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

People Do Not Yearn for Automation

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#61

Post by camgunz »

mft_ wrote: post #60
camgunz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the face that these are all already highly automated, this isn't what TFA is saying. People aren't angry there are planting machines or whatever; they're angry they're forced to forego anything you can't put in a DB, like their jobs or the texture of their lives. Ironically, you have a huge case of software brain.

> Beyond the face that these are all already highly automated Nonsense. To take first two examples: Power plants may run mostly automatically, but humans decide how/where/when to build new plants, and humans build them. I'll be satisfied when we see 100% automated manufacture, transport, erection, and maintenance of solar farms (or similar) and all associated power storage and transmission. Humans are still hugely in…

100% agree. These are the kinds of things I would love to work on, not like, "never schedule a haircut appointment again!"

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#62

Post by Gooblebrai »

wvenable wrote: post #41
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #13

A poorly thought, as a result, a poorly-written article. Almost everyone wants to automate away the boring parts of their work and life. The author created a strawman, but that is not what AI is ("Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.")

I've been listening to the Verge podcast and I've listened to Nillay refine this article piece by piece for weeks. He had the headline in mind for a long time and I've heard most of the points addressed in this article. It's now interesting to see all that distilled into this single article. It's definitely not poorly thought out article. People want to automate away the boring parts of their work and life but, as th…

> I've listened to Nillay refine this article piece by piece for weeks.

What do you mean?

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#63

Post by fennecbutt »

mft_ wrote: post #20

I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.

Well ultimately I want human beings to not be so tribal and apathetic so that they'd actually care about the things above and learn to compromise.

But that ain't happening anytime soon.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#64

Post by photon_collider »

Gooblebrai wrote: post #62
wvenable wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been listening to the Verge podcast and I've listened to Nillay refine this article piece by piece for weeks. He had the headline in mind for a long time and I've heard most of the points addressed in this article. It's now interesting to see all that distilled into this single article. It's definitely not poorly thought out article. People want to automate away the boring parts of their work and life but, as th…

> I've listened to Nillay refine this article piece by piece for weeks. What do you mean?

Nilay has been discussing these ideas on podcasts hosted by The Verge over the last few weeks. I can tell it's something that's been top of mind for him especially on his podcast series Decoder where he interviews CEOs about their approach to integrating AI in their products and how consumers feel about this.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#65

Post by psadauskas »

fennecbutt wrote: post #63
mft_ wrote: post #20

I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.

Well ultimately I want human beings to not be so tribal and apathetic so that they'd actually care about the things above and learn to compromise. But that ain't happening anytime soon.

Human beings mostly are. People mostly support their neighbors, and selflessly help each other in times of crisis.

The problem is the 5% of us are sociopaths. We let them have all the money and power because they're the only ones that want it. Then we let them use that money and power to convince us that the "REAL" problem is the people with no money or power in the neighboring political region (the border having been drawn by a sociopath).

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#66

Post by asdglkj »

harvey9 wrote: post #25
watwut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of AI use people encounter has zero to do with "automating drudgery" and a lot to do with "producing slop fast and cheap".

I don't think those are always different things. Imagine writing copy for a store catalogue. It pays the bills but probably isn't anyone's dream job.

Vintage Henley

Casual Shirt Manifesto.

Before the Mayflower Compact and the Magna Carta, there was the Casual Shirt Manifesto.

Irish monks kept it safe during the dark ages, along with the rest of written histories deemed critical to continued evolution of mankind.

It was there, in Dublin, in The Stag’s Head at 3 a.m. that I traded my treasured duster for the only remaining copy (still in Latin so please allow me some paraphrasing)…

“Find Henley and wear it. It won’t make you look crisp. Nobody looks crisp in Temple of Dendur. So, look good. When you wear something unstructured, relaxed, something that makes you feel good – you look good.”

Vintage Henley (No. 7129). Classic European military henley style in heavyweight rugby slub jersey. Created with siro yarns for high character and texture. Unique woven bib facing with button closure behind placket (keeps the chill out, looks more interesting than the neckline of your other henleys). Woven cotton twill bib facing and placket. Shell buttons. Flatlock stitching. Reinforced box stitch at placket end. Imported.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#67

Post by Legend2440 »

psadauskas wrote: post #65
fennecbutt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ultimately I want human beings to not be so tribal and apathetic so that they'd actually care about the things above and learn to compromise. But that ain't happening anytime soon.

Human beings mostly are. People mostly support their neighbors, and selflessly help each other in times of crisis. The problem is the 5% of us are sociopaths. We let them have all the money and power because they're the only ones that want it. Then we let them use that money and power to convince us that the "REAL" problem is the people with no money or power in the neighboring political region (the border having bee…

You should read up on the banality of evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

Regular people, not sociopaths, are responsible for most of the evil in the world. There is no tiny minority of 'evildoers' that we could root out and be pure from.

Other bad things happen because of unintended consequences or the collective behavior of many people. Climate change or deforestation are not caused by greed or scheming CEOs; it's a side effect from the actions of billions of people individually trying to better their lives.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#68

Post by psadauskas »

Legend2440 wrote: post #67
psadauskas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human beings mostly are. People mostly support their neighbors, and selflessly help each other in times of crisis. The problem is the 5% of us are sociopaths. We let them have all the money and power because they're the only ones that want it. Then we let them use that money and power to convince us that the "REAL" problem is the people with no money or power in the neighboring political region (the border having bee…

You should read up on the banality of evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem Regular people, not sociopaths, are responsible for most of the evil in the world. There is no tiny minority of 'evildoers' that we could root out and be pure from. Other bad things happen because of unintended consequences or the collective behavior of many people. Climate change or deforestation are not caused by greed o…

I'm familiar with it. The "banality of evil" in that book isn't about regular people, it was about the leadership of the Nazi party willing to go along with the Holocaust for personal power, then trying to get out of responsibility for it by claiming they were "just following orders". Those aren't regular people, those are sociopaths.

Regular people don't all independently decide to "do evil". There is banality in the ones that agree to go along with it, to save themselves from being ostracized or mildly inconvenienced. Do they perpetuate evil? For sure. But are they the villains responsible for it?

The "evildoers" are the tiny minority of sociopaths doing the convincing, because it nets them more personal power, and they don't care who they hurt along the way.

There is a huge amount of injustice in the world, morally speaking I should be out there fighting against it with everything I have. But I'm also the sole breadwinner for my family and I have a mortgage, so I mostly keep my head down and try to survive. Does that make me an evildoer? I sure hope not.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#69

Post by themafia »

camgunz wrote: post #52
themafia wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then use AI to make a dishwasher. Why aim for accounting first? It's easy to get users. Speaking of accounting we should probably just measure profits.

We have dishwashers.

We also have accountants. They're not even hard to come by.

Re: People Do Not Yearn for Automation

#70

Post by simonw »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #13

A poorly thought, as a result, a poorly-written article. Almost everyone wants to automate away the boring parts of their work and life. The author created a strawman, but that is not what AI is ("Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn’t be.")

Your comment here appears to be a perfect illustration of what Nilay calls "software brain" in the article.

(I have a strong case of software brain as he describes it myself.)

Post reply on HN