3 ms·

But how is an individual supposed to "prepare" for AGI? The outcome of further automation will be to move even more capital under the control of an even smalle

But how is an individual supposed to "prepare" for AGI? The outcome of further automation will be to move even more capital under the control of an even smaller number of hands. It's that increasing inequality which is the problem, not AGI.

globalise83 2y ago
If you are right, a modest investment in an index fund of shares covering tech companies in the USA should generate enough returns over the next few years to retire in comfort.
- weatherlite 2y ago
  They will have very good earnings if this happens but I'm not expecting them to become 10x their current market cap in a few years. So yeah I put some money on the index but retire comfortable sounds too good to be true to me.
weatherlite 2y ago
You're right. It's tough, I'm not gonna tell you otherwise. I think there are 3 main things most people should try to do: 1) Mental preparation - understanding your current career is finite (be it 5 more years or 20, its not gonna last forever) and broaden and deepen other things in your life such as family, friends and hobbies. I've contemplated the loss of my career hundreds of times already if not thousands, I do it almost on a daily basis (not for hours, just a few moments of a passing thought). It's kind of the opposite of denial and it seems helpful for me to do it. 2) Financials - an obvious one. We should all accept that quite possibly our standard of living will be lower 10 years from now. It's not a certainty, but the likelihood is high enough that we need to be more frugal - which means both trying to save money as much as we can and also learning to enjoy things that don't cost a lot of money. 3) Possible career pivot - there will be opportunities. Some parts of the labour market are starving for employees and I don't mean just the trades - there's a constant need for nurses, teachers, care etc. The problem is these jobs are notorious for burning their workers out; I don't have a solution for that.
- piva00 2y ago
  > 3) Possible career pivot - there will be opportunities. Some parts of the labour market are starving for employees and I don't mean just the trades - there's a constant need for nurses, teachers, care etc. The problem is these jobs are notorious for burning their workers out; I don't have a solution for that. These jobs are also not scalable and not directly profitable, they require money from other sources to even exist at a large scale. In this potential AI-dominated world where there is less money being earned by individuals, consequently less taxes being paid, who exactly is going to be paying for nurses, teachers, care, etc.?
  - weatherlite 2y ago
    Good question. My hunch is most functioning governments will step in and create these jobs - because they are badly needed. .Even now at least half of economic activity is government created in many developed countries - so it will be more like 80%. But I have no crystal ball, I'm just speculating.
    - piva00 2y ago
      For that to happen we would need a paradigm shift on the main ideology behind most functioning governments: neoliberalism. It's not in the current sociopolitical/economical zeitgeist for governments to step in and create jobs, since the 80s we've moved towards privatisation, even very socially oriented governments like Western/Northern Europe are in it. To undo this flow into the other direction will take another generation or two of people under a new ideology voting for it. We've been fed neoliberal policies for way too long, the contemporary Western world has been molded in it, I don't believe such a huge shift will happen fast enough if AI does actually develop that fast to replace jobs. We will live through a limbo of pain until newer generations fight against it, usually that only happens when our collective pain is way above the uncomfortable threshold. > Even now at least half of economic activity is government created in many developed countries I wasn't aware of this fact, where could I find statistics about it (if you have sources easily, if not I can do my own research).
spiderfarmer 2y ago
Most people I know that learned a classic trade (plasterers, tilers, builders in general) are making a lot of money due to shortages that will not be resolved anytime soon due to structural problems in our educational system. That is my plan B. So I don’t worry about AGI.
pizza 2y ago
Maybe something like dividends for all citizens? Either way, atoms will still matter where no number of bits will fix your problem. It's also possible that AI will introduce unimaginably profitable ways for non-technical people to give others value, though, I wouldn't bet on it, or even that does pan out I can't see it becoming particularly widespread.
fragmede 2y ago
sell all your unnecessary worldly possessions, buy a landstead, take up farming.
caeril 2y ago
[flagged]
- senordevnyc 2y ago
  I'm curious where this level of bitterness is coming from. It doesn't seem healthy.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - caeril 2y ago
    Is there an argument here beyond armchair psychologizing? GPT-3 is over 4 years old. The writing was on the wall then. FAANG status-strivers had plenty of warning to maybe stop blowing their TC on impressing other people, and choose instead to sock something away. Most chose not to, because living the "right" lifestyle was far more important than prudence. It is for these people that just desserts are in store. The Social Network and its consequences have been a disaster for the software engineering race. It marked the Eternal September when this profession was inundated with greedy normies who don't care about software, but rather their wealth and status. The end of this era could not come quickly enough.
    - senordevnyc 2y ago
      Sorry, wasn’t trying to attack you, it just seems like you’re really angry and hoping for tech workers to suffer. I hope you find some peace.
- dang 2y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
Get a job that requires a human physical presence. Nurse, plumber, etc.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 2y ago
  Humanoid robots are a thing. I assume we're currently seeing a lot of smoke and mirrors on the AI controlling those robots, but the mere physical form factor isn't enough any more. Nurses may have longer than plumbers because many of us will want the human connection, and servos behind rubber masks are currently deeply in uncanny valley — at least, they are for me, but I've noticed from the breadth of responses to GenAI that uncanny valley is in a different place for different people.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    We've had human shaped robots for decades, but so what ? Robots that not only have AGI (running locally, under battery power?!) but also the dexterity, flexibility, etc to match that of a plumber seem a long, long way off, and would of course require something a lot more advanced that today's LLM based AI - would need to have full blown brain-like capabilities, obviously including the mechanisms to learn a craft.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > We've had human shaped robots for decades, but so what ? They've improved a lot since the ones decades ago. When ASIMO was state of the art, that meant being able to walk on a flat surface and climb stairs. Now, it's more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlUFoZstcWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlUFoZstcWg (Though again, as this is a sales video, I expect it to be implying more than it can actually do, in the same vein as the Tesla Optimus robot bartenders but not necessarily the same specifics) > Robots that not only have AGI (running locally, under battery power?!) Assuming batteries are a must and we can't e.g. use mains, that means the gap between AI reaching the power-performance envelope needed for level 5 self driving cars and the one needed for such robots would be about 5 years. Get the former in x years from now, the latter in x+5 years. > but also the dexterity, flexibility, etc to match that of a plumber seem a long, long way off Single humanoid hand, solving a Rubik's Cube, real time video from 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVmp0uGtShk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVmp0uGtShk > and would of course require something a lot more advanced that today's LLM based AI The future existence of a sufficiently more advanced AI is baked into the assumptions in the question at the top of this thread. It's the goal and driving purpose of the field. Dunno when it comes; if I did, that would make it easier to prepare for. > would need to have full blown brain-like capabilities, obviously including the mechanisms to learn a craft. How confident are you about what specifically they need and don't have, and why? I've seen people confidently say AI would need brain-like capabilities to play Chess, then when Deep Blue beat Kasparov they were saying it about Go, then when AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol they were saying it about natural language and creating pictures, then ChatGPT happened and various Transformer and Diffusion models got so good that collectively they've become a fraud risk. Based on the observation that LLMs could get up to the level of interns or mid-university students, I suspect we've already got AI capable of learning a craft to that (mediocre) level just by training on all the YouTube DIY videos. Based on all the sim2real work, I think it's at least plausible (not certain, only plausible) that some mediocre plumber AI bootstrapped by YouTube would also be able to improve substantially in this fashion: https://arxiv.org/search/?query=sim2real&searchtype=all&source=header https://arxiv.org/search/?query=sim2real&searchtype=all&sour... I don't think we need to solve, e.g., the question of why humans seem to be able to learn from so much less data than our AI require to reach any given skill level. Likewise, we do we don't need to agree on what "consciousness" is, nor do we need to then give that to the machines.

globalise83 2y ago

If you are right, a modest investment in an index fund of shares covering tech companies in the USA should generate enough returns over the next few years to retire in comfort.

weatherlite 2y ago
They will have very good earnings if this happens but I'm not expecting them to become 10x their current market cap in a few years. So yeah I put some money on the index but retire comfortable sounds too good to be true to me.

weatherlite 2y ago

You're right. It's tough, I'm not gonna tell you otherwise. I think there are 3 main things most people should try to do: 1) Mental preparation - understanding your current career is finite (be it 5 more years or 20, its not gonna last forever) and broaden and deepen other things in your life such as family, friends and hobbies. I've contemplated the loss of my career hundreds of times already if not thousands, I do it almost on a daily basis (not for hours, just a few moments of a passing thought). It's kind of the opposite of denial and it seems helpful for me to do it. 2) Financials - an obvious one. We should all accept that quite possibly our standard of living will be lower 10 years from now. It's not a certainty, but the likelihood is high enough that we need to be more frugal - which means both trying to save money as much as we can and also learning to enjoy things that don't cost a lot of money. 3) Possible career pivot - there will be opportunities. Some parts of the labour market are starving for employees and I don't mean just the trades - there's a constant need for nurses, teachers, care etc. The problem is these jobs are notorious for burning their workers out; I don't have a solution for that.

piva00 2y ago
> 3) Possible career pivot - there will be opportunities. Some parts of the labour market are starving for employees and I don't mean just the trades - there's a constant need for nurses, teachers, care etc. The problem is these jobs are notorious for burning their workers out; I don't have a solution for that. These jobs are also not scalable and not directly profitable, they require money from other sources to even exist at a large scale. In this potential AI-dominated world where there is less money being earned by individuals, consequently less taxes being paid, who exactly is going to be paying for nurses, teachers, care, etc.?
- weatherlite 2y ago
  Good question. My hunch is most functioning governments will step in and create these jobs - because they are badly needed. .Even now at least half of economic activity is government created in many developed countries - so it will be more like 80%. But I have no crystal ball, I'm just speculating.
  - piva00 2y ago
    For that to happen we would need a paradigm shift on the main ideology behind most functioning governments: neoliberalism. It's not in the current sociopolitical/economical zeitgeist for governments to step in and create jobs, since the 80s we've moved towards privatisation, even very socially oriented governments like Western/Northern Europe are in it. To undo this flow into the other direction will take another generation or two of people under a new ideology voting for it. We've been fed neoliberal policies for way too long, the contemporary Western world has been molded in it, I don't believe such a huge shift will happen fast enough if AI does actually develop that fast to replace jobs. We will live through a limbo of pain until newer generations fight against it, usually that only happens when our collective pain is way above the uncomfortable threshold. > Even now at least half of economic activity is government created in many developed countries I wasn't aware of this fact, where could I find statistics about it (if you have sources easily, if not I can do my own research).

spiderfarmer 2y ago

Most people I know that learned a classic trade (plasterers, tilers, builders in general) are making a lot of money due to shortages that will not be resolved anytime soon due to structural problems in our educational system. That is my plan B. So I don’t worry about AGI.

pizza 2y ago

Maybe something like dividends for all citizens? Either way, atoms will still matter where no number of bits will fix your problem. It's also possible that AI will introduce unimaginably profitable ways for non-technical people to give others value, though, I wouldn't bet on it, or even that does pan out I can't see it becoming particularly widespread.

fragmede 2y ago

sell all your unnecessary worldly possessions, buy a landstead, take up farming.

caeril 2y ago

[flagged]

senordevnyc 2y ago
I'm curious where this level of bitterness is coming from. It doesn't seem healthy.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- caeril 2y ago
  Is there an argument here beyond armchair psychologizing? GPT-3 is over 4 years old. The writing was on the wall then. FAANG status-strivers had plenty of warning to maybe stop blowing their TC on impressing other people, and choose instead to sock something away. Most chose not to, because living the "right" lifestyle was far more important than prudence. It is for these people that just desserts are in store. The Social Network and its consequences have been a disaster for the software engineering race. It marked the Eternal September when this profession was inundated with greedy normies who don't care about software, but rather their wealth and status. The end of this era could not come quickly enough.
  - senordevnyc 2y ago
    Sorry, wasn’t trying to attack you, it just seems like you’re really angry and hoping for tech workers to suffer. I hope you find some peace.
dang 2y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

Get a job that requires a human physical presence. Nurse, plumber, etc.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 2y ago
Humanoid robots are a thing. I assume we're currently seeing a lot of smoke and mirrors on the AI controlling those robots, but the mere physical form factor isn't enough any more. Nurses may have longer than plumbers because many of us will want the human connection, and servos behind rubber masks are currently deeply in uncanny valley — at least, they are for me, but I've noticed from the breadth of responses to GenAI that uncanny valley is in a different place for different people.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  We've had human shaped robots for decades, but so what ? Robots that not only have AGI (running locally, under battery power?!) but also the dexterity, flexibility, etc to match that of a plumber seem a long, long way off, and would of course require something a lot more advanced that today's LLM based AI - would need to have full blown brain-like capabilities, obviously including the mechanisms to learn a craft.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > We've had human shaped robots for decades, but so what ? They've improved a lot since the ones decades ago. When ASIMO was state of the art, that meant being able to walk on a flat surface and climb stairs. Now, it's more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlUFoZstcWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlUFoZstcWg (Though again, as this is a sales video, I expect it to be implying more than it can actually do, in the same vein as the Tesla Optimus robot bartenders but not necessarily the same specifics) > Robots that not only have AGI (running locally, under battery power?!) Assuming batteries are a must and we can't e.g. use mains, that means the gap between AI reaching the power-performance envelope needed for level 5 self driving cars and the one needed for such robots would be about 5 years. Get the former in x years from now, the latter in x+5 years. > but also the dexterity, flexibility, etc to match that of a plumber seem a long, long way off Single humanoid hand, solving a Rubik's Cube, real time video from 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVmp0uGtShk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVmp0uGtShk > and would of course require something a lot more advanced that today's LLM based AI The future existence of a sufficiently more advanced AI is baked into the assumptions in the question at the top of this thread. It's the goal and driving purpose of the field. Dunno when it comes; if I did, that would make it easier to prepare for. > would need to have full blown brain-like capabilities, obviously including the mechanisms to learn a craft. How confident are you about what specifically they need and don't have, and why? I've seen people confidently say AI would need brain-like capabilities to play Chess, then when Deep Blue beat Kasparov they were saying it about Go, then when AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol they were saying it about natural language and creating pictures, then ChatGPT happened and various Transformer and Diffusion models got so good that collectively they've become a fraud risk. Based on the observation that LLMs could get up to the level of interns or mid-university students, I suspect we've already got AI capable of learning a craft to that (mediocre) level just by training on all the YouTube DIY videos. Based on all the sim2real work, I think it's at least plausible (not certain, only plausible) that some mediocre plumber AI bootstrapped by YouTube would also be able to improve substantially in this fashion: https://arxiv.org/search/?query=sim2real&searchtype=all&source=header https://arxiv.org/search/?query=sim2real&searchtype=all&sour... I don't think we need to solve, e.g., the question of why humans seem to be able to learn from so much less data than our AI require to reach any given skill level. Likewise, we do we don't need to agree on what "consciousness" is, nor do we need to then give that to the machines.