5 ms·

This is a multifaceted problem for sure. As the fruit of leveraging LLM use, from my experience, is held in the hands of experienced, skilled, and gray-haired w

This is a multifaceted problem for sure. As the fruit of leveraging LLM use, from my experience, is held in the hands of experienced, skilled, and gray-haired workers, what hope do young kids today have of BEING in this world? The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching it's metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Who, in that world, can spend the fiat and for what? I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine. Everyone else is either bunker prepping or plugging into the matrix. Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k?

arionhardison 1mo ago
This is so closely related to a comment I just made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 that I am going to just risk and repost it. > This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least. .... 3 responses .... > Thats totally fair, and TBH - I am also very concerned for my wellbeing as well; I and many others are not doing so well because, in my case I no longer see this "vapid" state of existence as ephermial. I have been reading more and more; I guess looking ot knowledge as some eort of ends vs a means to an end for once. Camus, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dostoevsky's underground man etc... Camus: The universe was always going to stay silent when you demand meaning from it; the answer isn't a better metric, it's to push the rock anyway ("imagine Sisyphus happy"). Dostoevsky [underground man]: Refusing to be a piano key in someone's optimized Crystal Palace Stokely Carmichael: "Racism is not a question of attitude, it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism." My conclusion: AI didn't take our meaning, It made me realize I have always been looking in the wrong place and thus reacting ignoratly when I felt "denied" this thing I feel entitled to. Love. Edit: Love; paradoxically, ive felt both entitled to and unworthy of so I'm not sure WTF to do with that. To wit: Our love of self is so closely tied to our output and if we have no output do we have value? Edit: tl;dr - I am not sure I understand the point of anything anymore and many others feel the same way. I do not think this is some "existential crisis" I believe it is a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence presented by the day and age we live in.
- rickydroll 1mo ago
  You raise a good point. If nothing is special, what's our motivation, our purpose? Maybe our purpose becomes being comfortable with no purpose, and I am surprisingly okay with that. I know that my existence is finite, and the time I spend and what I do with it give it importance. For example, spending my time teaching people how to make telescopes, keep a garden going and growing, and train dogs in field exercises would give it meaning. In the short term, figuring out how to use LLMs to take power away from oligarchs would be a good use of time. Spending more hours working to make somebody else rich, yeah, no. Let's go through the archway in the forest.
  - arionhardison 1mo ago
    This terrifies me but I suspect you are correct. My abject obsession with not being viewed as less fuels my drive to create, earn, produce. I may have to learn just to be. To sit with myself, and just be OK with being.
spacecadet 1mo ago
Well even 40k spent 20k years living like the jetsons... There are no analogs for our future. That's one of the core problems here, you have powerful individuals who identify with and aspire to sci-fi, while living in denial of reality. I would argue someone like Musk is more blue pilled and in the Matrix than they think they are...
- Izkata 1mo ago
  > There are no analogs for our future. WALL-E?
  - spacecadet 1mo ago
    Sure, why not pick idiocracy. You miss the point. People now cannot predict the future, all analogs are simultaneously possible and unlikely. Pick any event we have experienced, 9/11, COVID. Sure, some predictions were close, but nothing like the reality of living through it.
quadrifoliate 1mo ago
> The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching its metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Not true at all. If you have a robotic servant that can "do everything" for anywhere close to an affordable amount for even a middle-class person, please post a link and specify what it can do. There a big gap between a tool that can spew out large amounts of code and something you trust to not screw up your house. Once I can tell a robot to do a simple plumbing task in my house, I'll believe in this metamorphosis you're talking about.
- space_fountain 1mo ago
  Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. I think you're right that plumbing is safe for a bit. Human hands are insanely dexterous
  - csa 1mo ago
    > Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. This will not happen in my lifetime. It may do some. It may even do a lot. It will certainly augment close to 100% the remote jobs. AI will never be able to “do every job that is remote”.
    - _DeadFred_ 1mo ago
      Just 5% of the population with no hope, no future, and looking at no survival can be extremely disruptive to a society. Take away all the daydream future job options and only leave the difficult labor that breaks peoples bodies by 40 and the youth could become disruptive to society. You can't add in Mana making sure every minute of those jobs left is productive and every dollar paid in wages gets clawed back from workers. People can't function in modern hyper optimizing of all the impacts on workers but no optimization in housing affordability, food affordability, enjoyment options that benefit the average person instead of all optimizations extracting all the previous slack/dollars in life. You can't optimize away all the slack (in affordability, in time, in things to be enjoyed, in xyz, in 123). You can't optimize away all the future opportunity. You can't optimize away all the daydreams and hope and expect society to look anything like our current society.
stonogo 1mo ago
> robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast enough to make me think there will be a robot servant doing anything for anyone in my lifetime. As has been the case for the past fifty years or so, they're either hyperspecialized or remote controlled by people, and neither of those spell doom for the economy.
- arionhardison 1mo ago
  Honest question, did you foresee the last 2 or 3 years happening as fast as they have? Edit: In terms of AI/LLM's etc..
  - atriarch 1mo ago
    Indeed. The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space, it's game over. We don't need to engineer plumbing robots - they will engineer themselves. We will see a silicon Cambrian Explosion. Maybe next year maybe in 500, but it's inevitable with the current economic incentives.
    - trickypr 1mo ago
      Bold of you to assume that “current economic inventives” will remain around for 500 years, especially given the American-style neo-liberal economy is only like 70 years old.
    - beej71 1mo ago
      What if the creation of such robots destroys the economic incentive for doing so?
    - BobaFloutist 1mo ago
      >The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space Ok, but that's still sci-fi. We've made a huge advancement in automation of knowledge work, but hardware still has no clear path to what you're describing, or even to anything similar to it.
watwut 1mo ago
Or, we can go back to reality and observe that people are not obsolete and all human work was not eradicates Then we can take down monopolies, tax large corporations, regulate them, empower anti white colar crime agencies again and regulate finance. That will actually do. Bullshitters and sociopaths are too empowered. That is an issue, and acute one.
Laurel1234 1mo ago
> Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k? Maybe Dune: thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
CamperBob2 1mo ago
I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine Translation: I've never picked potatoes for a living
- dgellow 1mo ago
  Or keep the current world, just without everything having to be done by an LLM Goldberg machine
  - CamperBob2 1mo ago
    Would you say that's a progressive point of view, or a conservative one? I'm not sure what the ideological term is for someone who doesn't argue for a return to the past or advancement into the future, but for permanent retention of current conditions.
    - dgellow 1mo ago
      As I said, just remove the LLMs Goldberg machines. That’s it. The rest can continue to evolve and change
      - CamperBob2 1mo ago
        No, thanks, I like mine. It runs on a spare machine in my basement and seems benign enough.
fatata123 1mo ago
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arionhardison 1mo ago

This is so closely related to a comment I just made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 that I am going to just risk and repost it. > This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least. .... 3 responses .... > Thats totally fair, and TBH - I am also very concerned for my wellbeing as well; I and many others are not doing so well because, in my case I no longer see this "vapid" state of existence as ephermial. I have been reading more and more; I guess looking ot knowledge as some eort of ends vs a means to an end for once. Camus, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dostoevsky's underground man etc... Camus: The universe was always going to stay silent when you demand meaning from it; the answer isn't a better metric, it's to push the rock anyway ("imagine Sisyphus happy"). Dostoevsky [underground man]: Refusing to be a piano key in someone's optimized Crystal Palace Stokely Carmichael: "Racism is not a question of attitude, it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism." My conclusion: AI didn't take our meaning, It made me realize I have always been looking in the wrong place and thus reacting ignoratly when I felt "denied" this thing I feel entitled to. Love. Edit: Love; paradoxically, ive felt both entitled to and unworthy of so I'm not sure WTF to do with that. To wit: Our love of self is so closely tied to our output and if we have no output do we have value? Edit: tl;dr - I am not sure I understand the point of anything anymore and many others feel the same way. I do not think this is some "existential crisis" I believe it is a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence presented by the day and age we live in.

rickydroll 1mo ago
You raise a good point. If nothing is special, what's our motivation, our purpose? Maybe our purpose becomes being comfortable with no purpose, and I am surprisingly okay with that. I know that my existence is finite, and the time I spend and what I do with it give it importance. For example, spending my time teaching people how to make telescopes, keep a garden going and growing, and train dogs in field exercises would give it meaning. In the short term, figuring out how to use LLMs to take power away from oligarchs would be a good use of time. Spending more hours working to make somebody else rich, yeah, no. Let's go through the archway in the forest.
- arionhardison 1mo ago
  This terrifies me but I suspect you are correct. My abject obsession with not being viewed as less fuels my drive to create, earn, produce. I may have to learn just to be. To sit with myself, and just be OK with being.

spacecadet 1mo ago

Well even 40k spent 20k years living like the jetsons... There are no analogs for our future. That's one of the core problems here, you have powerful individuals who identify with and aspire to sci-fi, while living in denial of reality. I would argue someone like Musk is more blue pilled and in the Matrix than they think they are...

Izkata 1mo ago
> There are no analogs for our future. WALL-E?
- spacecadet 1mo ago
  Sure, why not pick idiocracy. You miss the point. People now cannot predict the future, all analogs are simultaneously possible and unlikely. Pick any event we have experienced, 9/11, COVID. Sure, some predictions were close, but nothing like the reality of living through it.

quadrifoliate 1mo ago

> The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching its metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Not true at all. If you have a robotic servant that can "do everything" for anywhere close to an affordable amount for even a middle-class person, please post a link and specify what it can do. There a big gap between a tool that can spew out large amounts of code and something you trust to not screw up your house. Once I can tell a robot to do a simple plumbing task in my house, I'll believe in this metamorphosis you're talking about.

space_fountain 1mo ago
Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. I think you're right that plumbing is safe for a bit. Human hands are insanely dexterous
- csa 1mo ago
  > Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. This will not happen in my lifetime. It may do some. It may even do a lot. It will certainly augment close to 100% the remote jobs. AI will never be able to “do every job that is remote”.
  - _DeadFred_ 1mo ago
    Just 5% of the population with no hope, no future, and looking at no survival can be extremely disruptive to a society. Take away all the daydream future job options and only leave the difficult labor that breaks peoples bodies by 40 and the youth could become disruptive to society. You can't add in Mana making sure every minute of those jobs left is productive and every dollar paid in wages gets clawed back from workers. People can't function in modern hyper optimizing of all the impacts on workers but no optimization in housing affordability, food affordability, enjoyment options that benefit the average person instead of all optimizations extracting all the previous slack/dollars in life. You can't optimize away all the slack (in affordability, in time, in things to be enjoyed, in xyz, in 123). You can't optimize away all the future opportunity. You can't optimize away all the daydreams and hope and expect society to look anything like our current society.

stonogo 1mo ago

> robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast enough to make me think there will be a robot servant doing anything for anyone in my lifetime. As has been the case for the past fifty years or so, they're either hyperspecialized or remote controlled by people, and neither of those spell doom for the economy.

arionhardison 1mo ago
Honest question, did you foresee the last 2 or 3 years happening as fast as they have? Edit: In terms of AI/LLM's etc..
- atriarch 1mo ago
  Indeed. The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space, it's game over. We don't need to engineer plumbing robots - they will engineer themselves. We will see a silicon Cambrian Explosion. Maybe next year maybe in 500, but it's inevitable with the current economic incentives.
  - trickypr 1mo ago
    Bold of you to assume that “current economic inventives” will remain around for 500 years, especially given the American-style neo-liberal economy is only like 70 years old.
  - beej71 1mo ago
    What if the creation of such robots destroys the economic incentive for doing so?
  - BobaFloutist 1mo ago
    >The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space Ok, but that's still sci-fi. We've made a huge advancement in automation of knowledge work, but hardware still has no clear path to what you're describing, or even to anything similar to it.

watwut 1mo ago

Or, we can go back to reality and observe that people are not obsolete and all human work was not eradicates Then we can take down monopolies, tax large corporations, regulate them, empower anti white colar crime agencies again and regulate finance. That will actually do. Bullshitters and sociopaths are too empowered. That is an issue, and acute one.

Laurel1234 1mo ago

> Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k? Maybe Dune: thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

CamperBob2 1mo ago

I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine Translation: I've never picked potatoes for a living

dgellow 1mo ago
Or keep the current world, just without everything having to be done by an LLM Goldberg machine
- CamperBob2 1mo ago
  Would you say that's a progressive point of view, or a conservative one? I'm not sure what the ideological term is for someone who doesn't argue for a return to the past or advancement into the future, but for permanent retention of current conditions.
  - dgellow 1mo ago
    As I said, just remove the LLMs Goldberg machines. That’s it. The rest can continue to evolve and change
    - CamperBob2 1mo ago
      No, thanks, I like mine. It runs on a spare machine in my basement and seems benign enough.

fatata123 1mo ago

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