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The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

cacm.acm.org

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Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#51

Post by seydor »

ditch your phone , go back to your desktop, problem solve. Mobile has been a regression in pretty much everything except corporate profits.

The focus of the article is wrong. PCs for example are not getting more specialized, they are getting new capabilities with the additional specialized gpus. As others have said the problem does not lie in processors, but on the software and UI, which has been steadily dumbing down since "smart"phones have been introduced. Phones have perfectly capable general computing processors but corporate decisions limit their usage.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#52

Post by ludston »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #49
NikolaNovak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say that - I'm increasingly subscribing to "bullshit jobs" theory : * productivity for goods is high and availability is high (we can discuss inequality and distribution) * we just don't need everybody to work 40hrs a week to obtain collectively good standard of living * but as a society we are uncomfortable with universal basic income * so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary j…

> so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary jobs. Your first 3 bullet points make sense, but this last one is where I think the normal theory behind "bullshit jobs" really falls apart. Every individual business has a large, strong economic incentive to not hire these bullshit jobs if they don't need to, so why should we think they would be so generous to engage in this "bullshit jobs charity"? I…

Whilst business owners have a financial incentive not to employ people, there are competing incentives. For example, non-owners are incentivised to have more people reporting to them because it increases their status and status is usually correlated with salary. In fact, when you are rich enough that money doesn't mean anything any more, you may as well have a bunch of people employed to do nothing but make you feel important and powerful.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#53

Post by concordDance »

troupe wrote: post #29
ethbr1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were able to fix it up with some automation in a couple days. Critically, still running visually on her machine, and with internal resources for lifecycle support if the process changes.

Do you have any guess how long it will take to break even? Presumably you charged some amount to spend a few days automating it and hopefully it frees her up to do something more valuable for the company. Sometimes the reason things aren't automated is because there isn't anything more valuable for that person to do so automation doesn't have a positive return on investment.

Can't speak for them, but I've done office automation work with a breakeven measured in days.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#54

Post by tempodox »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #49
NikolaNovak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say that - I'm increasingly subscribing to "bullshit jobs" theory : * productivity for goods is high and availability is high (we can discuss inequality and distribution) * we just don't need everybody to work 40hrs a week to obtain collectively good standard of living * but as a society we are uncomfortable with universal basic income * so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary j…

> so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary jobs. Your first 3 bullet points make sense, but this last one is where I think the normal theory behind "bullshit jobs" really falls apart. Every individual business has a large, strong economic incentive to not hire these bullshit jobs if they don't need to, so why should we think they would be so generous to engage in this "bullshit jobs charity"? I…

GP's last point isn't to be taken literally. It's just the short and snappy summary of what took you many words to describe.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#55

Post by concordDance »

opportune wrote: post #44
NikolaNovak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say that - I'm increasingly subscribing to "bullshit jobs" theory : * productivity for goods is high and availability is high (we can discuss inequality and distribution) * we just don't need everybody to work 40hrs a week to obtain collectively good standard of living * but as a society we are uncomfortable with universal basic income * so instead we basically do UBI through inefficient, unnecessary j…

Who's saying that lady's job is bullshit just because it can be automated? There is real value in paying some up front cost in detection/monitoring/validation of data to prevent mistakes. Just because software engineers would consider her job "beneath" them because they could do it faster or better does not make it not worth doing. There are mega-efficient factory farms in Nebraska that are immensely productive per-h…

Does she find that task enjoyable and fulfilling? If not, it's bullshit.

And if bet money on it NOT being enjoyable and fulfilling. Humans almost universally hate being cogs doing the same repetitive trivial action over and over.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#56

Post by omscs99 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

Hypothetically, if she figured out how to automate it on her own, would she get any kind of reward for it? If not, why should she automate it?

Another example, if there’s some repetitive task that you automate at a software dev job, would you get rewarded for figuring out how to automate it? The answer is obviously dependent on culture, at my current gig you just get brushed off

Seems to me like you’re assuming that the economy incentivizes efficiency. Imo it doesn’t, it’s just a bunch of stupid rich people sloshing money around (for the most part). None of it makes any sense

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#57

Post by blueblimp »

I question the article's framing of CPUs as "universal" and GPUs as "specialized". In theory, they can both do any computation, so they differ only in their performance characteristics, and the deep learning revolution has shown that there is wide range of practical workloads that is non-viable on CPUs. The reason OpenAI runs GPT-4 on GPUs isn't that it's faster than running it on CPUs--they do it because they _can't_ practically run GPT-4 on CPUs.

So what's going on is not a shift away from the universality of CPUs, but a realization that CPUs weren't as universal as we thought. It would be nice though if a single processor could achieve the best of both worlds.

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#58

Post by kaycebasques »

> the economic cycle that has led to the usage of a common computing platform, underpinned by rapidly improving universal processors, is giving way to a fragmentary cycle, where economics push users toward divergent computing platforms driven by special purpose processors

Where does RISC-V and all its extensions land on the GPT fragmentation spectrum?

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#59

Post by throwaway14356 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

I understand this is ACM, but I would say the decline has strictly been a failure of software . Specifically, corporate IT's failure to deliver general purpose development tools usable by anyone in a company to make computers do work for them (aka programming). There's still a ton of general value that could be delivered by general purpose processors/computers. But instead, most non-programmers live in a Kafkaesque r…

I use to point at office buildings and tell people non of the jobs there are real. They are all software that didn't get written. One logistics friend argued his well paid job was very important but with very little help he automated it in 2 weeks, it was just the idea never occurred to him. i told him to not tell anyone but he did and 300 people got fired

Re: The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)

#60

Post by rrr_oh_man »

tuatoru wrote: post #32
radlad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I'm not sure everyone has the inclination to become a programmer. And the whole thread was about how computers should work for everyone, including this lady whose job could be automated. Which begs the question: do most people actually want general purpose computing? Or does the average human prefer "apps"?

Who said anything about her becoming a programmer? An interior decorator, or a gardener, or a nurse aide, or a yoga instructor, or a nail technician: they all add more to human welfare than this task. If she wants to become an architect, or a water system engineer, more power to her!

Not disagreeing with your point in general, but:

Not everyone can become an architect or water systems engineer at 50, after having worked a "general assistant" type office job for many years.

I think that (and its consequences) might be the biggest short term societal risk of automation in an aging society.

How would you solve this problem?

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