibly helpful to me. It helped me figure out how to get docker containers setup. It’s even helped me figure out how to run data analysis on graph data. It’s not just made things simpler – it’s made things possible .

>"It’s not just made things simpler – it’s made things possible"

Nice slogan... is this an ad?

Post reply on HN