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Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#81

Post by danaris »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #55
mips_avatar wrote: post #20

Outside of America people aren't really stressed about AI. Like you go to Vietnam or Vienna they mostly just think that they will have a good life with AI. It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. The problem isn't the AI it's that your access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job. American's need to decenter their self worth from their jobs. Like when I quit Mic…

> It's uniquely American to believe that your life will end when AI takes your job. It's probably because it's uniquely American for a sizable chunk of the workforce to have cushy jobs that appear ripe for the picking. AI is not going to immediately replace food service work, manual labor, farming, hospitality, etc. But it might replace quite high-paid software jobs, finance jobs, legal jobs, etc. One, if AI is good…

> It's probably because it's uniquely American for a sizable chunk of the workforce to have cushy jobs that appear ripe for the picking.

What an arrogant statement.

Lots of people outside America have cushy jobs.

What's much more likely to be uniquely American is that if you lose your job there's nothing there to help you.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#82

Post by danaris »

b112 wrote: post #8
alexjray wrote: post #6

Even if they automate all our current jobs uniquely human experiences will always be valuable to us and will always have demand.

For AI, yes. For AGI? Do you care about uniquely ant experience? Bacteria? Why would AGI care? Which now runs the planet?

...Well, why would aliens care, when they take over the planet? Or the Tuatha De Danan come back and decide we've all been very wicked? Because right now, those are just about as likely as AGI taking over.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#85

Post by c22 »

ori_b wrote: post #11
saberience wrote: post #3

ChatGPT, please summarise this long essay by Stephen Wolfram into a couple of pithy sentences: TLDR: AI won’t “end work” so much as endlessly move the goalposts, because the universe itself is too computationally messy to automate completely. The real risk isn’t mass unemployment—it’s that we’ll have infinite machine intelligence and still argue about what’s worth doing.

Why would we argue if the machine is better at knowing what's worth doing? Why wouldn't we ask the machine to decide, and then do it?

Why would we let a machine decide what's worth doing? In what way could its decisions be better? Better for who?

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#86

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

danaris wrote: post #82
b112 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For AI, yes. For AGI? Do you care about uniquely ant experience? Bacteria? Why would AGI care? Which now runs the planet?

...Well, why would aliens care, when they take over the planet? Or the Tuatha De Danan come back and decide we've all been very wicked? Because right now, those are just about as likely as AGI taking over.

Probably more likely. There's at least some evidence that aliens and Tuatha De Danann actually exist.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#87

Post by ori_b »

c22 wrote: post #85
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we argue if the machine is better at knowing what's worth doing? Why wouldn't we ask the machine to decide, and then do it?

Why would we let a machine decide what's worth doing? In what way could its decisions be better? Better for who?

Well, because people are lazy. They already ask it for advice and it gives answers that they like. I already see teams using AI to put together development plans.

If you assume super intelligence, Why wouldn't that expand? Especially when it comes to competitive decisions that have a real cost when they're suboptimal?

The end state is that agents will do almost all of the real decision making, assuming things work out as the AI proponents say.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#88

Post by ori_b »

evilantnie wrote: post #76
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we argue if the machine is better at knowing what's worth doing? Why wouldn't we ask the machine to decide, and then do it?

There are infinite things worth doing, a machines ability to actually know what's worth doing in any given scenario is likely on par with a human's. What's "Worth doing" is subjective, everything comes down to situational context. Machines cannot escape the same ambiguity as humans. If context is constant, then I would assume overlapping performance on a pretty standard distribution between humans and machines. Machi…

For what human leverage of AGI may look like, look at the relationship between a mother and a toddler.

As you said: There's an infinite number of things a toddler may find worth doing, and they offload most of the execution to the mother. The mother doesn't escape the ambiguity, but has more experience and context.

Of course, this all assumes AGI is coming and super intelligent.

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#89

Post by pelasaco »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #62
BirAdam wrote: post #23

If all jobs were taken by AI in a short time span, the companies owning and operating those AIs would go out of business as no one would be able to afford the products made by the AIs. This is an unlikely scenario. Not all things will be made/run by AIs in a short time. It is far more likely that specific jobs in specific industries will be taken by AI, and AI will slowly take the labor market. This will drive down p…

If machines did all the repetitive, labor intensive, productive work, including building more machines, the natural consequence would be a very disruptive rethinking of economics. Post-scarcity is only a disaster if money exists. People would still work, but as a hobby, not as a way of survival. Think of it as if in a few generations, everyone had the motivations of a rich junior, for better or worse. IMO, this is a…

those are just "wishful thinking" or "Noble lies" that we are used to in the post-truth world. Until now, only creative jobs are going away. Music, Arts, Software development.. Construction Work, Garbage Collector etc, are much safer than expected after the "Robot Revolution"

Re: Will AIs take all our jobs and end human history, or not? (2023)

#90

Post by advael »

mips_avatar wrote: post #63
advael wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To "decenter [one's] self worth from [one's] job" would presumably require the fact that one's "access to basic rights is intermediated by a corporate job", no? This is a policy problem that needs to be solved by collective action, not a mindset problem that can be solved by personal growth

No you have to decenter yourself from your pay to achieve it. People accept things like cutting of medicaid because they see their job success as a moral success. There's a lot you can do to start being the good in the world that doesn't require Washington's permission.

I can't parse what distinction you're trying to draw here. When I say "collective action" I mean exactly things like exerting political pressure toward objectives like expanding rather than reducing healthcare coverage provided by governments, such as medicaid. The notion that solutions that involve changing the policy of governments "require[s] Washington's permission" seems to reject the notion that we exert power collectively via democracy, but your proposed example of what someone shouldn't accept suggests that this is an issue of how people fail to see the value in exerting said power, for which the prescription would presumably be doing so? I don't understand what you're driving at or even why you think we're in disagreement
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