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We were perhaps a bit too enamored with the idea that it was intellect that made us unique, and thus knowledge workers would be the last to be replaced. Pouring

We were perhaps a bit too enamored with the idea that it was intellect that made us unique, and thus knowledge workers would be the last to be replaced. Pouring our brains out by the Petabytes for neural networks to pick them up made the economics just work for an AI industrial revolution to start from there.

mdp2021 4y ago
No, we were enamored with the idea that intelligence was well distributed between people, as if following Descartes' massive incipit "Good sense must be the best distributed thing in the world, given that nobody seems to be asking for more". Inability to recognize intelligence is and will be devastating.
- forgetfulness 4y ago
  > Inability to recognize intelligence is and will be devastating. It's a pop-culture quote from a movie that was no masterpiece, I know, but "I, Robot" presented in two sentences an argument for having more sober expectations on what machine intelligence could be capable of, and of our own > Detective Del Spooner: "Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a… canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?" > Sonny: "Can you?" We're discrediting the capabilities of current machine learning models for being unable of producing the thoughts that many, many people are unable to either. Alright, so the models are not at the level that us HN philosopher kings hold ourselves to be, and they won't be Senior Architects of distributed systems or what have you very soon, but what does it say about Average Joe, slightly-above-Average Joe, and their economic prospects? Specially since in the West and much of the developing world, we were taking solace in the idea that a service economy comprised of knowledge workers would provide plenty of opportunities on a political and economic landscape where manufacture was gone, or had never arrived.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    "Learn to code" isn't such valuable advice for the Average Joe anymore, is it?
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    -- Pseudo Detective Del Spooner: "Can a robot lift that object?" -- Pseudo Sonny: "Can you?" -- Pseudo Detective Del Spooner: "Ha-ha. So what the #!@! is a robot doing there, not doing what is required? I cannot, and I do not stand there clueless" What is being engineered, toys for the satisfaction of some idle decadent sympathy urge? Have cats disappeared from the world? > We're discrediting We are shocked that an overly large number of individuals expect stones to bleed, and intelligence to pour out of machines that do not have intelligence coded inside, and that instead have unintelligence - acritical repetition - coded inside. > what does it say about Average Joe That he should catch up with his nature, if he shows the critical capacities of a simulacrum that has none. > not at the level No, no, no: it is not a matter of quantity but of quality: if you do not implement it or its origin, it will not be there. > [Asimov] Asimov is relevant. For example, I remember his idea that the State comes from Agriculture (~10000 BC), in the need to plan irrigation, or that the Abel vs Cain story could be a parallel of the political consequences of lands denied to pastors. Now: those seem to be good ideas, and their production can be an interesting goal. But there is something /before/ "creativity", or "advanced pattern recognition": it is /intelligence/, meaning that Asimov, after having spawned those hypoteses, has /vetted/ them as a required duly activity before confirming them in his set of founded hypotheses. You have to use intelligence, you have to have intelligence, and if you want to do AGI, you have to implement intelligence!!!
    - forgetfulness 4y ago
      And many among the Average Joes will not measure up to this ideal man of science and art. In truth you'll see that I'm not advocating for the rights of as-of-yet non-sapient computer programs, but to think of what this means about people. If we're setting the bar of personhood or dignity to being exceptional researchers and engineers, it doesn't bode well for the masses that aren't and won't be. Maybe this will result in a society of leisure where everyone can be that! I wouldn't bet on it, there's already more PhDs in the sciences and humanities than society can fit, and humans may just not work that way. You're already dismissing concerns about the welfare of the merely average, for being unfit when competing with the Machine Learning models we may have in the near future.
      - 4y ago
mikepurvis 4y ago
I feel a bit like this with the whole firestorm around AI artwork as well— it's been a big wakeup call to people who have been creating using technology-assisted workflows for decades, but still felt in their gut that they were bringing something unique to the table and were therefore "safe" from being completely automated away. That hitting the button for magic eraser or magic lasso or magic color correction was someone okay in a way that the AI itself sitting in the driver's seat was not. Now that's been reduced to pointing out minor flaws that the next generation of AI artists will trivially resolve, and sharing memes beseeching other humans to participate in a boycott. There's real pain and angst there, and I don't want to be callous about it with a comparison to buggy-whip manufacturers or something. But I wish the participants in these types of discussions were able to zoom out a bit and see that there's a larger societal issue here around automation, and that the real solution is going to be rethinking the basic economics of how we distribute wealth in a time of extraordinary machine-driven productivity— productivity that is no longer just about assembly lines and primary industries, but now also includes an increasing bite out of realms previously classified as "knowledge work".
- forgetfulness 4y ago
  Hard to tell, other knowledge workers and people in creative industries were already squeezed, designers for instance have had a tough time for a very long time. Will things change, politically, because now marketers and Software developers join those ranks, for instance? Programming was an outlet, if not a gold rush, for many people as the basic technical skills to create Software with the already sophisticated tooling available today presented an economic opportunity, but if "describe your problem, get crappy app" becomes viable, it may squeeze the market for junior developers. For as long as it has existed, Software has been subject to the Jevons Paradox [1], and every advancement in making its development cheaper and its supply more abundant has only made it so more activities become powered by Software and Software developers, but it's hard to tell how this will impact the job market, especially if Software was absorbing people who didn't find more opportunities in the broader service sector. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - 4y ago

mdp2021 4y ago

No, we were enamored with the idea that intelligence was well distributed between people, as if following Descartes' massive incipit "Good sense must be the best distributed thing in the world, given that nobody seems to be asking for more". Inability to recognize intelligence is and will be devastating.

forgetfulness 4y ago
> Inability to recognize intelligence is and will be devastating. It's a pop-culture quote from a movie that was no masterpiece, I know, but "I, Robot" presented in two sentences an argument for having more sober expectations on what machine intelligence could be capable of, and of our own > Detective Del Spooner: "Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a… canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?" > Sonny: "Can you?" We're discrediting the capabilities of current machine learning models for being unable of producing the thoughts that many, many people are unable to either. Alright, so the models are not at the level that us HN philosopher kings hold ourselves to be, and they won't be Senior Architects of distributed systems or what have you very soon, but what does it say about Average Joe, slightly-above-Average Joe, and their economic prospects? Specially since in the West and much of the developing world, we were taking solace in the idea that a service economy comprised of knowledge workers would provide plenty of opportunities on a political and economic landscape where manufacture was gone, or had never arrived.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  "Learn to code" isn't such valuable advice for the Average Joe anymore, is it?
- mdp2021 4y ago
  -- Pseudo Detective Del Spooner: "Can a robot lift that object?" -- Pseudo Sonny: "Can you?" -- Pseudo Detective Del Spooner: "Ha-ha. So what the #!@! is a robot doing there, not doing what is required? I cannot, and I do not stand there clueless" What is being engineered, toys for the satisfaction of some idle decadent sympathy urge? Have cats disappeared from the world? > We're discrediting We are shocked that an overly large number of individuals expect stones to bleed, and intelligence to pour out of machines that do not have intelligence coded inside, and that instead have unintelligence - acritical repetition - coded inside. > what does it say about Average Joe That he should catch up with his nature, if he shows the critical capacities of a simulacrum that has none. > not at the level No, no, no: it is not a matter of quantity but of quality: if you do not implement it or its origin, it will not be there. > [Asimov] Asimov is relevant. For example, I remember his idea that the State comes from Agriculture (~10000 BC), in the need to plan irrigation, or that the Abel vs Cain story could be a parallel of the political consequences of lands denied to pastors. Now: those seem to be good ideas, and their production can be an interesting goal. But there is something /before/ "creativity", or "advanced pattern recognition": it is /intelligence/, meaning that Asimov, after having spawned those hypoteses, has /vetted/ them as a required duly activity before confirming them in his set of founded hypotheses. You have to use intelligence, you have to have intelligence, and if you want to do AGI, you have to implement intelligence!!!
  - forgetfulness 4y ago
    And many among the Average Joes will not measure up to this ideal man of science and art. In truth you'll see that I'm not advocating for the rights of as-of-yet non-sapient computer programs, but to think of what this means about people. If we're setting the bar of personhood or dignity to being exceptional researchers and engineers, it doesn't bode well for the masses that aren't and won't be. Maybe this will result in a society of leisure where everyone can be that! I wouldn't bet on it, there's already more PhDs in the sciences and humanities than society can fit, and humans may just not work that way. You're already dismissing concerns about the welfare of the merely average, for being unfit when competing with the Machine Learning models we may have in the near future.
    - 4y ago

mikepurvis 4y ago

I feel a bit like this with the whole firestorm around AI artwork as well— it's been a big wakeup call to people who have been creating using technology-assisted workflows for decades, but still felt in their gut that they were bringing something unique to the table and were therefore "safe" from being completely automated away. That hitting the button for magic eraser or magic lasso or magic color correction was someone okay in a way that the AI itself sitting in the driver's seat was not. Now that's been reduced to pointing out minor flaws that the next generation of AI artists will trivially resolve, and sharing memes beseeching other humans to participate in a boycott. There's real pain and angst there, and I don't want to be callous about it with a comparison to buggy-whip manufacturers or something. But I wish the participants in these types of discussions were able to zoom out a bit and see that there's a larger societal issue here around automation, and that the real solution is going to be rethinking the basic economics of how we distribute wealth in a time of extraordinary machine-driven productivity— productivity that is no longer just about assembly lines and primary industries, but now also includes an increasing bite out of realms previously classified as "knowledge work".

forgetfulness 4y ago
Hard to tell, other knowledge workers and people in creative industries were already squeezed, designers for instance have had a tough time for a very long time. Will things change, politically, because now marketers and Software developers join those ranks, for instance? Programming was an outlet, if not a gold rush, for many people as the basic technical skills to create Software with the already sophisticated tooling available today presented an economic opportunity, but if "describe your problem, get crappy app" becomes viable, it may squeeze the market for junior developers. For as long as it has existed, Software has been subject to the Jevons Paradox [1], and every advancement in making its development cheaper and its supply more abundant has only made it so more activities become powered by Software and Software developers, but it's hard to tell how this will impact the job market, especially if Software was absorbing people who didn't find more opportunities in the broader service sector. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- 4y ago