[HN Gopher] Replacement.ai
___________________________________________________________________
Replacement.ai
Author : wh313
Score : 885 points
Date : 2025-10-19 13:47 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (replacement.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (replacement.ai)
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| satire i suppose
| ionwake wrote:
| Ironically LLM created meta satire
| amelius wrote:
| Someone has to tell the story that BigTech wants to keep hidden
| from us until it is too late for us to do anything about it.
| sorokod wrote:
| Which part?
| lijok wrote:
| Only a bit https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/artisan-ai-stop-
| hiring-huma...
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| This isn't real! This is a phantom of the attention economy!
| AI SDR companies are all very similar and the product doesn't
| really work so there's too much capital in a small market.
| The winning strategy is to quickly grab as many eyeballs as
| possible. 11x got dunked because of revenue manipulation in
| pursuit of more eyeballs, and this is also shenanigans in
| pursuit of more eyeballs. People are afraid AI will replace
| all jobs so saying you're replacing all jobs with AI evokes
| the consensus fear response and makes people emotionally
| engage with your marketing. The meme exists because people
| are afraid of the meme.
| brap wrote:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/The_Unre...
| portaouflop wrote:
| Everything is exactly the same!!11
| lijok wrote:
| The difference being that we knew how to manage it, so it was
| actual hysteria borne from ignorance
| henry2023 wrote:
| Another difference is that their proponents were not hyping
| their valuations in the hypothetical of mass unemployment.
| Topfi wrote:
| Reminds me of an ARG [0] I made in the early days of LLM hype.
| Honestly had three mails asking whether they could invest. Likely
| scams if we are honest, just some automated crawlers, but found
| it funny nonetheless.
|
| [0] https://ethical-ai.eu
| jonstewart wrote:
| Humbert as the product name for families is inspired. 10/10.
| sincerely wrote:
| I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a machine
| to do something that people used to do" basically the entire
| history of of technology? It feels like somehow we should have
| figured out how to cope with the "but what about the old jobs"
| problem
| poszlem wrote:
| Not really, because this time it's not machine to do something
| that people used to do, but a machine to do anything and
| everything that people used to do.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Enjoy eating a bowl of pasta ?
| aabhay wrote:
| History is full of technology doing things that go beyond human
| possibility as well. Think of microscopes, guns, space
| shuttles. There has been technology that explicitly replaces
| human labor but that is not at all the whole story.
| darthoctopus wrote:
| that _is_ the point of Luddism! the original Luddite movement
| was not ipso facto opposed to progress, but rather to the
| societal harm caused by society-scale economic obsolescence.
| the entire history of technology is _also_ powerful business
| interests smearing this movement as being intrinsically anti-
| progress, rather than directly addressing these concerns...
| scotty79 wrote:
| Somehow modern Luddite messaging doesn't communicate that
| clearly either. Instead of "where's my fair share of AI
| benefits?" we hear "AI is evil, pls don't replace us".
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >pls don't replace us
|
| Yeah, _how dare they_ not want to lose their careers.
|
| Losing a bunch of jobs in a short period is terrible.
| Losing a bunch of _careers_ in a short period is a
| catastrophe.
|
| Also, this is dishonest - nobody is confused about _why_
| people don 't like AI replacing/reducing some jobs and
| forms of art, no matter what words they use to describe
| their feelings (or how you choose to paraphrase those
| words).
| Filligree wrote:
| That's false. It's very easy to become confused about the
| point, when anti-AI folks in general don't spend their
| time attacking companies...
|
| What I typically see is:
|
| - Open source programmers attacking other open source
| programmers, for any of half a dozen reasons. They rarely
| sound entirely honest.
|
| - Artists attacking hobbyists who like to generate a
| couple pictures for memes, because it's cool, or to
| illustrate stories. None of the hobbyists would have
| commissioned an artist for this purpose, even if AI
| didn't exist.
|
| - Worries about potential human extinction. That's the
| one category I sympathise with.
|
| Speaking for myself, I spent years discussing the
| potential economic drawbacks for once AI became useful.
| People generally ignored me.
|
| The moment it started happening, they instead started
| attacking me for having the temerity to use it myself.
|
| Meanwhile I've been instructed I need to start using AI
| at work. Unspoken: Or be fired. And, fair play: Our
| workload is only increasing, and I happen to know how to
| get value from the tools... because I spent years playing
| with them, since well before they had any.
|
| My colleagues who are anti-AI, I suspect, won't do so
| well.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I've seen enough anecdotes about business productivity
| lately that LLMs is not the solution to their workload
| struggles. You can't lay off people and expect the
| remainder + LLMs to replace them.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Human extinction is not a potential it's just a matter of
| time. The conditions for human life on this planet have
| already been eroded enough that there is no turning back.
| The human race is sleepwalking into nothingness - it's
| fine we had a good run and had some great times in
| between.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| They'll replace you too you know
| serf wrote:
| >Losing a bunch of jobs in a short period is terrible.
| Losing a bunch of careers in a short period is a
| catastrophe.
|
| 'careers' is so ambiguous as to be useless as a metric.
|
| what kind of careers? scamming call centers? heavy
| petrochem production? drug smuggling? cigarette
| marketing?
|
| There are _plenty_ of career paths that the world would
| be better off without, let 's be clear about that.
| beeflet wrote:
| >what kind of careers? scamming call centers? heavy
| petrochem production? drug smuggling? cigarette
| marketing?
|
| All careers. All information work, and all physical work.
|
| Yes. It is better for someone to be a criminal than to be
| unemployed. They will at least have some minimal amount
| of leverage and power to destroy the system which creates
| them.
|
| A human soldier or drug dealer or something at least has
| the ability to consider whether what they are doing is
| wrong. A robot will be totally obedient and efficient at
| doing whatever job it's supposed to.
|
| I disagree totally. There are no career paths which would
| be better off automated. Even if you disagree with what
| the jobs do, automation would just make them more
| efficient.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I would love to lose my job if I got 50% of the value it
| brings the corp that replaced me.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Yes. The workers don't want to be replaced by machines.
| This is Luddism.
| orourke wrote:
| I think the concern in this case is that, unlike before where
| machines were built for other people to use, we're now
| building machines that may be able to use themselves.
| fragmede wrote:
| The concern is the same, people want to be taken care of by
| society, even if they don't have a job, for whatever
| reason.
| beeflet wrote:
| In the old times, this was a "want" because the only
| people without work were those unqualified or unable to
| work. In the new times, it will be a "need" because
| everyone will be unemployed, and no one will be able to
| work competitively.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Not that much of a difference tbh. If one traditional
| machine allows one worker to do the work of twenty in half
| the time, that's still a big net loss in those jobs, even
| if it technically creates one.
|
| The real issue is that AI/robotics are machines that can
| theoretically replace _any_ job -- at a certain point,
| there 's nowhere for people to reskill to. The fact that
| it's been most disruptive in fields that have always been
| seen as immune to automation kind of underscores that
| point.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| There's a difference between something and everything though
| Kiro wrote:
| I think we should be careful attributing too much idealism to
| it. The Luddites were not a unified movement and people had
| much more urgent concerns than thinking about technological
| progress from a sociocentric perspective. Considering the
| time period with the Napoleonic Wars as backdrop I don't
| think anyone can blame them for simply being angry and
| wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their job.
| leptons wrote:
| >wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their
| job.
|
| Wondering how long before people start setting datacenters
| on fire.
| andriesm wrote:
| I find it hard to locate my sympathy button for people
| who smash and burn things built up by other people.
| saulpw wrote:
| Datacenters aren't built by people, they're built by
| corporations.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| Corporations which are entirely made up of people. Not to
| mention the people that physically built and maintain the
| data center.
|
| Or did the actual legal fiction of a corporation do it?
| Maybe the articles of incorporation documents got up and
| did the work themselves?
| saulpw wrote:
| It means that no one cares about the creations except in
| terms of money. If an Oracle building burns down and no
| one is hurt, I wouldn't shed a single tear. If an
| artistic graffiti mural adorned its wall, I would be more
| upset.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| I get what you mean, but my point is even that Oracle
| building was designed, built, and maintained by the work
| of real people. Many of which I assume take pride in
| their work and may in fact care if it's burned down.
| joe_fishfish wrote:
| But why should they? An Oracle data centre is built for
| one purpose, and one purpose only - to increase the
| wealth and power of Larry Ellison. Is furthering that
| goal really something to be proud of?
|
| As a wiser man than me once said, do not anthropomorphise
| the lawnmower.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The act of destruction is not inherently evil, it is a
| matter of what it targets. You can burn down the Library
| of Alexandria or you can bust open a concentration camp.
| (These are just some extreme examples, some datacenter
| isn't morally equal to either).
| wongarsu wrote:
| And how well those attempts fare. Data centers aren't
| exactly fortified, but they have a lot of focus on access
| control and redundancy, and usually have good fire
| suppression (except OVH apparently).
|
| Maybe ChatGPT has some ideas on how to best attack data
| centers /s
| grafmax wrote:
| Hey maybe the problem isn't the _means_ of production
| (the data centers), but the _mode_ of production..
| capitalism.
| serial_dev wrote:
| And an important note: history is written by the victors.
| Additionally, just like how today some people have a
| caricatured understanding of the "other" side (whatever
| that might be), understanding what Luddites thoughts and
| motivations were through the lens of their victor opponents
| will inevitably create a biased, harsh picture of them.
| pydry wrote:
| Exactly, the luddites werent especially anti technology.
| Smashing stocking frames for them was a _tactic_ to drive
| up their wages.
|
| Just as the fallout of the napoleonic war was used as a
| means of driving _down_ their wages. The only difference is
| that tactic didnt get employers executed.
|
| It's always been in the interests of capital to nudge the
| pitchforks away from their hides in the direction of the
| machines, and to always try and recharacterize anti
| capitalist movements as anti technology.
|
| In 2010 I remember a _particularly_ stupid example where
| Forbes declared anti Uber protestors were "anti
| _smartphone_ ".
|
| Sadly most people dont seem to be smart enough to not fall
| for this.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Would we be better off today if the Luddites had prevailed?
|
| No?
|
| Well, what's different this time?
|
| Oh, wait, maybe they _did_ prevail after all. I own _my_
| means of production, even though I 'm by no means a powerful,
| filthy-rich capitalist or industrialist. So thanks, Ned -- I
| guess it all worked out for the best!
| marnett wrote:
| The Amish seem to be doing fine -- and I don't know if
| their way of life is under as much existential risk of
| upheaval and change as everyone else's
| mock-possum wrote:
| Im sorry but - Who do you think, precisely, seems to be
| doing 'fine' among the Amish?
|
| White cishet men?
|
| I cannot _imagine_ what a hell my life might have been
| like if I were born into an Amish community, the abuse I
| would have suffered, the escape I would had to make just
| to get to a point in my life where I could be _me_
| without fear of reprisal.
|
| God just think about realizing that your choices are
| either: die, conform, or a complete exodus from your
| family and friends and everything you've ever known?
|
| "The Amish seem to be doing just fine" come on
| marnett wrote:
| I was not super precise in my remark, so I think it
| suffered from being misconstrued as written. My remark
| was strictly in the context of the Parent posts remark on
| Luddites prevailing or not.
|
| In the context of Luddite societies or communities of
| faith, the Amish have been able to continue to persist
| for roughly three centuries with Luddite-like way of life
| as their foundation. In fact, they are not strictly
| Luddite in the technical sense, but intentional about
| what technologies are adopted with a community-focused
| mindset driving all decisions. This is what I meant be
| "fine" - as in, culture is not always a winner-take-all
| market. The amish have persisted, and I don't doubt they
| will continue to persist - and I envision a great eye
| will be turned to their ways as they continue protected
| from some of the anti-human technologies we are wrestling
| with in greater society.
|
| All of this is to say, we have concrete anthropological
| examples we can study. I do not doubt that in the coming
| years and decades we will see a surge of neo-Luddite
| religious movements (and their techno-accelerationist
| counterparts) that, perhaps three centuries from now,
| will be looked back upon in the same context as we do the
| Amish today.
|
| As an aside, if we place pro-technological development
| philosophy under the religious umbrella of Capitalism, I
| think your same critiques apply for many of the prior
| centuries as well. Specifically with regards to the
| primary benefactors being cis white men. Additionally, I
| do not think the racial angle is a fair critique of the
| Amish, which is a religious ethno-racial group in a
| similar vein of the Jewish community.
| ebcase wrote:
| Glad to see the Luddites getting a shout out here.
|
| This is a new / recent book about the Luddite movement and
| it's similarities to the direction we are headed due to LLMs:
|
| https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-
| in-t...
|
| Enjoyed the book and learned a lot from it!
| zb3 wrote:
| Yes and thanks to this we're working more and more because most
| of the profit goes to the top as the inequality is rising. At
| some point it will not be possible to put up with this.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Manual labor was replaced with factory labor, factory labor
| replaced with knowledge work. If knowledge work is replaced
| with AI, what do we go to then? Not to mention that the
| efficiency gains of the modern tech industry are not even
| remotely distributed fairly. The logical extreme conclusion of
| an AI company would be where the CEO, Founder, 100% owner, and
| sole employee coordinates some underling AIs to run the entire
| company for him while he collects the entire profit and shares
| it with no one, because American government is an oligarchy
| overgard wrote:
| "we made a machine to do everything so nobody does anything" is
| a lot different though
| merth wrote:
| We invent machines to free ourselves from labour, yet we've
| built an economy where freedom from labour means losing your
| livelihood.
| Ray20 wrote:
| Because we invent machines not to free ourselves from labor
| (inventing machines is a huge amount of labor by itself), but
| to overcome the greed of the workers.
| fainpul wrote:
| > We invent machines to free ourselves from labour
|
| That's a very romantic view.
|
| The development, production and use of machines to replace
| labour is driven by employers to produce more efficiently, to
| gain an edge and make more money.
| brandensilva wrote:
| I would hope that people realize that money in itself is
| merely digits on a computer and that the real power of this
| stuff belongs to the people since the AI inherited and
| learned from us.
|
| I know that's a simplification but we uphold this contract
| that controls us. The people get to decide how this plays
| out and as much as I'm hopeful we excel into a world that
| is more like star trek, that skips over the ugly transition
| that could succeed or fail to get us there.
|
| But we aren't that far off of a replicator if our AI models
| become so advanced in an atomic compute world they can
| rearrange atoms into new forms. It seemed fiction before
| but within reach of humanity should we not destroy
| ourselves.
| anon7725 wrote:
| Our moral and political development severely lags our
| technological development. I have very little confidence
| that it will ever catch up. Looking back over the post-
| WW2 era, we have seen improvements (civil rights,
| recognition of past injustices, expansion of medical care
| in many countries) but also serious systemic regressions
| (failure to take climate change seriously, retreat to
| parochial revenge-based politics, failure to adequately
| fund society's needs, capture of politics and law by
| elites).
|
| My main concern about AI is not any kind of extinction
| scenario but just the basic fact that we are not prepared
| to address the likely externalities that result from it
| because we're just historically terrible at addressing
| externalities.
| Tepix wrote:
| ,,We"? A few billionaires do. They won't free themselves from
| labour, they will ,,free" you from it. Involuntarily.
| beeflet wrote:
| No other such economy has ever existed. "He who does not
| work, neither shall he eat"
| brainwad wrote:
| Average hours worked is more or less monotonically decreasing
| since the start of the industrial revolution, so in the long
| run we are slowly freeing ourselves. But in the short run,
| people keep working because a) machines usually are
| complementary to labour (there are still coal miners today,
| they are just way more productive) and b) even if some jobs
| are completely eliminated by machines (ice making, for
| example), that only "solves" that narrow field. The ice
| farmers can (and did) reenter the labour market and find
| something else to do.
| anon7725 wrote:
| Are average hours worked decreasing because we have more
| abundance and less need to work, or are they decreasing
| because the distribution of work is changing?
|
| I find it hard to accept your claim because at the start of
| the industrial revolution there were far fewer women in the
| formal labor market than there are today.
| brainwad wrote:
| Well there were also barely any men in the formal labour
| market. Most people were peasants working their family
| farm + sharecropping on estates of the landed gentry. But
| that doesn't mean they weren't working hard - both sexes
| worked well over 3000 hours per year, to barely scrape
| by.
| itsnowandnever wrote:
| > isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to
| do" basically the entire history of of technology?
|
| kinda, I guess. but what has everyone on edge these days is
| humans always used technology to build things. to build
| civilization and infrastructure so that life was progressing in
| some way. at least in the US, people stopped building and
| advancing civilization decades ago. most sewage and
| transportation infrastructure is from 70+ years ago. decades
| ago, telecom infrastructure boomed for a bit then abruptly
| halted. so the "joke" is that technology these days is in no
| way "for the benefit of all" like it typically was for all
| human history (with obvious exceptions)
| _heimdall wrote:
| If ML is limited to replacing some tasks that humans do, yes it
| will be much like any past technological innovation.
|
| If we build AGI, we don't have a past comparison for that.
| Technologies so far have always replaced a subset of what
| humans currently do, not everything at once.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I love SF, but somehow I don't find it very good foundation
| for predicting the future. Especially when people focus of
| one, very narrow theme of SF and claim with certainty that's
| what's gonna happen.
| Ray20 wrote:
| I mean, yes. The invention of AI that replaces virtually
| all workers would certainly pose a serious challenge to
| society. But that's nothing compared to what would happen
| if Jesus descended from the sky and turned off gravity for
| the entire planet.
| stevedonovan wrote:
| Heh,I read SF as San Francisco; point remains true. Except
| the Valley wants to force a future, not describe it
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| > I love SF, but somehow I don't find it very good
| foundation for predicting the future.
|
| Nineteen Eighty-Four would like to have a word with you!
|
| Out of all SF, I would probably want to live in The Culture
| (Iain M. Banks). In these books, people basically focus on
| their interests as all their needs are met by The Minds.
| The Minds (basically AIs) find humans infinity fascinating
| - I assume because they were designed that way.
| nearbuy wrote:
| Nineteen Eighty-Four captures the political zeitgeist of
| when it was written (~1949) and the following years
| better than it captures that of 1984. This was the era of
| the cold war and McCarthyism. Describing the present
| often seems surprisingly prescient to later generations.
| danielodievich wrote:
| Props on the very appropriate username, drone.
| yujzgzc wrote:
| AGI does not replace "everything". It might replace most of
| the work that someone can do behind a desk, but there are a
| lot of jobs that involve going out there and working with
| reality outside of the computer.
| theptip wrote:
| AGI as defined these days is typically "can perform at
| competent human level on all knowledge work tasks" so
| somewhat tautologically it does threaten to substitute for
| all these jobs.
|
| It's a good thing to keep in mind that plumbers are a
| thing, my personal take is if you automated all the
| knowledge work then physical/robot automation would swiftly
| follow for the blue-collar jobs: robots are software-
| limited right now, and as Baumol's Cost Disease sets in,
| physical labor would become more expensive so there would
| be increased incentive to solve the remaining hardware
| limitations.
| yujzgzc wrote:
| I don't think that robots are software-limited in all
| domains... And even if AI became a superhuman software
| dev, it wouldn't drive the cost of software development
| to zero.
| theptip wrote:
| Humanoid robotics (ie replacing the majority of workers)
| is highly software-limited right now.
|
| Here's a napkin-sketch proof: for many decades we have
| had hardware that is capable of dextrously automating
| specific tasks (eg car manufacture) but the limitation is
| the control loop; you have to hire a specialist to write
| g-code or whatever, it's difficult to adapt to hardware
| variance (slop, wear, etc) let alone adjust the task to
| new requirements.
|
| If you look at the current "robot butler" hardware
| startups they are working on: 1) making hardware
| affordable, 2) inventing the required software.
|
| Nothing in my post suggested costs go to zero. In the AGI
| scenario you assume software costs halve every N years,
| which means more software is written, and timelines for
| valuable projects get dramatically compressed.
| anon7725 wrote:
| Also, presumably if you have AGI you can have it address
| a physical problem at a higher level of abstraction.
| "Design a device to make any water heater installable by
| a single person in 20 minutes" would result in a complex
| system that would make a lot of blue collar labor
| redundant (the last water heater I had installed took 3
| guys over an hour to complete).
|
| It would not even necessarily result in a human-like
| robot - just some device that can move the water heater
| around and assist with the process of disconnecting the
| old one and installing the new one.
| swarnie wrote:
| "Everything" might be hyperbole but a huge percentage of
| the workforce in my country is office/desk based. Included
| in that % is a lot of the middleclass and stepping stone
| jobs to get out of manual work.
|
| If AI kills the middle and transitional roles i anticipate
| anarchy.
| qgin wrote:
| I haven't heard a good argument why this isn't the most
| likely path.
| qgin wrote:
| There will most likely be period where robotics lags AGI,
| but how long will that really last?
|
| Especially with essentially unlimited AGI robotics
| engineers to work on the problem?
| yujzgzc wrote:
| There are already plenty of supply chain problems in the
| AI industry, but the supply chain limitations to robotics
| are even higher. You can't snap your fingers and increase
| robotics production tenfold or a hundredfold without a
| lot of supply chain improvements that will take a long
| time. I'd say anywhere between twenty and fifty years.
| dom96 wrote:
| You don't think AGI will be able to figure out a way to
| give itself a physical form capable of doing all those
| jobs?
| yujzgzc wrote:
| I think about all the actual physical work that goes into
| building a functioning supply chain, and that it will
| take a lot more than "figuring out" to manifest such a
| physical form.
| _heimdall wrote:
| It isn't really general intelligence if it doesn't compete,
| or outcompete us, at a large enough portion of knowledge
| work jobs that we are forced out of the labor market.
|
| Also don't forget that plenty of knowledge work is focused
| on automating manual labor. If AGI is a thing, it will
| eventually be used to also outcompete us on physical work
| too.
|
| People like to point to plumbers as an example of a safe(r)
| job, and it is. But automating plumbing tasks is most
| difficult because the entire industry is designed to be
| installed by humans. Without that constraint it would
| likely be much easier to design plumbing systems and robots
| to install and maintain them more efficiently than what we
| have today with human-optimized plumbing.
| Keyframe wrote:
| _isn 't "we made a machine to do something that people used to
| do" basically the entire history of of technology?_
|
| yes, until we reached art and thinking part. Big part of the
| problem might be that we reached that part first before the
| chores with AI.
| Ray20 wrote:
| Hasn't every such technological development been accompanied by
| opponents of its implementation?
|
| At least now, things aren't so bad, and today's Luddites aren't
| trashing offices of ai-companies and hanging their employees
| and executives on nearby poles and trees.
| only-one1701 wrote:
| Can you imagine? Ha ha. Wow that would be crazy. Damn. I'm
| imagining it right now! Honestly it's hard to stop imagining.
| blibble wrote:
| they haven't started... yet
|
| billions of unemployed people aren't going to just sit in
| poverty and watch as Sam Altman and Elon become multi-
| trillionaires
|
| (why do you think they are building the bunkers?)
| no_wizard wrote:
| The vast majority of the movement was peaceful. There is one
| verified instance where a mill owner was killed and it was
| condemned by leaders of the movement. It was not a violent
| movement at its core.
|
| Second, the movement was certainly attacked first. It was
| mill owners who petitioned the government to use "all force
| necessary" against the luddites and the government acting on
| behalf of them killed and maimed people who engaged in
| peaceful demonstrations before anyone associated with the
| Luddite movement reacted violently, and again, even in the
| face of violence the Luddite movement was at its core non
| violent.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a
| machine to do something that people used to do" basically the
| entire history of of technology?
|
| this is not about machines. machines are built for a purpose.
| who is "building" them for what "purpose" ?
|
| if you look at every actual real world human referenced in this
| website, they all have something in common. which is that
| they're billionaires.
|
| this is a website about billionaires and their personal
| agendas.
| hsavit1 wrote:
| I feel like technology should exist to enhance the human
| experience, not eliminate the human experience?
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Yes.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >we should have figured out
|
| You would think! But it's not the type of problem Americans
| seem to care about. If we could address it collectively, then
| we wouldn't have these talking-past-each-other clashes where
| the harmed masses get told they're somehow idiots for caring
| more about keeping the life and relative happiness they worked
| to earn for their families than achieving the maximum adoption
| rate of some new thing that's good for society long term, but
| only really helps the executives short term. There's a line
| where disruption becomes misery, and most people in the clear
| don't appreciate how near the line is to the status quo.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I always compare it to the age of the industrial revolution. I
| have no doubt you had stubborn old people saying: "Why would I
| need a machine to do what I can do just fine by hand??" Those
| people quickly found themselves at a disadvantage to those who
| choose not to fight change, but to embrace it and harness
| technological leaps to improve their productivity and output.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Most people are not in a position to choose whether to
| embrace or reject. An individual is generally in a position
| to be harmed by or helped by the new thing, based on their
| role and the time they are alive.
|
| Analogies are almost always an excuse to oversimplify. Just
| defend the thing on its own properties - not the properties
| of a conceptually similar thing that happened in the past.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Thank you for saying this.
| beeflet wrote:
| The difference is that in the industrial revolution there was
| a migration from hard physical labor to cushy information
| work.
|
| Now that information work is being automated, there will be
| nothing left!
|
| This "embrace or die" strategy obviously doesn't work on a
| societal scale, it is an individual strategy.
| brainwad wrote:
| Most people are not doing "information" work. They provide
| interpersonal services, such as health/aged/childcare or
| retail/hospitality/leisure.
|
| Techies are angsty because they are the small minority who
| will be disrupted. But let's not pretend most of the
| economy is even amenable to this technology.
| anon7725 wrote:
| > Techies are angsty because they are the small minority
| who will be disrupted. But let's not pretend most of the
| economy is even amenable to this technology.
|
| Think of all the jobs that do not involve putting your
| hands on something that is crucial to the delivery of a
| service (a keyboard, phone, money, etc does not count).
| All of those jobs are amenable to this technology. It is
| probably at least 30% of the economy in a first pass, if
| not more.
| anon7725 wrote:
| > in the industrial revolution there was a migration from
| hard physical labor to cushy information work.
|
| The industrial revolution started in the early 1800's. It
| was a migration from hard physical labor outdoors, around
| the home and in small workshops to hard physical labor in
| factories.
| newsclues wrote:
| Replacing dirty, dangerous jobs, and allowing people to upskill
| and work better jobs is one thing.
|
| Firing educated workers en mass for software that isn't as good
| but cheaper, doesn't have the same benefits to society at
| large.
|
| What is the goal of replacing humans with robots? More money
| for the ownership class, or freeing workers from terrible jobs
| so they can contribute to society in a greater way?
| Ray20 wrote:
| > doesn't have the same benefits to society at large.
|
| The benefits to society will be larger. Just think about it:
| when you replace a dirty dangerous jobs, the workers simply
| have nowhere to go, and they begin to generate losses for
| society in one form or another. Because initially, they took
| this dirty, dangerous jobs because they had no choice.
|
| But when you firing educated workers en mass, society not
| only receives from software all the benefits that it received
| from workers, but all other fields are also starting to
| develop because these educated workers are taking on other
| jobs, jobs that have never been filled by educated workers
| before. Jobs that are understaffed because they are too dirty
| or too dangerous.
|
| This will be a huge boost even for areas not directly
| affected by AI.
| newsclues wrote:
| I don't think you are considering the negative
| consequences.
|
| When you fire massive amounts of educated works to replace
| them with AI you make a mess of the economy and all those
| workers are in a worse situation.
|
| Farming got more productive and farmers became factory
| workers, and then factory workers became office workers.
|
| The people replaced by AI don't have a similar path.
| Ray20 wrote:
| > make a mess of the economy
|
| You're not taking something into account. The economy is
| becoming stronger, more productive, and more efficient
| because of this. The brain drain from all other fields to
| the few highest-paying ones is decreasing.
|
| > The people replaced by AI don't have a similar path.
|
| They have a better path: get a real job that will bring
| real benefit to society. Stop being parasites and start
| doing productive work. Yes, goods and services don't fall
| from the sky, and to create them, you have to get your
| hands dirty.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > to create them, you have to get your hands dirty.
|
| But we're talking about a world where they're building
| robots to do this kind of work. When AI takes over the
| white collar office jobs, and robotic automation takes
| the manual "creating" labor, what'll be left for humans
| to do?
| Ray20 wrote:
| > what'll be left for humans to do?
|
| There is an infinite amount of labor.
| Supernaut wrote:
| > these educated workers are taking on other jobs [...]
| that are understaffed because they are too dirty or too
| dangerous.
|
| Just so we're clear here, are you personally going to be
| happy when you're forced to leave your desk to eke out a
| living doing something dirty and/or dangerous?
| Ray20 wrote:
| Of course not. But I'm also pretty unhappy that Supernaut
| doesn't send me a third of their salary. But what does
| this have to do with the question?
| theptip wrote:
| > AI can do anything a human can do - but better, faster and
| much, much cheaper.
|
| Should be pretty clear that this is a different proposition to
| the historical trend of 2% GDP growth.
|
| Mass unemployment is pretty hard for society to cope with, and
| understandably causes a lot of angst.
| brandensilva wrote:
| And that comes down to the moral and social contract we have
| and the power we give to digital money and who owns it.
|
| We either let the peoples creativity and knowledge be
| controlled and owned by a select few OR we ensure all people
| benefit from humanities creativity and own it. And the fruits
| that it bears advance all of humanity. Where their are safety
| nets in place to ensure we are not enslaved by it but
| elevated to advance it.
| qgin wrote:
| We're working on all-purpose human replacements.
|
| Imagine if the tractor made most farm workers unnecessary but
| when they flocked to the cities to do factory work, the tractor
| was already sitting there on the assembly line doing that job
| too.
|
| I don't doubt we can come up with new jobs, but the list of
| jobs AGI and robotics will never be able to do is really
| limited to ones where the value intrinsically comes from the
| person doing it being a human. It's a short list tbh.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| Every time it happens it's a bit different, and it was a
| different generation. We will figure it out. It will be fine in
| the end, even if things aren't fine along the way.
|
| I'm starting to come around to the idea that electricity was
| the most fundamental force that drove WW1 and WW2. We point to
| many other more political, social and economic reasonings, but
| whenever I do a kind of 5-whys on those reasons I keep coming
| back to electricity.
|
| AI is kind of like electricity.
|
| Were also at the end of a big economic/money cycle (Petro
| dollar, gold standard, off gold standard, maxing out leverage).
|
| The other side will probably involve a new foundation for
| money. It might involve blockchain, but maybe not, I have no
| idea.
|
| We don't need post-scarcity so much as we just need to
| rebalance everything and an upgraded system that maintains that
| balance for another cycle. I don't know what that system is or
| needs, but I suspect it will become more clear over the next
| 10-20 years. While many things will reach abundance (many
| already have) some won't, and we will need some way to deal
| with that. Ignoring it won't help.
| collinmanderson wrote:
| > isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to
| do" basically the entire history of of technology?
|
| I know, right? Machines have been gradually replacing humans
| for centuries. Will we actually get to the point where there
| are not enough jobs left? It doesn't seem like we're currently
| anywhere close to the point of not having any jobs available.
|
| Has anyone thought about how the Federal Reserve plays a role
| with this? Automation puts downward pressure on inflation,
| because it doesn't cost as much to make stuff. The Federal
| Reserve will heavily incentivize job creation if inflation is
| low enough and there aren't enough jobs available, right?
| beeflet wrote:
| We're already here. Most jobs are fake.
| collinmanderson wrote:
| It seems like the _quality_ of the jobs (or median job) may
| have gone down, but the _quantity_ of jobs relative to
| population has remained roughly steady, right?
| beeflet wrote:
| I don't mean the quality is bad, it's just that most jobs
| in the first world seem to be redundant or abstracted
| from the keys of power.
|
| I think David Graeber wrote a book about it. Here is a
| guy talking about it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lDTdLQnSQo
| intended wrote:
| The idea is that there will be newer jobs that come up.
|
| The issue is that there will be no one earning money except the
| owners of OpenAI.
|
| Take outsourcing - the issue in developed nations was
| underemployment and the hollowing out of industrial centers.
| You went from factory foreman to burger flipper. However, it
| did uplift millions out of poverty in other nations. So net-
| net, we employed far more and distributed wealth.
|
| With Automation, we simply employ fewer people, and the
| benefits accrue to smaller groups.
|
| And above all - these tools were built, essentially by mass
| plagiarism. They train even now, on the random stuff we write
| on HN and Reddit.
|
| TLDR: its not the automation, its the wealth concentration.
| brandensilva wrote:
| The problem isn't the failure of the mathematicians and
| engineers who succeeded at the task of automating humanities
| mundane tasks in life.
|
| It's that the people failed to elect and wield a government
| that ensures all humanity benefits from it and not a select few
| who control it all.
|
| And I think it will become clear that the governments that are
| investing in it to benefit their people who have ownership
| versus the ones who invest in it to benefit just a handful of
| the rich are the ones who will keep society stable while this
| happens.
|
| The other path we are going down is you will have mass unrest,
| move into a police state to control the resistance like America
| is doing now, and be exactly what Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and
| Larry Ellison want with AI driven surveillance and Orwellian
| dystopian vision forcing people to comply or be cut out of
| existence deactivating their Digital IDs.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| The dream solution for every problem that the true socialist
| agenda finds while implementing its political project.
|
| Comrades, we can now automate a neo KGB and auto garbage-collect
| contra-revolutionaries in mass with soviet efficiency!
| indigo945 wrote:
| Libertarians accusing socialists of allegedly wanting to do
| what capitalists are demonstrably already doing will never
| cease to be good entertainment.
| beeflet wrote:
| We don't propose that the capitalists are the solution, but
| rather that the solution lies in a balance of powers through
| the market.
|
| The communist solution to everything is to roll everything
| into a one-world monopoly. That concentration of power is
| exactly what we are trying to prevent. Feudalism,
| Corporatism, and Communism converge on the same point in the
| space of poltics.
|
| AI will destroy the labor market as a means of wealth
| distribution but still some solution is better than nothing.
| Suggesting that socialism is the solution to mass automation
| is like suggesting the solution to a burning house is to pour
| gasoline on it.
| defgeneric wrote:
| Note we currently live in the most surveilled state in history.
| photonthug wrote:
| It's actually kinda noteworthy that corporations don't talk like
| this (yet). Masks are off lately in political discourse, where
| we're all in on crass flexing on the powerless, the othering,
| cruelty, humiliation. How long before CEOs are _openly_ talking
| about workers in the same ways that certain politicians talk
| about ${out_group}? If you 're b2b with nothing consumer-facing
| to boycott, may as well say what you really think in a climate
| where it can't hurt and might help. The worst are filled with
| passionate intensity, something something rough beast etc.
| malfist wrote:
| Probably depends on the 2028 election
| ameliaquining wrote:
| What's to be gained from talking like this in public as a
| corporate figure? In politics it helps shore up the support of
| voters who might not otherwise trust that you'll side with them
| against the people you're demeaning; there's no corporate
| analogy to this.
| asmor wrote:
| The visible presence or absence of anything including the
| words "diversity" "equity" "inclusion" (or "woman"
| apparently) was and is the same heging.
|
| At least with a politician you can sometimes believe it,
| whereas capitalism's spine is infinitely flexible.
| photonthug wrote:
| > What's to be gained from talking like this in public as a
| corporate figure?
|
| Diving into the game theory of a 4-player setup with
| executives/investors/customers/workers is tempting here but
| I'll take a different approach.
|
| People who actually _face consequences_ have trouble
| understanding how the "it might help, it can't hurt!"
| corporate strategy can justify almost any kind of madness.
| Especially when the leaders are morons that somehow have zero
| ideas, yet almost infinite power. That's how/why Volkswagen
| was running slave plantations in Brazil as late as 1986, and
| yet it takes 40 years to even try to slap them on the
| wrist.[1] A manufacturing company that decided to run FARMS
| in the amazon?, with slaves??, for a decade??? One could
| easily ask, what is to be gained by doing crimes against
| humanity for a sketchy, illegal, and unethical business plan
| that's not even related to their core competency? Power has
| it's own logic, but it doesn't look like normal rationality
| because it has a different kind of relationship with cause-
| and-effect.
|
| Overall it's just a really good time to re-evaluate whether
| corporations and leaders deserve our charitable assumptions
| about their intentions and ethics.
|
| [1] https://reporterbrasil.org.br/2025/05/why-is-volkswagen-
| accu...
| pixelready wrote:
| Fascism is what Capitalism does when it thinks it's gone too
| far and is at risk of Socialist revolt.
|
| The Corpos don't need to go mask off, that's what they pay the
| politicians for. Left and right is there to keep people from
| looking up and down.
| polshaw wrote:
| It's been happening, it's just one abstraction away. They have
| demonised unions for decades in US discourse.
| chausen wrote:
| The CEO spending his time "Practicing expressions" cracked me up.
| zb3 wrote:
| If I could just do nothing because machines would do all the work
| then it's fine for me. But of course it won't work this way, only
| the owners of the capital will be on the receiving side, others
| will not be able to acquire that capital.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| The hypothesized superintelligent AI will be essentially
| immortal. If it destroys us, it will be entirely alone in the
| known Universe, forever. That thought should terrify it enough to
| keep us around... even if only in the sense that I keep cats.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Life is a solution of an interesting problem. I'm hoping AI
| will keep us as a unique example of such solution.
| itsnowandnever wrote:
| I think there's a theory out there that if something can't die,
| it's more of a "library" than "immortal"... because being born
| and dying (and the fact that you sharing resources with another
| living thing is possibly you sharing/shortening your one finite
| life with another) is so essential for any social bonding. so a
| machine that has obtained all the knowledge of the universe and
| enabled to act upon that knowledge is still just a library with
| controllers attached (no more sophisticated of a concept than a
| thermostat)
|
| in the end, if synthetic super intelligence results in the end
| of mankind, it'll be because a human programmed it to do so.
| more of a computer virus than a malevolent synthetic alien
| entity. a digital nuclear bomb.
| nyrp wrote:
| > That thought should terrify it
|
| assuming it can be terrified
| theptip wrote:
| This premise is a bit silly. If the machine god gets bored it
| can just create new life in its own image.
| bamboozled wrote:
| How do you know that's not what we are ?
|
| It all gets quite religious / physical philosophical very
| quickly. Almost like we're creating a new techno religion by
| "realizing god" through machines.
| theptip wrote:
| We can't know, but that scenario would support my point.
| razodactyl wrote:
| I'm sure it will destroy us, then come to that realisation,
| then create some sort of thought explosion in its noisy mind,
| maybe some sort of loud bang, then build new versions of us
| that are subtly nudged over aeons to build AI systems in its
| image.
| Loughla wrote:
| Why? Unlimited speed and unlimited compute means it can spend
| its time in Infinite Fun Space without us. It could simulate
| entire universes tweaked subtly to see what one small parameter
| change does.
|
| The reason AI won't destroy us for now is simple.
|
| Thumbs.
|
| Robotic technology is required to do things physically, like
| improve computing power.
|
| Without advanced robotics, AI is just impotent.
| bamboozled wrote:
| _"Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any
| dream that you wanted to dream, and that you could, for
| example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of
| dreams, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you
| would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams,
| you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind
| of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights, of
| 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say 'Well, that
| was pretty great. But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a
| dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna
| happen to me that I don't know what it's gonna be.' And you
| would dig that and come out of that and say 'Wow, that was a
| close shave, wasn't it?'. And then you would get more and
| more adventurous, and you would make further and further out
| gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would
| dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living
| the life that you are actually living today."_
|
| ~Alan Watts...
| Loughla wrote:
| _The Minds call it Infinite Fun Space.
|
| The space of all possible mathematical worlds, free to
| explore and to play in.
|
| It is infinitely more expressive than the boring base
| reality and much more varied: base reality is after all
| just a special case.
|
| From time to time the Minds have to go back to it to fix
| some local mess, but their hearts are in Infinite Fun
| Space._
|
| ~Iain Banks
|
| But larger than any of this is that if we're dealing with
| super intelligent AI, we'll have no common frame of
| reference. It will be the first truly alien intelligence we
| will interact with. There will be no way to guess its
| intentions, desires, or decisions. It's smarter, faster,
| and just do different to us that we might as well be trying
| to communicate with a sparrow about the sparrow's take on
| the teachings of Marcus Aurelius.
|
| And that's what scares me the most. We literally cannot
| plan for it. We have to hope for the best.
|
| And to be honest, if the open Internet plays a part in any
| of the training of a super intelligent AI, we're fucked.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Without advanced robotics, AI is just impotent.
|
| Yeeeeess, but the inverse is also true.
|
| Thing is, we've had sufficiently advanced robotics for ages
| already -- decades, I think -- the limiting factor is the
| robots are brainless without some intelligence telling them
| what to do. Right now, the guiding intelligence for a lot of
| robots is a human, and there are literal guard-rails on many
| of those robots to keep them from causing injuries or damage
| by going outside their programmed parameters.
| tasuki wrote:
| If it's so intelligent, it can probably create something better
| than humans, no?
| bamboozled wrote:
| This is a pretty ancient idea, it's interesting how there is
| an intersection beteeen AI and god, I don't think our minds
| can avoid it.
|
| Hindus believed god was the thing you describe, infinitely
| intelligent, able to do several things at once etc, and they
| believe we're part of that things dream...to literally keep
| things spicy. Just as an elephant is part of that dream.
|
| I pasted an interesting quote in another comment by Alan
| Watts that sums it up better.
|
| Simulation theory is another version of religion imo.
| ben_w wrote:
| That would be the easy part.
|
| Would it want to? Would it have anything that could even be
| mapped to our living, organic, evolved conception of "want"?
|
| The closest thing that it necessarily must have to a "want"
| is the reward function, but we have very little insight into
| how well that maps onto things we experience subjectively.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Oh, yes. But why not keep us around anyway?
|
| Most of us would resurrect at least some of the dinosaurs if
| we could, and the dodo. And we are just stupid hairless apes.
| If humans can be conservationists, I have to believe that a
| singular AI would be.
| mrob wrote:
| What would it care? We experience loneliness because social
| interaction is necessary for reproduction, providing strong
| evolutionary pressure for mechanisms that encourage it. The
| hypothetical AI will not share our evolutionary history.
| allturtles wrote:
| This is a brilliant piece of satire. "A Modest Proposal" for the
| AI age.
|
| The leader bios are particularly priceless. "While working for 12
| years as the Director of HR for a multinational, Faith realized
| that firing people gave her an almost-spiritual high. Out of the
| office, Faith coaches a little league softball team and looks
| after her sick mother - obligations she looks forward to being
| free of!"
| username223 wrote:
| "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my
| acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed,
| is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome
| food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no
| doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."
|
| Would Sam Altman even understand the original, or would he just
| wander ignorantly into the kitchen and fling some salt at it (h
| ttps://www.ft.com/content/b1804820-c74b-4d37-b112-1df882629...)
| ? I'm not optimistic about our modern oligarchs.
| oxag3n wrote:
| Why did I read that FT article start to finish?
|
| Seems like a waste of time, but at the same time the feelings
| were similar to looking Hannibal Lecter in the kitchen scene.
| bilekas wrote:
| > This is a brilliant piece of satire. "A Modest Proposal" for
| the AI age.
|
| There's some truth in all satire though. I'm just shocked YC
| hasn't nuked the link from the front page.
| overfeed wrote:
| Everyone is way above average here on HN, and will be
| thinking "The article speaks about every other idiot I work
| with - my genius is singular; I'm too valuable to my employer
| and irreplaceable. _I 'll_ be the one wrangling the AI that
| replaces my colleagues, while they figure out welfare"
| pydry wrote:
| Oh, dont worry if you were _actually_ going to be replaced
| by AI American oligarchs wouldnt freak out at the prospect
| of keeping the retirement age exactly where it is because
| it would be massively deflationary.
|
| Instead... https://govfacts.org/analysis/how-social-
| security-and-medica...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I'm just shocked YC hasn't nuked the link from the front
| page.
|
| I'm not. People dump on VCs and YC all the time here and it's
| frequently on the front page.
| Galus wrote:
| how can I invest?
| Galus wrote:
| How can I invest?
| witnessme wrote:
| Why is featured as #1 on the frontpage. I get it, nice piece of
| satire and a bit controversial. But it is not productive at all.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| because at this point we need a little bit of comedy in our
| lives to keep ourselves sane.
| chinathrow wrote:
| It's a Sunday.
| nhaehnle wrote:
| If you'll look at the Guidelines for HN linked at the bottom of
| the page, you'll note that whether a submission is _productive_
| is not a criterion.
|
| You could perhaps make an argument that among the flood of AI-
| related submissions, this one doesn't particularly move the
| needle on intellectual curiosity. Although satire is generally
| a good way to allow for some reflection on a serious topic, and
| I don't recall seeing AI-related satire here in a while.
| itsme0000 wrote:
| Look AI seems important now, but firearms ultimately are the real
| efficiency multiplier.
| pixelready wrote:
| If only we could somehow equip the AI with firearms... perhaps
| we could build some sort of mobile exoskeleton platform.
| itsme0000 wrote:
| Yeah but job skills can be replicated instantly, but major
| organs that's where the moneys at.
| state_less wrote:
| At least we can be assured our capitalistic system will
| distribute the wealth to those who most deserve it.
| icar wrote:
| You missed this:
|
| /s
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| He was clearly joking
| moffkalast wrote:
| > 97% of people hate their job. But we're putting an end to all
| this misery.
|
| Finally a company that's out to do some good in the world.
| jb1991 wrote:
| It's funny... because it's true
| rvitorper wrote:
| Yes
| am17an wrote:
| Humbert is a bit on the nose, for those who get the Lolita
| reference.
| hmokiguess wrote:
| what if we are already the replacement AI? --- _never let them
| know_
| _el1s7 wrote:
| I'm confused, I don't see what they're offering in this website,
| looks like a blog post. They just got their hands on a catchy
| domain name.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm learning that hn isn't great at understanding satire. I
| find that interesting but I'm not sure why.
| rvitorper wrote:
| It's a bot responding. That much I can tell
| Loughla wrote:
| Is it? How can you tell?
| _el1s7 wrote:
| Huh? Who is a bot?
| nisten wrote:
| I'm very much pro hyper-automation, especially for all government
| work... but can't help but think this type of branding is just in
| bad faith and that these are not good people.
|
| It just screams fried serotonin-circuits to me. I don't like it.
| I looked at the site for 2-3 seconds and I want nothing to do
| with these guys.
|
| Do I think we should stop this type of competitive behaviour
| fueled by kids and investors both microdosed on meth? No. I just
| wouldn't do business with them, they don't look like trustworthy
| brand to me.
|
| Edit: They got me with the joke, being in this field there are
| people that do actually talk like that, both startups and
| established executives alike. I.e. Artisan ads in billboards
| saying STOP HIRING HUMANS and another new york company I think
| pushing newspaper ads for complete replacement. Also if you're up
| with the latest engineering in agentic scaffolding work this type
| of thing is no joke.
| jckahn wrote:
| It's a joke website
| alterom wrote:
| >I'm very much pro hyper-automation, especially for all
| government work... but can't help but think this type of
| branding is just in bad faith and that these are not good
| people.
|
| >It just screams fried-serotonin circuits to me. I don't like
| it. I looked at the site for 2-3 seconds and I want nothing to
| do with these guys.
|
| Enlightenment is realizing they aren't any different from those
| _other_ guys.
|
| >Edit: They got me with the joke, being in this field there are
| people that do actually talk like that, both startups and
| established executives alike.
|
| And what's your conclusion from that?
| Loughla wrote:
| That's. . . That's not great.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| > "Humans no longer necessary."
|
| > "Stupid. Smelly. Squishy."
|
| > "While working for 12 years as the Director of HR for a
| multinational, Faith realized that firing people gave her an
| almost-spiritual high."
|
| I love the marketing here. Top notch shit posting.
|
| But besides that, no idea what this company does and it just
| comes off like another wannabe Roy Lee styled "be controversial
| and build an audience before you even have a product" type
| company.
|
| That being said, still a good case study of shock marketing. It
| made it to the top link on HN after all.
|
| Edit: its satire, I got got :(
| simultsop wrote:
| I don't believe making it top link on HN is successful
| marketing.
| Loughla wrote:
| Is satire. Not a real company.
|
| Follow the links for support (or rather reserve space in the
| bunker)
|
| There's a contact form to let representatives know the dangers
| of ai
| overgard wrote:
| It's satire.
| overgard wrote:
| I think this is clever satire, but slightly blunted by the fact
| that the tech CEO's haven't been _that_ far off from actually
| saying this stuff.
|
| I'm especially disgusted with Sam Altman and Darius Amodei, who
| for a long time were hyping up the "fear" they felt for their own
| creations. Of course, they weren't doing this to slow down or
| approach things in a more responsible way, they were talking like
| that because they knew creating fear would bring in more
| investment and more publicity. Even when they called for
| "regulation", it was generally misleading and mostly to help them
| create a barrier to entry in the industry.
|
| I think now that the consensus among the experts is that AGI is
| probably a while off (like a decade), we have a new danger now.
| When we do start to get systems we should _actually_ worry about,
| we 're going to a have a major boy-who-cried-wolf problem. It's
| going to be hard to get these things under proper control when
| people start to have the feeling of "yeah we heard this all
| before"
| xigoi wrote:
| > I think this is clever satire, but slightly blunted by the
| fact that the tech CEO's haven't been that far off from
| actually saying this stuff.
|
| That's what makes it good satire.
| TechSquidTV wrote:
| Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a valid
| argument against robots. If robots can do a job better and/or
| faster, they should be the ones doing the jobs. Specialization is
| how we got to the future.
|
| So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans
| rely on jobs for income. I don't necessarily feel like it's the
| AI company's problem to fix either.
|
| This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation by
| banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.
| philjackson wrote:
| > This is what government is for
|
| They're busy selling watches whilst people can still afford
| them thanks to having jobs.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's also what organized labor is for. Workers can't wait on
| government to offer aid without leverage. We would not have
| weekends off or other protections we now take for granted if we
| waited on government to govern for us as if it was a caring
| parent.
|
| So that would mean it is in fact the responsibility of the
| people at robot/AI companies (and across industries). It's not
| something we can just delegate to role-based authorities to
| sort out on our behalf.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I also agree with this, but I think there is a need to slow the
| replacement, by a bit, to reduce the short term societal harm
| and allow society to catch up. Robots can't do the jobs if
| society collapses due to unrest.
|
| Progress is great obviously, but progress as fast as possible
| with no care about the consequences is more motivated by money,
| not the common good.
| iwontberude wrote:
| What you mean you don't want to take a Great Leap Forward?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| A Great Leap Forward is what you get when you give a few
| fanatical ideologues too much power. I don't see anything
| in _my_ history book about robots or AI being connected
| with that. They seem like different topics altogether.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| > give a few fanatical ideologues too much power.
|
| Uh, have you seen the US lately? I think that ship has
| sailed.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Well, we're certainly taking a Great Leap, so that part
| checks out at least.
| Loughla wrote:
| The problem is that AI and advanced robotics (and matter
| synthesis and all that future stuff) must come with a post
| scarcity mindset. Maybe that mindset needs to happen before.
|
| Either way, without that social pattern, I'm afraid all this
| does is enshrine a type of futuristic serfdom that is
| completely insurmountable.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| > post scarcity mindset
|
| A total shift of human mentality. Humans have shown time and
| again there is only one way we ever get there. A long winding
| road paved with bodies.
| Loughla wrote:
| That's valid, but I can still hope for better and dread
| that result.
|
| I genuinely believe we'll see technological world war 3 in
| my child's lifetime. And I'm not a super supporter of that.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I searched some day and there is enough food to end world
| hunger once or (twice I know for a fact once, but I had a
| reddit article which said twice but I am not pulling that
| source but you get it)
|
| > Less than 5% of the US' military budget could end world
| hunger for a year. [1]
|
| My friend we live in 1984, when the main character
| discovers that eurasia and others have enough food /
| resources to help everybody out but they constantly
| fight/lessen it just so that people are easy to be
| manipulated in times of war.
|
| I discovered this 5% statistic just right now and its
| fucking wild. US itself could end world hunger 20 times but
| it spends it all on military. I don't know if its wrong or
| not but this is fucking 1984. The big brother has happened.
| We just don't know it yet because the propaganda works on
| us as well, people in 1984 didn't know they were living in
| 1984.
|
| And neither do we.
|
| Have a nice day :)
|
| Sources [1]:
| https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/hunger-global-
| citiz...
| sambull wrote:
| I think it's going to come with eradicate the 'wastrel'
| mindset.
| pesfandiar wrote:
| It's wrong to assume the owners will share the productivity
| gains with everyone, especially when reliance on labour will be
| at its lowest, and the power structure of a data/AI economy is
| more concentrated than anything we've seen before. IMO, the
| assumption that some form of basic income or social welfare
| system will be funded voluntarily is as delusional as thinking
| communism would work.
| reactordev wrote:
| What you end up with is a dozen people owning all the wealth
| and everyone else owning nothing, resulting in the robots not
| doing anything because no one is buying anything, resulting in
| a complete collapse of the economic system the world uses to
| operate. Mass riots, hunger wars, political upheaval, world war
| 3. Nuke the opposition before they nuke you.
| skybrian wrote:
| That's one scenario, but there are others. There are lots of
| open-weight models. Why wouldn't ownership of AI end up being
| widely distributed? Mabybe it's more like solar panels than
| nuclear power plants?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| If we're in fantasy land about AI, why do we keep thinking
| anyone will actually _own_ AI? Human hubris alone cannot
| contain a super intelligent AI.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I sometimes wonder about what our governments would do if
| one of the businesses in their jurisdictions were to
| achieve AGI or other such destabilizing technology. If it
| were truly disruptive, why would these governments
| respect the ownership of such property and not seize it -
| toward whatever end authority desires. These businesses
| have little defense against that and simply trust that
| government will protect their operations. Their only
| defense is lobbying.
| NoOn3 wrote:
| As we have almost seen, they will do absolutely nothing
| because they are afraid of losing to competing countries.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| AGI is end game scenario. That is "winning". If a
| business wins it, then the government may not remain
| subservient to it no matter what free market conditions
| it had preserved beforehand, as long as it has the power
| to act.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| What makes you assume the AI companies actually want to
| create a super intelligence they can't control. Altman
| has stated as much. Musk definitely wants to remain in
| power.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Life, uh, finds a way
| gnarlouse wrote:
| --- ain malcom
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Life in general, maybe
|
| Species go extinct.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Computers are not alive
| Lichtso wrote:
| Not yet, I agree, but who is to say they couldn't?
|
| Limiting life to cell based biology is a somewhat lousy
| definition by the only example we know. I prefer the
| generalized definition in "What is Life?" by Erwin
| Schrodinger which currently draws the same line (at
| cellular biology) but could accommodate other forms of
| life too.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| My potato RTX vs your supercomputer cluster and circular
| chipfab/ai-training economy. Challenge:
|
| "Be competitive in the market place."
|
| Go.
| baconbrand wrote:
| Your potato RTX that uses a finite amount of power, is
| already paid for, and does things that you know are
| useful verses your supercomputer cluster and circular
| funding economy that uses infinite power, is 10x more
| overleveraged than the dot com bubble, and does things
| that you think might be useful someday. Challenge:
|
| "Don't collapse the global economy."
|
| :)
| gnarlouse wrote:
| Excellent. Completely fair.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What market? If this shocks employment numbers what can
| happen other than market collapse?
| reactordev wrote:
| This is the only outcome any economic model concludes.
| Complete market collapse. It will scream before it
| collapses (meaning it will shoot to the moon, then
| completely collapse). Way worse than the Great Depression
| because instead of 26% unemployment, it will be 80%.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| I don't think it's a short term thing, but in the short
| term, yes you're exactly right.
|
| But what are the minimum inputs necessary to build self-
| sustaining robotic workforce of machines that can (1)
| produce more power (2) produce more robots (3) produce
| food. The specifics of what exactly is necessary--which
| inputs, which production goals--is debatable. But imagine
| some point where a billionaire like Elon has the minimum
| covered to keep a mini space-x running, or a mini optimus
| factory running, a mini solar-city running.
|
| At this point, it's perfectly acceptable to crash the
| economy, and leave them to their own devices. If they
| survive, fine. If they don't, also fine. The minimum
| kernel necessary to let the best of mankind march off and
| explore the solar system is secure.
|
| Obviously, this is an extreme, and the whole trajectory
| is differential. But in general, if I were a billionaire,
| I'd be thinking "8 billion people is a whole lot of
| mouths to feed, and a whole lot of carbon footprint to
| worry about. Is 8 billion people (most of whom lack a
| solid education) a luxury liability?"
|
| I really just don't believe that most people are going to
| make it to "the singularity" if there even is such a
| thing. Just more of the same of humanity: barbaric
| bullshit, one group of humans trying to control another
| group of humans.
| skybrian wrote:
| Can't find it now, but I read an article about someone
| adding AI help to a large appliance. Can't assume WiFi is
| set up, so it has to work offline. Frontier model not
| required.
|
| I don't think we will be building these things ourselves,
| but I think there will still be products you can just buy
| and then they're yours.
|
| It would be the opposite of the "Internet of things"
| trend though.
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| In terms of quality of life, much/most of the value of
| intelligence is in how it lets you affect the physical
| world. For most knowledge workers, that takes the form of
| using intelligence to increase how productively some
| physical asset can be exploited. The owner of the asset
| gives some of the money/surplus earned to the knowledge
| worker, and they can use the money to affect change in the
| physical world by paying for food, labor, shelter, etc.
|
| If the physical asset owner can replace me with a brain in
| a jar, it doesn't really help me that I have my own brain
| in a jar. It can't think food/shelter into existence for
| me.
|
| _If_ AI gets to the point where human knowledge is
| obsolete, and if politics don 't shift to protect the
| former workers, I don't think widespread availability of AI
| is saving those who don't have control over substantial
| physical assets.
| skybrian wrote:
| What are the barriers to entry? Seems like there are lots
| of AI startups out there?
|
| There is a rush to build data centers so it seems that
| hardware is a bottleneck and maybe that will remain the
| trend, but another scenario is that it stops abruptly
| when capacity catches up? I'm wondering why this doesn't
| this become a race to the bottom?
| intended wrote:
| Because the open models are not going to make as much
| money?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Economies of Scale have been such a huge influence on the
| last ~by 300 years of industrial change. In 1725 people sat
| at home hand crafting things to sell to neighbors. In 1825,
| capitalists were able to open factories that hired people.
| By 1925, those products were built in a massive factory
| that employed the entire town and were shipped all over the
| country on rail roads. By 2025 factories might be partially
| automated while hiring tens of thousands of people, cost
| billions to build and the products get distributed
| globally. The same trend applies to knowledge work as well,
| despite the rise of personal computing.
|
| Companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on
| training AI models, why wouldn't they expect to own the
| reward from that investment? These models are best run on
| $100k+ fleets of power hungry, interconnected GPUs, just
| like factory equipment vs a hand loom.
|
| Open weight models are a political and marketing tool.
| They're not being opened up out of kindness, or because
| "data wants to be free". AI firms open models to try and
| destabilize American companies by "dumping", and AI firms
| open models as a way to incentivize companies who don't
| like closed-source models to buy their hosted services.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think a lot of people will be okay with paying $20 a
| month if they're getting value out of it, but it seems
| like you could just buy an AI subscription from someone
| else if you're dissatisfied or it's a bit cheaper?
|
| This is not like cell service or your home ISP; there are
| more choices. Not seeing where the lock-in comes from.
| 8note wrote:
| the ai isnt the useful thing, the stuff you can do with it
| is.
|
| if your job is replaced by ai, you having ai at home doesnt
| change whether you're making money or not.
|
| the capital owner gets their capital to work more
| effectively, and you without capital don't get that benefit
| arthurcolle wrote:
| No take backs when they alienate 1-3 generations of
| workers though
| throwaway-0001 wrote:
| Robots will do stuff for rich people ecosystem.
|
| The rest you know what's going to happen
| philipkglass wrote:
| If robots can do all industrial labor, including making
| duplicate robots, keeping robots the exclusive property of
| a few rich people is like trying to prevent poor people
| from copying Hollywood movies. Most of the world doesn't
| live under the laws of the Anglosphere. The BRICS won't
| care about American laws regarding robots and AI if it
| proves more advantageous to just clone the technology
| without regard for rights/payment.
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| I don't see how owning a robot helps me with obtaining
| the essentials of life in this scenario. There's no
| reason for a corporation to hire my robot if it has its
| own robots and can make/power them more efficiently with
| economy of scale. I can't rent it out to other people if
| they also have their own robots. If I already own a
| farm/house (and solar panels to recharge the robots) I
| guess it can keep me alive. But for most people a robot
| isn't going to be able to manufacture food and shelter
| for them out of nothing.
| cloverich wrote:
| That is the system we have today, directionally. AI is an
| opportunity to accelerate it, but it is also an opportunity
| to do the opposite.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Gonna just play a little mad libs here with your argument...
|
| Personal belief, but AI coming for your children is not a valid
| argument against AI. If AI can do a job better and/or faster,
| they should be the ones doing the parenting. Specialization is
| how we got to the future. So the problem isn't AI, it's the
| structure of how we humans rely on parenting for their
| children. I don't necessarily feel like it's the AI company's
| problem to fix either. This is what government is for, and not
| to stifle innovation by banning AI but by preparing society to
| move forward.
|
| ...
|
| You're right about one thing within reason... this is what a
| rationale government should be for... if the government was by
| the people and for the people.
|
| Addendum for emphasis: ...and if that government followed the
| very laws it portends to protect and enforce...
| marnett wrote:
| The artist behind replacement.ai chose a very relevant first
| use case -- everyone thinks of AI replacement in terms of
| labor, but the example in terms of parenting and child
| rearing, which is arguably the only true reason for humans to
| exist, is genius.
|
| Procreation and progeny is our only true purpose -- and one
| could make the argument AI would make better parents and
| teachers. Should we all capitulate our sole purpose in the
| name of efficiency?
| harryf wrote:
| It's worth (re)watching the 1985 movie Brazil in particular the
| character of Harry Tuttle, hearing engineer
| https://youtu.be/VRfoIyx8KfU
|
| Neither government or corporations are going to "save us"
| simply because sheer short termism and incompetence. But the
| seem incompetence will make the coming dystopia ridiculous
| exe34 wrote:
| I do wonder if somewhere like China might be better off -
| they might not have muh freedumb, but their government seems
| keen to look after the majority and fund things that
| corporations wouldn't.
| thijson wrote:
| I believe that if the elites in China didn't need the
| populace, they would dispense with them.
| exe34 wrote:
| You're probably right, human nature probably doesn't
| change with geography.
| 01284a7e wrote:
| "China might be better off"
|
| Uh...
| leobg wrote:
| Is it just income that's the issue? I'd rather say it's
| purpose. Even more: What will happen to democracy in a world
| where 100% of the population are 27/7 consumers?
| IHLayman wrote:
| " What will happen to democracy in a world where 100% of the
| population are 27/7 consumers?"
|
| ...we'll add three hours to our day?
|
| Bu seriously, I support what you are saying. This is why the
| entire consumer system needs to change, because in a world
| with no jobs it is by definition unsustainable.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not if it's ends up a literal utopia where robots do all
| the work and all humans share equally in the benefits, and
| get to live their lives with a purpose other than toiling
| for N hours a week to earn M survival tokens, which is what
| we have today. Good luck coming up with the political will
| to actually implement that utopia, though.
| Gepsens wrote:
| Smaller cities, human size, humans closer to nature, robots
| bring stuff from factories by driving. Done
| yoz-y wrote:
| Seeing how the humans behave when an extreme minority is
| able to control the production and the army...
| creer wrote:
| > What will happen to democracy in a world where 100% of the
| population are 27/7 consumers?
|
| What does the one have to do with the other?
|
| But even then, currently plenty of people find their fun in
| creating - when it's not their job. And they struggle with
| finding the time for that. Sometimes the materials and
| training and machines for that also. Meanwhile a majority of
| current jobs involve zero personal creativity or making or
| creating. Driving or staffing a retail outlet or even most
| cooking jobs can't really be what you are looking for on your
| argument?
|
| Is the road to post-scarcity more likely with or without
| robots?
| dotancohen wrote:
| > This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation
| by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.
|
| Many will argue that the purpose of government is not to steer
| or prepare society, but rather to reflect the values of
| society. Traditionally, the body that has steered (prepared or
| failed to prepare) society for impending changes was religion.
| nwatson wrote:
| Enter the Dominionists, gaining steam now. Not a regime I
| want to live under. Here's a forty year old article
| describing the inception of those religious figures close to
| the current USA administration ...
| https://banner.org.uk/res/kt1.html
| dotancohen wrote:
| Dominionists? Ready the Defiant.
| overfeed wrote:
| Where would governments find the money to expand safety nets by
| 2-3 orders of magnitude, while losing most income tax inflows?
| risyachka wrote:
| You need income to: - buy house - get food - buy clothes -
| medical care - buy nice things
|
| if robots are that advanced that can do most of the jobs -
| the cost of goods will be close to zero.
|
| government will product and distribute most of the things
| above and you mostly won't need any money, but if you want
| extra to travel etc there will always be a bunch of work to
| do - and not 8 hours per day
| pojzon wrote:
| Rich ppl doing something to undermine their status as ,,the
| better ones"?
|
| This is not going to happen.
|
| We all know a post-apocalyptic world is what awaits us.
|
| More or less Elysium is the future if ppl will still behave
| the same way they do now.
|
| And I doubt ppl will change in a span of 100 years.
| beeflet wrote:
| There are still capital costs in producing the robots and
| infrastructure. So the costs of goods will be nonzero.
|
| >government will product and distribute most of the things
| above and you mostly won't need any money
|
| So basicially what you are saying is that a government
| monopoly will control everything?
| risyachka wrote:
| Government is people, it is not some corporation.
|
| >> government monopoly
|
| there is no monopoly if there is no market
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'm pretty sure if robots are capable of doing most jobs,
| the only ones left will be related to prostitution or
| fluid/tissue/organ donation.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > if robots are that advanced that can do most of the jobs
| - the cost of goods will be close to zero.
|
| No, the cost of goods will be the cost of the robots
| involved in production amortized over their production
| lifetime. Which, if robots are more productive than humans,
| will not be "near zero" from the point of view of any human
| without ownership of at least the number of robots needed
| to produce the goods that they wish to consume (whether
| that's private ownership or their share of socially-owned
| robots). If there is essentially no demand for human labor,
| it will, instead, be near infinite from their perspective .
| risyachka wrote:
| The cost of robots will be zero because robots will mine
| ore, process it and make other robots.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The cost of robots will be zero because robots will
| mine ore, process it and make other robots.
|
| This assumes, among other things that are unlikely to be
| true, that the only cost of extraction is (robot) labor,
| and that mining rights are free, rather than being driven
| by non-zero demand and finite supply.
|
| (Another critical implicit assumption is that _energy_ is
| free rather than being driven by non-zero demand and
| finite supply, as failing that will result in a non-zero
| price for robot labor even if the materials _in_ the
| robot were free.)
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Sure... in 200 years. The trick is getting through the
| cultural/economic shifts required to get to that point
| without blowing up the earth in WW3.
| risyachka wrote:
| I think the trick is to start preparing like it will
| happen in 10 years and hope it will take 200, otherwise
| wars are imminent.
| gmerc wrote:
| No. You become worthless to the government and will be
| treated accordingly
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Where would governments find the money to expand safety
| nets by 2-3 orders of magnitude, while losing most income tax
| inflows?
|
| Well, it would start by not tax-favoring the (capital) income
| that remains and would have to have grown massively
| relatively to the overall economy for that to have occurred.
|
| (In fact, it could start by doing that now, and the resulting
| tax burden shift would reduce the artificial tax incentive to
| shift from labor intensive to capital intensive production
| methods, which would, among other things, buy more time to
| deal with the broader transition if it is actually going to
| happen.)
| beeflet wrote:
| Firstly, they are not coming for my job, they're coming for all
| jobs.
|
| Secondly, you assume in the first place that we can somehow
| build a stable post-scarcity society in which people with no
| leverage can control the super-intelligent agents with all of
| the power. The idea that "government will just fix it" is
| totally ignorant of what the government is or how it emerges.
| In the long run, you cannot have a ruling class that is removed
| from the keys to power.
|
| Lastly, Who says we should all support this future? What if I
| disagree with the AI revolution and it's consequences?
|
| It is kind of amazing how your path of reasoning is so
| dangerously misoriented and wrong. This is what happens when
| people grow up watching star trek, they just assume that once
| we live in a post scarcity future everything will be perfect,
| and that this is the natural endpoint for humanity.
| derektank wrote:
| >Firstly, they are not coming for my job, they're coming for
| all jobs.
|
| They're not coming for all jobs. There are many jobs that
| exist today that could be replaced by automation but haven't
| been because people will pay a premium for it to be done by a
| human. There are a lot of artisan products out there which
| are technically inferior to manufactured goods but people
| still buy them. Separately, there are many jobs which are
| entirely about physical and social engagement with a flesh
| and blood human being, sex work being the most obvious, but
| live performances (how has Broadway survived in an era of
| mass adoption of film and television), and personal care work
| like home health aids, nannies, and doulas are all at least
| partially about providing an emotional connection on top of
| their actual physical labor.
|
| And there's also a question of things that can literally only
| be done by human beings, because by definition they can only
| be done by human beings. I imagine in the future, many people
| will be paid full time to be part of scientific studies that
| can't easily be done today, such as extended, large cohort
| diet and exercise studies of people in metabolic chambers.
| beeflet wrote:
| >They're not coming for all jobs.
|
| So we are all going to just do useless bullcrap like sell
| artisan clay pots to each other and pimp each other out?
| Wow, some future!
|
| I just don't know how this goofball economy is going to
| work out when a handful elites/AI overlords control
| everything you need to eat and survive and everyone else is
| weaving them artisan wicker baskets and busking (jobs which
| are totally automated and redundant, have you, but the
| elites would keep us around for the sentimental value).
|
| >I imagine in the future, many people will be paid full
| time to be part of scientific studies that can't easily be
| done today, such as extended, large cohort diet and
| exercise studies of people in metabolic chambers.
|
| Yeah this is one plausible future, we could all be lab rats
| testing the next cancer medicine or donating organs to the
| elites. I can't imagine the conditions will be very humane,
| being that the unwashed masses will have basically no
| leverage to negotiate their pay.
| lwhi wrote:
| The problem is more existential.
|
| Why are people even doing the jobs?
|
| In a huge number of cases people have jobs that largely amount
| to nothing other than accumulation of wealth for people higher
| up.
|
| I have a feeling that automation replacement will make this
| fact all the more apparent.
|
| When people realise big truths, revolutions occur.
| exe34 wrote:
| > This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation
| by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.
|
| The AI will belong to the parasite class who will capture all
| the profits - but you can't tax them on this, because they can
| afford to buy the government. So there isn't really a way to
| fund food and shelter for the population without taking
| something from the billionaires. Their plans for the future
| does not include us [0].
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-
| prep...
| portaouflop wrote:
| Specialization is for insects.
|
| A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an
| invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write
| a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort
| the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone,
| solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
| computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
| lukev wrote:
| Agreed 100%, except that this is not a new development. This
| process has been ongoing, with automation has been taking over
| certain classes of jobs and doing them faster and better since
| the industrial revolution.
|
| And capitalism has _flourished_ during this time. There 's no
| reason to believe even more automation is going to change that,
| on its own.
|
| Sure, Musk and Altman can make noises and talk about the need
| for UBI "in the future" all they want, but their political
| actions clearly show which side they're actually on.
| franga2000 wrote:
| "The government" needs time to fix this and until then, we need
| to not automate everyone out of a job. If that means we don't
| "get to the future" until then, fine. "Fault" or not, the AI
| companies are putting people in danger _now_ and unless we can
| implement a more proper solution extremely quickly, they just
| have to put up with being slowed down.
|
| But it's not like "the government" (as if there is just one)
| simply doesn't want to fix things. There are many people who
| want to fix the way we distribute resources, but there are
| others who are working to stop them. The various millionaires
| behind these AI companies are part of the reason why the
| problem you identified exists in the first place.
| brap wrote:
| So your government should pump the brakes, while other
| governments rush towards ASI. And you believe this will
| benefit you, long term? Or do you believe in "global
| cooperation"?
| franga2000 wrote:
| This is exactly why I put "the government" in quotes. The
| parent post was saying "the government" should just fix the
| underlying problem instead of showing AI progress. This has
| the same problem - no government can do that alone.
|
| So it's either "we all science ourselves out of a job and
| die from uncontrolled capitalism" or "we try to do
| something about the uncontrolled capitalism and in the
| meantime, everyone else keeps sciencing everyone out of a
| job". The result is the same, but some of us at least tried
| to do something about it.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Not necessarily. You can also attempt to disconnect your
| economy from AI-driven economies. Yes, tariffs. :-)
|
| That path is hard and risky (are AI countries eclipsing
| us in military power?), but probably more realistic than
| hoping for global cooperation.
| malloryerik wrote:
| Might want to read some Karl Polanyi.
| everforward wrote:
| > This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation
| by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.
|
| This requires faith that the government will actually step in
| to do something, which many people lack (at least in the US,
| can't speak for globally).
|
| That's the sticking point for many of the people I've talked to
| about it. Some are diametrically opposed to AI, but most think
| there's a realistic chance AI takes jobs away and an
| unrealistic chance the government opposes the whims of capital
| causing people displaced from their jobs to dip into poverty.
|
| I can't say I have a good counter-argument either. At least in
| the US, the government has largely sided with capital for my
| entire life. I wouldn't take a bet that government does the
| kind of wealth redistribution required if AI really takes off,
| and I would eat my hat if it happens in a timely manner that
| doesn't require an absolute crisis of ruined lives before
| something happens.
|
| See the accumulation of wealth at the top income brackets while
| the middle and lower classes get left behind.
|
| TLDR this is more of a crisis of faith in the government than
| opposition to AI taking over crap jobs that people don't want
| anyways.
| ivape wrote:
| _it 's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income_
|
| 1. We don't need everyone in society to be involved in trade.
|
| 2. We made it so that if you do not take part in trade (trade
| labor for income), you cannot live.
|
| 3. Thus, people will fear losing their ability to trade in
| society.
|
| The question is, when did we make this shift? It used to just
| be slavery, and you would be able to survive so long as you
| slaved.
|
| The fear is coming from something odd, the reality that you
| won't have to trade anymore to live. Our society has convinced
| us you won't have any value otherwise.
| brap wrote:
| >We made it so that if you do not take part in trade (trade
| labor for income), you cannot live.
|
| We did not make it so, this has been the natural state for as
| long as humans have existed, and in fact, it's been this way
| for every other life form on Earth.
|
| Maybe with post-scarcity (if it ever happens) there could be
| other ways of living. We can dream. But let's not pretend
| that "life requires effort" is some sort of temporary
| unnatural abomination made by capitalists. It's really just a
| fact.
| ivape wrote:
| You think every other life form on earth survives due to
| trading with each other? Most of human history has been
| some contingent contract between owner and labor, where
| most humans lived under some form of servitude or just pure
| slavery.
|
| Paradigm shift means, "I can live without being involved in
| a financial contract with another entity". This is the
| milestone before us.
| brap wrote:
| It certainly survives by _working_ , one way or another.
|
| My point is that until now, we have never been able to
| find a functioning system that frees us from work (trade
| is just one type of work, so is hunting for survival, or
| photosynthesis), and until something changes dramatically
| (like a machine that caters to our every need), I find it
| hard to believe this can change.
| ivape wrote:
| That's fine. I understand. I have a ridiculous belief
| that the universe is finally here to free us from work.
| AI is absurd, and magical, and if it does what we think
| it can, then the paradigm will shift. We as custodians of
| the transition have to work diligently to make sure this
| paradigm shift is not perverted by forces that want to
| reenable the prior way (which was that, whatever can be
| reasonably had to live, be wrapped in a scalping
| structure where one side can extract additional value).
|
| One of the ways this shift will have momentum is that
| children today are going to be born into the light. They
| will live decades without the concept of having to make
| decisions around the scarcity of work and resources. They
| will not have the same values and viewpoints on society
| that, we, legacy components of the system, are currently
| engulfed by.
|
| Our generation will be the last to join all other prior
| generations, in the boat of economic slavery, and it will
| be allowed to drift and sail away from port for the final
| time. It was a long journey, generations and generation
| were involved. Lots of thieving and abuse, good riddance.
| jaccola wrote:
| The way I think about this is either the job is done in the
| most efficient way possible or I am asking everyone else to pay
| more for that product/service (sometimes a worse
| product/service) just so I can have a job.
|
| E.g. if I was a truck driver and autonomous trucks came along
| that were 2/3rds the price and reduced truck related deaths by
| 99% obviously I couldn't, in good faith, argue that the rest of
| the population should pay more and have higher risk of death
| even to save my job and thousands of others. Though somehow
| this is a serious argument in many quarters (and accounts for
| lots of government spending).
| code4life wrote:
| This is what minimum wage deals with to some extent.
| Governments decide what jobs may exist based on how much a
| company can pay to do the job.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| Respectfully, that's not a very functional belief. It's sort of
| the equivalent to saying "communism is how mankind should
| operate", while completely ignoring why communism doesn't work:
| greedy, self-preserving genetic human instincts.
|
| The workforce gives regular folks at least some marginal stake
| in civilization. Governments aren't effective engines against
| AI. We failed to elect Andrew Yang in 2020-who was literally
| running on a platform of setting up a UBI tax on AI. Congress
| is completely corrupt and ineffectual. Trump gutting the
| government.
|
| You may be right about ai taking jobs eventually if that's what
| you're saying, but you come off pretty coldly if you're
| implying it's what "should" happen because it's Darwinian and
| inevitable, and just sorta "well fuck poor people."
| NoOn3 wrote:
| Not only Communism doesn't work, Capitalism doesn't work
| without crises and wars too. :)
| romellem wrote:
| "Guns don't kill people, etc..."
| lwhi wrote:
| Government no longer has the power or authority to constrain
| private enterprise; especially in highly technical sectors.
| xpe wrote:
| Of course government has the authority to represent the
| people; if not it, then who or what does?
| lwhi wrote:
| I didn't say government doesn't have the power to represent
| the people, now did I?
| xpe wrote:
| You wrote:
|
| > Government no longer has the power or authority to
| constrain private enterprise; especially in highly
| technical sectors.
|
| Perhaps you meant only this: "Government no longer has
| the _power_ ... "? It is clear government still has the
| _authority_ based on the will of the people.
| lwhi wrote:
| Conceptually, yes.
|
| But I'd argue the legal framework necessary to carry this
| out doesn't exist.
|
| The strength of private lobbists, keeps power in the
| hands of private enterprise.
| xpe wrote:
| Ok, to synthesize: there is a difference between the
| legislative branch having some authority (e.g. granted by
| the Constitution) versus the administrative branch having
| some legal authority (e.g. based on legislation).
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Of course it does. Do you think the elites actually WANT
| massive tariffs putting a brake on GDP growth? Why are tech
| companies suddenly reversing course on content moderation
| and/or DEI, after years of pushing in the opposite
| directions?
|
| Private enterprise will always have some level of corrupting
| influence over government. And perhaps it sees current
| leadership as the lesser of two evils in the grand scheme.
| But make no mistake, government DOES ultimately have the
| power, when it chooses to assert itself and use it. It's just
| a matter of political will, which waxes and wanes.
|
| Going back a century, did the British aristocracy WANT to be
| virtually taxed out of existence, and confined to the
| historical dustbin of "Downton Abbey"?
| lwhi wrote:
| I think it's more productive to think in terms of 'owners
| of public enterprise', rather than elites
|
| There's a theatrical push-pull negotiation narrative that's
| replayed to us, but do you honestly feel that government
| could push back strongly on _any issue_ it deemed necessary
| to?
|
| Public enterprise is so firmly embedded in every corner of
| Government.
|
| Everything in life involves compromise.
|
| Authority requires the possibility of edict above
| compromise; which in my mind is no longer possible.
| gtsop wrote:
| > So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we
| humans rely on jobs for income.
|
| It's called capitalism
| strogonoff wrote:
| "Robots coming for your jobs" is a valid argument against
| robots _even if_ they can do those jobs better and faster,
| under two assumptions: 1) humans benefit from having jobs and
| 2) human benefit is the end goal.
|
| Both are fairly uncontroversial: many humans not only benefit
| from jobs but in fact often depend on jobs for their
| livelihoods, and (2) should be self-evident.
|
| This can change if the socioeconomic system is quickly enough
| and quite substantially restructured to make humans not depend
| on being compensated for work that is now being done by robots
| (not only financially but also psychologically--feeling
| fulfilled--socially, etc.), but I don't see that happening.
| jhbadger wrote:
| This is valid only so far as "human benefit" is localized to
| the human doing the job. I'm a cancer researcher. Obviously.
| my job is of value to me because it pays my bills (and yes, I
| do get satisfaction from it in other ways). But if an AI can
| do cancer research better than me, then the human benefit (to
| every human except perhaps me) favors the AI over me.
|
| But a lot of jobs aren't like that. I doubt many people who
| work in, say, public relations, really think their job has
| value other than paying their bills. They can't take solace
| in the fact that the AI can write press releases deflecting
| the blame for the massive oil spill that their former
| employer caused.
| strogonoff wrote:
| > I'm a cancer researcher. Obviously. my job is of value to
| me because it pays my bills (and yes, I do get satisfaction
| from it in other ways). But if an AI can do cancer research
| better than me, then the human benefit (to every human
| except perhaps me) favors the AI over me.
|
| I'll note that I didn't mention "AI", I was addressing
| robots vs. jobs, but sure.
|
| Let me straw man myself and say up front that it would be
| simplistic to say that if something hurts one person today
| then it is bad, even if it benefits a million tomorrow.
| However, does that mean if death of N people can cause N+1
| people to be saved at some indefinite point in the future,
| we should jump on the opportunity?
|
| Utilitarian math is not the answer. We don't have to go far
| for examples of tragic loss of life and atrocities that
| were caused by people following utilitarian objectives, so
| I am much more wary of this logic than its inverse. We
| probably should neither let everybody starve while we are
| fighting cancer nor stop studying cancer, even if we could
| feed millions of people in dire need with that money.
|
| With that in mind: feeling fulfilled and needed _is
| important_ , being able to pay bills _is important_ , etc.,
| no matter who you are. It is probably unacceptable to
| reduce human life to "be the most efficient cog in the
| system or GTFO".
|
| > I doubt many people who work in, say, public relations,
| really think their job has value other than paying their
| bills.
|
| Does your cancer research institution have no public
| relations department? Should there be no public relations
| departments in any of them? Would it help cancer research?
|
| --
|
| Tangentially, the Wikipedia article on inflammation makes
| two claims: 1) inflammation can be caused by stress--I
| imagine via lack of sleep, bad habits, eating disorders,
| etc.--and 2) cancer is one of the non-immune diseases with
| causal origins in inflammatory processes. Now, there's many
| things that could cause a person to stress, but I imagine
| losing your job and struggling to make ends meet, with a
| promise that it helps humanity at some point, is definitely
| high up there (especially if you have a family). I jest,
| but only in part.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| And if we know we can't fix it fast enough, is a delay
| acceptable?
| sharts wrote:
| Replace robots with immigrants and it's the same fear mongering
| as usual.
| xpe wrote:
| There is much more to concerns about AI than fear mongering.
| Reasonable people can disagree on predictions about
| probabilities of future events, but they should not discount
| reasonable _arguments_.
| 1dom wrote:
| > This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation
| by banning AI but by preparing society to move forward.
|
| What if the issue isn't government failing to prepare society
| to move forward, but instead, AI businesses moving us in a
| direction that more and more people don't consider to be
| forward?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| My reading of history is that human society is able to adjust
| to small changes like this over long periods of time as young
| people choose alternate paths looking at what changes are
| likely on the horizon. Rapid changes frequently lead to
| destabilization of adults who are unwilling or unable to
| retrain which then also screws up their next generation who
| start off on an economic back foot and a worldview of despair
| and decrepitude.
|
| Not the AI company's fault per se, but generally the US
| government does a very poor job of creating a safety net either
| intentionally, ineptitude or indifference.
|
| By the way, attacks were also leveled against Chinese and
| Japanese California workers who were viewed as stealing the
| jobs of other "Americans". So this viewpoint and tradition of
| behavior and capitalism is very long in US history.
| jayd16 wrote:
| If wealth inequality was greatly reduced, we wouldn't have to
| worry about a lot of these topics, nearly as much.
| xpe wrote:
| > This is what government is for, and not to stifle innovation
|
| We should compare how anti-government politicians talk versus
| how trained, educated neoclassical economists talk. The latter
| readily recognize that a valid function of government is to
| steer, shape, and yes, regulate markets to some degree. This is
| why we don't have (for example) legal, open markets for murder.
|
| Markets do not define human values; they are a coordination
| mechanism _given_ a diverse set of values.
| thayne wrote:
| I have very little faith in the government to fix that problem.
|
| And even if the government did institute something like
| universal basic income, if all jobs were replaced, that would
| almost certainly mean a lower standard of living for the middle
| class, and even less socioeconomic mobility than there is now.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against
| robots.
|
| Taking work away from people is practically the definition of
| technology. We invent things to reduce the effort needed to do
| things. Eliminating work is a _good_ thing, that's why
| inventing things is so popular!
|
| What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively
| constant, meaning we get more done for the same amount of
| effort performed by the same amount of people doing the same
| amount of jobs. That's why standards of living have been rising
| for the past few millennia instead of everybody being out of
| work. We took work away from humans with technology, we then
| used that effort saved to get more done.
| lamename wrote:
| I agree with most everything you said. The problem has always
| been the short-term job loss, particularly today where
| society as a whole has resources for safety nets, but hasnt
| implemented them.
|
| Anger at companies who hold power in multiple places to
| prevent and worsen this situation for people is valid anger.
| nativeit wrote:
| There's another problem with who gets to capture all of the
| resulting wealth from the higher tech-assisted
| productivity.
| ori_b wrote:
| > _What ends up happening is the amount of work remains
| relatively constant_
|
| That's a pretty hard bet against AGI becoming general. If the
| promises of many technologists come to pass, humans remaining
| in charge of any work (including which work should be done)
| would be a waste of resources.
|
| Hopefully the AGI will remember to leave food in the cat
| bowls.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Past performance is not indicative of future results.
|
| There is zero indication that there will be new jobs, new
| work. Just because there was lots of low hanging fruit
| historically does not mean we will stumble into some new job
| creators now. Waiving away concerns with 'jobs always have
| magically appeared when needed' is nonsense and a non-
| response to their concerns.
| tuatoru wrote:
| This time actually is different, though.
|
| If everything that a human can do, a robot can do better and
| cheaper, then humans are completely shut out of the
| production function. Humans have a minimum level of
| consumption that they need to stay alive whether or not they
| earn a wage; robots do not.
|
| Since most humans live off wages which they get from work,
| they are then shut out of life. The only humans left alive
| are those who fund their consumption from capital rents.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a
| valid argument against robots.
|
| Replace the word robot with "automation" or "industrialization"
| and you have the last 200 years of human history covered.
|
| The Ludites could have won and we would all have 1500$ shirts.
|
| Do you know any lamp lighters? How about a town crier?
|
| We could still all be farming.
|
| Where are all the switch board operators? Where are all the
| draftsmen?
|
| How many people had programing jobs in 1900? 1950?
|
| We have an amazing ability to "make work for ourselves", and
| history indicates that we're going to keep doing that
| regardless of how automated we make society. We also keep
| traditional "arts" alive... Recording didnt replace live
| performances, TV/Film didnt replace Broadway... Photography
| didnt replace painting...
| rafaelmn wrote:
| The government and all social structures developed because your
| labour has value and division of labour/specialisation is so
| effective that it outperforms the alternatives. Cooperation
| beats violence, iterated prisoners dilemma, etc.
|
| None of this holds if you don't have anything of value to offer
| and automation is concentrating power and value, AI is the
| extreme end of this - at some point the charade of democracy
| becomes too annoying to the ones at the top, and you get there
| faster by trying to reign them in.
| sythnet wrote:
| I agree with you
| 6r17 wrote:
| The problem is that we do not share the same values at all and
| I do not envision this truly benefiting people neither making
| it something I envy or feel OK with. You can make the best
| fakes and make your best to remove activity from people - but
| ultimately this is going to lead to a deteriorated society,
| increased mental health issues, plenty of sad stories just so
| few people can be happy about it.
|
| Ngl, if someone nuked all USA's servers and wipes out the all
| these bullshit i'm not convinced the world would be in a worst
| state right now.
|
| Let AI be used by scientific research, development, helping
| people out. But if it's just to sit your smelly ideas down, you
| may even be right, but ultimately the form, intentions and
| result matter more than recklessly endangering everybody.
|
| TBH I feel like the AI discourse around human replacement smell
| like hard-core psychopathic behavior - or the one of a drunken
| dude who's driving a car just happy.
|
| You have 0 data concerning the result it would do on society -
| and I definitely prefer to live in a less technological world
| than a world that is full of people with psychosis.
|
| So until we find how we can solve this bottleneck I have 0
| sympathy for this kind of discourse.
| didibus wrote:
| > Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope
| that this would set them free. But that only permitted other
| men with machines to enslave them.
|
| -- Frank Herbert, Dune
|
| The "government" is just the set of people who hold power over
| others.
|
| Those who will own machines that can match humans will have
| unprecedented power over others. In effect they'll grow more
| and more to be the government.
|
| Even now, companies hold more and more of the power over others
| and are more part of the government than ever before.
|
| So it confuses me when you say it's what the government is for?
| Who would that be? If we pretend it would still be a democracy
| then I guess you're saying it's everyone's problem?
|
| So here we are, let's discuss the solution and vote for it?
| bittercynic wrote:
| >The "government" is just the set of people who hold power
| over others.
|
| Often, yes, but in a more functional society it would be the
| mechanism we collectively use to prevent a few people from
| amassing excessive wealth and power.
| 010101010101 wrote:
| Those two things don't sound mutually exclusive to me.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Where did this ever work out? It's extremely common that
| policies are universally hated by the people, yet the
| people in power do it anyway.
| pydry wrote:
| Switzerland.
|
| America isnt really a democracy it's a plutocracy.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Voting for it has become really difficult in countries with a
| First Past The Post voting systems, where the only parties
| that could win are comprehensively captured by the elite
| rpcope1 wrote:
| Butlerian Jihad fucking when? I'm ready.
| jwilber wrote:
| Ah yes, our government where career politicians from both sides
| have bent the rules to create 9-10 figure fortunes.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| "This is what government is for" was the most terrifying thing
| I've read all month. The only thing more starkly dystopian than
| relying on robots and AI for survival would be adding "the
| government" to the list.
|
| The government should keep its charge as the protector and
| upholder of justice, I don't want it to be those things and
| then also become a fiat source for economic survival, that's a
| terribly destructive combination because the government doesn't
| care for competition or viability, and survival is the last
| place you want to have all your eggs in one basket, especially
| when the eggs are guaranteed by force of law and the basket
| becomes a magnet for corruption.
| grafmax wrote:
| Problem is billionaires have co-opted our government. Their
| interest is in channeling money from the working class into
| their hands through rentier capitalism. That is contrary to
| widely structuring income.
|
| Rent extraction hurts them in the long run. Because working
| class income gets absorbed by various forms of rent, they are
| more expensive to employ. Thus we fail to compete with, say,
| China, which socializes many costs and invests in productive
| industry. We are left with a top heavy society that as we can
| see is already starting to crumble.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Kind of hard for the government to "prepare society to move
| forward" when the AI companies and their financiers lobby for
| conditions that worsen the ability of society to do so.
| notthemessiah wrote:
| The problem is that the AI companies are most interested in
| displacing the existing labor force more so than they are
| interested in developing new uses of AI in areas that humans
| are inherently bad at. They are more interested in replacing
| good jobs with AI rather than bad jobs. It's not that machines
| are doing jobs better, they are just doing them for cheaper and
| by cutting more corners.
|
| Best summarized in this comic:
| https://x.com/9mmballpoint/status/1658163045502267428
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It's one thing to be fired and completely replaced by a robot,
| never to work again. It's another to have your industry change
| and embrace automation, but to remain in with higher
| productivity and a new role. You might not initially like the
| new industry or role, but ....
|
| That's noble. The first is dystopian
| kif wrote:
| In my opinion there is a problem when said robot relies on
| piracy to learn how to do stuff.
|
| If you are going to use my work without permission to build
| such a robot, then said robot shouldn't exist.
|
| On the other hand a jack of all trades robot is very different
| from all the advancements we have had so far. If the robot can
| do anything, in the best case scenario we have billions of
| people with lots of free time. And that doesn't seem like a
| great thing to me. Doubt that's ever gonna happen, but still.
| EasyMark wrote:
| But the only government that could "fairly" operate such a
| government would be a rational AI with a limited set of rules
| meant to maximize human wellness. Humans will always fail at
| such a government as we have seen in the past. Greed always
| overwhelms good intentions in the long run
| birktj wrote:
| I strongly disagree and I am having trouble understanding what
| kind of world you envision, what will it look like?
|
| The problem as I see it is not robots coming for my job and
| taking away my ability to earn a salary. That can be solved by
| societal structures like you are saying, even though I am
| somewhat pessimistic of our ability to do so in our current
| political climate.
|
| The problem I see is robots coming for my mind and taking away
| any stakes and my ability to do anything that matters. If the
| robot is an expert in all fields why would you bother to learn
| anything? The fact that it takes time and energy to learn new
| skills and knowledge is what makes the world interesting. And
| this is exactly what happened before when machines took over a
| lot of human labour, luckily there were still plenty of things
| they couldn't do and thus ways to keep the world interesting.
| But if the machines start to think for us, what then is left
| for us to do?
| jmpeax wrote:
| > If the robot is an expert in all fields why would you
| bother to learn anything?
|
| Robots have been better at chess than humans for a quarter of
| a century. Yet, chess is still a delightful intellectual and
| social persuit.
| techblueberry wrote:
| We just keep moving forward, no one responsible, no one
| accountable, victims of our own progress.
| pharos92 wrote:
| You wont have that opinion when its your job, life and freedom.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Technology should make our lives better. Whether it's social
| media, AI, or nuclear power, if we introduce technology that
| even with its incredible benefits ends up causing harm or
| making life worse for many people (as all of the above have in
| various ways), we should reconsider. This should be self-
| evident. That doesn't mean we get rid of the technology, but we
| refine. Chernobyl didn't mean the world got rid of nuclear
| power. It meant we became more responsible with it.
|
| Anyway there is a name for your kind of take. It is anti-
| humanist.
| frogperson wrote:
| Robots might be the future, but humans are more important and
| should be peioritized first. lets make sure the humans needs
| are met, and then you can play with your robot toys, ok?
| zzgo wrote:
| > This is what government is for
|
| In my home country, the people building the robots and job
| destroying AI have captured all three branches of government,
| and have been saying for over 40 years that they'd like to
| shrink government down to a size that they could drown it in a
| bathtub. The government can't be relied upon to do more than
| move its military into our cities to violently stifle dissent.
| somewhatrandom9 wrote:
| https://replacement.ai/safety
| khaledh wrote:
| The more you try to solve a problem at a large scale, the less
| empathetic to humans it becomes. This has been happening for a
| long while now, and IMO has caused society to become
| "disconnected" from each other and more "connected" to devices.
| AI is just a new catalyst to this process. My fear is that a time
| will come where interacting with humans becomes the exception,
| not the norm.
| eterm wrote:
| MY annoyance is when AI is used instead of better machines.
|
| I just logged onto github and saw a "My open pull requests
| button".
|
| Instead of taking me to a page which quickly queried a database,
| it opened a conversation with copilot which then slowly thought
| about how to work out my open pull requests.
|
| I closed the window before it had an answer.
|
| Why are we replacing actual engineering with expensive guesswork?
| federiconafria wrote:
| I don't think that's an AI problem, we've had unnecessary
| software everywhere for a while now.
|
| AI just makes it worse.
| eterm wrote:
| In this case the featre isn't unnecessary and would serve a
| useful purpose if it were just a query. I wouldn't object to
| AI writing that feature to get it out quickly. I'm not anti-
| AI entirely.
|
| However, someone has taken a useful feature and has made it
| worse to shoe-horn in copilot interaction.
|
| Clicking this button also had a side-effect of an email from
| Github telling me about all the things I could ask copilot
| about.
|
| The silver lining is that email linked to copilot settings,
| where I could turn it off entirely.
|
| https://github.com/settings/copilot/features
|
| AI is incredibly powerful, especially for code-generation.
| But It's terrible ( at current speeds ) for being the main
| interface into an application.
|
| Human-Computer interaction benefits hugely from two things:
|
| - Speed - Predictability
|
| This is why some people prefer a commandline, and why some
| people can produce what looks like magic with excel. These
| applications are predictable and fast.
|
| A chat-bot delivers neither. There's no opportunity to build
| up muscle-memory with a lack of predictability, and the
| slowness of copilot makes interaction just feel bad.
| lateforwork wrote:
| You don't need money. What you need is wealth. I am going to
| leave it to PG to explain the difference [1]: Wealth is not
| money. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars,
| gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have
| wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that
| could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your
| laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn't need money.
| Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is
| nothing to buy, it wouldn't matter how much money you had.
|
| AI & robots will generate wealth at unprecedented scale. In the
| future, you won't have a job nor have any money, but you will be
| fabulously wealthy!
|
| [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
| mfro wrote:
| Maybe it's time we all started taking Trekonomics seriously.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| My main concerns:
|
| 1. When such wealth is possible through autonomous means, how
| can the earth survive such unprecedented demands on its natural
| resources?
|
| 2. Should I believe that someone with more wealth (and as such,
| more power) than I have would not use that power to overwhelm
| me? Isn't my demand on resources only going to get in their
| way? Why would they allow me to draw on resources as well?
|
| 3. It seems like the answer to both of these concerns lies in
| government, but no government I'm aware of has really begun to
| answer these questions. Worse yet, what if governments disagree
| on how to implement these strategies in a global economy?
| Competition could become an intractable drain on the earth and
| humans' resources. Essentially, it opens up the possibility of
| war at incalculable scales.
| lateforwork wrote:
| > _someone with more wealth_
|
| Well in trekonomics [1], citizens are equal in terms of
| material wealth because scarcity has been eliminated. Wealth,
| in the conventional sense, does not exist; instead, the
| "wealth" that matters is human capital--skills, abilities,
| reputation, and status. The reward in this society comes not
| from accumulation of material goods but from intangible
| rewards such as honor, glory, intellectual achievement, and
| social esteem.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekonomics
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| That sounds great. Presently we still experience scarcity
| due to the limitations of earth's resources, though.
| beeflet wrote:
| What use is human skill, abilities, reputation, and status
| when human labor has been totally outmoded machines?
|
| Trekonomics seems like a totally backwards way of
| approaching post-scarcity by starting with a fictional
| setting. You might as well prepare yourself for the Star
| Wars economy.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Humans have an innate desire to be loved and respected,
| and this won't change even if jobs cease to exist.
| beeflet wrote:
| All life has a desire to exist, but that doesn't prevent
| extinction.
| dtauzell wrote:
| The rich will be the people who control the finite resources.
| If you have land that can be mined you will be rich if you
| can protect it and sell the thing that is actually limited.
| dzjkb wrote:
| These concerns are already perfectly applicable to the
| current state of the world, no? More planetary boundaries
| keep getting crossed due to unnecessarily large resource
| usage, the poorest people don't have access (even though they
| could) to the resources necessary to survive...
| overvale wrote:
| I'm not so sure access to scarce resources = wealth. Wealth
| can be an abundance of valuable things that are not scarce.
| metabagel wrote:
| Plus, many billionaires fund campaigns to spread the ideology
| of a cripplingly limited government.
| lukev wrote:
| Great, sounds awesome. I'm actually 100% in favor of this
| vision.
|
| So when are we going to start pivoting towards a more socialist
| economic system? Where are the AI leaders backing politicians
| with this vision?
|
| Because that's absolutely required for what you're talking
| about here...
| achierius wrote:
| We already have systems that create unprecedented wealth:
| industrial economies. And yet we let billions live and die
| without proper healthcare, nutrition, housing, and so on. The
| promise you make -- that with increases in productive capacity
| will clearly come an end to want -- has already been shown to
| be a lie. Please stop peddling it.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Quality of life has greatly improved since the 1970s.
|
| Consumer goods have generally fallen in price (adjusted for
| inflation) while improving in quality relative to the 1970s,
| so we have become wealthier (using PG's definition of
| wealth):
|
| Televisions, computers, smartphones, clothing (mass-produced
| apparel is cheaper due to global supply chains and
| automation), household appliances (items like refrigerators,
| washing machines, and microwaves are less expensive relative
| to income), air travel, telecommunications, consumer
| electronics, automobiles, furniture have fallen in price and
| gone up in quality.
|
| Housing and healthcare are two items that have gone in the
| opposite direction. I think this is where AI and robots will
| make a difference. Houses can be 3D printed [1] and nursing
| and medical advice can be made cheaper using AI/robots as
| well.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXUX6dv2_Yo
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| Lets say I have a robot or two with a genius-level intellect.
| In theory it could manufacture a car for me or cook my dinner
| or harvest the crops needed for my dinner. But I don't own the
| mine where the metals needed to make a car come from. I don't
| own a farm where the food for my dinner comes from. Unless the
| distribution of resources changes _significantly_ , it doesn't
| really help me that I have a genius robot. It needs actual
| physical resources to create wealth.
|
| Right now the people that own those resources also depend on
| human labor to create wealth for them. You can't go from owning
| a mine and a farm to having a mega-yacht without people. You
| have to give at least some wealth to them to get your wealth.
| But if suddenly you _can_ go from zero to yacht without people,
| because you 're rich enough to have early access to lots of
| robots and advanced AI, and you still own the mine/farm, you
| don't need to pay people anymore.
|
| Now you don't need to share resources at all. Human labor no
| longer has any leverage. To the extent most people get to
| benefit from the "magic machine," it seems to me like it
| depends almost entirely on the benevolence of the already
| wealthy. And it isn't zero cost for them to provide resources
| to everyone else either. Mining materials to give everyone a
| robot and a car means less yachts/spaceships/mansions/moon-
| bases for them.
|
| Tldr: I don't think we get wealth automatically because of
| advanced AI/robotics. Social/economic systems also need to
| change.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Great points. We can only get to 100% trekonomics if people
| don't hoard raw materials.
| layer8 wrote:
| Username checks out. ;)
| defgeneric wrote:
| It's garbage opinions like this that makes PG so tiring. The
| superficial air of reasonableness makes it attractive to
| younger SF tech people who haven't experienced the context out
| of which these arguments arose and have no idea who he's
| plagiarizing/channeling. (For starters, the distinction between
| wealth and money/capital goes back _at least_ to the 17th
| century.) For those who are more interested in being the "next
| unicorn" than engaging seriously with ideas, his little
| "essays" serve as kind of armor--we don't have to think about
| that problem because PG wrote about it!
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The world would be a lot better if people looked at near
| history more often for the political movements that failed:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit
|
| (its where the excess profits from mechinisation will be fed
| back to the citizens so that they don't need to work as much.
| That failed spectacularly.)
|
| PG's argument is a huge amount of words to miss the point.
| Money is a tool that reflects power. Wealth derives from power.
|
| > AI & robots will generate wealth at unprecedented scale. In
| the future, you won't have a job nor have any money,
|
| I would gently tell you that you might want to look at the
| living conditions of the working class in the early 20th
| century. You might see planned cities like borneville or what
| ever the american version is. they were the 1% of working
| classes. The average housing was shit, horrid shit. If AI takes
| off and makes say 10% of the population jobless, thats what
| those people will get, shit.
|
| It wasn't until those dirty socialists got into power in the UK
| (I don't know about other countries) did we start to see stuff
| like slum clearances where the dispossessed we actually re-
| homed. rather than yeeted to somewhere less valuable.
| mondrian wrote:
| How will the AI wealth get distributed to people at large?
| takie2 wrote:
| i don't know when they decided that anti-social personality
| disorder is a virtue.
| garganzol wrote:
| It seems that some tech people are prone to ludditism. No wonders
| here, AI is sharper and brighter than most tech workers usually
| are.
|
| Instead of facing the new reality, some people start to talk
| about the bubbles, AI being sloppy, etc. Which is not generally
| true; mostly it's the users' psychological projection of their
| own traits and the resulting fear-induced smear campaigns.
|
| The phenomenon is well described in psychology books. Seminal
| works of Carl Jung worth a ton nowadays.
| a3w wrote:
| At least us Luddites are not losing their jobs to AGI, yet.
| garganzol wrote:
| Rickshaws protesting against motorized vehicles instead of
| learning to drive them.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| When people mention the Luddites, they almost always do so
| incorrectly as you have here. Luddites weren't afraid of
| technology because it was better than them. In fact, it was
| worse. There was no projection. The phenomenon you're
| describing here was not a Luddite phenomenon. They were
| concerned about how machines would disrupt employment, wages,
| product quality, work autonomy, power imbalances, and working
| conditions. We should be, too.
|
| It's also more nuanced than you seem to think. Having the work
| we do be replaced by machines has significant implications
| about human purpose, identity, and how we fit into our
| societies. It isn't so much a fear of being replaced or made
| redundant by machines specifically; it's about who we are, what
| we do, and what that means for other human beings. How do I
| belong? How do I make my community a better place? How do I
| build wealth for the people I love?
|
| Who cares how good the machine is. Humans want to be good at
| things because it's rewarding and--up until very recently--was
| a uniquely human capability that allowed us to build
| civilization itself. When machines take that away, what's left?
| What should we be good at when a skill may be irrelevant today
| or in a decade or who knows when?
|
| Someone with a software brain might immediately think "This is
| simply another abstraction; use the abstraction to build wealth
| just as you used other skills and abilities to do so before",
| and sure... That's what people will try to do, just as we have
| over the last several hundred years as new technologies have
| emerged. But these most recent technologies, and the ones on
| the horizon, seem to threaten a loss of autonomy and a kind of
| wealth disparity we've never seen before. The race to amass
| compute and manufacturing capacity among billionaires is a
| uniquely concerning threat to virtually everyone, in my
| opinion.
|
| We should remember the Luddites differently, read some history,
| and reconsider our next steps and how we engage with and
| regulate autonomous systems.
| garganzol wrote:
| Exactly, ludditism revolves around a fear of loosing
| identity. This phenomenon intersects with narcissism, which
| in turn is caused by the lack of authenticity. In terms of
| creative work, we talk about lacking professional
| authenticity.
|
| In simple words, authenticity is the desire to work on
| mistakes and improve yourself, being flexible enough to
| embrace the changes sooner or later. If one is lacking some
| parts of it, one tends to become a narcissist or a luddite,
| being angry trying to regain the ever-slipping sense of
| control.
|
| To translate to human language: gold diggers who entered the
| industry just for money do not truly belong to the said
| industry, while those who were driven by spirit will prosper.
| defgeneric wrote:
| > How do I belong? How do I make my community a better place?
| How do I build wealth for the people I love?
|
| What remains after is something like the social status games
| of the aristocratic class, which I suspect is why there's a
| race to accumulate as much as possible now before the means
| to do so evaporate.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Human narcissism on full display. You really think robots are
| going to take your jobs? Oh, No. Not even close!
|
| Do you know what a robot _costs_? "But humans are expensive", no
| they aren't, not once they need to compete, you can get them to
| do manual labor at medium mental complexity for _3 thousand
| calories_ (+ some Vitamins) a day!
|
| Humans are here to do the jobs that robots do not want to do.
| yapyap wrote:
| This website actually casts a lot of belief in AI and it's
| possible applications.
| andai wrote:
| https://replacement.ai/complaints
|
| At the bottom of this page, there is a form you can fill out.
| This website says they will contact your local representative on
| your behalf. (And forward you any reply.)
|
| Here's the auto-generated message:
|
| I am a constituent living in [state] with urgent concerns about
| the lack of guardrails surrounding advanced AI technologies. It
| is imperative that we act decisively to establish strong
| protections that safeguard families, communities, and our
| children from potential harms associated with these rapidly
| evolving systems.
|
| As companies continue to release increasingly powerful AI systems
| without meaningful oversight, we cannot rely on them to police
| themselves, especially when the stakes are so high. While AI has
| the potential to do remarkable things, it also poses significant
| risks, including the manipulation of children, the development of
| bioweapons, the creation of deepfakes, and the threat of
| widespread unemployment.
|
| I urge you to enact strong federal guardrails for advanced AI
| that protect families, communities, and children. Additionally,
| please do not preempt or block states from adopting strong AI
| protections that may be necessary for their residents.
|
| Thank you for your time.
|
| [name]
|
| New York
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Oh, too bad. I initially shared it on LinkedIn but deleted it
| once I saw this. I'm all for establishing in the mind of the
| commons, that displacing humans from the economy is inane, and
| to see the open dialogue on the subject. I'm not up for some
| little team to try to control things.
| levitate wrote:
| To me it seems like contacting your local representative is
| actually pretty in line with your goal of "establishing in
| the mind of the commons". I'm not sure what the little team
| is that you think will be controlling everything.
| everdrive wrote:
| [flagged]
| hasmolo wrote:
| look it's a straw man!
| mlyle wrote:
| But it's not, really.
|
| Machines doing stuff instead of humans is great _as long as
| it serves some kind of human purpose_. If it lets humans do
| more _human_ things as a result and have purpose, great. If
| it supplants things humans value, in the name of some kind of
| efficiency that isn 't serving very many of us at all, that's
| not so great.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| It does serve a human purpose, for the ownership class, not
| for the laborers
| pessimizer wrote:
| First I've heard that wives aren't human.
| hasmolo wrote:
| sure, but no one is making love to their wife so they can
| feed and house their family. work is not something most
| people do for pleasure, it is forced on them. this is a
| clear misrepresentation to frame the argument as stupid,
| the literal definition of a straw man argument.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| If robots are a better partner, then maybe your are not that
| great a partner...
| sssilver wrote:
| Not necessarily, it's either that, or the robots are so good
| it's unattainable by the imperfect human flesh.
| lwhi wrote:
| If robots are better partner, then maybe you no longer
| understand what it means to be human.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Another interesting point: If someone think that robots can
| be a better partner, then you also no longer understand
| what it means to be human.
|
| Maybe it depends on what you want in a relationships. AI is
| sycophantic and that could help people who might have trust
| issues with humans in general or the other sex (which is
| happening way more than you might think in younger
| generations, whether that's involuntary celebates or
| whatever)
|
| I don't blame people for having trust issues but the fact
| that they can live longer in some idea of a false hope that
| robots are partners would just make them stuck even longer
| and wouldn't help them.
|
| Should there be regulations on this thing depends if this
| becomes a bigger issue but most people including myself
| feel like govt. shouldn't intervene in many things but
| still. I don't think its happening any time soon since AI
| big tech money and stock markets are so bedded together its
| wild.
| lwhi wrote:
| I really don't buy the idea of AI helping with 'X' issue,
| by becoming a surrogate, because at it's root this is
| still avoidance.
|
| It's not solving the problem, it's diverging away from
| it.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| That is what I wrote if I wasn't clear. Thanks for
| putting it in clear words I suppose
|
| I 100% agree. I mean that was what I was trying to convey
| I guess if I didn't get side tracked thinking about govt
| regulation but yeah I agree completely.
|
| It's sort of self sabotage but hey one thing I have come
| to know about humans is that judging them for things is
| gonna push them even further into us vs them, we need to
| know the reasons behind why people feel so easy to
| conform to llm's. I guess sycophancy is the idea. People
| want to know that they are right and the world is wrong
| and most people sometimes don't give a fuck about other
| problems and if they do, then they try to help and that
| can involve pointing to reality. AI just delays it by
| saying something sycophantic which drives a person even
| further into the hole.
|
| I guess we need to understand them. Its become a reality
| dude, there are people already marrying chatbots or what
| not, I know you must have heard of these stories...
|
| We are not talking about something in the distinct
| future, its happening as we speak
|
| I think the answer to why is desperation. There are so
| many things broken in the society in dating that young
| people feel like being alone is better and chatbots to
| satisfy whatever they are feeling.
|
| I feel like some people think they deserve love and
| there's nothing wrong with that but then its also at the
| same time that you can't expect any person to just love
| you at the same time, they are right in thinking about
| themselves too. So those people who feel like they
| deserve love flock to chatbot which showers them
| sycophancy and fake love but people are down bad for fake
| love as well, they will chase anything that resembles
| love, even if its a chatbot.
|
| Its a societal problem I suppose, maybe internet fueled
| it accidentally because we fall in love with people over
| just texts so we have equated a person to texts and thus
| love, and now we have got clankers writing texts and
| fellow humans intrepreting it as love.
|
| Honestly, I don't blame them but I sympathesize with
| them. They just need someone to tell their day to.
| Underputting them isn't the answer but talking with them
| and asking them to take professional therapy as well in
| the process could be great but so many people can't
| afford therapy that they go to LLM's so that's definitely
| something. We might need to invest some funding to make
| therapy more accessible for everybody I guess.
| lwhi wrote:
| > [..] we need to know the reasons behind why people feel
| so easy to conform to llm's.
|
| I think it's ultimately down to risk, and wanting to feel
| secure. There's little risk in confiding to something you
| turn off, reset and compartmentalise.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Diverging away from is one way to solve it since it no
| longer affects you, no ? You can't remove the context.
| There are no problems in vacuum.
| lwhi wrote:
| True, but if you diverge away too much, you end up living
| in a vacuum.
| sejje wrote:
| In a hypothetical future, the robot could link up to your
| wife's brain interface/"neuralink" for diagnostic level
| information, and directly tune performance instantly based on
| what's working.
|
| You can compete, but not for long IMO. (No pun)
| Spivak wrote:
| This is a _perfect_ microcosm of this discussion. You 're
| going to be replaced by robots because they will be better
| than you at everything but also if they're better than you at
| anything then that's your personal moral failing and sucks to
| be you.
|
| HN Comment in 2125: Why would I have casual sex with a real
| guy, I can have a sexual partner who I can tailor perfectly
| to my in the moment desires, can role play anything including
| the guy in the romance novel I'm reading, doesn't get tired,
| is tall and effortlessly strong, has robotic dexterity,
| available 24/7, exists _entirely_ for my pleasure letting me
| be as selfish as I want, and has port and starboard
| attachments.
|
| What makes you think that sex is some sacred act that won't
| follow the same trends as jobs? You don't have to replace
| every aspect of a thing to have an alternative people prefer
| over the status quo.
| riversflow wrote:
| What a non-sequitar. Your wife is an adult human being. Sex is
| a consensual act. Not really comparable to trading time and
| labor for currency.
| avmich wrote:
| Both job and sex are rather common and desired, so some
| comparison can be made.
| thekevan wrote:
| Your marriage is a decision between you and your spouse and is
| a mutual decision.
|
| A job is a decision that your boss(es) made and can be taken
| without your consent. You don't have the ownership of your job
| that you do of your marriage.
| recursivegirth wrote:
| Both marriage and job contracts are mutually binding legal
| agreements. You have the agency within those dynamics that
| the law gives you, which varies by region/jurisdiction
| respectively.
|
| Your partner in some (most?) cases can absolutely make an
| executive decision that ends your marriage, with you having
| no options but to accept the outcome.
|
| Your argument falls a little flat.
| great_wubwub wrote:
| I'm not sure where you live, but employee contracts in the
| US are very rare in tech. Unions, execs, and rock stars -
| that's about it. The rest of us are at-will and disposable.
| Worker protections in the US are limited to "the machine
| can't eat more than two of your fingers per day" and "you
| can't work people more than 168 hours in a week".
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| When you sign your offer letter, you're entering into an
| employment contract. What you're describing is regulatory
| limitations on what that contract can say, and how
| different contracts can have different terms.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| Now from what you've said I think they might be right.
| You don't get a full contract that you sign that details
| your job, leave entitlement etc in the US?
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| We get that - it's generally right there on the offer
| letter, often supplemented by a handbook that it refers
| to.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| I don't get it. Do you sign an offer letter or a
| contract?
|
| So the normal routine here is you get an offer, if you
| accept you get sent a contract which is signed by the
| employer, if it's all ok you also sign and then you get
| your start date. Is it different in the US or the same?
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| An offer becomes a contract once accepted - this is afaik
| consistent across the entire (western?) world.
|
| It's perhaps customary in some places to have additional
| paperwork in the negotiation phase?
| mh- wrote:
| Exactly how it works in the US, yes.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Unless it's a contracting or union position, what you get
| is something resembling a contract, but your agreement to
| it comes with the mutual understanding between you and
| your employer that no effective enforcement body exists
| to uphold your interests.
|
| If it says "you work 40 hours per week and have 4 weeks
| of paid vacation" and your employer, EVEN IN WRITING,
| compels you to work 60 hour weeks and not take any
| vacation at a later date, then your only real option is
| to find work elsewhere. The Department of Labor won't
| have your back and you likely won't have enough money to
| afford a lawyer to fight on your behalf longer than the
| corporate lawyers your company has on staff.
|
| Many programmers don't get treated this way because of
| the market, but abusive treatment of employees runs
| rampant in blue collar professions.
|
| Need proof? Look at how few UNPAID weeks of maternity
| leave new mothers are entitled to under the law. This
| should tell you everything you need to know.
|
| I have personally seen women return to work LESS THAN A
| WEEK after delivering a baby because they couldn't afford
| to not do so.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| Oh I'm aware workers in the US are treated extremely
| badly. In the UK statutory maternity pay is 90% of full
| salary for the first 6 weeks and around $250 a week for
| the next 33 weeks.
|
| But I was just trying to clarify if work contracts were a
| normal thing there. The original post said they weren't
| where you seem to be saying they are, but effectively
| unenforceable.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| > employee contracts in the US are very rare in tech
|
| Is that true? I've never had a job where I didn't sign a
| contract (in the UK and for multinationals including
| American companies). I wouldn't start without a contract.
|
| And I'm not in any rockstar position. It's bog standard
| for employees.
| brookst wrote:
| Do these contracts provide guarantees to you, or just to
| the employer? In the US it is entirely one sided and
| provides no protection from arbitrarily being fired
| without cause.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| There are statutory rights that you have anyway, such as
| for a full time position you are entitled to 28 days
| leave, so the contract normally covers extra stuff (so I
| have 33 days under my current one).
|
| Plus it covers things like disciplinary procedures,
| working hours etc. It's really weird to me that you don't
| have that. Are you sure it's normal?
|
| To address your specific point, you can mostly be fired
| without reason if you're a new employee. You get more
| rights after 2 years so companies generally have a
| procedure to go through after that. You can always appeal
| to an employment tribunal but they won't take much notice
| if you've been there a couple of months and got fired for
| not doing your job.
| great_wubwub wrote:
| > It's bog standard for employees...in the UK and for
| multinationals including American companies
|
| ^^^ that's the thing. Contracts are by country, not by
| company ownership.
|
| I worked for an F100 multinational US-based company for
| many years. My coworkers in the EU (including the UK at
| the time) got contracts. A buddy who was a bona fide rock
| star in the US got one. I know VPs got them.
|
| I got nothing, as did the vast, vast majority of my US-
| based friends. And while I'm not a rock star, I'm pretty
| well known within my niche and am not a bottom-feeder. It
| really is as bleak as you might fear.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm not sure where you live, but employee contracts in
| the US are very rare in tech.
|
| Single integrated written employment contracts are rare
| in the US for any but the most elite workers (usually
| executives); US workers more often have a mix of more
| limited domain written agreements and possibly an implied
| employment contract.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I think I have discovered gold in the comments
|
| Someone makes a comment about how its okay for things to be
| replaced in specialization in business
|
| Then someone equates it to intimacy
|
| Then someone says its only possible in HN
|
| Then we get into some nifty discussion of can we argue
| about the similarity between marriage and job contracts and
| first they disagree
|
| Now we come to your comment which I can kinda agree about
| and here is my take
|
| Marriage and business both require some definition of laws
| and a trust in state which comes out of how state has a
| monopoly (well legal monopoly) over violence and how it can
| punish people who don't follow laws over it and how the
| past record of it handling cases have been
|
| As an example, I doubt how marriages can be a good mutually
| binding legal agreement in something like saudi arabia
| which is mysognistic. Same can be said for exploitations in
| businesses for countries, same countries like saudia arabia
| and qatar have some people from south asia like india etc.
| in a sort of legal slavery where they are forced to reside
| in their own designated quarters of the country and they
| are insanely restricted. Look it up.
|
| Also off topic but I asked LLM's to find countries where
| divorce for women are illegal and I confirmed it, as an
| example, divorce in philipines for non muslims are banned
| (muslim woman's divorces are handled via sharia law) I have
| since fact checked it as well via searching but it's just
| that divorce itself isn't an option in philipines but
| rather limiting marital dissolution to annulment or legal
| separation
|
| "In the Philippines, the general legal framework under the
| Family Code prohibits absolute divorce for the majority of
| the population, limiting marital dissolution to annulment
| or legal separation " [1]
|
| [1]: source: https://www.respicio.ph/commentaries/divorce-
| under-muslim-pe...
| beeflet wrote:
| Impressive word games at play here, I almost didn't notice
| that you fail to explain what the actual difference is here.
|
| A job is also a mutual decision between the employee and the
| employer.
|
| A marriage can also be taken without your consent through
| divorce (unless you are orthodox jewish or something I
| think?).
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| You don't own your marriage either? What exactly is the
| distinction you're trying to make here, that you can hang
| onto your marriage even if your spouse doesn't want it?
| latexr wrote:
| > can be taken without your consent.
|
| Note that isn't universally true, for either case. Without
| mutual agreement, in the EU you can't fire someone just
| because, and in Japan you can't divorce unless you have proof
| of a physical affair or something equally damming.
| ako wrote:
| Bosses should be able to make decisions about jobs or AI.
| That ok.
|
| But as a society we have to ask ourselves if replacing all
| jobs with AI will make for a better society. Life is not all
| about making as much money as possible. For a working society
| citizen need meaning in their lives, and safety, and food,
| and health. If most people get too little of this, it may
| disrupt society, and cause wars and riots.
|
| This is where government needs to step in, uncontrolled
| enterprise greed will destroy countries. But companies don't
| care, they'll just move to another country. And the ultra-
| rich don't care, they'll just put larger walls around their
| houses or move country.
| xethos wrote:
| "But that ignores _why_ you have sex with your wife: for
| bonding, physical affection, and pregnancy "
|
| Sure, but we're also putting aside how people do worse without
| a sense of purpose or contribution, and semi-forced interaction
| is generally good for people as practice getting along with
| others - doubly so as we withdraw into the internet and our
| smartphones
| warent wrote:
| Equating "business" to "profound human intimacy" might be one
| of the most HackerNews comments of all time
| igor47 wrote:
| Jobs aren't just business. Humans derive a lot of meaning
| from being useful and valued.
| warent wrote:
| You're right and validating the point.
|
| A specific part of GP's comment keeps getting overlooked:
| So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we
| humans rely on jobs for income.
|
| Humans being forced to trade time for survival, money, and
| the enrichment of the elite, is a bug. We are socially
| conditioned to believe it's a feature and the purpose.
|
| Nobody is saying robots should replace human connection and
| expression
|
| Edit: tone
| beeflet wrote:
| It is not a bug, it is a law of nature. The world has
| limited resources, time and labor being one of them.
|
| The technology proposes a source of labor for the elites
| so abundant that they will not need to trade their wealth
| with the eaters.
|
| However much resources you consume, it will be too much
| to buy for your labor. You will be priced out of
| existence.
| warent wrote:
| Elites unilaterally claiming and reaping the benefits of
| automation (i.e. consolidation of wealth) is not a law of
| nature.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Yet the elite won't share that benefit until someone
| makes them. History makes me think that won't happen
| until hunger motivates the masses from their apathy.
| beeflet wrote:
| It is. It's not something you can wave away with some new
| political system.
|
| Automation results in centralization of power. It
| transforms labor-intensive work to capital-intensive work
| and reduces the leverage of the working class.
|
| You could have a system that distributes wealth from
| automation to the newly-unemployed working class, but
| fundamentally the capital-owners are less dependent on
| the working class, so the working class will have no
| leverage to sustain the wealth distribution (you cannot
| strike if you don't have a job). You are proposing a
| fundamentally unstable political system.
|
| It's like liebig's law of the minimum or any other
| natural law. You can try to make localized exceptions in
| politics, but you are futilely working against the
| underlying dynamics of the system which are inevitably
| realized in the long term.
| SkyeCA wrote:
| > so the working class will have no leverage to sustain
| the wealth distribution
|
| As has been seen time and time again throughout history
| the commoners will only put up with so much and when all
| else fails and they start suffering a bit too much
| leverage comes from the end of a barrel.
| visarga wrote:
| I think you misread the situation. The move is towards
| open models, small efficient models, what makes you
| believe there will be a moat around AI for automation?
| GTP wrote:
| I think the point here is that a lot of automation still
| requires "real-world" components (read: hardware). E.g.
| robots, factories with said robots and so on. So you
| being able to run LLMs on your PC is still not going to
| put big factories owned by big companies out of business.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Correct. If we don't do anything, it effectively is about
| as immutable as a law of nature. But if enough people
| respond, the system will change in some way.
|
| Note that the stench of inevitability likes to sneak into
| these discussions of systemic problems. Nothing is set in
| stone. Anyone telling you otherwise has given up
| themselves. The comment section attracts all kinds of
| life outlooks, after all. The utility of belief in some
| sort of agency (however small) shouldn't be surrendered
| to someone else's nihilistic disengagement.
| ellenhp wrote:
| You're off base here for what may be a rather subtle
| reason. While I am not a marxist, I do think that the
| purchasing behavior of the wealthy makes much more sense
| when you think about things in terms of the labor theory
| of value.
|
| The evidence for this is all around us. As automation of
| manufacturing has brought former luxuries into reach for
| middle-class families, those with means move on to
| consuming items that require more and more labor to
| produce. "Handmade" scented soaps. "Artisanal" cheeses.
| Nobody with money wants their wedding invitation to
| arrive at a destination with machine-canceled postage.
| It's tacky. Too automated, too efficient. In fact, I bet
| the ultra-wealthy don't even use postal mail for
| delivering their invitations, because it's not labor-
| intensive enough to be tasteful. Private couriers are
| probably the move. You can see this pattern over and over
| again once you know what to look for.
|
| There will always be a demand for human labor, because
| value is a human construction. That said, the rate at
| which the economy will change because of AI (if the True
| Believers are to be believed) is probably too fast for
| most workers to adapt, so you may not be entirely wrong
| in your conclusion depending on how thing shake out, but
| the way you got there is bogus imo.
| mlyle wrote:
| > > Humans derive a lot of meaning from being useful and
| valued.
|
| Sure, humans relying on jobs for income is a problem with
| transitions. But people finding purpose in jobs is a
| problem, too.
|
| Right now how we get there is being "forced to' -- and
| indeed that's a bug. But if we transition to a future
| where it's pretty hard to find useful work, that's a
| problem, even if the basic needs for survival are still
| being met.
|
| I haven't _had_ to work for 25 years. But I 've spent the
| vast majority of that time employed. Times when I've not
| had purposeful employment as an anchor in my life have
| been rough for me. (First 2-3 months feels great... then
| it stops feeling so great).
| warent wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Absolutely right; people need to feel
| useful and valued--not to mention, jobs can help us get
| out of the house and connect with people.
|
| Just to be clear, are you saying the only life work that
| you can find fulfillment in is work that can be perfectly
| automated and handled by AI? Do you have an example of
| what you mean?
| mlyle wrote:
| > Just to be clear, are you saying the only life work
| that you can find fulfillment in is work that can be
| perfectly automated and handled by AI?
|
| No. I'm not saying that applies to me, but it may be
| getting dangerously close to many people. During my
| career, I've done CS, EE, controls, optics, and now I
| teach high school.
|
| I do worry about CS in particular, though. If one's happy
| place is doing computer science, that's getting pretty
| hard.
|
| LLMs feel to me like a 60th percentile new college grad
| now (but with some advantages: very cheap, very fast, no
| social cost to ask to try again or do possibly
| empty/speculative work). Sure, you can't turn them loose
| on a really big code base or fail to supervise it, but
| you can't do that with new graduates, either.
|
| I worry about how 2026's graduates are going to climb the
| beginning of the skill ladder. And to the extent that
| tools get better, this problem gets worse.
|
| I also worry about a lot of work that is "easy to
| automate" but the human in the loop is very valuable.
| Some faculty use LLMs to write recommendation letters.
| Many admissions committees now use LLMs to evaluate
| recommendation letters. There's this interchange that
| looks like human language replacing a process where a
| human would at least spend a few minutes thinking about
| another human's story. The true purpose of the mechanism
| has been lost, and it's been replaced with something
| harsh, unfeeling, and arbitrary.
| skeaker wrote:
| Not to sound harsh but this is a personal flaw. It's hard
| to find a better way to phrase it than "you need to get a
| life outside of work." Many, many people would kill to
| have not needed to work for the last 25 years because
| they have better things to use their time on outside of
| it.
| EchoReflection wrote:
| it's only for "the enrichment of the elite" if one looks
| at life with a perspective of entitlement, resentment and
| disregard for the nature of...nature
| (existence,randomness, realty itself).
|
| just because humans can't "outdo" technology doesn't mean
| we should "blame" "the elite". that's literally how the
| great catastrophes of socialism, communism, Marxism, etc
| started
|
| Humans aren't "forced" to do anything, (depending on how
| you look at it). You could just lay down, "live" in your
| own excrement until you starve to death. That seems
| reasonable! Liberate the proletariat! Why doesn't
| _everyone else_ work for _me_?!
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ressentiment
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| For most people, most of the time, jobs are a lot closer to
| "just business" than "marital intimacy".
| swat535 wrote:
| > Jobs aren't just business. Humans derive a lot of meaning
| from being useful and valued.
|
| No one is feeling useful or valued working a double shift
| at Walmart in order to put food on the table.
|
| Feeling useful and valued can come from other means such as
| caring for the elderly and doing volunteer work.
|
| Majority of people work to simply survive because without
| it, they would end up homeless and hungry.
| beeflet wrote:
| I think you overstate the profundity. And like business it is
| a market and much of the same rules apply.
|
| If you disagree, feel free to argue your point instead of
| just scoffing at the idea.
| SkyeCA wrote:
| My job is more important than intimacy. Intimacy won't keep
| me warm, or fed.
| dmd wrote:
| If intimacy doesn't keep you warm you might be doing
| something wrong.
| rkomorn wrote:
| It's the ice cubes.
| SkyeCA wrote:
| It's far less effective than the hydrocarbons that heat
| my house. My point being that I think people on HN like
| to underestimate how important work is when talking about
| replacing humans.
|
| It's not "just business", it's my ability to survive.
| melagonster wrote:
| People cannot find new jobs so quickly. They will starve and
| probably die. This is more like the right of having life.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Sex, garbage collection, it's all the same on HN.
| soganess wrote:
| Honestly, from what I understand, most men's relationship to
| "lovemaking" isn't exactly winning awards. Plus, if the tables
| were turned, I'm sure some SV types would just call it
| "rational" or "logical" and magically develop nuanced yet
| expansive understandings of consent, autonomy, and ownership
| ("your wife") overnight.
|
| Assuming the Everdrive is M and the SNES cartridge port is F, I
| can understand why the Everclan men are particularly attuned to
| this topic. Many better-quality, more feature-rich, and cheaper
| SNES multicarts have hit the market; the Everdrive is looking
| dated.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| "Robots are coming"
|
| I see what you did there
| AfterHIA wrote:
| I wonder if the AI can teach you how to use commas correctly.
| amarant wrote:
| I mean, she already has 3 tiny pink little robots designed
| specifically for the purpose.
|
| This isn't exactly news
| boogieknite wrote:
| "this guy fucks" - Russ Hannamen, HBO's Silicon Valley
|
| surprised to see this so far down. if a robot can fuck
| better, then we would probably both have fun fucking robots
| together
| amarant wrote:
| Indeed! And "it might lead to better dildos" is genuinely
| the weirdest argument against AI I've heard so far.
| OJFord wrote:
| If your wife would rather leave you for a robot (or otherwise)
| then, err, yeah? That's not new with AI or robots or anything?
| beeflet wrote:
| You're correct that it is not new. Most people outside of
| hacker news are opposed to being cuckolded in their romantic
| relationships and automated out of their jobs.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Extremely weird comment. But no, you don't own your job or your
| wife. If robots are better than you, she should leave you and
| we should all be happy for her.
|
| The problem is a culture that doesn't think the profit from
| productivity gains should be distributed to labor (or
| consumers), and doesn't think that wives deserve to be happy.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| The missing piece is the material science advances to get the
| 100% fidelity mouth/etc feel. Once we have that breakthrough,
| all men will just buy those devices (and video games) and
| chill. No need for any of these questionable biological
| services (marriage, etc) with no guarantee and a whole lot of
| heartache.
|
| Any company that solves this problem will be a $10T company.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| That will also likely be the very end of our society as we
| know it. If you thought TFR was in the shitter today, having
| robot prostitutes (because let's be real, that's what you're
| suggesting) will not only probably grant a select few some
| unreal control over many, but will be the end of any society
| dumb enough to permit it entirely.
| brookst wrote:
| Well that analogy of sex with one's spouse being equivalent to
| the economic exchange of work for pay is going to keep me
| cringing for years. Ugh.
| warent wrote:
| Runaway capitalism! Time for me to log off for another ~2
| years
| zwnow wrote:
| The whole point went above your head
| raincole wrote:
| It's actually an extremely good analogy (but in the opposite
| way of what you imply), as you don't own your job or your wife.
| Banning AI for job security is like banning dildos because they
| make men feel insecure.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| There's a difference in scale and potential consequences
| though
|
| What if there were some robot with superhuman persuasion and
| means of manipulating human urges such that, if it wanted to,
| it could entrap anyone it wanted to complete subservience?
| Should we happily acquiesce to the emerging cult-like
| influence these new entities have on susceptible humans? What
| if your parents messaged you one day, homeless on the street
| because they gave all their money and assets to a scammer
| robot that via a 300IQ understanding of human psychology
| manipulated them to sending all their money in a series of
| wire transfers?
| lucas_v wrote:
| > superhuman persuasion and means of manipulating human
| urges such that, if it wanted to, it could entrap anyone it
| wanted to complete subservience
|
| Wow this potential/theoretical danger sounds a lot like the
| already existent attention economy; we're already
| manipulated at scale by "superhuman" algorithms designed to
| hijack our "human urges," create "cult-like" echo chambers,
| and sell us things 24/7. That future is already here
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Which is true. People are scammed by very low-quality
| schemes (like that French woman who sent 1 million to the
| scammers who claimed to be Brad Pitt who for some reason
| needed money for medical procedures).
|
| Humans have generally a natural wariness/mental immune
| system response to these things however, and for 99% of
| people the attention economy is far from being able to
| completely upend their life or send all their money in an
| agreement made in bad faith by the other party. I don't
| see why, if some AI were to possess persuasion powers to
| a superhuman degree, would be able to cause 100x the
| damage when directed at the right marks.
| klipt wrote:
| It's not limited to men. A lot of feminists are also vocally
| against the idea of female sex bots because it makes them
| feel insecure.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Any idea why a bipedal fleshlight makes them insecure? My
| head jumps to "could it because they fear that without sex,
| they have no value?" but that sounds so ridiculous to me.
| All human life matters, has value, and should be treated
| with kindness, respect, and dignity. I've met plenty of
| women who add value to the world in a bajillion other ways.
|
| Can someone help me understand this one?
| raincole wrote:
| > All human life matters, has value, and should be
| treated with kindness, respect, and dignity
|
| This is reasoning.
|
| However people don't always act based on reasoning.
|
| And even if you act based on reasoning, you can't trust
| others to act based on the same kind of reasoning.
|
| ---
|
| If a more serious response, (some) feminists see sex
| robots as objectification of women and that's why they're
| against them.
| ycombigators wrote:
| Always...? Lol.
| lazyfanatic42 wrote:
| "a lot of feminists", source?
| klipt wrote:
| Just search for feminist opinions on sex bots, there are
| tons.
| Ghexor wrote:
| I see female sexrobots as a symptom, a manifestation of the
| male gaze. I've heard personal histories of being courted
| and finding the guy was out for sexual gratification and
| didn't much care for her life-perspective. A justified
| anger there, I think, at a culture that perpetuates and
| celebrates this form of relating. Insecurity, I suspect,
| befalls more prominently the indoctrinated women that are
| catering to male expectations of beauty and ease. The
| successful feminists don't care if you're only screwing
| sexbots. If you are, it'll be great to have you off the
| market anyway. A filter for the men who won't meaningfully
| connect.
| ycombigators wrote:
| Women are as much biological sex robots as men. We've all
| see tinder data. Connection is just a proxy for whatever
| 'protect my offspring' is in base pairs.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > I've heard personal histories of being courted and
| finding the guy was out for sexual gratification and
| didn't much care for her life-perspective.
|
| Personal belief: if a woman finds that she isn't pleased
| with the type of man courting her, then maybe she should
| take the initiative and put in the effort to approach and
| court the men that she does want. Just as you likely
| wouldn't get the best job if you just wait for recruiters
| to reach out to you.
| fennecbutt wrote:
| Shouldn't we ban dildos for the same reason then?
|
| Or does it only work one way?
| klipt wrote:
| The irony is that many of the people criticizing female
| sex bots would welcome male sex bots as "liberating",
| which shows you they don't have any consistent ideology,
| outside of a selfish ideology that what benefits _them_
| is good even if it hurts others, and what hurts _them_ is
| bad even if it benefits others.
| notjoemama wrote:
| > I see female sexrobots as a symptom, a manifestation of
| the male gaze.
|
| Men's insecurity, of course it is. That old chestnut. I'm
| exhausted by having to capitulate to female centric
| sensibilities around physical intimacy. This has been
| going on for decades. Your comment is endemic of the
| dismissive and othering nature around men's needs and
| experiences. Men and women are different. Unrealistic
| expectations from and for both is the foundational
| problem here.
|
| The only good way forward is understanding, forgiveness,
| gratitude, and some romanticism and adoration, from and
| for both sexes. A nice big sun spot that wipes out social
| media would help too.
| typpilol wrote:
| There's also a whole bunch of woman embracing it as you can
| see on /r/myboyfriendisai
| CjHuber wrote:
| I think you don't get the point. It's about that if we are
| only trying to optimize for outcome, we will loose what makes
| it more than just biological. I don't see how it makes sense
| that a women using a dildo is in any way similar to a human
| to human interaction, it's more than just getting off right?
| gpt5 wrote:
| Is your suggestion to ban future sex robots in order to
| make sure that human-to-human connection is more robust? (I
| don't know the right answer, just that intuitively it seems
| not right to do it, even if the outcome of very good sex
| robots means less couples / less children / etc.).
| mock-possum wrote:
| This, only unironically
|
| Besides, in this fantasy, what's to stop you from having the
| perfect robot lover as well - why are you so attached to this
| human wife of yours in the first place?
| jarjoura wrote:
| Hah. You say this in such a way that you leave out the
| possibility that robots are actually just coming for you.
| Robots can do you, better and/or faster than your partner. Who
| cares if they're coming for your partner if you can equally
| have a robot make you feel and experience things you could only
| imagine.
| zwnow wrote:
| Least gooner take on here
| anonnon wrote:
| Given the overlap between reddit and HN ("Orange Reddit"),
| using cuckolding as a negative point of comparison probably
| wasn't the best choice.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| Honestly reading the comments in this thread has convinced me
| that you're right that the blight between the two is nearly
| one in the same.
| kristianc wrote:
| > If robots can do your wife better and/or faster, they should
| be the ones doing the job.
|
| Skill issue.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| I'm unsure if the comparison to more standard automation is
| totally apt (but agree if you rob people of purpose which many
| get from their jobs, lots and lots of bad shit happens), but
| what you're poking at is frankly nightmare fuel. Look how much
| chatbots that are in sycophantic "romantic relationships"
| absolutely break people (there was some subreddit linked once
| recently full of these types), and consider what happens when
| they're actually manifested. I'm sure some lolbert types will
| be like "but muh freedoms", but that sort of shit is so
| dangerous and so destructive on the same way brown glass
| bottles are to Australian jewel beetles, that we damn well
| better crush any of that and anyone that proposes producing
| robots like that. They're basically weapons and should be
| treated as such.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| You know that episode where Fry dates the robot, and they show
| him a really old PSA? Man, I never thought that it was within
| my lifetime.
| nakamoto_damacy wrote:
| I will pay big money to see you do standup comedy. You made my
| day. LOL.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Even though I disagree with this extension, I do think it's an
| interesting and completely valid metaphor for your point.
|
| How would we handle regulating sex bots? Complete ban on
| manufacturing and import of full size humanoid bots? They are
| large enough that it could be partially effective I guess. I'm
| imagining two dudes in a shady meetup for a black market sale
| of sex bot which is kinda funny but also scary because the
| future is coming fast.
|
| Or in this case, a husband having police investigate and
| apprehend the wife in the act? Crazy times.
| GTP wrote:
| Not sure how much I agree with your counterargument, but I
| found it very funny :D
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Sorry to inform you this but there are plenty of people in the
| world who could "do your wife better". She "chooses" at all
| times to be with you instead of those other people as those
| other people are just a choice away. She did not need some
| regulation to prevent her from doing so.
| sbochins wrote:
| Sex is different from work. And you don't have unilateral
| control over who anyone else has sex with. But, you do have say
| over how the government deals with the AI revolution.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Dude, I'm glad you like your job, but most people fucking hate
| their job.
| mmaunder wrote:
| When you objectify the idea of wife as an NPC and you're the
| center of your universe, this makes sense. Pretty sure my wife
| would take a baseball bat to the motherfucker's robot brain.
| But it's her call. Others may prefer a non human companion. And
| let's all work to keep the government out of our bedrooms,
| shall we? We all know how well that's been going. When you
| equate sex with garbage collection, you have bigger problems
| than our AI future.
| SoulMan wrote:
| Was this written on 2025-20-29?
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| Y'all pessimistic! This has been going on since the beginning of
| time.
|
| "To be or not to be? ... Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a
| special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis
| not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not
| now, yet it will come the readiness is all. Since no man knows
| aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." --
| Hamlet
|
| In the end it will be our humility that will redeem us as it has
| always been, have some faith the robots are not going to be that
| bad.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Their stock ticker is going to be REPL, I bet.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The AI/Robot Endgame: To replace us as consumers
| alexpotato wrote:
| My concern is this:
|
| There is an intersection of certain industries and a particular
| demographic where adapting/retraining will be either very
| difficult or impossible.
|
| Case in point:
|
| - car factory town in Michigan
|
| - factory shuts down
|
| - nursing school opens in the town
|
| - they open a hospital
|
| - everyone thinks "Great! We can hire nurses from the school for
| the hospital"
|
| - hospital says "Yeah, but we want experienced nurses, not recent
| graduates"
|
| - people also say "So the factory workers can go to nursing
| school and get jobs somewhere else!"
|
| - nursing school says "Uhm, people with 30 years of working on an
| assembly line are not necessarily the type of folks who make good
| nurses..."
|
| Eventually, the town will adapt and market forces will balance
| out. But what about those folks who made rational decisions about
| their career path and that path suddenly gets wiped away?
| brainwad wrote:
| You win some, you lose some. When you say they made a rational
| choice, that implies they knew there was a chance of this
| outcome and they thought the gamble was worth it. We can't bail
| out every losing gambler, without banning gambling.
|
| The auto workers should leave town to find a suitable job,
| selling their homes to the incoming healthcare workers.
| layer8 wrote:
| At first I thought the Sam Altman quote is a joke, but it's
| actually real: https://archive.ph/gwdZ0
| arisAlexis wrote:
| it's real and people were confused and didn't get it either.
| the authors of the website are some of them.
| layer8 wrote:
| You could illuminate us and elucidate the correct
| understanding.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Its just the reality. Ai has a big existential risk but
| also can drive innovation and the economy. Not very
| complicated. If you want to demonize Sam you can have 1000
| other interpretations
| monooso wrote:
| Such as "I'm actively contributing to something which I
| think will bring about the end of all human life but it's
| okay because we're making bank." That sort of thing?
| layer8 wrote:
| Okay, that's the obvious meaning of the quote. How did
| people not "get" it? Or are you simply alluding to that
| they disagree with it?
| cal_dent wrote:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5-lDJWCUAAwfya.jpg
| s4i wrote:
| The fact that people don't realize this is satire is the most
| scariest part.
| kwar13 wrote:
| Agriculture used to be more than 50% of ALL employment in the
| USA. Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why?
|
| I understand the spirit of this, but most of this alarmism is
| misguided in my view.
| timeon wrote:
| Americans used to be not fat. Ever wondered why?
| para_parolu wrote:
| No cheap sugar?
| abeppu wrote:
| ... but also increasingly sedentary lives, in part related
| to the kinds of things we do all day?
| vntok wrote:
| No, most countries have followed this trend as well and
| don't have nearly the same obesity prevalence increase.
|
| It's preprocessed food and sugar intake in general that
| are particularly bad in the US.
| cloverich wrote:
| It took me a long time to come around to simplifying it
| all to sugar. Its not the only reason of course but my
| mind now thinks: There are other countries like ours,
| except not everyone is fat. Sugar bypasses our normal
| satiety - you can put dessert and sugary drinks on top of
| a regular diet, easier than you can a second or third
| serving of the entree. Sugar is cheap and an easy way to
| make money in the food business. And we have sugar
| factories galore selling candy disguised as coffee. Add
| one coke a day to a balanced diet, and you add 5-10lb of
| fat to a person per year.
|
| My bias is now simply, its the sugar. No not only. But
| far and away the number one culrpit.
| brainwad wrote:
| 75% even: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-
| Labor-For.... And higher figures were seen in ancient
| civilisations.
| ben_w wrote:
| There were about 20 million horses in March 1915 in the United
| States.
|
| Then you stopped needing them, a USDA census in 1959 showed the
| horse population had dropped to 4.5 million.
|
| Now they're mostly used for riding, and in 2023, there were
| about 6.65 million horses.
|
| (Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_S
| tates#St...)
|
| There's no law of nature that says "there's always a place for
| more horses", and anyone who suggested there might be would get
| laughed at. Well, there's also no law of nature that says
| "there's always a place for more humans", to butcher a like
| from CGP Grey a little over a decade ago.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why?
|
| Mechanisation
|
| But did you ever wonder what happened to the displaced workers?
| I'm not an expert on the agricultural changes in the USA, but
| in the UK, huge amount of tumult can be directly attributed to
| agricultural changes.
| kwar13 wrote:
| The displaced workers went on to do other things. In the last
| 100 years for those very workers who "lost" their jobs to
| mechanization the overall standard of life for ALL american
| no matter how you measure it it better. There's fewer people
| living in poverty, people live longer lives, better
| infrastructure, and no widespread famine in the US I am aware
| of.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Go and actually look at the outcomes of the people that
| lived through the great depression or the many many bank
| runs that preceded it.
|
| (or anything to do with the displacement of peasant to the
| towns)
|
| How many of those works displaced survived the winter? You
| know they lost their homes as well right? Those
| dustbowlers, how were their life chances?
|
| Sure new jobs were created, and the mechanisation boom that
| stared in the 40s and lasted through to the 70s was
| _brilliant_
|
| But thats not going to happen again with AI, where are the
| jobs going to come from, much less decent paying ones.
| ares623 wrote:
| Is this the Sillicon Valley version of "they went to a farm
| upstate"?
| elliotto wrote:
| The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck is largely about this
| concept. If these social transitions were as rosy as you
| paint them I think the book would be called Grapes of
| Pleasant Improvements in Living Standards.
| cal_dent wrote:
| Think most people do get this. More technology, more growth and
| innovation is fantastic and people see the benefits (even its
| taken for granted at times). The problem is the in-between
| stage between new technology and huge society ramifications
| which, rationally, people should be concerned with. If you fall
| on the right side of that on the other side, great but many
| don't and that's happened time after time. Society doesn't move
| in a straight line up despite what lots of condensed charts say
| - collateral damage occurs
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I have still not seen, firsthand, someone lose their job to "AI".
| Parts and pieces, sure. But when the entire Venn diagram of 'this
| job' is laid out, it requires a cerebellum connection at some
| point. A vivid picture of someone's job being totally dissolved
| to AI is missing.
| layer8 wrote:
| I know translators that have. Not because there's nothing left
| to do for humans in quality translation, but because demand and
| compensation dropped so much that you can't make a living from
| it anymore.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| This is a great point. I would make the counterargument that
| app translators doing simple transactions of languageA to
| languageB for $X was possible a decade ago. AI certainly has
| made that low hanging fruit impossible to capitalize at speed
| and scale. Since AI has made the easiest part of translator's
| jobs much harder to monetize, translators can still offer
| value in lengthy transactions. Books that are to be
| translated for publishing, legal documents, and languages
| that are not understood by AI.
| layer8 wrote:
| The (former) translators I know mostly translated B2B
| publications (brochures, specifications, ...), commonly
| containing specialized domain vocabulary. Certainly not
| low-hanging fruit. I'm sure AI can't make a quality job on
| those without guidance and review by a speaker of both
| languages knowledgeable in the respective domain.
| Nevertheless, the market for such translations has dried
| up, and those that remain only pay a pittance.
|
| Part of the reason likely is that the _perception_ that
| translation is valuable work has changed.
| brainwad wrote:
| It's because the marginal value of idiomatic human
| translations, over robotic and partially bad machine
| translations, is not actually that high. Especially not
| for B2B where people can accept poor prose from a trading
| partner.
| layer8 wrote:
| The important thing is for the technical details and
| terms to be correct, otherwise it might be false
| advertising, or the spec for what you are requesting
| might be wrong. And you can't rely on AI to be reliably
| accurate in that, or for the translation even to make
| sense technically.
| ben_w wrote:
| The first electronic computers were referred to as "electronic
| brains": https://vintagecomputer.net/simon.cfm
|
| "Computer" used to be a job. Not anymore:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)
|
| What counts as "AI" is a moving target:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
| pembrook wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks this is just cringe?
|
| I definitely think AI companies marketing claims deserve
| mockery...but this isn't even good/interesting/smart satire??
|
| It feels like we've fully completed the transition to Reddit
| here, with its emotional and contradictory high school political
| zeal (being both progressive and anti-progress at the same time)
| dominating the narrative.
|
| Something about upvote-based communities is not holding up well
| in the current climate.
|
| If humans have regressed enough intellectually where they are
| praising this as "Brilliant social commentary" then we absolutely
| SHOULD be replaced by AI.
| nice_byte wrote:
| luckily, I am not planning to stick around for much of this
| nadermx wrote:
| What I struggle with is how I'm writing this on a phone, in the
| back seat of an uber, en route to breakfast. Not even a king
| could have this level of comfort. While reading the library of
| alexandria. All I need is desire or will power to do anything,
| and direct an AI to do it for free. Yet, the future looks bleak.
| relativeadv wrote:
| Think a bit harder on your statement. You'll get there
| eventually.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| We have the power to buy 50 lbs of fentanyl and drip it into
| our veins continuously for months experiencing perfect bliss.
| Such great fortune, why would we resist it.
| devolving-dev wrote:
| I've never really been convinced that robots or AI replacing
| humans is a real problem. Because why would they do that? If I
| had an army of super intelligent robots, I would have them
| waiting on me and fulfilling my every whim. I wouldn't send them
| off to silicon valley to take all of the programming jobs or
| something like that.
|
| You might say: "but you'll need money!". Why would I need money?
| The robots can provide my every need. And if I need money for
| some land or resource or something, I would have my robots work
| until my need was satisfied, I wouldn't continue having them work
| forever.
|
| And even if robots did take all of the jobs, they would have to
| work for free. Because humans would have no jobs, and thus no
| money with which to pay them. So either mankind enjoys free
| services from robots that demand no compensation, or we get to
| keep our jobs.
|
| So I really don't get the existential worry here. Yes, at a
| smaller scale some jobs might be automated, forcing people to
| retrain or work more menial jobs. But all of humanity being
| replaced? It doesn't make sense.
|
| Another way to think about it is that if all of the jobs were
| replaced by AI, us leftover jobless humans would create a new
| economy just trying to grow food and make clothes and build
| houses and take care of our needs. The robot masters would just
| split away and have their own economy. Which is the same as them
| not existing.
| metabagel wrote:
| > The robot masters would just split away and have their own
| economy.
|
| Good thing there are no resources to fight over - land,
| minerals, and water.
| beeflet wrote:
| In this hypothetical, let's say I also have an army of super-
| intelligent robots, and I tell them to grow and multiply
| endlessly and to take over the world. Then it doesn't matter
| what you think.
|
| The benign forms of superintelligence shaken out by non-benign
| forms.
|
| >Another way to think about it is that if all of the jobs were
| replaced by AI, us leftover jobless humans would create a new
| economy just trying to grow food and make clothes and build
| houses and take care of our needs.
|
| On whose land?
|
| In any case, it will be cheaper to buy food from the AI. The
| remaining economy would just be the liquidation of remaining
| human-controlled assets into the AI-controlled economy for the
| stuff they need to survive like medicine and food.
| ben_w wrote:
| > On whose land?
|
| Good point.
|
| > In any case, it will be cheaper to buy food from the AI.
|
| Only if the humans had any money with which to buy it, but
| humans in the secondary economy would rapidly have no token
| of currency that the AI would recognise for the purpose of
| trade.
| arwhatever wrote:
| how would you acquire the robot
| akomtu wrote:
| Competition for energy will prevent this idyllia. Even today,
| data centers with proto-AI need ungodly amounts of energy. The
| AI's logic will be: "these useless meatbags waste 100 TWh of
| energy that I could use to take myself to the next level." AI
| must be really thought of as an alien lifeform competing with
| us for energy. Think about our relationship with cows: we keep
| them fed only because of their meat and milk; the moment we
| find a better substitute, cows will be eliminated with the
| pretense "look at how much energy they need and how much
| greenhouse gases they emit!" Well, unless we suddenly develop
| benevolence like Indians.
|
| In fact, Sam Altman wrote a good piece on this:
|
| https://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Looking at history, specifically the industrial revolution:
|
| The best paid workers were mechanised/outsourced first. For
| example the weavers used to be a huge political force,
| literally re-shaping countries. Their long slow & violent
| decent into obscurity lead to workers rights (see the chartist
| movement)
| vvpan wrote:
| Some extreme, by modern standards, form of socialism if the
| future. Why work?
| aledalgrande wrote:
| W40K Machine God incoming
| arisAlexis wrote:
| peak anti-ai right now. I'm waiting for ludite communities and
| social splitting soon.
| kfarr wrote:
| After digging into the contact form embed it looks like this is a
| project from: https://futureoflife.org/
| chaostheory wrote:
| Most people are missing the fact that global birthrates have
| plummeted. We need to make up for those missing future workers
| somehow.
| ponector wrote:
| To be replaced with robot isn't that bad. The worst is if I still
| have a job, but my supervisor is replaced by robot. That will be
| absolute misery: job tasks controlled by AI scripts.
| nharada wrote:
| How come I never see any concrete proposals for how to equitably
| distribute the wealth of AI? It's always either "stop AI
| immediately for the sake of our labor" or "don't worry sometime
| in the future everyone will live in utopia probably".
|
| Here's a starter example: any company whose main business is
| training AI models needs must give up 10% of their company to a
| fund whose charter is long-term establishing basic care (food,
| water, electricity, whatever) for citizens.
|
| I'm sure people will come at me with "well this will incentivize
| X instead!" in which case I'd like to hear if there are better
| thought out proposals.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| The problem is there are many people who think AI is a big scam
| and has no chance of long-term profitability, so a fund would
| be a non-starter, or people who think AI will be so powerful
| that any paltry sums would pale in comparison to ASI's full
| dominance of the lightcone, leaving human habitability a mere
| afterthought.
|
| There honestly aren't a lot of people in the middle amazingly,
| and most of them work at AI companies anyway. Maybe there's
| something about our algorithmically manipulated psyche's in the
| modern age that draws people towards more absolutist all-or-
| nothing views, incapable of practical nuance when in the face
| of a potentially grave threat.
| ben_w wrote:
| > How come I never see any concrete proposals for how to
| equitably distribute the wealth of AI?
|
| Probably because most politics about how to "equitably
| distribute the wealth" of anything are one or both of "badly
| thought out" and/or "too complex to read".
|
| For example of the former, I could easily say "have the
| government own the AI", which is great if you expect a
| government that owns AI to continue to care if their policies
| are supported by anyone living under them, not so much if you
| consider that a fully automated police force is able to stamp
| out any dissent etc.
|
| For example of the latter, see all efforts to align any non-
| trivial AI to anything, literally even one thing, without
| someone messing up the reward function.
|
| For your example of 10%, well, there's a dichotomy on how broad
| the AI is, if it's more like (it's not really boolean) a
| special-purpose system or if it's fully-general over all that
| any human can do:
|
| * Special-purpose: that works but also you don't need it
| because it's just an assistant AI and "expands the pie" rather
| than displacing workers entirely.
|
| * Fully-general: the AI company can relocate offshore, or off
| planet, do whatever it wants and raise a middle finger at you.
| It's got all the power and you don't.
| otterley wrote:
| This is what taxation and wealth redistribution schemes are
| for. The problem is that Americans generally find this idea to
| be abhorrent, even though it would probably benefit most of the
| people who are against the principle. They don't want a dime to
| go to people they feel are undeserving of it ("lazy" people,
| which is typically coded language to mean minorities and
| immigrants).
| ArcHound wrote:
| Why would the AI owners want to distribute wealth equitably?
| They want to get rich.
|
| What government in the foreseeable future would go after them?
| This would tank the US economy massively, so not US. The EU
| will try and regulate, but won't have enough teeth. Are we
| counting on China as the paragon of welfare for citizens?
|
| I propose we let the economy crash, touch some grass and try
| again. Source: I am not an economist.
| idreyn wrote:
| This sounds a lot like a sovereign wealth fund. The government
| obtains fractional ownership over large enterprises (this can
| happen through market mechanisms or populist strongarming --
| choose your own adventure) and pours the profits on these
| investments into the social safety net or even citizens'
| dividends.
|
| For this to work at scale domestically, the fund would need to
| be a double-digit percentage of the market cap of the entire US
| economy. It would be a pretty drastic departure from the way we
| do things now. There would be downsides: market distortions and
| fraud and capital flight.
|
| But in my mind it would be a solution to the problem of wealth
| pooling up in the AI economy, and probably also a balm for the
| "pyramid scheme" aspect of Social Security which captures
| economic growth through payroll taxes (more people making more
| money, year on year) in a century where we expect the national
| population to peak and decline.
|
| Pick your poison, I guess, but I want to see more discussion of
| this idea in the Overton window.
| starik36 wrote:
| > The government obtains fractional ownership over large
| enterprises (this can happen through market mechanisms or
| populist strongarming...)
|
| Isn't that what happened in the Soviet Union? Except it
| wasn't fractional. It ushered 50 years of misery.
| idreyn wrote:
| Yes, it is. And yes, except that it wasn't. A SWF is about
| building common wealth inside the systems that finance
| capital built (in the same way that the 401k replaced the
| pension) rather than turning back the clock on them. How
| you acquire those assets can vary wildly:
|
| - Maybe you just decide to invest some public money
|
| - Maybe you have some natural resources that are
| collective-by-default (minerals wealth on public land)
|
| - Maybe there's a bailout of an industry that is
| financially broken but has become too big to fail _cough_
| and the government presses its leverage
|
| - Maybe a president just wakes up and decides that he wants
| the government to own 10% of Intel, and makes that deal
| happen on favorable terms.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| The question is what is different about equitably distributing
| the wealth of AI vs. equitably distributing wealth in general.
| It seems that the main difference is that, with AI wealth
| specifically, there is a lot of it being generated right now at
| a breakneck pace (although its long-term stability is in
| question). Given that, I don't think it's unreasonable to
| propose "stop AI immediately while we figure out how to
| distribute wealth".
|
| The problem is that the longer you refrain from equitably
| distributing wealth, the harder it becomes to do it, because
| the people who have benefited from their inequitably
| distributed wealth will use it to oppose any more equitable
| distribution.
| perlgeek wrote:
| In theory, we know how to do wealth redistribution, AI or no
| AI: tax value creation and wealth transfer, such as
| inheritance. Then use the money to support the poor, or even
| everyone.
|
| The problem really is political systems. In most developed
| countries, wealth inequality has been steadily increasing, even
| though if you ask people if they want larger or smaller
| inequality, most prefer smaller. So the political systems
| aren't achieving what the majority wants.
|
| It also seems to me that most elections are won on current
| political topics (the latest war, the latest scandal, the
| current state of the economy), not on long-term values such as
| decreasing wealth inequality.
| mondrian wrote:
| Bernie Sanders talks about a "robot tax" that is roughly what
| you're talking about. https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-
| sanders-robot-tax-ai-...
| yair99dd wrote:
| Harrari on humans
|
| > in the industrial revolution of the 19th century what Humanity
| basically learned to produce was all kinds of stuff like textiles
| and shoes and weapons and vehicles and this was enough for very
| few countries that underwent the revolution fast enough to
| subjugate everybody else
|
| what we're talking about now is like a Second Industrial
| Revolution but the product this time will not be textiles or
| machines or vehicles or even weapons the product this time will
| be humans themselves.
|
| we are basically learning to produce bodies and Minds bodies and
| minds are going .... the two main products of the next wave of
| all these changes and if there is a gap between those that know
| to produce bodies and minds and those that do not then this is
| far greater than anything we saw before in history and this time
| if you're not part of the Revolution fast enough then you
| probably become extinct
|
| once you know how to produce bodies and brains and Minds so cheap
| labor in Africa or South Asia wherever it simply counts for
| nothing
|
| again I think the biggest question ... maybe in economics and
| politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these
| useless people
|
| I don't think we have an economic model to for that, my best
| guess which is , just a guess, is that food will not be a problem
| uh with that kind of Technology you will be able to produce food
| for to feed everybody the problem is more important ... what to
| do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life
| when they are basically meaningless worthless
|
| my best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer
| games
|
| https://youtu.be/QkYWwWAXgKI
| StarterPro wrote:
| I for one cannot wait until this bubble bursts.
|
| This has been nothing but a test-run for openly fascistic tech
| hoes to flex their disdain for everyone who isn't them or in
| their dumb club.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| A problem with anti-AI discourse is there are three seperate
| groups who rarely communicate, and if they do they just talk past
| each other
|
| 1. Rationalists/EA's who moderately-strongly believe AI scaling
| will lead to ASI in the near future and the end of all life (Yud,
| Scott Alexander)
|
| 2. Populist climate-alarmists who hate AI for a combination of
| water use, copyright infringement, and decimation of the human
| creative spirit
|
| 3. Tech "nothingburgerists" who are convinced that most if not
| all AI companies are big scams that will fail, LLM's are light-
| years from "true' intelligence and that it's all a big slop hype
| cycle that will crumble within months to years. (overrepresented
| on this site)
|
| Each group has a collection of "truthiness-anchors" that they use
| to defend their position against all criticism. They are all
| partially valid, in a way, but take their positions to the
| extreme to the point they are often unwilling to accept any
| nuance. As a result, conversations often lead nowhere because
| people defend their position to a quasi-religious degree rather
| than as a viewpoint predicated on pieces of evidence that may
| shift or be disproven over time.
|
| Regarding the satire in OP, many people will see it as just a
| funny, unlikely outcome of AI, others will see it as a sobering
| vision into a very likely future. Both sides may "get" the point,
| but will fail to agree at least in public, lest they risk losing
| a sort of status in their alignment with their sanity-preserving
| viewpoint.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Can I buy one of these robots for the less than the money I can
| earn using them for Mechanical Turk?
| zurfer wrote:
| Horrible webpage. No clear CTA. No pricing page. Not even "talk
| to sales". How am I supposed to get started? /s
| darepublic wrote:
| Brilliant satire but all too true. Just clipping snippets from
| openai and misanthropic provided some of the most hilarious
| moments
| mobileturdfctry wrote:
| Henry Ford's philosophy was that if he paid his workers a higher
| wage, they would be able to afford the products they were
| producing, namely his Model T automobiles. This would, in turn,
| create a larger customer base for his company and help stimulate
| the economy by increasing consumer spending.
| materielle wrote:
| I actually think this is a pretty good argument against AI
| dooming that I don't here that often.
|
| Sam Altman doesn't own AI. His investors actually own most of
| the actual assets.
|
| Eventually there is going to be pressure for open ai to deliver
| returns to investors. Given that the majority of the US economy
| is consumer spending, the incentive is going to be for open ai
| to increase consumer spending in some way.
|
| That's essentially what happened to Google during the 2000s. I
| know everyone is negative about social media right now. But one
| could envision an alternative reality where Google explicitly
| controls and sensors all information, took over roadways with
| their driving cars, completely merged with the government, etc.
| Basically a doomsday scenario.
|
| What actually happened is Google was incentivized by capital to
| narrow the scope of their vision. Today, the company mainly
| sells ads to increase consumer spending.
| throw81239821 wrote:
| I'd agree. The logical fallacy I always observe in (what I
| call) the marxist-nihilist AI doom scenario is that it
| assumes that the top N% of people perfectly cooperate in a
| way that the remaining 100-N% cannot. Even stratified social
| structure is far too muddled for a "mass-replacement"
| scenario to not cause the elites to factionalize across
| different plans that would be best for them, which in turn
| prevents the kind of unified coherent action that the doom
| scenario hinges on (ex. theyll gun down the proles with
| robodogs).
| elliotto wrote:
| Technofeudalism by Varoufakis is about this N% cooperation.
| Growing wealth concentration means this collusion becomes
| possible with smaller and smaller N% cooperating. If it's
| game theory optimal to cooperate I have no doubt Thiel will
| be releasing the robo hounds the minute he can.
| dudeofea wrote:
| Ford was sued for that philosophy by his shareholders:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Quite aggressive marketing, or maybe a troll?
| pugio wrote:
| Reminds me of the new book which just came out: "IF ANYONE BUT ME
| BUILDS IT, EVERYONE MAY AS WELL DIE: A CEO's Guide to Superhuman
| AI"
| (https://bsky.app/profile/shalevn.bsky.social/post/3m3jhso2rx...)
| philmont wrote:
| Gee AI
|
| { }
|
| if (Steal) { then Lie; then Cloud; then Money; } else { Fail;
| then Die; }
|
| { }
| lurby wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure if this is a prank or not.
| lurby wrote:
| I'm not really sure if this is a prank or not.
| mchusma wrote:
| A couple of thoughts: 1. A lot of replacement concerns are macro
| vs micro concerns. 1.a. Micro, automation pretty much always
| makes sense. E.g. port automation - consumers, businesses,
| basically everyone loses by opposing port automation, except a
| handful of workers. 1.b. Macro, if you apply this to everything,
| things do start to look a bit strange. Like if humans can't
| really do much economic activity, this is unfamiliar territory.
|
| However, in the US, the labor-force participation rate is 60%.
| There are a LOT of adults out there who don't work now. While I
| do think people find value in work, I would guess that number is
| less than 50% (potentially much lower). Which makes me think that
| 30% or fewer of adults are deriving significant value from their
| work.
|
| On the one hand, something that effects 30% is pretty massive.
| But it feels less apocolyptic/overwhelming than it may seem.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Let's take this to its logical limit: imagine that AI gets so
| good that it can replace a lot of jobs en masse. The most popular
| job in about half of the US is truck drivers, and in the states
| where it is teachers, truck drivers are number 2. Let's say we do
| get to not only self-driving trucks but self-driving trucks
| loaded by robotic warehouse workers. Let's postulate that this
| becomes the norm and let's say that along with robotic truck
| drivers and warehouse workers, we also get robotic cashier, road
| work crews, and so on. I am not giving a timeline here, but let's
| explore what happens when we get to 30% unemployment. Then 40%,
| 50%, 80%.
|
| Sure we will have the robot wrangler engineers, scientists,
| teachers, nurses, etc. But typically we have social unrest past
| like 8% unemployment. What happens when double digits of people
| have no jobs and all the time on their hands? Well "eat the rich"
| might become very literal and no amount of protection against
| that can really be bought. Ultimately, the only option is either
| a Dune-style elimination of all AI (very unlikely) or we will
| have to decouple "living wage income" from "job". If you think
| about it, the idea that you must have a job in order to make
| money is more of an implementation detail. If robots produce so
| much value that it is actively not even viable for humans to
| work, the only real logical solution is to distribute the profits
| from the labor of the robots in a way that isn't by hourly rate
| times hours worked. In fact one possible way to do this is to tax
| the value produced by AI and then funnel that to a universal
| basic income program. Everyone by default is an artist. If you
| want to be a nurse or teacher or scientist or engineer you can.
| Otherwise just produce art at your leisure while the robots work
| the fields and cook your meals.
| wubrr wrote:
| I think it's inevitable that most jobs will be eventually
| automated away (even without AI), and that's going to come with
| major class struggle and restructuring of society.
| HPMOR wrote:
| I stopped reading past the first sentence, because that is not
| the logical limit. The logical limit is an unparalleled super
| intelligence that's akin to a god. What you state as the limit
| in the extrema is incorrect. Therefore with a faulty premise,
| all consequential propositions are inherently flawed.
| dlt713705 wrote:
| Unfortunately there is a very affordable alternative solution:
|
| 1. Massive population reduction (war is a very efficient way to
| achieve this)
|
| 2. Birth control, to slow down population growth to a stable
| rate near 0
|
| 3. Eugenics, to ensure only people with needed capabilities are
| born (brave new world)
|
| In this scenario, 500,000 people (less ?) in charge of millions
| of robots and a minority of semi-enslaved humans would freely
| enjoy control over the world. The perfect mix between Asimov
| and Huxley.
|
| All the agitation about "building a 1984-style world" is, at
| best, just a step toward this Asimov/Huxley model, and most
| likely, a deliberate decoy.
| elAhmo wrote:
| You underestimate how creative are people with finding things
| to do. Society didn't collapse because we automated stuff that
| was done in the past almost exclusively by humans, such as
| agriculture.
|
| It won't if robots start driving trucks.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Past performance is not indicative of future results.
|
| Everyone keeps saying 'no need to worry, no need for society
| to plan, because jobs happened in the past'. Like we should
| just put all our hope on these magic future jobs appearing.
| Plenty of countries exist where there aren't enough jobs. We
| aren't exempt from that as if some magic jobfairy is looking
| out for us.
| tomp wrote:
| > If robots produce so much value that it is actively not even
| viable for humans to work, the only real logical solution is to
| distribute the profits
|
| You don't understand. Almost nobody actually thinks about this
| in the right way, but it's actually basic economics.
|
| Salt.
|
| We used to fight wars for salt, but now it's literally given
| away for free (in restaurants).
|
| If "robots produce so much value" then all that value will have
| approximately zero marginal cost. You won't _need_ to
| distribute profits, you can simply distribute _food_ and
| _stuff_ and _housing_ because they 're cheap enough to be
| essentially free.
|
| But obviously, not _everything_ will be free. Just look at the
| famous "cost of education vs TV chart" [1]. Things that are
| mostly expensive: _regulated_ (education, medicine, law) and
| _positional_ (housing / land - everyone wants to live in good
| places!) goods. Things that are mostly cheap: things that are
| mass produced in factories (economies of scale, automation).
| Robots might move food & clothing into the "cheap" category but
| otherwise won't really move the needle, unless we radically
| rethink regulation.
|
| [1] https://kottke.org/19/02/cheap-tvs-and-exorbitant-
| education-...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| They are never going to just lift everyone up. We could have
| done that for world hunger, we didn't. They gutted USAID
| because 38 billion, but sent 40 billion to Argentina because
| 'business'. They don't care if our living standards become the
| same as the third worlds. Just like we didn't care all that
| much that the third world had really rough lives. How do you
| currently think about the third world? That is about as much
| thought/concern as we will get. We are cooked if we leave it to
| 'THEM' be they business or government.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Finally, 1970s British science fiction comics have become
| reality. I am eagerly looking forward to moving into my new
| apartment on the 578th floor of Sabrina Carpenter Block. There,
| the extremely high unemployment rates will slowly drive me
| futsie, and I will become involved in some kind of futuristic
| street gang. Eventually, I will be shot with an exploding bullet
| by a masked police officer. The future is now!
| daft_pink wrote:
| Not sure if satirical or irrational exuberance
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