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AI is different

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Re: AI is different

#781

Post by jplusequalt »

xpe wrote: post #174
forgetfulness wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because otherwise you'd have to convince AI-owners and select professionals to let go of their wealth to give a comfortable and fulfilling life of leisure to the unemployed. More likely it will look like the current welfare schemes of many countries, now add mass boredom leading to unrest. Sam Altman has expressed a preference for paying people in vouchers for using his chatbots to kill time: https://basicincomecanad…

> Because otherwise you'd have to convince AI-owners and select professionals to let go of their wealth to give a comfortable and fulfilling life of leisure to the unemployed. Not necessarily. Such forces could be outvoted or out maneuvered. > More likely it will look like the current welfare schemes of many countries.., Maybe, maybe not. It might take the form of UBI or some other form that we haven’t seen in practi…

>So many assumptions.

Then a few words later ...

>Deep Utopia (Bostrom) is an excellent read that extensively discusses various options if things go well

Oh, the irony

Re: AI is different

#782

Post by saltcured »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #762
kelseyfrog wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's three important beliefs at play in the A(G)I story: 1. When(if) AGI will arrive. It's likely going to be smeared out over a couple months to years, but relative to everything else, it's a historical blip. This really is the most contention belief with the most variability. It is currently predicted to be 8 years[1]. 2. What percentage of jobs will be replaceable with AGI? Current estimates between 80-95% of p…

Your only reference [1] is to a page where anybody in the world can join and vote. It literally means absolutely nothing. For [2] you have no reference whatsoever. How does AI replace a nurse, a vet, a teacher, a construction worker?

For the AI believer who has an axiom that AGI is around the corner to take over knowledge work, isn't that just "a small matter of robotics" to either tele-operate a physical avatar or deploy a miniaturized AI in an autonomous chassis?

I'm afraid it's really a matter of faith, in either direction, to predict whether an AI can take over the autonomous decision making and robotic systems can take over physical actions which are currently delegated to human professions. And, I think many robotic control problems are inherently solved if we have sufficient AI advancement.

Re: AI is different

#783

Post by l33tbro »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #777
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your only reference [1] is to a page where anybody in the world can join and vote. It literally means absolutely nothing. For [2] you have no reference whatsoever. How does AI replace a nurse, a vet, a teacher, a construction worker?

What are you talking about? This is common knowledge. Median forecasts indicated a 50% probability of AI systems being capable of automating 90% of current human tasks in 25 years and 99% of current human tasks in 50 years[1] The scope of work replaceable by embodied AGI and the speed of AGI saturation of vastly under estimated. The bottle necks are production of a replacement workforce, not retraining human laborers…

Work is central to identity. It may seem like it is merely toil. You may even have a meaningless corporate job or be indentured. But work is the primary social mechanism that distributes status amongst communities.

A world of 99 percent of jobs being done by AGI (which there remains no convincing grounds for how this tech would ever be achieved) feels ungrounded in the reality of human experience. Dignity, rank, purpose etc are irreducible properties of a functional society, which work currently enables.

It's far more likely that we'll hit some kind of machine intelligence threshold before we see a massive social pushback. This may even be sooner than we think.

Re: AI is different

#784

Post by kelseyfrog »

l33tbro wrote: post #783
kelseyfrog wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? This is common knowledge. Median forecasts indicated a 50% probability of AI systems being capable of automating 90% of current human tasks in 25 years and 99% of current human tasks in 50 years[1] The scope of work replaceable by embodied AGI and the speed of AGI saturation of vastly under estimated. The bottle necks are production of a replacement workforce, not retraining human laborers…

Work is central to identity. It may seem like it is merely toil. You may even have a meaningless corporate job or be indentured. But work is the primary social mechanism that distributes status amongst communities. A world of 99 percent of jobs being done by AGI (which there remains no convincing grounds for how this tech would ever be achieved) feels ungrounded in the reality of human experience. Dignity, rank, purp…

Pretend I'm a farmer in 1850 and I have a belief that the current proportion of jobs in agriculture - 55% of jobs in 1850 would drop to 1.2% in 2022 due to automation and technological advances.

Why would hearing "work is central to identity," and "work is the primary social mechanism that distributes status amongst communities," change my mind?

Re: AI is different

#785

Post by j45 »

zarzavat wrote: post #706
j45 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today’s models are tuned to output the average quality of their corpus. This could change with varying results. What is average quality? For some it’s a massive upgrade. For others it’s a step down. For the experienced it’s seeing through it.

You're absolutely right, but AIs still have their little quirks that set them apart. Every model has a faint personality, but since the personality gets "mass produced" any personality or writing style makes it easier to detect it as AI rather than harder. e.g. em dashes, etc. But reducing personality doesn't help either because then the writing becomes insipid — slop. Human writing has more variance, but it's not "t…

It’s not a personality. There is no concept of replicating a person, personality or behaviours because the software is not the simulation of a living being.

It is a query/input and response format. Which can be modeled to simulate a conversation.

It can be a search engine that responds on the inputs provided, plus the system, account, project, user prompts (as constraints/filters) before the current turn being input.

The result can sure look like magic.

It’s still a statistically present response format based on the average of its training corpus.

Take that average and then add a user to it with their varying range and then the beauty varies.

LLMs can have many ways to explain the same thing more than 1 can be valid sometimes; other times not.

Re: AI is different

#786

Post by l33tbro »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #784
l33tbro wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is central to identity. It may seem like it is merely toil. You may even have a meaningless corporate job or be indentured. But work is the primary social mechanism that distributes status amongst communities. A world of 99 percent of jobs being done by AGI (which there remains no convincing grounds for how this tech would ever be achieved) feels ungrounded in the reality of human experience. Dignity, rank, purp…

Pretend I'm a farmer in 1850 and I have a belief that the current proportion of jobs in agriculture - 55% of jobs in 1850 would drop to 1.2% in 2022 due to automation and technological advances. Why would hearing "work is central to identity," and "work is the primary social mechanism that distributes status amongst communities," change my mind?

People migrated from the farms to the city. They didn't stop working.

Re: AI is different

#787

Post by sylos »

LtWorf wrote: post #525
boulos wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Will it be able to function on super slippery roads while volcanic ash is falling down? Or ice? I do drive in these conditions.

Can people handle that? people have millions of accidents in perfect weather and driving conditions. I think the reason most people don't like at drivers now is because it's easy to assign blame to the driver. Ai doesn't have that easy out. Suddenly we're faced with the cold truth: reality is difficult and sometimes shit happens and someone gets the short end of the stick.

Re: AI is different

#788

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

dsign wrote: post #334
mycentstoo wrote: post #266

I am just not having this experience of AI being terribly useful. I don’t program as much in my role but I’ve found it’s a giant time sink. I recognize that many people are finding it incredibly helpful but when I get deeper into a particular issue or topic, it falls very flat.

The argument goes like this: - Today, AI is not incredibly useful and we are not 100% sure that it will improve forever, specially in a way that makes economic sense, but - Investors are pouring lots of money into it. One should not assume that those investors are not making their due diligence. They are. The figures they have obtained from experts mean that AI is expected to continue improving in the short and mediu…

> "One should not assume that those investors are not making their due diligence."

The sort of investors who got burned by the 2008 mortgage CDO collapse or the 2000s dotcom bust?

Re: AI is different

#789

Post by mekael »

After reading a good chunk of the comments, I got the distinct impression that people don't realize we could just not do the whole "let's make a dystopian hellscape" project and just turn all of it off. By that I mean, outlaw AI, destroy the data centers, have severe consequences for it's use by corporations as a way to reduce headcount, I'm talking executives get to spend the rest of their lives in solitary confinement, and instead invest all of this capital in making a better world (solving homelessness, the last mile problem of food distribution, the ever present and ongoing climate catastrophe). We, as humans, can make a choice and make it stick through force of actions.

Or am I just too idealistic ?

Sidenote, I never quite understand why the rich think their bunkers are going to save them from the crisis they caused. Do they fail to realize that there's more of us than them, or do they really believe they can fashion themselves as warlords?

Re: AI is different

#790

Post by lotsoweiners »

7952 wrote: post #427
badestrand wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people could be replaced by a proper CMS or a Excel sheet right now already? Probably dozens of millions, and yet they are at their desks working away. It's easy to sit in a café and ponder about how all jobs will be gone soon but in practice people aren't as easily replacable.

For many businesses the situation is that technology has dramatically underperformed in doing the most basic tasks. Millions of people are working around things like defective ERP systems. A modest improvement in productivity in building basic apps could push us past a threshold. It makes it possible for millions more people to construct crazy excel formulas. It makes it possible to add a UI to a python script where…

> If we could make line of business crud apps work reliably, have usable document/email search, and have functional ERP that would dissolve millions of jobs.

Why would that be your goal? I’d prefer millions of people have gainful employment instead of some shit tech company having more money.

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