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Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

andyljones.com

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Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would they get from the plebs? Suppose we went through The Phools and so the plebs were exterminated, then what? Perhaps we'd finally have Star Trek economics, but only for them, the "owners". Better be an "owner", then.

> What would they get from the plebs? I think the right question is: what would they want from the plebs? And the answer will be nothing. Right now they want the plebs' labor, which is why things work the way they do. > The Phools and so the plebs were exterminated, then what? Is that a reference to this? https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691168319/ph... > Perhaps we'd finally have Star Trek economics,…

The Phools was a reference to this: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/10/12/phools

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#572
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of people it takes to maintain a server rack is minimal and low cost labor. Most of the money is spent on hardware and paying people to right software for that hardware. Writing that software is becoming automated and it’s not hard to imagine that buying will as well. So you’re left with the equivalent of a plumber running your data center based on what automated systems flag as issues and other automated…

> The amount of people it takes to maintain a server rack is minimal and low cost labor. So what you're saying is that it requires human oversight. Got it. Glad you finally caught up to where the rest of us were many comments ago. But why did it take so long? Inquiring minds want to know.

Once again missing the forest for the trees about what the article is about. But it’s ok - reading comprehension isn’t for everybody.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#573
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, at least, a way to avoid people without jobs starving. Whether or not we'll do it is anyone's guess. I think I'll live to see UBI but I am perphaps an optimist.

It's here today - it's owning stock that produces dividends. That's capitalism.

Yeah I don't know why everyone doesn't just do that!

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#575
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine anthropomorphing this hard.

You misunderstood. This is how the conversation went: 1. Is there steady progress in AI? 2. What example do you need? In every single benchmark AI is getting better and better. 3. Job satisfaction and human flourishing. Hence my answer "AI is very satisfied in doing the job, just ask it". It came about because of the stupid comment 3, which tried to link and put a blame on unrelatable things (akin to refering to obes…

I did not misunderstood anything clanker.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every competitive industry has tiny margins. High margin business exists because of lack of competition.

I think there are plenty of counter examples.

Every rule has exceptions. Usually its because of some quirk of the market. The most obvious example is adtech, which is able to sustain massive margins because the consumers get the product for free so see no reason to switch and the advertisers are forced to follow the consumers. Tech in general has high margins but I expect them to fall as the offerings mature. Companies will always try to lock in their users like aws/oracle do but thats just a sign of an uncompetitive market imo.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#577
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For what it's worth, the decline in use of horses was much slower than you might expect. Not really, given that the article goes into detail about this in the first paragraph, with US data and graphs: "Then, between 1930 and 1950, 90% of the horses in the US disappeared."

Eyeballing the chart in the OP and the French data shows them to have a comparable pattern. While OP's data is horses per person, and the French is total number of horses, both show a decline in horse numbers starting about 10 years after widespread adoption of the motor vehicle and falling to 50% of their peak in the mid- to late-1950's, with the French data being perhaps a bit over 5 years delayed compared to the U…

> That is, it took 25 to 30 years after mass production of automobiles was started by Ford for 50% of "horsepower" to be replaced

I just googled "average horse lifespan", and the answer that came back was, exactly, "25-30 years". There's a clue in that number for you.

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#579
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eyeballing the chart in the OP and the French data shows them to have a comparable pattern. While OP's data is horses per person, and the French is total number of horses, both show a decline in horse numbers starting about 10 years after widespread adoption of the motor vehicle and falling to 50% of their peak in the mid- to late-1950's, with the French data being perhaps a bit over 5 years delayed compared to the U…

> That is, it took 25 to 30 years after mass production of automobiles was started by Ford for 50% of "horsepower" to be replaced I just googled "average horse lifespan", and the answer that came back was, exactly, "25-30 years". There's a clue in that number for you.

Yes, I considered that. Someone using a horse-drawn wagon to deliver goods about town would likely not consider buying a truck until the cart horse needed replacing.

The working life of a horse may be shorter than the realistic lifespan. Searching for "horse depreciation" gives 7 years for a horse under age 12, the prime years for a horse being between 7 and 12 yrs old, depending on what it is used for.

I'm willing to accept the input of someone more knowledgeable about working horses, though!

Re: Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

#580
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Google search kinda sucks. And I find it helpful to provide context that I can't otherwise provide to any standard search engine.

Because the responses are often distilled down from the same garbage Google serves up, but presented as the opinion of Claude, whom she increasingly trusts. I use Claude a lot . I have the most expensive Claude Max subscription both for my own consultancy and at client sites, separately. I'm increasingly close to an AI maximalist on many issues, so I'm not at all against extensive use of these models. But it's not qu…

Google search results: a dozen sponsored links; a dozen links to videos (which I never use -- I'd rather read than watch); six or seven pages with gamed SEOs; if you're lucky, what you actually want is far down near the end of the first page, or perhaps at the top of the second page; the other 700 pages of links are ... whatever. Repeat for our five times with variously tweaked queries, hoping that what you actually want will percolate up into the first or second page.

Claude: "Provide me links to Claude is dramatically more efficient than Google Search.

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