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Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else
- sestep 2mo agoFull title: "Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone else, it’s the problem"
- deaton 2mo agoI don't understand why OP cut that off... that's a completely different title.
- altern8 2mo agoCharacter limit..?
- bpodgursky 2mo agoBait
- hansmayer 2mo ago[dead]
- petilon 2mo agoEven when the full title is displayed it can be interpreted in two ways.
- MaysonL 2mo agoA bug in the scriptlet I used to post it, which truncated the title as “Silicon Valley sees AI as the solution – for everyone els...”, which I didn’t notice had dropped the third line of the title.
- alansaber 2mo agoI don't find the argument that advanced AI will leave 20% of society permanently unemployed particularly compelling
- everdrive 2mo agoThere are places where 20% of society (or more) are unemployed. They're not nice places. They're run by gangs or warlords. They're the kind of place where teenagers sit on steps and just wait for the wrong person to walk past them.
- an0malous 2mo agoLike where?
- esafak 2mo agoLots of places in the ME and Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemploym...
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoDo those places have gangs and warlords because they have 20%+ unemployment, or do they have 20%+ unemployment because they have gangs and warlords?
- everdrive 2mo agoI cannot imagine the answer is strictly just one of those two. Young men in particular who have no prospects can and nothing to domesticate them (parents, jobs, relationship prospects) can especially be a lot of trouble. That said, I'm not particularly convinced that gangs and warlords would suppress employment (if anything, the more organized criminals tend to run protection rackets which sort of require people to have some income they can steal) however they are most certainly reducing the quality of life for people. Unemployment causing gangs at least feels more plausible, however you seem to have plenty of areas with gang activity that have plenty of employment opportunities as well as social programs. Selling drugs almost certainly makes more money, but comes with much, much higher risks. I might guess that this is more about social mobility than it is about survival, but I don't want to try to over-simplify a complex issue.
- daun_gee 2mo ago[flagged]
- _fat_santa 2mo agoI don't find the "AI will cause mass unemployment" argument compelling, in fact I see the opposite as being true. The reason we are talking so much about that now is that at the current level of productivity, we just don't need as many humans to do the work, as companies can use AI as leverage to not hire as many people. This i feel will be a short lived period where not everyone has adopted AI to the fullest and thus simply having AI gives you leverage to not hire as many people and still stay competitive. The same thing happened with computers writ large, during the early days the folks that used computers had massive leverage over those that did not. But what happens in 5-10 years once most orgs standardize on that leverage and everyone has it. All of a sudden that advantage AI gave you over others evaporates and you're right back to how things have always been, that is more humans give you more leverage. I think once AI is broadly adopted and standardized, there will be an insane boom period for workers.
- mythrwy 2mo agoI don't broadly disagree and see AI opening up opportunities that didn't exist before but with respect to companies hiring large numbers of people I wonder what the people will be doing? Come to think of it, I sort of wonder what many people with office jobs now are doing.
- 0gs 2mo agotrying to reify the proposed efficiency gains they have been told are just out of reach
- win311fwg 2mo agoThe same thing they are already doing? Being a companion for someone who doesn't want to be alone. The human touch, if you will, is hard to replicate. Even where AI can convincingly act human, that often isn't enough to satisfy what people feel. Just look at the HN guidelines as a perfect example. "HN is for conversation between humans." If it were about the content then any suitable content would be welcome, regardless of the origin, but people are here under the belief that they are making a connection with other people. Maybe someday AI will replace the business owners and managers too, but so as long as humans control the resources, they will choose to surround themselves with other humans by expending some of those resources towards those other humans.
- ErrorNoBrain 2mo agoi dont know anyone who wants AI only use case i see, is ... helping disabled people
- soco 2mo agoMaybe you - as in, whoever says that - should go first talk to them, because I don't know any disabled people wanting AI (data set of one).
- tsss 2mo agoI'm also disabled and like using AI...
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoOver a billion unique people are using chatgpt,Gemini,Claude every month. You should try asking one of them what they're doing
- apercu 2mo agoI am pretty down on the pervasive LLM psychosis - but that doesn't mean they are useless.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- grokcodec 2mo ago> males who come from narrow Stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) backgrounds I see, so women from narrow Stem backgrounds would totally handle these issues differently, got it.
- altcognito 2mo agoI think you left this off. > the main reason is that they are, overwhelmingly, males Was that intentional? Do you disagree that tech is overwhelmingly male? Do you happen to be someone who believes in differences in the sexes? Just curious.
- grokcodec 2mo agoThe article clearly implies that one of the reasons why they "talk such nonsense" is because they are male, but no explanation is given - bog standard misandry that I take umbrage with.
- altcognito 2mo agoI'm going to assume you left it off intentionally if you can't even address it. Read it again. They narrow it two ways in addition to being male: "0. but the main reason is that they are, overwhelmingly, males 1. who come from narrow Stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) backgrounds 2. and are trapped in a particular mindset that the technology writer Evgeny Morozov called “solutionism”. It's not that they are male, it males who come from Stem with a particular solution oriented mindset. I think in a different context you would be less offended. We are talking about driven, solution oriented people. It's a bias. Biases are fine, we all have them, this article is just talking about it. I could ask again, would you agree that there are differences in the sexes? A different set of biases even?
- grokcodec 2mo ago[flagged]
- spking 2mo agohttps://archive.ph/fRwM4 https://archive.ph/fRwM4
- cmiles8 2mo agoRather ironically you spend time outside Silicon Valley it would appear those most at risk of “mass unemployment” are the folks full-press pushing AI. It’s “cool” and the tech is here to stay, but we appear light years away from anything like what was promised from materializing. The current hype cycle is clearly barreling toward the “trough of disillusionment” phase of the Gartner hype cycle.
- lilerjee 2mo agoWhy didn't you regard it as a promotion or marketing strategy? Actually it is
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ChiperSoft 2mo agoFunny how these guys never factor construction workers and building contractors into their AI social caste structures.