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Slop Terrifies Me

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Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#71

Post by zozbot234 »

beardyw wrote: post #10

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects. A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately…

> very many will struggle without work or prospects.

People always say this with zero evidence. What are some real examples of real people losing their job today because of LLMs. Apart from copywriters (i.e. the original human slop creators) having to rebrand as copyeditors because the first draft of their work now comes from a language model.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#72

Post by bonoboTP »

Commercial ventures already had to care exactly to the extent that they are financially motivated by competition forces and by regulation.

In my experience coding agents are actually better at doing the final polish and plugging in gaps that a developer under time pressure to ship would skip.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#73

Post by cr125rider »

direwolf20 wrote: post #57
lm2s wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s why they are on the race to building the very advanced robots. To prevent the violence towards them.

Gaza is kept as a testing ground for domestic spying and domestic military technology intended to be used on other groups. Otherwise they'd have destroyed it by now. Stuff like Palantir is always tested in Gaza first.

> Otherwise they'd have destroyed it by now.

About that…

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#74

Post by alehlopeh »

danaris wrote: post #56
Havoc wrote: post #30

The slop is sad but a mild irritation at most. It's the societal level impact of recent advances that I'd call "terrifying". There is a non-zero chance we end up with a "useless" class that can't compete against AI & machines - like at all, on any metric. And there doesn't seem to be much of a game plan for dealing with that without social fabric tearing

Some of us have a perfectly good game plan for that. It's called Universal Basic Income. It's just that many powerful people have a vested interest in keeping the rest of us poor, miserable, and desperate, and so do everything they can to fight the idea that anything can ever be done to improve the lot of the poor without destroying the economy. Despite ample empirical evidence to the contrary.

Well that sounds less like a plan and more like a pipe dream.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#75

Post by ReptileMan »

Meh. Slop is not danger. Because in software lines of code quantity does not have quality on its own. Or if it has it is not a good quality. And bad software costs money. The problem with temu for the west is not that the things sold there are bad. The real problem rose in the last 2-3 years when they become good.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#76

Post by chii »

satisfice wrote: post #26
lm2s wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s why they are on the race to building the very advanced robots. To prevent the violence towards them.

That is exactly the motivation. The problem with being a billionaire is you still have to associate with poor people. But imagine a world where your wealth completely insulates you from the resentful poor.

Watch, or read "altered carbon" for a taste of that future.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#77

Post by fragmede »

danaris wrote: post #56
Havoc wrote: post #30

The slop is sad but a mild irritation at most. It's the societal level impact of recent advances that I'd call "terrifying". There is a non-zero chance we end up with a "useless" class that can't compete against AI & machines - like at all, on any metric. And there doesn't seem to be much of a game plan for dealing with that without social fabric tearing

Some of us have a perfectly good game plan for that. It's called Universal Basic Income. It's just that many powerful people have a vested interest in keeping the rest of us poor, miserable, and desperate, and so do everything they can to fight the idea that anything can ever be done to improve the lot of the poor without destroying the economy. Despite ample empirical evidence to the contrary.

We can (and should) provide for those among us who aren't able to provide for themselves, without also firing everyone in the welfare department. UBI is shit. People need to do something in order to recieve money, even if the something is begging on the side of the freeway or going into the welfare office to claim benefits. Magic money from the sky is not the answer.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#78

Post by bonoboTP »

frankie_t wrote: post #48

If slop doesn't get better, it would mean that at least I get to keep my job. In the areas where the remaining 10% don't matter, maybe I won't. I'm struggling to come up with an example of such software outside of one-off scripts and some home automation though. The job is going to be much less fun, yes, but I won't have to learn from scratch and compete with young people in a different area (and which I will enjoy l…

I find working with LLMs much more fun and frictionless comprated to the drudgery of boring glue code or tracking down nongeneralizable version-specific workarounds in github issues etc. Coding LLMs let you focus on the domain of you actual problem instead of the low level stumbling blocks that just create annoyance without real learning.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#79

Post by baxtr »

beardyw wrote: post #10

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects. A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately…

I definitely recommend to watch this video with Reinhold Niebuhr.

Sure some things deteriorate, but many things improve. Talking about a net decline (or net gain) is very difficult.

Every age has its own set of problems that need to be solved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93EJJVAinRc

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#80

Post by graemep »

kubb wrote: post #19
beardyw wrote: post #10

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects. A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately…

I wonder, will the rich start hiring elaborate casts of servants including butlers, footmen, lady's maids, and so on, since they'll be the only ones with the income?

They already do and always have. They never stopped hiring butlers (who are pretty well paid BTW), chefs, chauffeurs, maids, gardeners, nannies.....

The terminology may have changed a bit, but they still employ people to do stuff for them

One big difference is while professional class affluent people will hire cleaners or gardeners or nannies for a certain number or hours they cannot (at least in rich countries) hire them as full time live in employees.

There are some things that are increasing. For example employing full time tutors to teach their kids - as rich people used to often do (say a 100 years ago). So they get one to one attention while other people kids are in classes with many kids, and the poor have their kids in classes with a large number of kids. Interesting the government here in the UK is increasingly hostile to ordinary people educating their kids outside school which is the nearest we can get to what the rich do (again, hiring tutors by the hour, and self-supply within the household).

They also hire people to manage their wealth. I do not know enough about the history to be sure, but this seems to be also to be a return to historical norms after an egalitarian anomaly. A lot of wealth is looked after by full time employees of "family offices" - and the impression I get from people in investment management and high end property is that this has increased a lot in the last few decades. Incidentally, one of the questions around Epstein is why so many rich people let him take over some of the work that you would expect their family offices to handle.

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