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Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

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

#641

Post by jimbokun »

shaka-bear-tree wrote: post #140
twodave wrote: post #126

Horses eat feed. Cars eat gasoline. LLMs eat electricity, and progress may even now be finding its limits in that arena. Besides the fact that just more compute and context size aren’t the right kind of progress. LLMs aren’t coming for your job any more than computer vision is, for a lot of reasons, but I’ll list two more: 1. Even if LLMs made everyone 10x as productive, most companies will still have more work to do…

Funny the original post doesn’t mention AI replacing the coding part of his job. There seems to be a running theme of “okay but what about” in every discussion that involves AI replacing jobs. Meanwhile a little time goes by and “poof” AI is handling it. I want to be be optimistic. But it’s hard to ignore what I’m doing and seeing. As far as I can tell, we haven’t hit serious unemployment yet because of momentum and…

It’s first showing up in high unemployment for graduating college students.

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

#642

Post by jimbokun »

enduser wrote: post #138
twodave wrote: post #126

Horses eat feed. Cars eat gasoline. LLMs eat electricity, and progress may even now be finding its limits in that arena. Besides the fact that just more compute and context size aren’t the right kind of progress. LLMs aren’t coming for your job any more than computer vision is, for a lot of reasons, but I’ll list two more: 1. Even if LLMs made everyone 10x as productive, most companies will still have more work to do…

This is a very insightful take. People forget that there is competition between corporations and nations that drives an arms race. The humans at risk of job displacement are the ones who lack the skill and experience to oversee the robots. But if one company/nation has a workforce that is effectively 1000x, then the next company/nation needs to compete. The companies/countries that retire their humans and try to auto…

Why not just have the robots oversee the robots?

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

#644

Post by DangitBobby »

Herring wrote: post #613
DangitBobby wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't the only thing a job provides. Those are all professions that provide a sense of meaning, so monetary compensation doesn't need to be as high to attract and keep people.

Yeah that’s part of the gaslighting. It takes 2 seconds to realize it’s wrong, but people parrot it like Fox News talking points. Every profession attracts people who enjoy it, eg lawyers tend to enjoy adversarial debate. Lots of countries don’t treat their teachers like shit. It’s a choice.

Yeah I'm sure that felt good to say but it's fucking bullshit. I'm not a software dev because it's my calling, I'm a software dev because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't make any money doing anything else. I only briefly considered teaching as a profession (knowing I'd be functionally poor as a result) despite being quite sure I'd enjoy it (I tutored and instructed all through high school and college) because the desire to make money combined with the current state of schools ultimately won out. Other people who are more passionate about teaching and/or don't have the same skills as me would have gone the other way.

There will always be fucking teachers, pilots, etc, because people WANT to be those things, and it's gonna take more than "nuh uh, Fox News" to dislodge that belief.

That said, I didn't say it isn't a public policy choice, I'm saying the "passion factor" is the reason they are ABLE to offer these jobs at low wages.

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

#645

Post by Eisenstein »

listenallyall wrote: post #555
Eisenstein wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a doctor is spending time on admin tasks instead of revenue-generating procedures, obviously the hospital has accountants and analysts who will notice this, yes? I am going to assume that the Doctors are just working longer hours and/or aren't as attentive as they could be and so care quality declines but revenue doesn't. Overworking existing staff in order to make up for less staff is a tried and true play. > I…

Doesn't really matter the type of doctor, spending all their time on revenue-generating activities would seem to be better than only 75% generating revenue and 25% on "administrative and bureaucratic tasks" that don't generate revenue and which could be accomplished by a much lower-paid employee ("secretaries and assistants"). Perhaps you're correct that the doctors are simply working much longer hours but that's one…

There are reasons why the claim might be right, as noted by others, and there are reasons why the claim may not be right, as noted by you. If you think that your idea of how Doctors operate in a hospital is more compelling than other people's explanations of why the claim is legitimate, then keep believing that.

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

#646

Post by _aavaa_ »

jimbokun wrote: post #636
_aavaa_ wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication is very clearly about “killing” jobs, not killing people.

But what happens when the people without jobs can’t buy food and starve to death?

Political change.

This is a political problem, not a technical one.

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

#647

Post by andai »

DangitBobby wrote: post #604
andai wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it good when number of human go up? Is bad when go down?

That depends on what you think jobs and the economy are for, generally. If you think the purpose of the economy is for the economy to be good then it doesn't matter. If you think it exists to serve humanity then... You really wouldn't need to ask the question, I imagine.

The number of humans doesn't exactly serve humanity though either. Both of those variables are mostly irrelevant to actual human happiness and flourishing. In fact as far as I can tell they are actively harmful, for several different reasons.

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

#648

Post by andai »

maciejzj wrote: post #371
andai wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it good when number of human go up? Is bad when go down?

I would say that it is bad when it has large derivative (positive or negative). However, the problem is not about >number of human beings< but about making agency that existing people have obsolete.

We're making slave morality obsolete. The sense of self dependent entirely on external performance. Reality is making it so that we will have very little value in that domain very soon. Because everything we do now will be done better faster cheaper by the machines.

That's going to be a pretty rough transition. I think the economic aspects will be pretty straightforward by comparison to the psychological upheaval!

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

#649

Post by andai »

tuyiown wrote: post #458
maciejzj wrote: post #353

I may have developed some kind of paranoia reading HN recently, but the AI atmosphere is absolutely nuts to me. Have you ever thought that you would see a chart showing how population of horses was decimated by the mass introduction of efficient engines accompanied by an implication that there is a parallel to human population? And the article is not written in any kind of cautionary humanitarian approach, but rather…

> I may have developed some kind of paranoia reading HN recently My comments being downvoted, pretty rare lately, were about never discussed but legitimate points about AI that I validated IRL. I have no resonance about the way AI is discussed on HN and IRL, to the point that I can't rule out more or less subtle manipulation on the discussions.

I wouldn't read too much into it. Anytime I post something silly and stupid, it becomes the top comment. Anytime I post something important, I get downvotes. That's just normal. I think that's just human nature...

And the votes are pretty random too. Sometimes it'll go from -5 to +10 in the span of a few hours. Just depends on who's online at the time...

And yet don't they pull on our heartstrings? Isn't that funny? A random number generator for the soul...

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

#650

Post by lawn »

jimbokun wrote: post #627
lawn wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. You can have morality without religion. Religion arguably makes it worse too.

At the very least , it takes generations to build up shared traditions and values across a society. If you want an atheistic version of that, you would need to start now and it’s going to take a long time to build.

> If you want an atheistic version of that, you would need to start now and it’s going to take a long time to build.

Why do you think we would have to start from zero? Even in highly religious countries not all traditions and values are tied to religion, and even those that are can be disconnected from their religious roots.

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