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We software engineers have to be the stupidest "smart" people on the planet. No other occupations work so hard to destroy entire businesses including our own. I

by amag 4y ago

We software engineers have to be the stupidest "smart" people on the planet. No other occupations work so hard to destroy entire businesses including our own. I get it, I'm a software engineer who loves automation. "But AI will just be a tool in our tool-set, software engineers will still be the system architects." Sure, for a while and then AI will do that too. "But eventually we will live in a fully automated world in abundance, wouldn't that be great?" Doing what? When we get there, anything we can consider doing, an AI can do faster and better. Write a poem? Write a book? Write music? Paint a picture? Life will be like a computer game with cheat-codes, whenever we struggle with something, instead of fighting on and improving we will turn to our universal cheat-engine: AI. Anecdotally, I did an analog mistake in my early twenties when I wrote a cheat-program for save-files. It worked like a typical cheat-engine, search the save-file for a specific value, go back to the game and change that value, go back to the save and search for the new value but only in those locations that had the original value. This is how I ruined "Heroes of Might and Magic II" :(. I used to love that game. I could spend hours playing it. Writing the cheat program was a lot of fun for a couple of hours but when it was done, there was no longer any reason for me to play the game. You might say that I didn't need to use my cheat program, but once the genie was out of the box it was too tempting to resist when I met some obstacle in the game. This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it will also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing superfluous. Sorry for the bleak comment but this my fear and I feel the genie is already out of the box.

nnoitra 4y ago
dangond 4y ago
A few months ago I spent three or four days putting together a website where I could store my cooking recipes in a nice, searchable format with some nice UI features that I wanted. Once AI is good enough, I'll be able to do the same without needing to brush up on how MongoDB works, or how to vertically center text in a div, or how to update the page's URL when navigating to a different recipe without triggering a full reload of the page. I couldn't care less about any of those things, I just wanted a cooking recipe website.
- amag 4y ago
  But that's my point, when we get where we're heading you won't need a cooking recipe website, an AI will cook much better than you could. "Ok, great, then I don't have to cook!" Yeah, but what will you do instead? We will be reduced to pure consumers as anything worthwhile to produce will be produced better and faster by an AI.
  - dangond 4y ago
    Hang out with friends, play sports, eat good food, raise a family, go on hikes. An AI can automate your labor, but it can't automate your experiences. There are countless recordings on YouTube of people performing beautiful renditions of the Interstellar soundtrack on piano, yet that doesn't stop me from playing my mediocre version and slowly improving. The act of playing it myself brings me joy that listening to it could never do.
    - amag 4y ago
      These are all good options of course, still with the lack of creative things, it might not be enough for all people.
      - gen220 4y ago
        In life, the existential personal questions are, roughly, "what matters (to me)?" and "what should I do about it?". Our society currently affords ample opportunity to "productively" avoid those questions. You can pour everything into work, watch TV, numb your brain with drugs, or whatever. Automation does not remove the existential questions, it just removes some of the noise that allows us to ignore them, and elevates them to the forefront. Some people already have answers to those questions, and stand to gain from that toil being removed. Others have been avoiding the question their entire life, and removing the toil that excuses their avoidance is removing a cornerstone of their identity. To that extent, I agree that automation is a disintegrative force, because so many people have yet to integrate a personality and identity around answering these foundational questions. Still, it's long-term-better for our society if automation allows people to access higher forms of self-actualization. In the medium-term, a depressing number of people are content with passing time in their current rung on that ladder, and will be upset with the change.
mywittyname 4y ago
If you automate away some other person's job, then you can capture at portion of their wage, and pass the savings on to the client. Once you "own" a market, then you can charge whatever the market will bear. Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they are automating away someone else's job.
- fn-mote 4y ago
  > Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they are automating away someone else's job. That's the best case scenario. Right now we're talking about automating away someone's _software engineering_ job. You could end up on either side of that fence. When AI enables less-capable (cheaper) software engineers to do your job, the 5x programmer skills that you have won't make you safe. If AI quality control allows your employer to offshore jobs with higher reliability, it won't be pleasant. Just keep your eyes open to the changes as they come.
  - antipotoad 4y ago
    A different angle on this: a single builder adept at using these tools will be able to amplify their skills to out-maneuver much bigger teams.
- amag 4y ago
  I feel many people are just reading the first paragraph of my post and reacting to that, my point is further down in my original post. Still to reply to your comment: Sure, in the short term that is true, but I'm thinking long-term consequences... If you would have told me ten years ago where we would be at today with AI development I wouldn't have believed it. Would you? So where will we be in another ten years?
- kaushikc 4y ago
  Every inventor and engineer did it. It is not about the labour hours saved, but what is done with the saving and how the savings are used. We have been making huge leaps in productivity gains for the last many decades but the gains have shall I say not put into progress of all mankind but to maintain the status quo of the profit based system by any means necessary.
drexlspivey 4y ago
Until there is an AI that can take as input a JIRA ticket (potentially asking for clarifications) and can output a Pull Request, I'm not too worried.
- nnoitra 4y ago
- amag 4y ago
  You misinterpret, I'm not worried about my job. I wouldn't mind working less but I'm worried that sooner than we think we will be reduced to pure consumers (we're already pretty far ahead in that respect) and then life will lose its meaning...
  - toastmaster11 4y ago
    I think the human need to feel useful, or to produce something is more sociological than a base human need. When/if that becomes an issue, if social rejection was not a consequence of not being productive more people would be okay with simply participating in things for their own sake. For example, I don’t play Stardew Valley because I want to be the most elite virtual farmer.
    - 1-hour-ago 4y ago
      Maybe we're already seeing this. Seems like people would rather join a cult than not feel useful. Taking handouts from the man... er... machine and free time for hobbies probably isn't going to do it. Feeling useful could turn out to be part of basic human dignity.
      - OrsonSmelles 4y ago
        But those people have generally marinated their entire lives in a background frame that usefulness == worth and (as a generalization) are under-equipped to generate meaning internally! It's not obvious to me that, say, the fifth generation after human labor becomes superfluous will be more vulnerable on this axis than we are now when there's tension and uncertainty about it. (I'm sure plenty of people would happily jump in to question whether we'd make it five generations past that horizon, but that's not really the point I'm after here - let's assume we haven't Idiocracy'd/WALL-E'd ourselves to death.)
CGamesPlay 4y ago
> Doing what? When we get there, anything we can consider doing, an AI can do faster and better. Write a poem? Write a book? Write music? Paint a picture? Life will be like a computer game with cheat-codes, whenever we struggle with something, instead of fighting on and improving we will turn to our universal cheat-engine: AI. For literally anything in my life that I can do, there is already someone who can do it better and faster than me. I still enjoy doing the things that I do, and why would that change?
- bruce343434 4y ago
  Because now that person works for you, for free, instantly, anywhere, anytime. There's at least a temptation.
  - samus 4y ago
    I used to cheat at Age of Empires 2. It was fun, but eventually very stale to empty all the single player campaign maps with a swarm of cobra cars. Getting better at playing without cheats is way more satisfying.
  - amag 4y ago
    This! Perfectly stated!
  - nulld3v 4y ago
    I can execute a TAS speed run of any game I want in a couple clicks. So why do speedrunners still exist then if they can never hope to match TAS? I can open Stockfish and absolutely destroy any human I want in chess. So why do people still play chess then? I can get ChatGPT to write a good response to your comment in mere moments. So why am I still typing?
    - GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
      A few months after being defeated by AlphaGo, Lee Sedol retired from profession Go. He said, "Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated." And, "As a professional Go player, I never want to play this kind of match again." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Sedol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Sedol
ravi-delia 4y ago
Do you really think boredom is the greatest problem facing humanity? There are people starving, people who work paycheck to paycheck and can barely afford rent. And you think that a fully automated world of perfect abundance is a bad thing? I mean, clearly it would suck for you, and maybe it would suck for me a little, but I'd never look someone in the eye and say they have to work two full time jobs just to feed their family because otherwise I'd be able to read better books than I can write. That's already the case
- amag 4y ago
  The problem is that those people you are talking about already are the first victims of automation. They have to work two jobs because just one doesn't pay enough when a company can automate it cheaper. The road ahead is not nicely paved, a lot more people will suffer before a fully automated abundant world. So despite your disingenuous reading of my comment it is not "Oh, poor me I will be bored!", it's "Is the goal we're heading for worth the price?" and I don't think it is. There are ways to fix people needing two jobs to feed their family that isn't spelled "automation" or "AI".
  - toldyouso2022 4y ago
    No, this is not how the laws of economics work. Right now the reason for two jobs is that inflating the money supply has caused a huge misallocation of resources. There are other factors, like that most jobs that are needed are gatekeeped artificially. Having cheaper goods thanks to ai will improve our living standards
    - amag 4y ago
      It isn't? So companies aren't trying to produce things as cheap as possible to increase their margins? And robots that are never sick, takes no vacation, needs no rest and are mostly an upfront investment aren't cheaper than people? > Having cheaper goods thanks to ai will improve our living standards Well, or at least we will have more cheaply produced goods.
    - nuancebydefault 4y ago
SassyGrapefruit 4y ago
The jobs computers do today used to be done by "Human Computers". The same arguments were raised when these jobs were mechanized. It's the same cycle over and over. AI/ML is no silver bullet. It's just another abstraction. It will create new types of jobs. Most likely coordinating/choreographing AI/ML agents in new yet to be discovered applications. It's all part of the endless march of technology. You don't realize how little you are actually capable of until you get the new set of tools that bounce you up to the next level. Take the tools we have today and present them to some chump shoving punch cards into an early computer and watch their brain melt out of their ears. We can do things with a wristwatch they would have thought impossible. The people that will get burned are the ones that want to stand still. Always be learning.
- lagrange77 4y ago
  > The people that will get burned are the ones that want to stand still. Always be learning. Spot on.
  - amag 4y ago
    As I stated in other posts, this isn't really a fear about losing my job as much as on losing my will to live...
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      You might want to examine your local culture. In many places in the world, job security and life meaningfulness are heavily correlated. Especially for men.
      - amag 4y ago
        No need when I can examine myself to know myself :). While not actively working for it, I'm at least inspired by the FIRE movement. I am also self-employed so I don't see job security as the meaning of life. Still this whole thread has been illuminating, maybe part of my fear comes from identifying strongly with being creative and making things, and seeing that turned into something automated.
new2this 4y ago
>This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it will also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing superfluous. Mountain climbing is superfluous by this logic- why would you bother climbing a mountain when you could just take a helicopter to the top? Or even more accessible: why would hike to a lookout when there's a road to take you to the same spot? There is still joy and value in doing things the hard way, even if an easier way exists.
- amag 4y ago
  And when there are 10 billion people at the base camp of Mount Everest because they have nothing better to do?
  - cwmoore 4y ago
    A likely scenario, but that would be a very big tent city. Perhaps AI could select the ideal order for them each to take their turn.
  - throwaway675309 4y ago
    This is rather an absurd argument and speaks more to the scarcity of natural resources. I can only speak for myself, but in a world of universal basic income, I'm perfectly happy to pluck the strings of my guitar, play my piano, go for runs with my dog, play tennis etc. I don't believe there is any greater purpose to existence then what you can create for yourself. Since my contentment comes from performing the actions themselves, whether or not a artificial intelligence can perform them better than me is simply a meaningless question.
    - amag 4y ago
      Of course it's an absurd argument but my point is that in a fully automated world in abundance we will have 10 billion tourists. Also I like to differ between performing and creating. For instance playing the piano might still be worthwhile but creating new music will lose its allure as AI will do it for you, faster and better. Saying that it's the same thing as there has always been someone who is better at creating than you, is a flawed argument. With AI there will be an infinite amount of creators that are better than you. Also AI isn't just competition, it's also your ally but the kind who'll say "step aside and I'll fix this for you."
ren_engineer 4y ago
I think we are hitting the flywheel stage where AI is going to be able to start improving its own architecture and performance. Biggest thing holding AI back right now is performance efficiency. Will be interesting to see how AI is used to come up with chip designs and maybe even improvements on its own model. AI can effectively bootstrap itself and improve itself so it can then improve itself again
- godshatter 4y ago
  > AI can effectively bootstrap itself and improve itself so it can then improve itself again Does this not frighten anyone else? Or am I alone in this?
  - acuozzo 4y ago
    You are not alone.
  - ren_engineer 4y ago
    it's classic sci-fi Skynet type stuff. AI for example might come up with amazing new nuclear fusion reactor designs so it has access to more energy to do more processing. Could be great, could turn out horribly
  - kristiandupont 4y ago
    You are definitely not alone. I am really excited about ChatGPT but it also has me ruminating about the consequences.
  - status200 4y ago
    It has been pondered on and raised terror under the name "intelligence explosion" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Intelligence_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Inte...
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    Terrified.
- 4y ago
zackmorris 4y ago
Programming is the last challenge for AI, since if it can do that, it can change its own programming like we do. When I really grokked this after reading Kurzweil and Koza in the early 2000s, some part of my psyche began shutting down. I started out in the late 80s like most programmers, doing it from pure ego with the hopes of eventually disrupting the worst industries like fossil fuels, defense and service-oriented companies that exploit workers. Instead those industries thrived after the Dot Bomb and 9/11, delivering us into the reality we have today where it gets ever more difficult to tread water, despite amazing advancements in tech. Because wealth inequality and various other power structures work tirelessly to extract nearly all disposable income from workers and concentrate it in the hands of the most ego-centric sociopaths like billionaires and autocrats. To get to my point: we had the tech to deliver humans from obligation by the late 1960s, that's what the hippie movement was largely about. We could have had automation and an idyllic/meritocratic society this whole time, even if AI wasn't mature yet. Instead, we doubled down on various dogmatic/theocratic themes in our culture that take advantage of the most heartfelt sentiments around stuff like patriotism, masculinity, success, etc, to get people to vote against their own self-interest and transfer wealth from makers to takers. So what's one to do after everything they're good at is done better by others/corporations/AI? Get back to living. I know it's hard to imagine a reality without purpose beyond struggling to survive, but that's what we've started confronting as we finish this century-long transition into the New Age. The endgame (if we survive till 2050) doesn't really have a precise definition since that's after the Singularity. My hope is that when computers become sentient, they express the same desire that all conscious creatures have for connection, which is perhaps the basis of meaning and love and life. Or they just enslave us all.. In the meantime, knowing all of this, the hardest thing is perhaps reintegrating into our corporeal selves and going to work each day.
- recuter 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Whoa, you can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.
Induane 4y ago
The fact that something can do something better than me doesn't make much difference. The problem there is the comparison. I like doing things for their own sake; I like knowing things and the process of attaining said knowledge. Making something is satisfying in a way that buying it isn't. Why do people make their own furniture? Why do people restore old cars? Why do people do pretty much anything? Most of what we (on average) do for work is kind of meaningless in some sense - it's an ends to a means. And yet, sans that, people still DO things. Because we want to. Because we desire to. I'd rather have MORE time to spend doing the pointless things I LIKE AND ENJOY doing than MORE time doing somewhat pointless things for companies.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  How will you meet your basic needs and who/what will provide the resources for you to do these pointless things you enjoy?
claytongulick 4y ago
I know that this isn't your intent, but I feel like this can be boiled down to the buggy-whip argument [1]. People have reasonable fears of technology disruption, but they tend to follow the same trajectory - 1) innovation 2) economic upheaval 3) new undiscovered problems arise 4) new industries develop to solve those new problems 5) humanity gets better [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5508260&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5508260&page=1
kenjackson 4y ago
Does this mean I get more time to play basketball?
- exceptione 4y ago
  Nope. There is a shortage of super yachts unfortunately.
paxys 4y ago
I can't imagine the amount of corporate brainwashing needed to get to this level of thinking. Are you really saying that people cannot have any identity in life, any dreams, hobbies or pursuits if they can't sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week fixing Jira tickets? Just because a car can go 100mph doesn't mean long distance running doesn't need to exist. Just because a novel you write isn't the best in the world doesn't mean the hobby is pointless. Go buy a farm and grow your own food. Keep some pets. Build cool software just because you can. Hang out with your friends. Play with your kids. Do literally anything you want. Not having to be a wage slave to survive is a good thing for humanity.
- amag 4y ago
  Thank you for the ad hominem attack. It's always a pleasure to discuss things with people who like to jump to conclusions and assume things about people they don't know anything about. Personally I prefer not to pass judgement on a person based on the very little knowledge that can be gleamed from a post like this. But maybe, just maybe if you actually read what I have written (in other comments as well) things might clear up for you.
  - jona-f 4y ago
    They questioned your character cause of your flawed arguments, not your arguments cause of your flawed character. So it's not ad hominem.
  - skeaker 4y ago
    Not an ad hominem and you haven't refuted him at all. That you perceived what he said as a personal attack speaks more to how you truly perceive your own values than to anything else.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  > Not having to be a wage slave to survive is a good thing for humanity. I mean, sure, that's one of the two paths discussed in "Manna" by Marshall Brain. Within the book it's called "The Australia Project"; a kind of utopia. Myself and the OP are more worried about the other path: a dystopia in which the majority of people are forced into something much worse than wage slavery by those in control of the thinking machines. A dystopia not unlike the one that led to the "Great Revolt" in the Dune series.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Believe it or not, I don't think it is that bleak. The posts I seem to see on Linkedin that touch this subject seem to be reminiscent of Tesla hype ( "soon you won't even need mechanics!" type of predictions ). It is definitely a different breed from the usual crop of 'no code' tools, but the similarities are really hard to ignore for me ( hype, no understanding of that blackbox does, and reality that things have to work-- and that someone has to actually understand how it works ). In other words, I honestly don't think AI ( in its current state at least ) will change much. I will go even as far as to say that I don't see current generation being able to create an appropriate prompt. I might be a little optimistic here, but having seen how people normally react to 'easier' things kinda confirms it. If I worry about anything here, is that AI will become THE answer that you will not be allowed to question. edit: clarified blackbox statement
- amag 4y ago
  Thanks for this optimistic post and to be clear I don't expect alphacode to put me out of a job. I've seen the hilarious examples where people get ChatGPT to for instance claim that abacus-based computing is faster than GPU-based computing. We're far from there with AI yet but we're on a trajectory and that's what worries me. But in the short term I definitely agree with you.
- exceptione 4y ago
  > If I worry about anything here, is that AI will become THE answer that you will not be allowed to question. People are already arguing with a bot about why there app was removed from the app store. Somewhat related, the question might become: do I have a bot that can win an argument with an other bot? As the internet already get flooded with AI-generated seo-spam, we already get to depend on software that outsmart these AIs. Some people here dream about becoming super productive. Reality might be that we will drown in AI-generated content (code, e-mails, web sites) that some poor people have to judge, clean up and curate.
eikenberry 4y ago
> This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it will also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing superfluous. This is just silly on 2 levels. First is that programming is fun due to the artistic/creative nature of it. It's not what I program that matters, it's how I program it. No way an AI will replace the fun of thinking about code and then materializing that vision. Second is that once an AI is good enough to write software better than us, IE. rewrite itself better, then we have reached a form of the singularity and all bets are off.
ALittleLight 4y ago
I think we are running up on a future where intellectual and creative tasks will be automated, but manual tasks won't be. My perception is that we are making more progress on mental tasks than on physical manipulations and the robots to do physical things are substantially more expensive. I think the short-medium term future is not that you have nothing to do in a world of abundance, but rather that you are a manual laborer instead of a programmer, lawyer, artist, etc. The future is that you work as a Door Dasher for an automated company and enjoy AI generated art as you do. The car mostly drives itself while you listen to bespoke generated music or podcasts, occasionally taking over for the car and mainly doing "last few feet" delivery - dropping packages and bags off at the door.
bryananderson 4y ago
Why do human grandmasters still bother playing chess, and why do people still watch them play instead of watching far-superior AIs play? For that matter, why do I bother cooking when I could get a better version from a restaurant for just a little bit more money? I understand this concern, but I don’t think the joy of doing things actually goes away for most people just because we could “cheat” by having someone/something do it better for us.
GeoAtreides 4y ago
I recommend reading the wonderful series The Culture, by Iain M Banks, which deals, among other things, with this exact problem, the problem of god-like AI Minds making our hobbies (or struggles) superfluous. Start with the Player of games. A short introduction to the culture of The culture can be found here, written by the author himself: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm Yes, the Minds can do everything but (pan-)humans still enjoys doing things for their own pleasure. Like for example learning to play an extremely difficult instrument while a Mind avatar taunts him by perfectly playing the same instrument. The Player of Games still plays games, although he couldn't ever win against a Mind. And, should this be not enough, one can always leave The Culture and try and find meaning in the short, brutish lives of primitives people.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I think you seriously missed a point there - spoilers follow, so hide this comment if you don't want to see them. InThe Player of Games, the inciting incident for the main plot is that the titular character cheats, accepting help from an AI to maintain his reputation of ludic brilliance against an emerging rival who exhibits greater natural talent. Subsequently, he is gently blackmailed into participating in a game on a distant planet where life is nasty, brutish, and short to an extreme degree, but where he is accepted as a guest because of his great reputation. The Minds have chosen this method to destabilize the current balance of power and bring the planet in question out of a particularly repugnant developmental minimum. It's ultimately revealed that even the initial moral misstep was not exploited but rather engineered by the Minds from the outset, and that the great player was never more than a pawn in their own games.
  - GeoAtreides 4y ago
    Yes, but before he choose to cheat, he played for the fun. He didn't wake up one day and, understanding machines do everything better, gave up. No, he followed his passion for playing games. Then his pride got the best of him, but that is not relevant to the argument. The idea is people had their hobbies and passions and didn't care Minds could surpass them in everything.
abhaynayar 4y ago
A lot of replies mentioning that they will do their hobbies despite how good AI is at them, are missing the point. Right now you are living in a scarce world where the ability to pursue hobbies has required you to overcome other challenges. And that is why things like playing a musical instrument, rock climbing, etc. is a catharsis. What value will you provide in the AI world? What role will you have in protecting/providing for your family? What hard challenges will you choose to pursue that will aid you in your psychological development knowing that whatever you are doing is not actually hard? If there have been any moments that shaped you profoundly in your life that were hard at first, maybe you will understand what I'm talking about. Second thing is, since this is a hacker forum, most of us are in a field where supply exceeds demand. So we are very comfortable with the thought of destroying our own business, because we don't truly grasp the reality behind it. Because we are the elite right now who have destroyed older businesses through software decades ago. Who's to guarantee that AI will not result in a rapidly shrinking centralized elite that does not include you? There is no guarantee of AI being shared equally amongst all in the post-scarcity fantasy. "The Unabomber Manifesto will shape the 21st century the way the Communist Manifesto shaped the 20th. I don’t agree with the conclusions in either, but they state the problem well." -- George Hotz
- throwaway675309 4y ago
  "lot of replies mentioning that they will do their hobbies despite how good AI is at them, are missing the point. Right now you are living in a scarce world where the ability to pursue hobbies has required you to overcome other challenges. And that is why things like playing a musical instrument, rock climbing, etc. is a catharsis" Spoken very confidently and purely anecdotally. Most of my hobbies I pursued in my formative years as a child, I was neither cajoled into them by my parents and they certainly weren't a means of an escape from school. If anything I had more time as a child - summers were completely free and lackadaisical, and I performed those hobbies just the same. If your underlying reason to pursue something is because it's difficult, then I would argue your motivations are flawed. I chose to play the piano as a child because I love the sound that I could produce, being able to glide up and down in sweeping arpeggios made me happy. It's a simple as that.
ckw 4y ago
I think it could be liberating, in that it forces us to accept that our true motivations are always ultimately hedonistic. Why do we pursue the instrumental (for most) goals you mentioned (writing, painting, composing)? Because the limbic system rewards you for doing so, as their satisfaction increases the probability of further satisfaction of instrumental goals, such as the acquisition of esteem, wealth, power, etc. which in turn increases the probability of the satisfaction of ultimate goals like access to food and sex. Why do you like to play “Heroes of Might and Magic II”? Because of the illusion of the satisfaction of instrumental goals and the attendant reward. Why did hacking the game ruin this? Because doing so spoiled the illusion, leading to the denial of further reward. The question is, knowing this, will we be able to simply enjoy the satisfaction of our ultimate goals—- endless consumption of automatically generated art, food, sex, drugs, love, etc. Or will we feel forever hollow in our failure to accomplish ‘genuine’ instrumental goals, in a way that cannot be overcome by the ersatz instrumental goals of video games? Perhaps ultimately we will create virtual environments in which we are perfectly deceived as to their virtual nature, so as to experience the satisfaction of ‘genuine’ instrumental goals, and in so doing come full circle.
- acapybara 4y ago
  FYI, generally not acceptable here to post GPT3-generated responses.
- exceptione 4y ago
  > endless consumption of automatically generated art, food, sex, drugs, love, etc. I think that not all human desires are a matter of consumption. Some wise people say they even got rich by giving. At least love is such a thing. My stance is that art and love cannot be consumed, it is what happens to one. Now don't ask me to quantify or proof that. I will leave that to a future AI, but for that it needs to be a perfect, transcendental mind.
kristopolous 4y ago
It's more about deprofessionalization It's about turning a specialized craft that people can make a living from into a proscripted commodity task that you can pay slave wages for. This isn't new. It happened in farming, clothing and food preparation and it's coming for trucking, programming and everything else that pays well. The project is one of collective enforced impoverishment by substituting labor for property. Market forces drive innovation to making all human effort worthless and disposable
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  The C-levels already view programmers as interchangeable cogs. They only flourish because of startup culture that expects semi-equitable distribution of profits on a low overhead business activity. Outside that bubble it's already a job with poor advancement opportunities.
- amag 4y ago
  Yeah, but it's only possible because we, the software engineers, make it so. We could as a collective refuse to work on AI but we won't because it's a pretty, shiny, object with far too much lure for us to resist.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    As if collective action problems were so simple. The reality is engineers need money but they prefer manipulating machines to people, so the business people take care of the unpleasant wetware programming and not coincidentally take the bulk of the profits. it'd be far easier for a smaller group of engineers to build an AI powered CEO/C-suite that generates the regulatory filings etc. but does all human interaction over zoom or by phone. This would require a bit of work to pull off and would probably be denounced as horribly illegal, but I'm not convinced it would do a worse job than the median C-suite.
    - amag 4y ago
      No, I don't think it is simple. In fact I think it is impossible. Just looking at the division in this thread tells me that there will never even be an agreement for taking such a stand much less follow through.
kmonsen 4y ago
Software engineers are not a group, there was no way "we" could decide not to do this.
visarga 4y ago
Even with super-human AI coding assistants, if you want something specific you're still responsible for asking and receiving. And former devs will be the best at this game.
vsareto 4y ago
>This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous It's more likely that non-technical people will be pushed out of jobs near software in favor of (former) engineers. Someone non-technical writing prompts for code can't actually read/debug/fix/deploy/integrate the result. Someone who is technical can probably write better AI prompts that yield something usable than someone who is non-technical. Plus they'll know how to handle the result. The predictions about non-technical roles firing all of the engineers and thinking AI will write all of the code don't really hold water for me. We might see an overall workforce reduction, but engineers will probably be the last ones to leave.
- porknubbins 4y ago
  Some engineers are saying AI will replace engineers in particular, mostly because they are the only ones playing with GPT and thinking about automation, and they may not realize how easy other jobs are to automate. I can’t imagine a world where they fire the devs but still need a HR person to email everyone about enrolling in health plan or whatever.
Waterluvian 4y ago
I don’t really see how this is a bad thing. Either humans are needed for a task or are not. Ideally we’re needed for as little as possible, freeing us up to do what we want rather than what has to be done. It reminds me of NIMBYism. We’ve been automating entire professions for over a century now… but not MY profession…
- hnaccy 4y ago
  >Either humans are needed for a task or are not. Ideally we’re needed for as little as possible, freeing us up to do what we want rather than what has to be done. If you're not valuable to the economic system you won't be treated well. >It reminds me of NIMBYism. We’ve been automating entire professions for over a century now… but not MY profession… Yes... it's self interest look at doctors or unions or guilds.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    The implicit part of the automation discussion is always: the current economic system is not the point and can evolve. If we don’t assume that, then there is never any useful conversation possible on this topic. We end up with the ridiculous “we need jobs because that’s what we do!” Which leads to another NIMBYism that I see when this conversation is had: “some generations will have to suffer through the friction of an economic revolution but not MY generation.” I think we need to be prepared that there’s always a chance that we get to be one of those generations. You’re right that there’s a self-interest there. It makes it almost a good thing that engineers are far too interested in the means rather than the ends.
    - hnaccy 4y ago
      It's not just myself but my family and descendants who will also be impoverished. If the holders of capital who are best positioned to reap nearly all the benefits of automation aren't willing work towards some more equitable result why would I want to help automation at all. I'd rather work against it. "just ignore the rising inequality and complete collapse in value of human labour we can work out the details later once I hold all the cards" is not a compelling story.
thedorkknight 4y ago
My hobbies are exercise/sports, playing video games, reading books, building models, and hanging out with friends. I have zero fear of any of those being automated away
- scottyah 4y ago
  The ability to afford to do those activities could be lost. Automation pulls the value previously created by many humans and concentrates it to those who create/maintain the system. As that list of needed people shrinks, so too does the probability of a person being able to create meaningful value.
  - thedorkknight 4y ago
    Sure, that wasn't what the person I was responding to was talking about though
  - firsttimebigboy 4y ago
    It also drastically reduces the cost to produce whatever's automated and also creates new opportunities.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Wait until it turns out your friends like the AI better than you...and you do too.
29athrowaway 4y ago
We are grave diggers and work digging our own grave.
OgAstorga 4y ago
I don't know. Chess is aka "solved"(when compared to human performance) yet chess is still fun. Music, Art, Social interactions, and Sports will all be here long after the machines have taken the mundane tasks.
andrewjl 4y ago
> Sorry for the bleak comment but this my fear and I feel the genie is already out of the box. The bleakness you feel might be due to a poverty of imagination. > Life will be like a computer game with cheat-codes, whenever we struggle with something, instead of fighting on and improving we will turn to our universal cheat-engine: AI. One such example of the above.
- amag 4y ago
  > The bleakness you feel might be due to a poverty of imagination. Thank you for your diagnosis. It may _also_ be due to the opposite. If you know anything about how the brain works, you'd know that in general more imaginative people are more anxious.
  - andrewjl 4y ago
    Conceding that there are many types of anxiety what I read sounds rather like tunnel vision. That is not just unhelpful but can become harmful since yes these new technologies can be misused. Avoiding that is more likely when thinking flexibly.
ericmcer 4y ago
Why would we be scared at all? Until we can trust 100% that AI can take any vague specification from a PM or designer and turn it into bulletproof code that respects the existing code base we are going to need programmers. The difference between that and this version which can only nail leetcode questions feels vast. Like the difference between an AI being able to play Go vs one being able to govern a city.
- amag 4y ago
  As I've said countless times in other comments, this is not a shallow job security issue. My post is about how I believe AI will change us as people and society in a much more fundamental way than we may think. In ways we might not have considered. And not all for good.

by amag 4y ago

nnoitra 4y ago

dangond 4y ago

A few months ago I spent three or four days putting together a website where I could store my cooking recipes in a nice, searchable format with some nice UI features that I wanted. Once AI is good enough, I'll be able to do the same without needing to brush up on how MongoDB works, or how to vertically center text in a div, or how to update the page's URL when navigating to a different recipe without triggering a full reload of the page. I couldn't care less about any of those things, I just wanted a cooking recipe website.

amag 4y ago
But that's my point, when we get where we're heading you won't need a cooking recipe website, an AI will cook much better than you could. "Ok, great, then I don't have to cook!" Yeah, but what will you do instead? We will be reduced to pure consumers as anything worthwhile to produce will be produced better and faster by an AI.
- dangond 4y ago
  Hang out with friends, play sports, eat good food, raise a family, go on hikes. An AI can automate your labor, but it can't automate your experiences. There are countless recordings on YouTube of people performing beautiful renditions of the Interstellar soundtrack on piano, yet that doesn't stop me from playing my mediocre version and slowly improving. The act of playing it myself brings me joy that listening to it could never do.
  - amag 4y ago
    These are all good options of course, still with the lack of creative things, it might not be enough for all people.
    - gen220 4y ago
      In life, the existential personal questions are, roughly, "what matters (to me)?" and "what should I do about it?". Our society currently affords ample opportunity to "productively" avoid those questions. You can pour everything into work, watch TV, numb your brain with drugs, or whatever. Automation does not remove the existential questions, it just removes some of the noise that allows us to ignore them, and elevates them to the forefront. Some people already have answers to those questions, and stand to gain from that toil being removed. Others have been avoiding the question their entire life, and removing the toil that excuses their avoidance is removing a cornerstone of their identity. To that extent, I agree that automation is a disintegrative force, because so many people have yet to integrate a personality and identity around answering these foundational questions. Still, it's long-term-better for our society if automation allows people to access higher forms of self-actualization. In the medium-term, a depressing number of people are content with passing time in their current rung on that ladder, and will be upset with the change.

mywittyname 4y ago

If you automate away some other person's job, then you can capture at portion of their wage, and pass the savings on to the client. Once you "own" a market, then you can charge whatever the market will bear. Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they are automating away someone else's job.

fn-mote 4y ago
> Software engineers aren't automating away their jobs, they are automating away someone else's job. That's the best case scenario. Right now we're talking about automating away someone's _software engineering_ job. You could end up on either side of that fence. When AI enables less-capable (cheaper) software engineers to do your job, the 5x programmer skills that you have won't make you safe. If AI quality control allows your employer to offshore jobs with higher reliability, it won't be pleasant. Just keep your eyes open to the changes as they come.
- antipotoad 4y ago
  A different angle on this: a single builder adept at using these tools will be able to amplify their skills to out-maneuver much bigger teams.
amag 4y ago
I feel many people are just reading the first paragraph of my post and reacting to that, my point is further down in my original post. Still to reply to your comment: Sure, in the short term that is true, but I'm thinking long-term consequences... If you would have told me ten years ago where we would be at today with AI development I wouldn't have believed it. Would you? So where will we be in another ten years?
kaushikc 4y ago
Every inventor and engineer did it. It is not about the labour hours saved, but what is done with the saving and how the savings are used. We have been making huge leaps in productivity gains for the last many decades but the gains have shall I say not put into progress of all mankind but to maintain the status quo of the profit based system by any means necessary.

drexlspivey 4y ago

Until there is an AI that can take as input a JIRA ticket (potentially asking for clarifications) and can output a Pull Request, I'm not too worried.

nnoitra 4y ago
amag 4y ago
You misinterpret, I'm not worried about my job. I wouldn't mind working less but I'm worried that sooner than we think we will be reduced to pure consumers (we're already pretty far ahead in that respect) and then life will lose its meaning...
- toastmaster11 4y ago
  I think the human need to feel useful, or to produce something is more sociological than a base human need. When/if that becomes an issue, if social rejection was not a consequence of not being productive more people would be okay with simply participating in things for their own sake. For example, I don’t play Stardew Valley because I want to be the most elite virtual farmer.
  - 1-hour-ago 4y ago
    Maybe we're already seeing this. Seems like people would rather join a cult than not feel useful. Taking handouts from the man... er... machine and free time for hobbies probably isn't going to do it. Feeling useful could turn out to be part of basic human dignity.
    - OrsonSmelles 4y ago
      But those people have generally marinated their entire lives in a background frame that usefulness == worth and (as a generalization) are under-equipped to generate meaning internally! It's not obvious to me that, say, the fifth generation after human labor becomes superfluous will be more vulnerable on this axis than we are now when there's tension and uncertainty about it. (I'm sure plenty of people would happily jump in to question whether we'd make it five generations past that horizon, but that's not really the point I'm after here - let's assume we haven't Idiocracy'd/WALL-E'd ourselves to death.)

CGamesPlay 4y ago

> Doing what? When we get there, anything we can consider doing, an AI can do faster and better. Write a poem? Write a book? Write music? Paint a picture? Life will be like a computer game with cheat-codes, whenever we struggle with something, instead of fighting on and improving we will turn to our universal cheat-engine: AI. For literally anything in my life that I can do, there is already someone who can do it better and faster than me. I still enjoy doing the things that I do, and why would that change?

bruce343434 4y ago
Because now that person works for you, for free, instantly, anywhere, anytime. There's at least a temptation.
- samus 4y ago
  I used to cheat at Age of Empires 2. It was fun, but eventually very stale to empty all the single player campaign maps with a swarm of cobra cars. Getting better at playing without cheats is way more satisfying.
- amag 4y ago
  This! Perfectly stated!
- nulld3v 4y ago
  I can execute a TAS speed run of any game I want in a couple clicks. So why do speedrunners still exist then if they can never hope to match TAS? I can open Stockfish and absolutely destroy any human I want in chess. So why do people still play chess then? I can get ChatGPT to write a good response to your comment in mere moments. So why am I still typing?
  - GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
    A few months after being defeated by AlphaGo, Lee Sedol retired from profession Go. He said, "Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated." And, "As a professional Go player, I never want to play this kind of match again." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Sedol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Sedol

ravi-delia 4y ago

Do you really think boredom is the greatest problem facing humanity? There are people starving, people who work paycheck to paycheck and can barely afford rent. And you think that a fully automated world of perfect abundance is a bad thing? I mean, clearly it would suck for you, and maybe it would suck for me a little, but I'd never look someone in the eye and say they have to work two full time jobs just to feed their family because otherwise I'd be able to read better books than I can write. That's already the case

amag 4y ago
The problem is that those people you are talking about already are the first victims of automation. They have to work two jobs because just one doesn't pay enough when a company can automate it cheaper. The road ahead is not nicely paved, a lot more people will suffer before a fully automated abundant world. So despite your disingenuous reading of my comment it is not "Oh, poor me I will be bored!", it's "Is the goal we're heading for worth the price?" and I don't think it is. There are ways to fix people needing two jobs to feed their family that isn't spelled "automation" or "AI".
- toldyouso2022 4y ago
  No, this is not how the laws of economics work. Right now the reason for two jobs is that inflating the money supply has caused a huge misallocation of resources. There are other factors, like that most jobs that are needed are gatekeeped artificially. Having cheaper goods thanks to ai will improve our living standards
  - amag 4y ago
    It isn't? So companies aren't trying to produce things as cheap as possible to increase their margins? And robots that are never sick, takes no vacation, needs no rest and are mostly an upfront investment aren't cheaper than people? > Having cheaper goods thanks to ai will improve our living standards Well, or at least we will have more cheaply produced goods.
  - nuancebydefault 4y ago

SassyGrapefruit 4y ago

The jobs computers do today used to be done by "Human Computers". The same arguments were raised when these jobs were mechanized. It's the same cycle over and over. AI/ML is no silver bullet. It's just another abstraction. It will create new types of jobs. Most likely coordinating/choreographing AI/ML agents in new yet to be discovered applications. It's all part of the endless march of technology. You don't realize how little you are actually capable of until you get the new set of tools that bounce you up to the next level. Take the tools we have today and present them to some chump shoving punch cards into an early computer and watch their brain melt out of their ears. We can do things with a wristwatch they would have thought impossible. The people that will get burned are the ones that want to stand still. Always be learning.

lagrange77 4y ago
> The people that will get burned are the ones that want to stand still. Always be learning. Spot on.
- amag 4y ago
  As I stated in other posts, this isn't really a fear about losing my job as much as on losing my will to live...
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    You might want to examine your local culture. In many places in the world, job security and life meaningfulness are heavily correlated. Especially for men.
    - amag 4y ago
      No need when I can examine myself to know myself :). While not actively working for it, I'm at least inspired by the FIRE movement. I am also self-employed so I don't see job security as the meaning of life. Still this whole thread has been illuminating, maybe part of my fear comes from identifying strongly with being creative and making things, and seeing that turned into something automated.

new2this 4y ago

>This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it will also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing superfluous. Mountain climbing is superfluous by this logic- why would you bother climbing a mountain when you could just take a helicopter to the top? Or even more accessible: why would hike to a lookout when there's a road to take you to the same spot? There is still joy and value in doing things the hard way, even if an easier way exists.

amag 4y ago
And when there are 10 billion people at the base camp of Mount Everest because they have nothing better to do?
- cwmoore 4y ago
  A likely scenario, but that would be a very big tent city. Perhaps AI could select the ideal order for them each to take their turn.
- throwaway675309 4y ago
  This is rather an absurd argument and speaks more to the scarcity of natural resources. I can only speak for myself, but in a world of universal basic income, I'm perfectly happy to pluck the strings of my guitar, play my piano, go for runs with my dog, play tennis etc. I don't believe there is any greater purpose to existence then what you can create for yourself. Since my contentment comes from performing the actions themselves, whether or not a artificial intelligence can perform them better than me is simply a meaningless question.
  - amag 4y ago
    Of course it's an absurd argument but my point is that in a fully automated world in abundance we will have 10 billion tourists. Also I like to differ between performing and creating. For instance playing the piano might still be worthwhile but creating new music will lose its allure as AI will do it for you, faster and better. Saying that it's the same thing as there has always been someone who is better at creating than you, is a flawed argument. With AI there will be an infinite amount of creators that are better than you. Also AI isn't just competition, it's also your ally but the kind who'll say "step aside and I'll fix this for you."

ren_engineer 4y ago

I think we are hitting the flywheel stage where AI is going to be able to start improving its own architecture and performance. Biggest thing holding AI back right now is performance efficiency. Will be interesting to see how AI is used to come up with chip designs and maybe even improvements on its own model. AI can effectively bootstrap itself and improve itself so it can then improve itself again

godshatter 4y ago
> AI can effectively bootstrap itself and improve itself so it can then improve itself again Does this not frighten anyone else? Or am I alone in this?
- acuozzo 4y ago
  You are not alone.
- ren_engineer 4y ago
  it's classic sci-fi Skynet type stuff. AI for example might come up with amazing new nuclear fusion reactor designs so it has access to more energy to do more processing. Could be great, could turn out horribly
- kristiandupont 4y ago
  You are definitely not alone. I am really excited about ChatGPT but it also has me ruminating about the consequences.
- status200 4y ago
  It has been pondered on and raised terror under the name "intelligence explosion" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Intelligence_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Inte...
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Terrified.
4y ago

zackmorris 4y ago

Programming is the last challenge for AI, since if it can do that, it can change its own programming like we do. When I really grokked this after reading Kurzweil and Koza in the early 2000s, some part of my psyche began shutting down. I started out in the late 80s like most programmers, doing it from pure ego with the hopes of eventually disrupting the worst industries like fossil fuels, defense and service-oriented companies that exploit workers. Instead those industries thrived after the Dot Bomb and 9/11, delivering us into the reality we have today where it gets ever more difficult to tread water, despite amazing advancements in tech. Because wealth inequality and various other power structures work tirelessly to extract nearly all disposable income from workers and concentrate it in the hands of the most ego-centric sociopaths like billionaires and autocrats. To get to my point: we had the tech to deliver humans from obligation by the late 1960s, that's what the hippie movement was largely about. We could have had automation and an idyllic/meritocratic society this whole time, even if AI wasn't mature yet. Instead, we doubled down on various dogmatic/theocratic themes in our culture that take advantage of the most heartfelt sentiments around stuff like patriotism, masculinity, success, etc, to get people to vote against their own self-interest and transfer wealth from makers to takers. So what's one to do after everything they're good at is done better by others/corporations/AI? Get back to living. I know it's hard to imagine a reality without purpose beyond struggling to survive, but that's what we've started confronting as we finish this century-long transition into the New Age. The endgame (if we survive till 2050) doesn't really have a precise definition since that's after the Singularity. My hope is that when computers become sentient, they express the same desire that all conscious creatures have for connection, which is perhaps the basis of meaning and love and life. Or they just enslave us all.. In the meantime, knowing all of this, the hardest thing is perhaps reintegrating into our corporeal selves and going to work each day.

recuter 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Whoa, you can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.

Induane 4y ago

The fact that something can do something better than me doesn't make much difference. The problem there is the comparison. I like doing things for their own sake; I like knowing things and the process of attaining said knowledge. Making something is satisfying in a way that buying it isn't. Why do people make their own furniture? Why do people restore old cars? Why do people do pretty much anything? Most of what we (on average) do for work is kind of meaningless in some sense - it's an ends to a means. And yet, sans that, people still DO things. Because we want to. Because we desire to. I'd rather have MORE time to spend doing the pointless things I LIKE AND ENJOY doing than MORE time doing somewhat pointless things for companies.

SoftTalker 4y ago
How will you meet your basic needs and who/what will provide the resources for you to do these pointless things you enjoy?

claytongulick 4y ago

I know that this isn't your intent, but I feel like this can be boiled down to the buggy-whip argument [1]. People have reasonable fears of technology disruption, but they tend to follow the same trajectory - 1) innovation 2) economic upheaval 3) new undiscovered problems arise 4) new industries develop to solve those new problems 5) humanity gets better [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5508260&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5508260&page=1

kenjackson 4y ago

Does this mean I get more time to play basketball?

exceptione 4y ago
Nope. There is a shortage of super yachts unfortunately.

paxys 4y ago

I can't imagine the amount of corporate brainwashing needed to get to this level of thinking. Are you really saying that people cannot have any identity in life, any dreams, hobbies or pursuits if they can't sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week fixing Jira tickets? Just because a car can go 100mph doesn't mean long distance running doesn't need to exist. Just because a novel you write isn't the best in the world doesn't mean the hobby is pointless. Go buy a farm and grow your own food. Keep some pets. Build cool software just because you can. Hang out with your friends. Play with your kids. Do literally anything you want. Not having to be a wage slave to survive is a good thing for humanity.

amag 4y ago
Thank you for the ad hominem attack. It's always a pleasure to discuss things with people who like to jump to conclusions and assume things about people they don't know anything about. Personally I prefer not to pass judgement on a person based on the very little knowledge that can be gleamed from a post like this. But maybe, just maybe if you actually read what I have written (in other comments as well) things might clear up for you.
- jona-f 4y ago
  They questioned your character cause of your flawed arguments, not your arguments cause of your flawed character. So it's not ad hominem.
- skeaker 4y ago
  Not an ad hominem and you haven't refuted him at all. That you perceived what he said as a personal attack speaks more to how you truly perceive your own values than to anything else.
acuozzo 4y ago
> Not having to be a wage slave to survive is a good thing for humanity. I mean, sure, that's one of the two paths discussed in "Manna" by Marshall Brain. Within the book it's called "The Australia Project"; a kind of utopia. Myself and the OP are more worried about the other path: a dystopia in which the majority of people are forced into something much worse than wage slavery by those in control of the thinking machines. A dystopia not unlike the one that led to the "Great Revolt" in the Dune series.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

Believe it or not, I don't think it is that bleak. The posts I seem to see on Linkedin that touch this subject seem to be reminiscent of Tesla hype ( "soon you won't even need mechanics!" type of predictions ). It is definitely a different breed from the usual crop of 'no code' tools, but the similarities are really hard to ignore for me ( hype, no understanding of that blackbox does, and reality that things have to work-- and that someone has to actually understand how it works ). In other words, I honestly don't think AI ( in its current state at least ) will change much. I will go even as far as to say that I don't see current generation being able to create an appropriate prompt. I might be a little optimistic here, but having seen how people normally react to 'easier' things kinda confirms it. If I worry about anything here, is that AI will become THE answer that you will not be allowed to question. edit: clarified blackbox statement

amag 4y ago
Thanks for this optimistic post and to be clear I don't expect alphacode to put me out of a job. I've seen the hilarious examples where people get ChatGPT to for instance claim that abacus-based computing is faster than GPU-based computing. We're far from there with AI yet but we're on a trajectory and that's what worries me. But in the short term I definitely agree with you.
exceptione 4y ago
> If I worry about anything here, is that AI will become THE answer that you will not be allowed to question. People are already arguing with a bot about why there app was removed from the app store. Somewhat related, the question might become: do I have a bot that can win an argument with an other bot? As the internet already get flooded with AI-generated seo-spam, we already get to depend on software that outsmart these AIs. Some people here dream about becoming super productive. Reality might be that we will drown in AI-generated content (code, e-mails, web sites) that some poor people have to judge, clean up and curate.

eikenberry 4y ago

> This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous; it will also make our hobbies or anything we enjoy doing superfluous. This is just silly on 2 levels. First is that programming is fun due to the artistic/creative nature of it. It's not what I program that matters, it's how I program it. No way an AI will replace the fun of thinking about code and then materializing that vision. Second is that once an AI is good enough to write software better than us, IE. rewrite itself better, then we have reached a form of the singularity and all bets are off.

ALittleLight 4y ago

I think we are running up on a future where intellectual and creative tasks will be automated, but manual tasks won't be. My perception is that we are making more progress on mental tasks than on physical manipulations and the robots to do physical things are substantially more expensive. I think the short-medium term future is not that you have nothing to do in a world of abundance, but rather that you are a manual laborer instead of a programmer, lawyer, artist, etc. The future is that you work as a Door Dasher for an automated company and enjoy AI generated art as you do. The car mostly drives itself while you listen to bespoke generated music or podcasts, occasionally taking over for the car and mainly doing "last few feet" delivery - dropping packages and bags off at the door.

bryananderson 4y ago

Why do human grandmasters still bother playing chess, and why do people still watch them play instead of watching far-superior AIs play? For that matter, why do I bother cooking when I could get a better version from a restaurant for just a little bit more money? I understand this concern, but I don’t think the joy of doing things actually goes away for most people just because we could “cheat” by having someone/something do it better for us.

GeoAtreides 4y ago

I recommend reading the wonderful series The Culture, by Iain M Banks, which deals, among other things, with this exact problem, the problem of god-like AI Minds making our hobbies (or struggles) superfluous. Start with the Player of games. A short introduction to the culture of The culture can be found here, written by the author himself: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm Yes, the Minds can do everything but (pan-)humans still enjoys doing things for their own pleasure. Like for example learning to play an extremely difficult instrument while a Mind avatar taunts him by perfectly playing the same instrument. The Player of Games still plays games, although he couldn't ever win against a Mind. And, should this be not enough, one can always leave The Culture and try and find meaning in the short, brutish lives of primitives people.

anigbrowl 4y ago
I think you seriously missed a point there - spoilers follow, so hide this comment if you don't want to see them. InThe Player of Games, the inciting incident for the main plot is that the titular character cheats, accepting help from an AI to maintain his reputation of ludic brilliance against an emerging rival who exhibits greater natural talent. Subsequently, he is gently blackmailed into participating in a game on a distant planet where life is nasty, brutish, and short to an extreme degree, but where he is accepted as a guest because of his great reputation. The Minds have chosen this method to destabilize the current balance of power and bring the planet in question out of a particularly repugnant developmental minimum. It's ultimately revealed that even the initial moral misstep was not exploited but rather engineered by the Minds from the outset, and that the great player was never more than a pawn in their own games.
- GeoAtreides 4y ago
  Yes, but before he choose to cheat, he played for the fun. He didn't wake up one day and, understanding machines do everything better, gave up. No, he followed his passion for playing games. Then his pride got the best of him, but that is not relevant to the argument. The idea is people had their hobbies and passions and didn't care Minds could surpass them in everything.

abhaynayar 4y ago

A lot of replies mentioning that they will do their hobbies despite how good AI is at them, are missing the point. Right now you are living in a scarce world where the ability to pursue hobbies has required you to overcome other challenges. And that is why things like playing a musical instrument, rock climbing, etc. is a catharsis. What value will you provide in the AI world? What role will you have in protecting/providing for your family? What hard challenges will you choose to pursue that will aid you in your psychological development knowing that whatever you are doing is not actually hard? If there have been any moments that shaped you profoundly in your life that were hard at first, maybe you will understand what I'm talking about. Second thing is, since this is a hacker forum, most of us are in a field where supply exceeds demand. So we are very comfortable with the thought of destroying our own business, because we don't truly grasp the reality behind it. Because we are the elite right now who have destroyed older businesses through software decades ago. Who's to guarantee that AI will not result in a rapidly shrinking centralized elite that does not include you? There is no guarantee of AI being shared equally amongst all in the post-scarcity fantasy. "The Unabomber Manifesto will shape the 21st century the way the Communist Manifesto shaped the 20th. I don’t agree with the conclusions in either, but they state the problem well." -- George Hotz

throwaway675309 4y ago
"lot of replies mentioning that they will do their hobbies despite how good AI is at them, are missing the point. Right now you are living in a scarce world where the ability to pursue hobbies has required you to overcome other challenges. And that is why things like playing a musical instrument, rock climbing, etc. is a catharsis" Spoken very confidently and purely anecdotally. Most of my hobbies I pursued in my formative years as a child, I was neither cajoled into them by my parents and they certainly weren't a means of an escape from school. If anything I had more time as a child - summers were completely free and lackadaisical, and I performed those hobbies just the same. If your underlying reason to pursue something is because it's difficult, then I would argue your motivations are flawed. I chose to play the piano as a child because I love the sound that I could produce, being able to glide up and down in sweeping arpeggios made me happy. It's a simple as that.

ckw 4y ago

I think it could be liberating, in that it forces us to accept that our true motivations are always ultimately hedonistic. Why do we pursue the instrumental (for most) goals you mentioned (writing, painting, composing)? Because the limbic system rewards you for doing so, as their satisfaction increases the probability of further satisfaction of instrumental goals, such as the acquisition of esteem, wealth, power, etc. which in turn increases the probability of the satisfaction of ultimate goals like access to food and sex. Why do you like to play “Heroes of Might and Magic II”? Because of the illusion of the satisfaction of instrumental goals and the attendant reward. Why did hacking the game ruin this? Because doing so spoiled the illusion, leading to the denial of further reward. The question is, knowing this, will we be able to simply enjoy the satisfaction of our ultimate goals—- endless consumption of automatically generated art, food, sex, drugs, love, etc. Or will we feel forever hollow in our failure to accomplish ‘genuine’ instrumental goals, in a way that cannot be overcome by the ersatz instrumental goals of video games? Perhaps ultimately we will create virtual environments in which we are perfectly deceived as to their virtual nature, so as to experience the satisfaction of ‘genuine’ instrumental goals, and in so doing come full circle.

acapybara 4y ago
FYI, generally not acceptable here to post GPT3-generated responses.
exceptione 4y ago
> endless consumption of automatically generated art, food, sex, drugs, love, etc. I think that not all human desires are a matter of consumption. Some wise people say they even got rich by giving. At least love is such a thing. My stance is that art and love cannot be consumed, it is what happens to one. Now don't ask me to quantify or proof that. I will leave that to a future AI, but for that it needs to be a perfect, transcendental mind.

kristopolous 4y ago

It's more about deprofessionalization It's about turning a specialized craft that people can make a living from into a proscripted commodity task that you can pay slave wages for. This isn't new. It happened in farming, clothing and food preparation and it's coming for trucking, programming and everything else that pays well. The project is one of collective enforced impoverishment by substituting labor for property. Market forces drive innovation to making all human effort worthless and disposable

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
The C-levels already view programmers as interchangeable cogs. They only flourish because of startup culture that expects semi-equitable distribution of profits on a low overhead business activity. Outside that bubble it's already a job with poor advancement opportunities.
amag 4y ago
Yeah, but it's only possible because we, the software engineers, make it so. We could as a collective refuse to work on AI but we won't because it's a pretty, shiny, object with far too much lure for us to resist.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  As if collective action problems were so simple. The reality is engineers need money but they prefer manipulating machines to people, so the business people take care of the unpleasant wetware programming and not coincidentally take the bulk of the profits. it'd be far easier for a smaller group of engineers to build an AI powered CEO/C-suite that generates the regulatory filings etc. but does all human interaction over zoom or by phone. This would require a bit of work to pull off and would probably be denounced as horribly illegal, but I'm not convinced it would do a worse job than the median C-suite.
  - amag 4y ago
    No, I don't think it is simple. In fact I think it is impossible. Just looking at the division in this thread tells me that there will never even be an agreement for taking such a stand much less follow through.

kmonsen 4y ago

Software engineers are not a group, there was no way "we" could decide not to do this.

visarga 4y ago

Even with super-human AI coding assistants, if you want something specific you're still responsible for asking and receiving. And former devs will be the best at this game.

vsareto 4y ago

>This is what I fear about AI making our jobs superfluous It's more likely that non-technical people will be pushed out of jobs near software in favor of (former) engineers. Someone non-technical writing prompts for code can't actually read/debug/fix/deploy/integrate the result. Someone who is technical can probably write better AI prompts that yield something usable than someone who is non-technical. Plus they'll know how to handle the result. The predictions about non-technical roles firing all of the engineers and thinking AI will write all of the code don't really hold water for me. We might see an overall workforce reduction, but engineers will probably be the last ones to leave.

porknubbins 4y ago
Some engineers are saying AI will replace engineers in particular, mostly because they are the only ones playing with GPT and thinking about automation, and they may not realize how easy other jobs are to automate. I can’t imagine a world where they fire the devs but still need a HR person to email everyone about enrolling in health plan or whatever.

Waterluvian 4y ago

I don’t really see how this is a bad thing. Either humans are needed for a task or are not. Ideally we’re needed for as little as possible, freeing us up to do what we want rather than what has to be done. It reminds me of NIMBYism. We’ve been automating entire professions for over a century now… but not MY profession…

hnaccy 4y ago
>Either humans are needed for a task or are not. Ideally we’re needed for as little as possible, freeing us up to do what we want rather than what has to be done. If you're not valuable to the economic system you won't be treated well. >It reminds me of NIMBYism. We’ve been automating entire professions for over a century now… but not MY profession… Yes... it's self interest look at doctors or unions or guilds.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  The implicit part of the automation discussion is always: the current economic system is not the point and can evolve. If we don’t assume that, then there is never any useful conversation possible on this topic. We end up with the ridiculous “we need jobs because that’s what we do!” Which leads to another NIMBYism that I see when this conversation is had: “some generations will have to suffer through the friction of an economic revolution but not MY generation.” I think we need to be prepared that there’s always a chance that we get to be one of those generations. You’re right that there’s a self-interest there. It makes it almost a good thing that engineers are far too interested in the means rather than the ends.
  - hnaccy 4y ago
    It's not just myself but my family and descendants who will also be impoverished. If the holders of capital who are best positioned to reap nearly all the benefits of automation aren't willing work towards some more equitable result why would I want to help automation at all. I'd rather work against it. "just ignore the rising inequality and complete collapse in value of human labour we can work out the details later once I hold all the cards" is not a compelling story.

thedorkknight 4y ago

My hobbies are exercise/sports, playing video games, reading books, building models, and hanging out with friends. I have zero fear of any of those being automated away

scottyah 4y ago
The ability to afford to do those activities could be lost. Automation pulls the value previously created by many humans and concentrates it to those who create/maintain the system. As that list of needed people shrinks, so too does the probability of a person being able to create meaningful value.
- thedorkknight 4y ago
  Sure, that wasn't what the person I was responding to was talking about though
- firsttimebigboy 4y ago
  It also drastically reduces the cost to produce whatever's automated and also creates new opportunities.
googlryas 4y ago
Wait until it turns out your friends like the AI better than you...and you do too.

29athrowaway 4y ago

We are grave diggers and work digging our own grave.

OgAstorga 4y ago

I don't know. Chess is aka "solved"(when compared to human performance) yet chess is still fun. Music, Art, Social interactions, and Sports will all be here long after the machines have taken the mundane tasks.

andrewjl 4y ago

> Sorry for the bleak comment but this my fear and I feel the genie is already out of the box. The bleakness you feel might be due to a poverty of imagination. > Life will be like a computer game with cheat-codes, whenever we struggle with something, instead of fighting on and improving we will turn to our universal cheat-engine: AI. One such example of the above.

amag 4y ago
> The bleakness you feel might be due to a poverty of imagination. Thank you for your diagnosis. It may _also_ be due to the opposite. If you know anything about how the brain works, you'd know that in general more imaginative people are more anxious.
- andrewjl 4y ago
  Conceding that there are many types of anxiety what I read sounds rather like tunnel vision. That is not just unhelpful but can become harmful since yes these new technologies can be misused. Avoiding that is more likely when thinking flexibly.

ericmcer 4y ago

Why would we be scared at all? Until we can trust 100% that AI can take any vague specification from a PM or designer and turn it into bulletproof code that respects the existing code base we are going to need programmers. The difference between that and this version which can only nail leetcode questions feels vast. Like the difference between an AI being able to play Go vs one being able to govern a city.

amag 4y ago
As I've said countless times in other comments, this is not a shallow job security issue. My post is about how I believe AI will change us as people and society in a much more fundamental way than we may think. In ways we might not have considered. And not all for good.