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AI is different

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Re: AI is different

#571

Post by perryizgr8 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #42
btilly wrote: post #7

In every technology wave so far, we've disrupted many existing jobs. However we've also opened up new kinds of jobs. And, because it is easier to retrain humans than build machines for those jobs, we wound up with more and better jobs. This is the first technology wave that doesn't just displace humans, but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can. Right now it can't replace human…

> but which can be trained to the new job opportunities more easily than humans can What makes you think that? Self driving cars have had untold billions of dollars in reaearch and decades in applied testing, iteration, active monitoring, etc and it still has a very long tail of unaddressed issues. They've been known to ignore police traffic redirections, they've run right through construction barriers, and recently…

> They've been known to ignore police traffic redirections, they've run right through construction barriers, and recently they were burnt to a crisp in the LA riots

All of this is very common for human driven cars too.

Re: AI is different

#572

Post by monknomo »

marstall wrote: post #439
nikolayasdf123 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what do displaced humans transition to? go to any war-torn country or collapsed empire (Soviet). I have seen/grow-up myself in both — you would get desperation, people giving-up, alcohol (famous "X"-cross of birth rate drop and deaths rising), drugs, crime, corruption/warlord-ing, rural communities hit first and totally vanish, then small-tier cities vanish, then mid-tier, only the largest hubs remain. loss of scie…

that was because the economy was controlled/corrupt and not allowed to flourish (and create job-creating technologies like the internet and AI).

I'm puzzled how AI is supposed to be a job creating technology. It is supposed to either wholesale replace jobs, or make workers so efficient that fewer of them are required. This is supposed to make digital and intellectually produced goods cheaper (although, given reproduction is free, the goods themselves are already pretty cheap).

To me it looks like we'll see well paying jobs decrease, digital services get cheaper, food+housing stay the same, and presumably as displaced workers do what they need to do physical service jobs will get more crowded and pay worse, so physical services will get cheaper. It is unclear whether there will be a net benefit to society.

Where do the jobs come from?

Re: AI is different

#573

Post by rafaelero »

badestrand wrote: post #248
rafaelero wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you are trapped in the first assessment of this problem. Yes, we are not there yet, but have you thought about the rate of improvement? Is that rate of improvement reliable? Fast? That's what matters, not where we are today.

You could say that about any time in history. When the steam engine or mechanical loom were invented there were millions of people like you who predicted that mankind will be out of jobs soon and guess what happened? There's still a lot of things to do in this world and there still will be a lot to do (aka "jobs") for a loooong time.

Nothing in the rate of improvement of a steam engine suggest it would be able to drive a car or do the job of an attorney.

Re: AI is different

#574

Post by owebmaster »

econ wrote: post #356
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans sing. I sing every day, and I don't have any social or financial incentives driving me to do so. I also listen to the radio and other media, still singing.

Do others sing along? Do they sing the songs you've written? I think we lost a lot there. I can't even begin to imagine it. Thankfully singing happy birthday is mandatory - the fight isn't over! People also still have conversations despite phones. Some even talk all night at the kitchen table. Not everyone, most don't remember how.

> Do others sing along? Do they sing the songs you've written?

Probably more than what you think people did thousands of years ago. And there are almost infinite more people living from singing than ever.

Re: AI is different

#575

Post by wybiral »

zarzavat wrote: post #494
keiferski wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to further elaborate on this with another example: the writing industry. (Technical, professional, marketing, etc. writing - not books.) The default logic is that AI will just replace all writing tasks, and writers will go extinct. What actually seems to be happening, however, is this: - obviously written-by-AI copywriting is perceived very negatively by the market - companies want writers that understand how to…

The assumption here is that LLMs will never pass the Turing test for copywriting, i.e. AI writing will always be distinguishable from human writing. Given that models that produce intelligible writing didn't exist a few years ago, that's a very bold assumption.

AI will probably pass that test. But art is about experience and communicating more subtle things that we humans experience. AI will not be out in society being a person and gaining experience to train on. So if we're not writing it somewhere for it to regurgitate... It will always feel lacking in the subtlety of a real human writer. It depends on us creating content with context in order to mimic someone that can create those stories.

EDIT: As in, it can make really good derivative works. But it will always lag behind a human that has been in real life situations of the time and experienced being a human throughout them. It won't be able to hit the subtle notes that we crave in art.

Re: AI is different

#576

Post by owebmaster »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #183
econ wrote: post #160

For me it maps elegantly on previous happenings. When the radio came people almost instantly stopped singing and playing instruments. Many might not be aware of it but for thousands of years singing was a normal expression of a good mood and learning to play an instrument was a gateway to lifting the mood. Dancing is still in working order but it lacks the emotional depth that provided a window into the soul of those…

> for thousands of years singing was a normal expression of a good mood Back in the day singing was what everybody did to pass the time. (Especially in boring and monotonous situations.)

That is exactly what I would do when I needed to drive to an office.

Re: AI is different

#577

Post by perryizgr8 »

thephotonsphere wrote: post #259
BoorishBears wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've ridden just under 1,000 miles in autonmous (no scare quotes) Waymos, so it's strange to see someone letting Tesla's abject failure inform their opinions on how much progress AVs have made. Tesla that got fired as a customer by Mobileye for abusing their L2 tech is your yardstick? Anyways, Waymo's DC launch is next year, I wonder what the new goalpost will be.

Tesla uses only cameras, which sounds crazy (reflections, direct sunlight disturbances, fog , smoke, etc. LiDAR, radar assistance feels crucial https://fortune.com/2025/08/15/waymo-srikanth-thirumalai-int...

> only cameras, which sounds crazy

Crazy that billions of humans drive around every day with two cameras. And they have various defects too (blind spots, foveated vision, myopia, astigmatism, glass reflection, tiredness, distraction).

Re: AI is different

#578

Post by chuckadams »

cobbzilla wrote: post #564
zarzavat wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't an AI do all of that? > And I’d bet that the cyborg writers using AI will outcompete the purely AI ones. In the early days of chess engines there were similar hopes for cyborg chess, whereby a human and engine would team up to be better than an engine alone. What actually happened was that the engines quickly got so good that the expected value of human intervention was negative - the engine crunching so…

no matter what you ask AI to do, it’s going to give you an “average“ answer. Even if you tell it to use a very distinct specific voice and write in a very specific tone, it’s going to give you the “average“ specific voice and tone you’ve asked for. AI is the antithesis of creativity and originality. This gives me hope.

What is creative or original thought? You are not the first person to say this after all.

Re: AI is different

#579

Post by treis »

johnecheck wrote: post #568
danielvaughn wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another flaw is that humans won’t find other things to do. I don’t see the argument for that idea. If I had to bet, I’d say that if AI continues getting more powerful, then humans will transition to working on more ambitious things.

This is very similar to the 'machines will do all the work, we'll just get to be artists and philosophers' idea. It sounds nice. But to have that, you need resources. Whoever controls the resources will get to decide whether you get them. If AI/machines are our entire economy, the people that control the machines control the resources. I have little faith in their benevolence. If they also control the political syste…

>This is very similar to the 'machines will do all the work, we'll just get to be artists and philosophers' idea

We've come a long ways to that goal. The amount of work both economic and domestic that humans do has dropped dramatically.

Re: AI is different

#580

Post by msgodel »

johnecheck wrote: post #568
danielvaughn wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another flaw is that humans won’t find other things to do. I don’t see the argument for that idea. If I had to bet, I’d say that if AI continues getting more powerful, then humans will transition to working on more ambitious things.

This is very similar to the 'machines will do all the work, we'll just get to be artists and philosophers' idea. It sounds nice. But to have that, you need resources. Whoever controls the resources will get to decide whether you get them. If AI/machines are our entire economy, the people that control the machines control the resources. I have little faith in their benevolence. If they also control the political syste…

And it's very similar to "slaves will do all the work" which was actually possible but never happened.
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