5 ms·

> We are entering a golden age in which all computer science problems seem to be tractable, insomuch as we can get very useful approximations of any computable

> We are entering a golden age in which all computer science problems seem to be tractable, insomuch as we can get very useful approximations of any computable function. Alternatively, we are entering a dark age where the billionaires who control most of the world's capital will no longer need to suffer the indignity of paying wages to humans in order to generate more revenue from information products and all of the data they've hoarded over the past couple of decades. > the real kicker is that we now have general-purpose thinking machines that can use computers and tackle just about any short digital problem. We already have those thinking machines. They're called people. Why haven't people solved many of the world's problems already? Largely because the people who can afford to pay them to do so have chosen not to. I don't see any evidence that the selfishness, avarice, and short-term thinking of the elites will be improved by them being able to replace their employees with a bot army.

measurablefunc 8mo ago
What you fail to understand Bob is that as long as we let the billionaires do what they want then we all automatically win. That's just how the system is designed to work, we can't lose as long as Musk & his buddies are at the helm.
- munificent 8mo ago
  Gazing up at them adoringly, mouth open, waiting for it all to trickle down on my face.
  - measurablefunc 8mo ago
    It's the only thing us plebeians can hope for. When all is said & done the people at the top are the only ones that can truly create wealth w/ their innovative genius. The rest of us should just shut up & follow their orders for our own good.
    - drdaeman 8mo ago
      That would be a thing if wealth would correlate with innovation. I’m afraid the correlation is inverse in way too many cases.
      - munificent 8mo ago
        This comment thread is being sarcastic.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
Centigonal 8mo ago
I don't understand why you're being downvoted. This is a topic worth discussing. Like every previous invention that improves productivity (cf. copiers, steam power, the wheel), this wave of AI is making certain forms of labor redundant, creating or further enriching a class of industrialists, and enabling individuals to become even more productive. This could create a golden age, or a dark age -- most likely, it will create both. The industrial revolution created Dickensian London, the Luddite rebellion & ensuing massacres, and Blake's "dark satanic mills," but it also gave me my wardrobe of cool $30 band T-shirts and my beloved Amtrak train service. Now is the time to talk about how we predict incentive structures will cause this technology to be used, and what levers we have at our disposal to tilt it toward "golden age."
- keybored 8mo ago
  People fought back. Who is fighting back now? Capitalists have openly gloated in public about wanting to replace at least one profession. That was months or years ago. What are people doing in response? Discussing incentive structures? SC coders paid hundreds of thousands a year are just letting this happen to them. “Nothing to be done about another 15K round of layoffs, onlookers say”
  - CamperBob2 8mo ago
    Buggy-whip makers inconsolable!
  - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
    This is exactly it, nobody is going to do anything about it
  - zozbot234 8mo ago
    > Capitalists have openly gloated in public about wanting to replace at least one profession. That was months or years ago. What are people doing in response? Great, let them try. They'll find out that AI makes the human SC coder more productive not less. Everyone knows that AI has little to nothing to do with the layoffs, it's just a silly excuse to give their investors better optics. Nobody wants to admit that maybe they've overhired a bit after the whole COVID mess.
denkmoon 8mo ago
A labouring proletariat with bread and circuses is a distracted proletariat. Billionaires are still flesh and blood, much like Louis XVI and Charles I.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
  Are you actually doing anything in that direction or is this “tough guy on the internet?” I see literally zero people doing the equivalent of “breaking the factories” like the luddites attempted
  - denkmoon 8mo ago
    We're not there yet. The luddite movement formed and acted over decades not years. Do you not see the overwhelmingly negative response to AI produced goods and services from the average westerner?
    - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
      So, no then. Like I said upstream, nobody is going to anything about it. At a certain point it’s too late.
  - tejohnso 8mo ago
    I think we'd need a lot more suffering before we have enough people to start that kind of action. If we see 35% unemployment over the next 5 years with insufficient time to adjust, then maybe the pitchforks come out.
    - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
      So then we should just go slightly slower? What if it’s over 10 years?
      - tejohnso 8mo ago
        Well, time is one aspect but we'd also need motivation and proper execution for a reasonable chance at successful adaptation. My guess is we'll coast along the boundary. I don't imagine things will move so fast as to cause the sort of general upheaval that I think you're talking about. But I do think things will move fast enough to cause significant harm on a larger scale than we've seen recently in the West.
skybrian 8mo ago
I don't think you've read those quotes very closely? He's writing about all computer science problems. And "just about any short digital problem" is not the same as solving the world's problems. AI ghosts can do a lot of things, but they're limited by being non-physical.
- munificent 8mo ago
  He does also say: > The entire global economy is re-organizing around the scale-up of AI models. > Software engineering is just the beginning; ... > Air conditioning currently consumes 10% of global electricity production, while datacenter compute less than 1%. We will have rocks thinking all the time to further the interests of their owners. Every corporation with GPUs to spare will have ambient thinkers constantly re-planning deadlines, reducing tech debt, and trawling for more information that helps the business make its decisions in a dynamic world. > Militaries will scramble every FLOP they can find to play out wargames, like rollouts in a MCTS search. What will happen when the first decisive war is won not by guns and drones, but by compute and information advantage? Stockpile your thinking tokens, for thinking begets better thinking. So he is extending this to more than just computer science.
  - skybrian 8mo ago
    Yeah, I think that's magical thinking about how much better war planning will help.
keeda 8mo ago
Here are my thoughts, which are not fully formed because AI is still so new. But taking this line of thought reductio ad absurdum, it becomes apparent that the elites have a critical dependency on us plebs: Almost all of their wealth is ultimately derived from people. The rich get richer by taking a massive cut of the economy, and the economy is basically people providing and paying for services and goods. If all the employees are replaced and can earn no money, there is no economy. Now the elite have two major problems: a) What do they take a cut of to keep getting richer? b) How long will they be safe when the resentment eventually boils over? (There's a reason the doomsday bunker industry is booming.) My hunch is, after a period of turmoil, we'll end up in the usual equilibrium where the rest of the world is kept economically growing just enough to keep (a) us stable enough not to revolt and (b) them getting richer. I don't know what that looks like, could be UBI or something. But we'll figure it out because our incentives are aligned: we all want to stay alive and get richer (for varying definitions of "richer" of course.) However, I suspect a lot will change quickly, because a ton of things that made up the old world order is going to be upended. Like, you'd need millions in funding to hire a team to launch any major software product; this ultimately kept the power in the hands of those with capital. Now a single person with an AI agent and a cloud platform can do it themselves for pocket change. This pattern will repeat across industries. The power of capital is being disintermediated, and it's not clear what the repercussions will be.

measurablefunc 8mo ago

What you fail to understand Bob is that as long as we let the billionaires do what they want then we all automatically win. That's just how the system is designed to work, we can't lose as long as Musk & his buddies are at the helm.

munificent 8mo ago
Gazing up at them adoringly, mouth open, waiting for it all to trickle down on my face.
- measurablefunc 8mo ago
  It's the only thing us plebeians can hope for. When all is said & done the people at the top are the only ones that can truly create wealth w/ their innovative genius. The rest of us should just shut up & follow their orders for our own good.
  - drdaeman 8mo ago
    That would be a thing if wealth would correlate with innovation. I’m afraid the correlation is inverse in way too many cases.
    - munificent 8mo ago
      This comment thread is being sarcastic.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

Centigonal 8mo ago

I don't understand why you're being downvoted. This is a topic worth discussing. Like every previous invention that improves productivity (cf. copiers, steam power, the wheel), this wave of AI is making certain forms of labor redundant, creating or further enriching a class of industrialists, and enabling individuals to become even more productive. This could create a golden age, or a dark age -- most likely, it will create both. The industrial revolution created Dickensian London, the Luddite rebellion & ensuing massacres, and Blake's "dark satanic mills," but it also gave me my wardrobe of cool $30 band T-shirts and my beloved Amtrak train service. Now is the time to talk about how we predict incentive structures will cause this technology to be used, and what levers we have at our disposal to tilt it toward "golden age."

keybored 8mo ago
People fought back. Who is fighting back now? Capitalists have openly gloated in public about wanting to replace at least one profession. That was months or years ago. What are people doing in response? Discussing incentive structures? SC coders paid hundreds of thousands a year are just letting this happen to them. “Nothing to be done about another 15K round of layoffs, onlookers say”
- CamperBob2 8mo ago
  Buggy-whip makers inconsolable!
- AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
  This is exactly it, nobody is going to do anything about it
- zozbot234 8mo ago
  > Capitalists have openly gloated in public about wanting to replace at least one profession. That was months or years ago. What are people doing in response? Great, let them try. They'll find out that AI makes the human SC coder more productive not less. Everyone knows that AI has little to nothing to do with the layoffs, it's just a silly excuse to give their investors better optics. Nobody wants to admit that maybe they've overhired a bit after the whole COVID mess.

denkmoon 8mo ago

A labouring proletariat with bread and circuses is a distracted proletariat. Billionaires are still flesh and blood, much like Louis XVI and Charles I.

AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
Are you actually doing anything in that direction or is this “tough guy on the internet?” I see literally zero people doing the equivalent of “breaking the factories” like the luddites attempted
- denkmoon 8mo ago
  We're not there yet. The luddite movement formed and acted over decades not years. Do you not see the overwhelmingly negative response to AI produced goods and services from the average westerner?
  - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
    So, no then. Like I said upstream, nobody is going to anything about it. At a certain point it’s too late.
- tejohnso 8mo ago
  I think we'd need a lot more suffering before we have enough people to start that kind of action. If we see 35% unemployment over the next 5 years with insufficient time to adjust, then maybe the pitchforks come out.
  - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
    So then we should just go slightly slower? What if it’s over 10 years?
    - tejohnso 8mo ago
      Well, time is one aspect but we'd also need motivation and proper execution for a reasonable chance at successful adaptation. My guess is we'll coast along the boundary. I don't imagine things will move so fast as to cause the sort of general upheaval that I think you're talking about. But I do think things will move fast enough to cause significant harm on a larger scale than we've seen recently in the West.

skybrian 8mo ago

I don't think you've read those quotes very closely? He's writing about all computer science problems. And "just about any short digital problem" is not the same as solving the world's problems. AI ghosts can do a lot of things, but they're limited by being non-physical.

munificent 8mo ago
He does also say: > The entire global economy is re-organizing around the scale-up of AI models. > Software engineering is just the beginning; ... > Air conditioning currently consumes 10% of global electricity production, while datacenter compute less than 1%. We will have rocks thinking all the time to further the interests of their owners. Every corporation with GPUs to spare will have ambient thinkers constantly re-planning deadlines, reducing tech debt, and trawling for more information that helps the business make its decisions in a dynamic world. > Militaries will scramble every FLOP they can find to play out wargames, like rollouts in a MCTS search. What will happen when the first decisive war is won not by guns and drones, but by compute and information advantage? Stockpile your thinking tokens, for thinking begets better thinking. So he is extending this to more than just computer science.
- skybrian 8mo ago
  Yeah, I think that's magical thinking about how much better war planning will help.

keeda 8mo ago

Here are my thoughts, which are not fully formed because AI is still so new. But taking this line of thought reductio ad absurdum, it becomes apparent that the elites have a critical dependency on us plebs: Almost all of their wealth is ultimately derived from people. The rich get richer by taking a massive cut of the economy, and the economy is basically people providing and paying for services and goods. If all the employees are replaced and can earn no money, there is no economy. Now the elite have two major problems: a) What do they take a cut of to keep getting richer? b) How long will they be safe when the resentment eventually boils over? (There's a reason the doomsday bunker industry is booming.) My hunch is, after a period of turmoil, we'll end up in the usual equilibrium where the rest of the world is kept economically growing just enough to keep (a) us stable enough not to revolt and (b) them getting richer. I don't know what that looks like, could be UBI or something. But we'll figure it out because our incentives are aligned: we all want to stay alive and get richer (for varying definitions of "richer" of course.) However, I suspect a lot will change quickly, because a ton of things that made up the old world order is going to be upended. Like, you'd need millions in funding to hire a team to launch any major software product; this ultimately kept the power in the hands of those with capital. Now a single person with an AI agent and a cloud platform can do it themselves for pocket change. This pattern will repeat across industries. The power of capital is being disintermediated, and it's not clear what the repercussions will be.