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Sigh. No. This is silly and I'm starting to get tired of people thinking that AI having a modicum of lasting success means that Terminator 2 is around the corne

Sigh. No. This is silly and I'm starting to get tired of people thinking that AI having a modicum of lasting success means that Terminator 2 is around the corner. I'd say I expect more from Hacker News, but... yeah. This is starting to become all I know this website for. > most humans would be incapable of producing economically valuable work compared to a much cheaper robot or LLM/multi-model empowered agent. How can you buy into hype this hard? Humans are cheap to maintain and do a great number of things better than a robot can. At the very least, subsistence farming will be a completely viable strategy for the majority of people until we hit the limits of Malthusian growth. But on top of that, skilled manufacturing labor, research and design, testing and iteration, hypothesizing and postulating is all done better by humans. AI isn't building AI, it's skilled human laborers applying decades of research to get us where we are today. Seriously, I just don't get it. Go talk to an AI, it's dumber than a sack of rocks. If you'd want that sort of employee working for you, go hire a thousand ChatGPTs right now and build your dream product - you won't. It takes human understanding to realize human visions, and dice-rolling ChatGPT is not a realistic strategy for building anything unique or successful. Employers know this; the only reason they promote ChatGPT is to fearmonger and undervalue your work. By the looks of it, they're winning.

atleastoptimal 2y ago
> skilled manufacturing labor, research and design, testing and iteration, hypothesizing and postulating is all done better by humans Currently. The point is that it will likely improve to the point where AI can do this better. Why would there be a hard limit somewhere under the ability of humans? AI is already better at writing than most high-schoolers, why couldn't it be better at other learnable skills once the training data, compute and architecture is sufficient? >Go talk to an AI, it's dumber than a sack of rocks Lmao hyperbolic, even jokey statements like this aren't convincing. What does a sack of rocks score on the MMLU? How many companies have laid off thousands because sacks of rocks can do their human employees' jobs better? The point of my post isn't that AI is currently capable of the changes I've discussed, but the rate of improvement in general capabilities makes a future where this isn't as unreasonable as any random sci-fi scenario. Why do people insist that current limitations with AI will always persist and it will never improve? Remember AI video a year ago? Then SORA came out.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Look, automation is here. The existence of line-replaceable employees, 24/7 manufacturing and machine-assisted assembly is a century old today, we're currently living in the post-automation world and very little has changed. Humans do different things and the job market looks different as a result. I don't know what your proximity to the field is, but I've basically worked in robotics and industrial automation since I was a high schooler. Nobody is talking about this stuff; it's a sideshow reserved for wooing investors and particularly gullible public audiences. Know why? Because computer vision has been used in production for over a decade now. We've already replaced those jobs and moved on. ChatGPT-4o isn't even a party trick to these people. If you continue to assume that AI will accelerate along a neverending path of success, then you'll believe anything. I have watched and implimented LLMs since BERT was released and I strongly feel that you are overestimating ChatGPT's capabilities to an unreal degree.
  - atleastoptimal 2y ago
    I understand that ChatGPT isn't an industrial grade offering. It was meant as a research demo and I still believe it best functions as that. What it does however show is a slice of how far a generally capable agent can perform at a wide range of tasks, not simply ones in the narrow range it was specifically trained for. I couldn't use ChatGPT 3.5 for anything useful. Now I can describe the mechanics of an entirely new game with abstract rules I invented offhand and it can code a workable demo. I can give it specific feedback and it will fix it reasonably well. Of course once things get really really subtle and complex it starts hallucinating, but the fact that it did so well on the first try is astounding given how crappy these things were 4 years ago. > I've basically worked in robotics and industrial automation since I was a high schooler. Nobody is talking about this stuff Then why is China planning a massive initiative to mass-produce humanoid robots in the next year? (https://www.therobotreport.com/china-plans-to-mass-produce-humanoids-by-2025/ https://www.therobotreport.com/china-plans-to-mass-produce-h...). Why are billions being funneled into these efforts? Of course you can believe that all investors and the entire country of China is delusional but at some point there is reason to assume that things might just be starting to change in a way that isn't directly proportional to past changes.

atleastoptimal 2y ago

> skilled manufacturing labor, research and design, testing and iteration, hypothesizing and postulating is all done better by humans Currently. The point is that it will likely improve to the point where AI can do this better. Why would there be a hard limit somewhere under the ability of humans? AI is already better at writing than most high-schoolers, why couldn't it be better at other learnable skills once the training data, compute and architecture is sufficient? >Go talk to an AI, it's dumber than a sack of rocks Lmao hyperbolic, even jokey statements like this aren't convincing. What does a sack of rocks score on the MMLU? How many companies have laid off thousands because sacks of rocks can do their human employees' jobs better? The point of my post isn't that AI is currently capable of the changes I've discussed, but the rate of improvement in general capabilities makes a future where this isn't as unreasonable as any random sci-fi scenario. Why do people insist that current limitations with AI will always persist and it will never improve? Remember AI video a year ago? Then SORA came out.

talldayo 2y ago
Look, automation is here. The existence of line-replaceable employees, 24/7 manufacturing and machine-assisted assembly is a century old today, we're currently living in the post-automation world and very little has changed. Humans do different things and the job market looks different as a result. I don't know what your proximity to the field is, but I've basically worked in robotics and industrial automation since I was a high schooler. Nobody is talking about this stuff; it's a sideshow reserved for wooing investors and particularly gullible public audiences. Know why? Because computer vision has been used in production for over a decade now. We've already replaced those jobs and moved on. ChatGPT-4o isn't even a party trick to these people. If you continue to assume that AI will accelerate along a neverending path of success, then you'll believe anything. I have watched and implimented LLMs since BERT was released and I strongly feel that you are overestimating ChatGPT's capabilities to an unreal degree.
- atleastoptimal 2y ago
  I understand that ChatGPT isn't an industrial grade offering. It was meant as a research demo and I still believe it best functions as that. What it does however show is a slice of how far a generally capable agent can perform at a wide range of tasks, not simply ones in the narrow range it was specifically trained for. I couldn't use ChatGPT 3.5 for anything useful. Now I can describe the mechanics of an entirely new game with abstract rules I invented offhand and it can code a workable demo. I can give it specific feedback and it will fix it reasonably well. Of course once things get really really subtle and complex it starts hallucinating, but the fact that it did so well on the first try is astounding given how crappy these things were 4 years ago. > I've basically worked in robotics and industrial automation since I was a high schooler. Nobody is talking about this stuff Then why is China planning a massive initiative to mass-produce humanoid robots in the next year? (https://www.therobotreport.com/china-plans-to-mass-produce-humanoids-by-2025/ https://www.therobotreport.com/china-plans-to-mass-produce-h...). Why are billions being funneled into these efforts? Of course you can believe that all investors and the entire country of China is delusional but at some point there is reason to assume that things might just be starting to change in a way that isn't directly proportional to past changes.