[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to deal with the AI-pocalypse as a regul...
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Ask HN: How to deal with the AI-pocalypse as a regular guy?
I feel like there is a huge elephant in the room, and I'm sure I
can't be the only one thinking about this currently. However, in
the web dev community, which I likely follow a bit too closely for
my own good, there is a lot of business as usual. People argue
about all kinds of things like AI had never happened. Sure,
everyone is regularly confronted with the rapid advances made by
Copilot and the likes, but influencers on YouTube and X, as well as
the very companies developing all these novel solutions, keep
telling us: "there will always be a need for good (whatever that
means) developers," "the rising tide lifts all the boats," or "the
ones who adapt will be the ones who survive." And it seems obvious
why each of those are making these claims. I'm just increasingly
having a hard time believing any of that. I think pretty much
everyone who has seen the advances of AI in the past years can
imagine a not-too-distant future (likely less than 10 years) where
literally everything we are doing currently will be obsolete. Even
the best developers will not be able to compete with the literal
infinite compute the large companies throw at training ever more
capable models. Artificial agents likely will be better at any
given knowledge-worker task by the end of the decade and why would
they need instructions, that go beyond a simple list of
necessities? Sure, currently it's still incredibly advantageous to
have a deeper understanding of how complex software systems work to
leverage to full potential of the current generation of AI
assistants, but I'm not at all convinced that this will last
another decade. Powerful agents will be ubiquitous. Infinite
compute outperforms anyone. There might be societal backlash at
some point, as more and more people become obsolete in their jobs,
but democracies are already under a lot of pressure all around the
world and have a tendency to (by design) not be sufficiently
quickly in adapting to technological change. It seems foreshadowing
to me that even the more consolidated democracies from a decade ago
failed spectacularly in regulating Big Tech. The result of which we
live with today in the form of accumulations of power that outmatch
almost all of the democratically elected governments worldwide and
dictate large parts of our daily lives--a concentration of power
the likely will seem laughable compared to what we're headed at.
And even in the case, that a sufficiently powerful societal
movement could emerge in one or many democracies of the world, I'm
almost convinced there will be a sufficiently large counter-
movement claiming --and maybe rightly so-- that "we" need to be
faster than China, because otherwise "they" will be the ones
calling the shots for the centuries to come. So "going into
politics" seems like a waste of time from my perspective at this
point. I'm currently a freelance web developer, who studied Design
and trained and worked a couple of years in a kitchen as a chef.
This is to say, that I adapted quite a bit over the years. However
I haven't started a bunch of startups or worked in a FAANG-company
or anything of the like. Heck, I don't even have a large following
on X or any other social platform. I have two kids and no large
amounts of savings, that could assure me, that I would at least be
able to sustain myself for a couple of years during the AI-
pocalypse. This means I cannot "invest" myself through the next
years by buying stock or real estate or anything of the like. I
find myself in a unique position here, as my diverse background and
experiences have given me a perspective that allows me to see the
potential impact of AI more clearly than large parts of the society
I'm living in. At the same time, I feel like there is absolutely
nothing to be done for someone in my position. How are you dealing
with this?
Author : elschneider
Score : 10 points
Date : 2024-06-10 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| I work in an industry already being shaped by LLMs. Today, it's
| eating away at the bottom of the market, but I assume it will
| eventually eat away at the top where I am positioned too.
|
| I was talking to a friend about the book "psychology of money"
| and the part he shared was related to paying down your mortgage,
| even if it makes more financial sense to keep your money invested
| in the market with a higher expected return than the interest
| rate on your home loan.
|
| Being disrupted by an LLM has created a ton of anxiety for me,
| and this conversion led to investing almost my entire NW into
| Nvidia.
|
| My thinking was, if I am disrupted by AI, Nvidia will at the same
| time likely grow in value.
|
| The amount invested is still only a fraction of my total expected
| earnings over the next 10 - 20 years if AI did not exist, but it
| has calmed me quite a bit about my impending unemployment.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Not to add to your anxiety, but to help you diversify and plan
| ahead: https://x.com/timClicks/status/1799926065642852725
|
| nvidia's total control may soon vanish.
| anon291 wrote:
| > Being disrupted by an LLM has created a ton of anxiety for
| me, and this conversion led to investing almost my entire NW
| into Nvidia.
|
| It is almost never a good idea to convert your entire NW into
| anything.
|
| Nothing is unprecedented.
| jarsin wrote:
| I've noticed those that go all in on a investment end up
| becoming cult members.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > How are you dealing with this?
|
| I help to make a podcast, called cybershow.uk
|
| I hope it entertains, informs and emboldens people feeling
| existential anxiety as you describe.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| At my workplace they recently enabled Microsoft's Copilot which
| is basically OpenAI + RAG.
|
| It's a joke. It is painful to watch how slow it types. About 30%
| of the time it doesn't work at all. I asked it how big a particle
| accelerator would have to be to have 1 PeV protons and it got the
| right equation for the radius of the ring but it told me the ring
| would be like 10^34 meters in radius which is about 10^24 times
| too many because it got the units totally wrong.
|
| It is completely unable to help a person get 5kg of antimatter,
| make a nuclear weapon or a deadly virus that will kill everybody
| because... it can't. People are afraid it will try so it has been
| taught to claim that it won't do these things.
|
| It is also completely unable to put a list of items (say 20 or
| more) in a specified order. For instance it falls down on "list
| isotopes that decay by emitting a positron in order of half-life"
| or "list US states in order of how many characters in its name",
| etc. It can't do it any more than it can help you get 5kg of
| antimatter, but it lies and says that it can, will attempt and
| get it wrong, apologize when you point this out, try again, get
| it wrong again, endlessly. If you like pushing bubbles around
| under a rug, gen A.I. is really for you.
|
| Now yes, LLMs can solve difficult problems in information
| extraction (say relationship extraction) that we were lost at sea
| with 5 years ago. But intelligence, truth and such are all
| difficult philosophical concepts.
|
| People who know better act insulted when I remind them that
| neural networks don't repeal the laws of computer science (e.g.
| Godel, Turing and all that.) They can't make P=NP, they can't
| solve the very serious problems of logic + arithmetic that Godel
| warns about, but they are _very_ good at telling you something
| that will bypass your defenses (I think this comes out of picking
| the "most likely" word because it won't surprise you) and that
| you want to hear (what else is RLHF?)
|
| One real danger of LLMs is that they are better at seduction than
| we are because they don't have a self to manifest itself and get
| in the way. I am very worried about LLMs taking over dating
| sites, being used to run "pig butchering" scams and similar sorts
| of evil.
|
| See
|
| https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden...
|
| to get some idea of how LLMs could appear to be 95% of the way
| there but still be structurally wrong to solve real-life problems
| that involve logic, arithmetic and everything else.
| anon291 wrote:
| > to get some idea of how LLMs could appear to be 95% of the
| way there but still be structurally wrong to solve real-life
| problems that involve logic, arithmetic and everything else.
|
| I'm not sure if your Godel Escher Bach reference is real, but
| Douglass Hofstadter himself has recanted some of his views in
| light of LLMs.
|
| The things you're complaining about are implementation details.
|
| > People who know better act insulted when I remind them that
| neural networks don't repeal the laws of computer science (e.g.
| Godel, Turing and all that.)
|
| There is absolutely no evidence that humans do either. Not that
| I don't believe they do, because I -- due to religious reasons
| -- think we do. But from a purely empirical perspective, I
| don't see how you can make this claim at all.
| VariableStar wrote:
| I am worried too. But not as much for the AI itself, but the
| hoards of brainless humans (including quite a number in positions
| of at least some power) who are being seduced by the idea of AI
| without a hint of critical thought.
| realityfactchex wrote:
| As a regular person, I would suggest that one method is to not
| over-intellectualize it, as much as promoter types may throw
| extreme possible future outcomes at the screens one look at.
|
| Having thought a little about it, some thoughts below. If
| something helps, great. If not, I tried. What do you think of the
| following concepts?:
|
| 1. Big fat trends. There is repeatedly a "hype wave" of this or
| that, in technology. Companies jump on board. Old work gets done
| using the latest fad. There are some improvements and some
| detriments as a result. But overall "progress" marches on. So,
| you have crops of companies doing the same basic busy-work, which
| still requires integrations. It's a cash cow. Companies at the
| top may be vertically integrated, making shovels. Lots of people
| buying and using the shovels to help dig for the gold. The more
| things change, the more things stay the same, though. In some
| way, this might just go on this way. In some ways, big AI appears
| to be just a jobs program to keep people busy, so don't worry too
| much about it.
|
| 2. Limitations. Without being overly specific, the ML systems
| today can do a lot and almost surely will do more tomorrow. But
| there are still huge, obvious (to some) problems with these
| systems, that, currently, and a far as this observer can see into
| the future, will still require a human in the loop (to actually
| be as effective as purported). I guess this gets closer to the
| "politics" that you, the OP, state a valid reason (the
| pointlessness of it) to stay away from (perhaps for good reason).
| But there's something to be said for addressing the limitations
| of machines trained on a bunch of imperfect data. At some point
| it does seem to come down to ideas, and ideas can be inherently
| political. I think we have technological progression, and society
| gets complacent and needs to catch up, in order for people to
| really be able to make use of the tech advances. Some people have
| talked about this at length I think. As a chef turned web guy, I
| think you could pivot into this adjacent/more-human-centric area
| if eventually needed.
|
| To elaborate on (2) broadly, consider what ML branded as AI is
| supposedly able to unlock. Then look at the websites of 5 or 6
| top AI or AI-tangential companies, including maybe their blogs or
| hiring pages. And see JUST HOW LACKING in true intelligence those
| companies really are. (If you can't see it, that's okay.) The
| point is that the people that develop the AI really are not
| utilizing very fully AT ALL the larger field or true
| capabilities/applications of what they sell. If we're going to be
| all lofty about it, we are obligated to explorer here, too, IMO.
| I don't think it's that such companies and their employees are
| too close to the problem. I think it is that the problem space is
| that large and difficult. This is not meant to be a detractor so
| much as it shows how much opportunity is out there, and how much
| careful, sustained effort meaningful FORWARD progress will take.
|
| 3. Just stay focused on what is actually real and in front of
| you. What do the customers want to pay for? Offer that. In tech
| this seems to often require picking up certain skills along the
| way I guess, although often old things remain applicable, too. I
| think that will keep going for a long time.
|
| 4. There could theoretically be a burgeoning arts and
| architecture scene if we don't have to manufacture widgets
| ourselves so much. I guess we haven't really seen this play out a
| whole lot, maybe some (not talking NFTs). What is thought to
| throw this off track would be an asymmetry in art-funders (and
| art-interested) and art-makers. I don't have the answer here,
| maybe UBI is part of it. But I think this is an area that have
| businesses invent creative solutions. Because we shouldn't defund
| music class to push AI and enviro-tech; there has to be a better
| way, what is it?
| reify wrote:
| I have tried a variety of AI tools to simply Transcribe or
| Translate French to English from audio and video tracks.
|
| One of my favourite French TV series with 35 episodes and there
| are no English subtitles for it.
|
| With all the hype around AI I thought it would be a simple task
| using Open whisper, Open whisper faster and Vibe.
|
| I Downloaded and tried all and every model, still no success.
|
| I have extracted the audio with ffmpeg in different formats and
| changed the video formats but nothing helps
|
| Absolutely useless
| notaharvardmba wrote:
| It's a classic bubble. People are overpaying for chips (tulips)
| because other people are overpaying for chips. The big tech
| giants see the entertainment value in LLM and don't want to be
| caught pants down. These investments are mostly being made on
| blind faith, not on the basis that any real value will come from
| it. There isn't going to be an AI-pocalypse, but we are going to
| eliminate a lot of copy and paste cookie cutter shit even faster
| than before. Marketing and advertising feels like an area where
| that might happen. But the true creative marketing people, who
| aren't just the same person at every car dealership or
| supermarket but truely creative innovators will not be affected.
| Apply the same logic throughout the marketplace. It's all
| worthless shit work anyway. Big tech is uniquely positioned to
| take advantage of this and be the provider of choice, but it'll
| be a race to the bottom in terms of pricing. It'll end up being a
| waste of money and the shareholders will punish the ones who go
| too far. Apple had their chance today and all we see is UX and
| workflow stuff, not some new "intelligence". Shit, half their
| play is just making buttons to send shit to ChatGPT. This shit is
| desperation and grasping at straws to make good on our egos, to
| try to make something out of nothing because we fell for
| something so many humans have falled for: if someone (or thing)
| is well spoken, they are trustworthy and valuable. Great
| religious orators have long used this to control the masses. Not
| to invoke Godwin's Law, but look at Hitler. This mathematical
| parlor trick IS the level up. Computers can generate
| probablisticly realistic words, images and audio. That's it. It's
| already happened. The data wall is looming and we're all going to
| go back to laboriously training ML like we have for 20+ years to
| get little incremental improvements. It's a bubble. You're fine.
|
| See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
| SillyUsername wrote:
| Don't worry and live for the now.
|
| It's not just you in the boat and whatever happens you can follow
| the crowd when/if it happens.
|
| I personally believe it'll just be a new set of tools to reskill
| in, much like a calculator to an abacus.
|
| Sure it would help to know how to build that calculator, but just
| changing the batteries and typing sums will be fine, and you can
| continue doing the theoretical physics equations the calculator
| helps with but cannot do itself.
| rchaud wrote:
| Working freelance in web development is the opposite of job
| security, so I can understand why you feel concern about the
| impact of AI on your industry.
|
| However, reading this, I do not get the impression that your
| background gives any kind of unique insight others have missed,
| more that you've just read a lot of opinions online.
|
| Online isn't reality. Online, people don't talk about corporate
| politics and inertia and the million tiny factors that determine
| which jobs get "replaced" and which don't. I use quotation marks
| because most people mid-career or higher can see changes coming
| and either shift out into another role or go into management or
| solution architect roles where there is a need for human
| oversight (and tend to be roles that offer more money).
|
| AI is an existential risk only if you choose to do the same job
| forever.
| jarsin wrote:
| Can''t you just replace every mention of AI with outsourcing in
| your post?
|
| Literally everyone was freaking out in the 2000's about their job
| because of India.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Build relationships.. demand for certain jobs waxes and wanes,
| but people will always be around.
|
| The more connections you make and the more people respect you,
| the more likely you are to get a job when you need one.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The cool thing about AI is that its all or nothing.
|
| What we have right now is not really AI, its not really
| intelligence in the sense that the models can't reason. All the
| models out there are forward pass (and yes, even recurrent ones,
| which can essentially be unrolled). There is nothing on the
| horizon that indicates that we are even close to getting
| something that can reason, or are headed in the right direction.
|
| The biggest benefit of current ML stuff is translation.
| Everything that ML does now is translation, and it will apply to
| dev more and more over time.
|
| For example, Python and Node dominate the programming world
| because its way easier to translate ideas into code through
| abstraction layers. In the same way, the future is going to still
| require developers, but these developers are going to be coding
| in something that looks like python. You will be able to type
| plain english instructions on command line intermingled with
| traditional code, which will save you a lot of time because you
| won't have to learn specific syntax of some framework. The
| language will then be translated to some IR (most likely JS
| bytecode), which will then be translated by a specially trained
| model into efficient machine language instructions for a specific
| architecture.
|
| There will probably be even a come back for FPGAs, because you
| there will probably be models that optimize architecture for your
| code, and there would be some use cases where processing at
| slower speed but in parallel with specific "virtualized hardware"
| configuration for optimality is actually faster.
|
| And all that will mean is that dev will move faster. You will be
| able to write code faster, test the code and simulate production
| usage easier, and generally make things work in way shorter time
| with way less people. The thing thats preventing a lot of stuff
| being made now isn't really lack of ideas, its lack of funding.
|
| Now, as for actual AI, i.e intelligence that can reason, if we
| somehow manage to build it, the cool thing about it is that you
| will be able to simply ask it a question "Im a regular guy, what
| is the best way for me to optimize my life that guarantees my
| current standard of living?", and it will answer this for you.
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