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Doesn't this seem to be where all domains are headed? I get kinda freaked out when I feel like all the AI "utopianists" haven't taken the next logical step of

Doesn't this seem to be where all domains are headed? I get kinda freaked out when I feel like all the AI "utopianists" haven't taken the next logical step of thinking about what society looks like when humans are subpar in every domain (and you may argue this won't happen, though I'm becoming more and more a believer that it will, but my point is the utopianists believe that this absolutely will happen, and that it's also a wonderful thing). How motivated do you think folks will be to do the hard cognitive work to focus on things like math problems when there is a good chance AI will do it better?

ahepp 27d ago
Doesn't the premise that there's something inferior about these AI solutions, imply that there is something superior about human intelligence and that there will continue to be some kind of useful work for humans to do?
- palmotea 27d ago
  > Doesn't the premise that there's something inferior about these AI solutions, imply that there is something superior about human intelligence and that there will continue to be some kind of useful work for humans to do? Not necessarily. The "something superior about human intelligence" may have dependencies that "these AI solutions" are able to eliminate, such as the motivation to refine intellectual talent to a high level. Basically, AI could kick the ladder out from under human intelligence but be incapable of actually surpassing it in important ways, enabling a burst of advancement that's also a dead end. Sort of like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_stor.... So the AI could be inferior but there's still no useful work for humans, because the environment doesn't allow them to work up to that level anymore. This is kinda feeling a bit like SBF's coin flip bet: https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-coin-flip-destroy-world-caroline-ellison-trial-2023-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-coin-flip-.... Achieve human-superior AGI this generation or humanity stagnates.
znnajdla 27d ago
I don't think humans necessarily become subpar when AI can do most of the work. Taking my own personal example, I have far more intellectual curiosity and improved my skills in programming far more with Claude Code than for 15 years of programming without AI simply because I was bogged down by boilerplate and grunt work. Now that AI handles most of the boilerplate and grunt work and can handle harder and harder problems, I have the time and space to work on unexplored frontier problems. So, no, my skills have not become subpar, but have only become stronger because of the presence of AI.
- shakadak 27d ago
  > what society looks like when humans are subpar in every domain > when AI can do most of the work You're not really responding to the core hypothetical of his comment To me it reads as that: for utopians, you may benefit from LLMs now, but they'll still surpass you later, what then ?
  - hn_throwaway_99 26d ago
    Thank you for putting it so succinctly. I find that lots of people get "stuck" in the current state of things - they think that AI will continue to improve, but they inherently believe (perhaps subconsciously) that humans will always have the edge in things like "ingenuity", "inventiveness" or "curiosity". I don't blame them, I also believed that until very recently. I thought there was something unique and special about sentience and consciousness, but my thinking has changed in that I don't think machines need to develop the sentience we experience to still surpass us cognitively along all dimensions. But iff you really examine what grounds your beliefs, and then consider that AI very well could surpass humans even in domains like curiosity and real creativity (at several orders of magnitude faster), it starts to look like a very, very uncomfortable future for humans IMO. I saw this quote on Twitter: > Best outcome: we become pets > Worst outcome: we become cows
    - znnajdla 26d ago
      I don't get this take at all. Do you feel inferior that bears are stronger than you? Or that a machine can lift more weight than you? Or that a calculator can calculate faster than you? These AI things are machines which are completely under our control. Even if they become more intelligent than us, that doesn't mean that it has authority over us. There are plenty of very intelligent humans which work under the authority of much less intelligent humans. Many engineers are smarter than their CEOs. What makes you think that just because an AI is more intelligent that it will not be completely subject to our authority? It's just a tool in our hands.
munksbeer 26d ago
Obviously it is a ludicrous example, but there are books for this: The Culture novels by Iain. M. Banks. I'd be quite happy as a citizen of The Culture. But, on a more serious note, or more realistic, I find it vaguely insulting that you think that so many of us are just so shallow we'll not figure out how to live meaningful lives in an AI dominated future. The world is already meaningless. Some people live in the US, get tech jobs and live lives of almost indescribable luxury compared to someone born in South Sudan. There are beggars on the streets of most African countries, who are deformed of malnutrition and suffering in pain. There are children who will never know true happiness, and die in misery. It's all fucking senseless and nasty, and as someone who originated from such a poor country it is infuriating to see spoiled developed world complaints sometimes. We live, suffer, die. Some suffer less, some a lot more. We find out own meaning somehow, in this brief weird experience that we perceive as conscious life. If an AI can bring a few billion 3rd world people out of misery, I don't think I'm going to shed tears if that means you have to somehow "find meaning" outside of a high paying tech job.
- magicalist 26d ago
  > infuriating to see spoiled developed world complaints sometimes Maybe glance back at your comment history and find you mostly are complaining about very developed world things and investigate why there might be a disconnect between these two aspects of you? > If an AI can bring a few billion 3rd world people out of misery, I don't think I'm going to shed tears if that means you have to somehow "find meaning" outside of a high paying tech job. Well, this is begging the question (how awful are people for worrying about the future when the future is going to be so great?), but you're also missing that there's more to humanity than surviving or not, and there always has been. There's no reason to reduce this to a dichotomy.
- hn_throwaway_99 26d ago
  > Some people live in the US, get tech jobs and live lives of almost indescribable luxury compared to someone born in South Sudan. There are beggars on the streets of most African countries, who are deformed of malnutrition and suffering in pain. There are children who will never know true happiness, and die in misery. It's a bit baffling to me that folks think that the reason so many live in poverty now is a resource problem, and that an abundance of resources from AI would solve this problem. It is certainly a resource allocation problem, so I don't understand why folks believe that AI or our AI overlords will decide that everyone gets 40 acres and a mule.

ahepp 27d ago

Doesn't the premise that there's something inferior about these AI solutions, imply that there is something superior about human intelligence and that there will continue to be some kind of useful work for humans to do?

palmotea 27d ago
> Doesn't the premise that there's something inferior about these AI solutions, imply that there is something superior about human intelligence and that there will continue to be some kind of useful work for humans to do? Not necessarily. The "something superior about human intelligence" may have dependencies that "these AI solutions" are able to eliminate, such as the motivation to refine intellectual talent to a high level. Basically, AI could kick the ladder out from under human intelligence but be incapable of actually surpassing it in important ways, enabling a burst of advancement that's also a dead end. Sort of like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_stor.... So the AI could be inferior but there's still no useful work for humans, because the environment doesn't allow them to work up to that level anymore. This is kinda feeling a bit like SBF's coin flip bet: https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-coin-flip-destroy-world-caroline-ellison-trial-2023-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-coin-flip-.... Achieve human-superior AGI this generation or humanity stagnates.

znnajdla 27d ago

I don't think humans necessarily become subpar when AI can do most of the work. Taking my own personal example, I have far more intellectual curiosity and improved my skills in programming far more with Claude Code than for 15 years of programming without AI simply because I was bogged down by boilerplate and grunt work. Now that AI handles most of the boilerplate and grunt work and can handle harder and harder problems, I have the time and space to work on unexplored frontier problems. So, no, my skills have not become subpar, but have only become stronger because of the presence of AI.

shakadak 27d ago
> what society looks like when humans are subpar in every domain > when AI can do most of the work You're not really responding to the core hypothetical of his comment To me it reads as that: for utopians, you may benefit from LLMs now, but they'll still surpass you later, what then ?
- hn_throwaway_99 26d ago
  Thank you for putting it so succinctly. I find that lots of people get "stuck" in the current state of things - they think that AI will continue to improve, but they inherently believe (perhaps subconsciously) that humans will always have the edge in things like "ingenuity", "inventiveness" or "curiosity". I don't blame them, I also believed that until very recently. I thought there was something unique and special about sentience and consciousness, but my thinking has changed in that I don't think machines need to develop the sentience we experience to still surpass us cognitively along all dimensions. But iff you really examine what grounds your beliefs, and then consider that AI very well could surpass humans even in domains like curiosity and real creativity (at several orders of magnitude faster), it starts to look like a very, very uncomfortable future for humans IMO. I saw this quote on Twitter: > Best outcome: we become pets > Worst outcome: we become cows
  - znnajdla 26d ago
    I don't get this take at all. Do you feel inferior that bears are stronger than you? Or that a machine can lift more weight than you? Or that a calculator can calculate faster than you? These AI things are machines which are completely under our control. Even if they become more intelligent than us, that doesn't mean that it has authority over us. There are plenty of very intelligent humans which work under the authority of much less intelligent humans. Many engineers are smarter than their CEOs. What makes you think that just because an AI is more intelligent that it will not be completely subject to our authority? It's just a tool in our hands.

munksbeer 26d ago

Obviously it is a ludicrous example, but there are books for this: The Culture novels by Iain. M. Banks. I'd be quite happy as a citizen of The Culture. But, on a more serious note, or more realistic, I find it vaguely insulting that you think that so many of us are just so shallow we'll not figure out how to live meaningful lives in an AI dominated future. The world is already meaningless. Some people live in the US, get tech jobs and live lives of almost indescribable luxury compared to someone born in South Sudan. There are beggars on the streets of most African countries, who are deformed of malnutrition and suffering in pain. There are children who will never know true happiness, and die in misery. It's all fucking senseless and nasty, and as someone who originated from such a poor country it is infuriating to see spoiled developed world complaints sometimes. We live, suffer, die. Some suffer less, some a lot more. We find out own meaning somehow, in this brief weird experience that we perceive as conscious life. If an AI can bring a few billion 3rd world people out of misery, I don't think I'm going to shed tears if that means you have to somehow "find meaning" outside of a high paying tech job.

magicalist 26d ago
> infuriating to see spoiled developed world complaints sometimes Maybe glance back at your comment history and find you mostly are complaining about very developed world things and investigate why there might be a disconnect between these two aspects of you? > If an AI can bring a few billion 3rd world people out of misery, I don't think I'm going to shed tears if that means you have to somehow "find meaning" outside of a high paying tech job. Well, this is begging the question (how awful are people for worrying about the future when the future is going to be so great?), but you're also missing that there's more to humanity than surviving or not, and there always has been. There's no reason to reduce this to a dichotomy.
hn_throwaway_99 26d ago
> Some people live in the US, get tech jobs and live lives of almost indescribable luxury compared to someone born in South Sudan. There are beggars on the streets of most African countries, who are deformed of malnutrition and suffering in pain. There are children who will never know true happiness, and die in misery. It's a bit baffling to me that folks think that the reason so many live in poverty now is a resource problem, and that an abundance of resources from AI would solve this problem. It is certainly a resource allocation problem, so I don't understand why folks believe that AI or our AI overlords will decide that everyone gets 40 acres and a mule.