4 ms·

Average Is over with AI

19 points by paulpauper 9mo ago

mbgerring 9mo ago
Not asked: does anyone want this?
- hombre_fatal 9mo ago
  I hated sitting around in school classrooms so much that I fantasized about a system that would just give me work to do and I would turn it in and go about my day. This description of Alpha school might have been up my alley. AI learning certainly was. Either way, we do need to think about options for self-motivated students.
  - Avicebron 9mo ago
    Is this really for the students? Or is this for the people who believe they (and by extension their children) are the "Alphas" of society.. are there other values we should be teaching than "superior people do this and if you don't do this you are the inferior".. time will tell I guess. Crabs in buckets and all that.
- FuckButtons 9mo ago
  No one chose the economy we had before either. You are who, what and where you are by virtue of historical accident. The serfs of the Middle Ages sure as shit didn’t want that economy either, nor did the unwashed masses, dying at such an alarming rate of dysentery and cholera that the population of major cities was only sustained through mass migration during industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nor did more or less any slave during human history. The last ~150 years of economic freedom and prosperity for a large percentage of the population that has been wide spread across industrialized economies is the exception, not the rule, and the difference is and always has been the fact that industrialized economies have required large amounts of skilled specialists to make the systems they developed work. If you change that calculus, there is no historical precedent to assume that human societies won’t revert to the mean.
  - mbgerring 9mo ago
    idk I feel like I read a few things from history about people rejecting the economy that was forced on them and demanding better, maybe it was AI generated?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 9mo ago
    >You are who, what and where you are by virtue of historical accident. The serfs of the Middle Ages sure as shit didn’t want that economy either At least many of them fought hard to keep what they liked - plenty of peasant revolts and coming at feudal lords when they overdid it... Early industrial workers didn't like their economy and conditions either, fought hard, organized, and got many changes to labour laws and conditions. Us?
- coldtea 9mo ago
  "You'll own nothing, have a worse job, get fed slop, and be happy"
speakingmoistly 9mo ago
> Those who resist AI and/or fail to set high expectations for themselves will have to settle for lower income and status. It's great that we're spending all those resources making the world worse. \s
- mistrial9 9mo ago
  social Darwinists are rejoicing daily.. they don't tend to comment in the open. Several distant relatives here in the USA fly private planes while this board is active.. I guess that they spend zero time talking about the needs of others or "fairness" issues..
  - univarseman 9mo ago
    It’s universal too; I know a lot of women, queers, POC, who don’t give one second of reflection to the reality 12-13 year old kids are sewing all the crap fashion they buy off Temu, or off the shelf at local shops who just import cheap crap to cash in on “buy local” memes. They call it freedom and self determination. I call it co-dependency and learned helplessness. Labor exploitation. Low skilled in their own right; they have no idea where to start solving their needs so never engage the motor agency. Learned helplessness so a minority of humanity; first world affluents; out to avoid being responsible for themselves while they scold everyone else via TikTok. Yes the politicians are awful for their own reasons but so many merely express concerns while carrying on without putting any real effort into solving their exploitative waves. Empty virtue signaling.
- simianwords 9mo ago
  how worse?
  - speakingmoistly 9mo ago
    There's many things to be unpacked here, but one that feels particularly compelling is how the potential of AI is being leveraged to divide people further along class lines instead of being a tide that rises all boats. The narrative around AI adoption is largely a rehash of "think of how much more we could do with less", which is generally great for the ones who owns the means of production, not so much for the ones who are on the factory floor. It's quite visible when AI is being used as an excuse to lay people off and expand the expectation on whoever is left without necessarily increasing compensation to follow with the "added productivity". The worker/employee power dynamic is only made worse there since it seems to be a shared corporate wet dream to hire as little as possible and have "digital coworkers" fill the gaps. This isn't a new story: before, it was offshoring to cheaper markets (i.e. where the power dynamics are even more tipped toward the rich), now it's the dream of a digital worker that doesn't talk back and will work 24/7. There doesn't seem to be much interest in using this to make people work less and engage in the rest of life more, hence the jokes about how somehow, the machines are generating art while folks are still toiling away to make ends meet. The class division is even in the original message we're responding to: failing to get on the bandwagon or being pushed from it leads to lower income and status despite there being plenty to go around if we only stopped chasing infinite growth.
Isamu 9mo ago
Is there some redefinition of “average” going on? What are LLMs but a statistical representation of likely speech? What is generated except some likely and plausible output that seems to fit the bill? At what point is average exceeded?
- simianwords 9mo ago
  Average is exceeded by RL'ing hard enough. But I think you are missing the bigger picture -- its true that LLM's might have a tendency to average out things but even if this is true, everyone needs to keep up. People who use AI correctly will use it where they would have otherwise produced below average works.
coldtea 9mo ago
>Those who resist AI and/or fail to set high expectations for themselves will have to settle for lower income and status. Millions of those fully ok with embracing AI, but superfluous in the economy created it by it, will have to settle for lower income and status too. That doesn't mean they need to tolerate privileged c*ts who have no worry and millions in the bank be smug about it.

19 points by paulpauper 9mo ago

mbgerring 9mo ago

Not asked: does anyone want this?

hombre_fatal 9mo ago
I hated sitting around in school classrooms so much that I fantasized about a system that would just give me work to do and I would turn it in and go about my day. This description of Alpha school might have been up my alley. AI learning certainly was. Either way, we do need to think about options for self-motivated students.
- Avicebron 9mo ago
  Is this really for the students? Or is this for the people who believe they (and by extension their children) are the "Alphas" of society.. are there other values we should be teaching than "superior people do this and if you don't do this you are the inferior".. time will tell I guess. Crabs in buckets and all that.
FuckButtons 9mo ago
No one chose the economy we had before either. You are who, what and where you are by virtue of historical accident. The serfs of the Middle Ages sure as shit didn’t want that economy either, nor did the unwashed masses, dying at such an alarming rate of dysentery and cholera that the population of major cities was only sustained through mass migration during industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nor did more or less any slave during human history. The last ~150 years of economic freedom and prosperity for a large percentage of the population that has been wide spread across industrialized economies is the exception, not the rule, and the difference is and always has been the fact that industrialized economies have required large amounts of skilled specialists to make the systems they developed work. If you change that calculus, there is no historical precedent to assume that human societies won’t revert to the mean.
- mbgerring 9mo ago
  idk I feel like I read a few things from history about people rejecting the economy that was forced on them and demanding better, maybe it was AI generated?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 9mo ago
  >You are who, what and where you are by virtue of historical accident. The serfs of the Middle Ages sure as shit didn’t want that economy either At least many of them fought hard to keep what they liked - plenty of peasant revolts and coming at feudal lords when they overdid it... Early industrial workers didn't like their economy and conditions either, fought hard, organized, and got many changes to labour laws and conditions. Us?
coldtea 9mo ago
"You'll own nothing, have a worse job, get fed slop, and be happy"

speakingmoistly 9mo ago

> Those who resist AI and/or fail to set high expectations for themselves will have to settle for lower income and status. It's great that we're spending all those resources making the world worse. \s

mistrial9 9mo ago
social Darwinists are rejoicing daily.. they don't tend to comment in the open. Several distant relatives here in the USA fly private planes while this board is active.. I guess that they spend zero time talking about the needs of others or "fairness" issues..
- univarseman 9mo ago
  It’s universal too; I know a lot of women, queers, POC, who don’t give one second of reflection to the reality 12-13 year old kids are sewing all the crap fashion they buy off Temu, or off the shelf at local shops who just import cheap crap to cash in on “buy local” memes. They call it freedom and self determination. I call it co-dependency and learned helplessness. Labor exploitation. Low skilled in their own right; they have no idea where to start solving their needs so never engage the motor agency. Learned helplessness so a minority of humanity; first world affluents; out to avoid being responsible for themselves while they scold everyone else via TikTok. Yes the politicians are awful for their own reasons but so many merely express concerns while carrying on without putting any real effort into solving their exploitative waves. Empty virtue signaling.
simianwords 9mo ago
how worse?
- speakingmoistly 9mo ago
  There's many things to be unpacked here, but one that feels particularly compelling is how the potential of AI is being leveraged to divide people further along class lines instead of being a tide that rises all boats. The narrative around AI adoption is largely a rehash of "think of how much more we could do with less", which is generally great for the ones who owns the means of production, not so much for the ones who are on the factory floor. It's quite visible when AI is being used as an excuse to lay people off and expand the expectation on whoever is left without necessarily increasing compensation to follow with the "added productivity". The worker/employee power dynamic is only made worse there since it seems to be a shared corporate wet dream to hire as little as possible and have "digital coworkers" fill the gaps. This isn't a new story: before, it was offshoring to cheaper markets (i.e. where the power dynamics are even more tipped toward the rich), now it's the dream of a digital worker that doesn't talk back and will work 24/7. There doesn't seem to be much interest in using this to make people work less and engage in the rest of life more, hence the jokes about how somehow, the machines are generating art while folks are still toiling away to make ends meet. The class division is even in the original message we're responding to: failing to get on the bandwagon or being pushed from it leads to lower income and status despite there being plenty to go around if we only stopped chasing infinite growth.

Isamu 9mo ago

Is there some redefinition of “average” going on? What are LLMs but a statistical representation of likely speech? What is generated except some likely and plausible output that seems to fit the bill? At what point is average exceeded?

simianwords 9mo ago
Average is exceeded by RL'ing hard enough. But I think you are missing the bigger picture -- its true that LLM's might have a tendency to average out things but even if this is true, everyone needs to keep up. People who use AI correctly will use it where they would have otherwise produced below average works.

coldtea 9mo ago

>Those who resist AI and/or fail to set high expectations for themselves will have to settle for lower income and status. Millions of those fully ok with embracing AI, but superfluous in the economy created it by it, will have to settle for lower income and status too. That doesn't mean they need to tolerate privileged c*ts who have no worry and millions in the bank be smug about it.