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AI is different

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Re: AI is different

#591

Post by monknomo »

fergonco wrote: post #320
jrvarela56 wrote: post #278

This whole ‘what are we going to do’ I think is way out of proportion even if we do end up with agi. Let’s say whatever the machines do better than humans, gets done by machines. Suddenly the bottleneck is going to shift to those things where humans are better. We’ll do that and the machines will try to replace that labor too. And then again, and again. Throughout this process society becomes wealthier, TVs get cheap…

Rough numbers look good. But the hyper specialized geek that has 4 kids and has to pay back a credit for his house (that he bought according to his high salary) will have a hard time doing some gardening, let's say. And there are quite a few of those geeks. I don't know if we'll have enough gardens (owned by non geeks!) It's like cards are switched: those having the upper socioeconomic class will get thrown to the bo…

building on what you're saying, it isn't as though we are paying physical labor well, and adding more people to the pool isn't going to make the pay better.

About the most optimistic is that demand for goods and services will decrease because something like 80% of consumer spending is coming from folks that earn over $200k, and those are the folks ai is targeting. Who pays for the ai after this is still a mystery to me

Re: AI is different

#592

Post by exasperaited »

DrewADesign wrote: post #229
victorbjorklund wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. Just because someone understands how a NN works does not mean they understand the impact it has on the economy, society, etc. They could of course be right. But they don't have any more insight than any other average smart person does.

The “I think I understand a field because I think I understand the software for that field,” thing is a perennial problem in the tech world.

Indeed it is -- it's perhaps the central way developers offend their customers, let alone misunderstand them.

One problem is it is met from the other side by customers who think they understand software but don't actually have the training to visualise the consequences of design choices in real life.

Good software does require cross-domain knowledge that goes beyond "what existing apps in the market do".

I have in the last few years implemented a bit of software where a requirement had been set by a previous failed contractor and I had to say, look, I appreciate this requirement is written down and signed off, but my mother worked in your field for decades, I know what kind of workload she had, what made it exhausting, and I absolutely know that she would have been so freaking furious at the busywork this implementation will create: it should never have got this far.

So I had to step outside the specification, write the better functionality to prove my point, and I don't think realistically I was ever compensated for it, except metaphysically: fewer people out there are viscerally imagining inflicting harm on me as a psychological release.

Re: AI is different

#593

Post by dingnuts »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #559
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…

Chess is objective, stories and style are subjective. Humans crave novelty, fresh voices, connection and layers of meaning. It's possible that the connection can be forged and it can get smart enough to bake layers of meaning in there, but AI will never be good at bringing novelty or a fresh voice just by its very nature.

LLMs are frozen in time and do not have experiences so there's nothing to relate to.

I'd pay extra for writing with some kind of "no AI used" certification, especially for art or information

Re: AI is different

#594

Post by Tryk »

boulos wrote: post #350
tfourb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you live in a place with perfect weather year round? I don’t and I haven’t seen a robo taxi my entire life. I do have access to a Tesla though and it’s current self-driving capabilities are not even close to anything I would call „autonomous“ und real world conditions (including weather). Maybe the tech will at some point be good enough. At the current rate of improvement this will still take decades at least…

Our next vehicle sensor suite will be able to handle winter weather ( https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo... ).

Blog post is almost exactly 1 year old...

Re: AI is different

#595

Post by m4nu3l »

>We are not there, yet, but if AI could replace a sizable amount of workers, the economic system will be put to a very hard test. Moreover, companies could be less willing to pay for services that their internal AIs can handle or build from scratch. Nor is it possible to imagine a system where a few mega companies are the only providers of intelligence: either AI will be eventually a commodity, or the governments would do something, in such an odd economic setup (a setup where a single industry completely dominates all the others).

I think the scenario where companies that own AI systems don't get benefits from employing people, so people are poor and can't afford anything, is paradoxical, and as such, it can't happen.

Let's assume the worst case: Some small percentage of people own AIs, and the others have no ownership at all of AI systems.

Now, given that human work has no value to those owning AIs, those humans not owning AIs won't have anything to trade in exchange for AI services. Trade between these two groups would eventually stop.

You'll have some sort of two-tier economy where the people owning AIs will self-produce (or trade between them) goods and services. However, nothing prevents the group of people without AIs from producing and trading goods and services between them without the use of AIs. The second group wouldn't be poorer than it is today; just the ones with AI systems will be much richer.

This worst-case scenario is also unlikely to happen or last long (the second group will eventually develop its own AIs or already have access to some AIs, like open models).

If models got exponentially better with time, then that could be a problem, because at some point, someone would control the smartest model (by a large factor) and could use it with malicious intent or maybe lose control of it.

But it seems to me that what I thought time ago would happen has actually started happening. In the long term, models won't improve exponentially with time, but sublinearly (due to physical constraints). In which case, the relative difference between them would reduce over time.

Re: AI is different

#596

Post by bbqfog »

mxwsn wrote: post #24

AI with ability but without responsibility is not enough for dramatic socioeconomic change, I think. For now, the critical unique power of human workers is that you can hold them responsible for things. edit: ability without accountability is the catchier motto :)

That's just a side effect of toxic work environments. If AI can create value, someone will use it to create value. If companies won't use AI because they can't blame it when their boss yells at them, then they also won't capture that value.

Re: AI is different

#597

Post by pfdietz »

Barrin92 wrote: post #504
jhbadger wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can already see this with YouTube: AI-generated videos are a mild amusement, not a replacement for video creators, because made by AI is becoming a negative label in a world where the presence of AI video is widely known. But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good. Consider the history of CGI. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was common to complain about how the move away from practical s…

>But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good. It isn't good, but that's not the reason. There's a paper about 10 years ago where people used some computer system to generate Bach-like music that even Bach experts couldn't reliably tell apart, but nobody listens to bot music. (or nobody except for engine programmers watches computer chess, despite superiority. Chess is thriving more now includin…

Authenticity and sincerity are very important. When you can fake those, you've got it made.

Re: AI is different

#598

Post by bbqfog »

leeoniya wrote: post #135
mxwsn wrote: post #24

AI with ability but without responsibility is not enough for dramatic socioeconomic change, I think. For now, the critical unique power of human workers is that you can hold them responsible for things. edit: ability without accountability is the catchier motto :)

i've also made this argument. would you ever trust safety-critical or money-moving software that was fully written by AI without any professional human (or several) to audit it? the answer today is, "obviously not". i dont know if this will ever change, tbh.

I would. If something has proven results, it won't matter to me if a human is in the loop or not. Waymo has worked great for me for instance.

Re: AI is different

#599

Post by SimianLogic »

A lot of anxious words to say “AI is disruptive,” which is hardly a novel thought.

A more interesting piece would be built around: “AI is disruptive. Here’s what I’m personally doing about it.”

Re: AI is different

#600

Post by iwontberude »

m4nu3l wrote: post #595

>We are not there, yet, but if AI could replace a sizable amount of workers, the economic system will be put to a very hard test. Moreover, companies could be less willing to pay for services that their internal AIs can handle or build from scratch. Nor is it possible to imagine a system where a few mega companies are the only providers of intelligence: either AI will be eventually a commodity, or the governments wou…

I think the bigger relief is that I know humans won’t put up with a two tiered system of haves and have nots forever and eventually we will get wealth redistribution. Government is the ultimate source of all wealth and organization, corporations are built on top of it and thus are subservient.
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