For your kids, I think you’re imagining more progress with AI than we’ll have in the next five years. I think the changes of the last 3 years will be much more impactful on new grads. I recently switched role and learning remotely is a lot more difficult for various reasons. I’m already well into my career so I imagine for new grads it will be incredibly difficult. I’d worry more about that than AI provided they’re going to college to study something “useful”.
This. Anyone who thinks that their job is safe is fooling themselves.
Is it blindly optimistic to assume that people will eventually yearn for more genuine interaction, daresay truth?
Is it wrong to think that people gain purpose from other people, and that our mammalian instincts will not be so easily conquered?
If your argument is that there won't be anyone to spend money, so even the jobs that AI can't replace won't be safe, then okay.
99% of writing is meh, so ChatGPT is not a downgrade.
In addition, I think we’re living in a huge bubble and are sort of entitled enough to think that Internet = human knowledge. So many jobs and skills are simply not transferable even using human language (and even if they hire an army if “trainers”). This is one of the core problems with the current incarnation of “AI” - tacit knowledge has always been the stumbling block, even back in the expert systems days when everyone was thinking what we’re thinking will happen today.
So until the machines can somehow gain consciousness, autonomous and nimble movement, the will to live and all of the deep levels of the human mind that are outside language, I think we’ll be pretty safe :-) And for now, on all of these parameters they aren’t even close to a cat.
Between social sites, corporate BS and medias farms, it's more like 99.9999999999999999%.
* Past performance is not indicative of future results.
It's not surprising that the human race has survived for this long - we always find ways to adapt, no matter what challenges history throws at us. This is what distinguishes us (and I suspect will always do) from the machines.
What now? Established trends have been regularly violated over thousands of years.
> It's not surprising that the human race has survived for this long - we always find ways to adapt, no matter what challenges history throws at us. This is what distinguishes us (and I suspect will always do) from the machines.
You know what would count as an adaptation? Large fractions of population becoming immiserated and either dying off or living in poverty at the margins.
Mere survival is the wrong metric.
However, if you'd like to be pessimistic on it I won't argue, I have that tendency too ;)
"This AI" seems perfectly capable of resulting of extending the kind of economic immiseration that has already affected many blue collar jobs into many types of white collar work (ironically enough, the kind of work those blue collar workers were told to pick up).
Past this iteration of AI, who knows if the advances will peter out, but it's foolish to assume things will be fine because other things were adapted to in the past. That's kinda like assuming you won't die before having kids because none of your ancestors did.
List them.
You mainly been making vague, unsupported assertions backed by emoticons. It's a stretch to call that an "argument," and arguable you haven't been really engaging from the start.
I don't think you can convince me because I suspect you don't really have any support or specifics for your position to provide.
Regardless, I flagged your comment since it really doesn’t follow HN etiquette on respectful arguments.
Come on. If you have them formulated, you should have responded with them. It's not that hard.
> Regardless, I flagged your comment since it really doesn’t follow HN etiquette on respectful arguments.
Again, come on. The disrespectful thing is expecting someone to go on a scavenger hunt just to find out what you, some internet rando, should be saying in your half of a conversation thread.
It's also just bizarre for you to note you flagged my comment. Am I supposed feel intimidated or ashamed or something?
I don’t think that’s true. The archetypal constructs of human cognition have been unchanged. Hence the enduring relevance of myths. It’s always the same stories playing out.
> I don’t think that’s true. The archetypal constructs of human cognition have been unchanged. Hence the enduring relevance of myths. It’s always the same stories playing out.
I think you misunderstand. I didn't say everything has changed, just that many "established trends" have been.
I mean, at some point it was a well established trend that all humans hunted and gathered for their substance, then that trend was violated.
At some point, the trend of "we will find something productive to do with all these people who's jobs have been made obsolete" may be violated. And it seems like that's getting more likely the more rarefied the remaining valuable skills become.
> Mere survival is the wrong metric.
People don't have to live in cities. Knowledge work has brought many people to cities and the absence of it will reverse that trend. It is welfare that keeps impoverished people living in cities.
But I'm basing my opinion on history as well. The focus will be on reducing costs, which means eliminating as many workers as possible.
They don't, and in 10-20 years corporate leaders will bemoan the shortage of high-skilled experienced people that they created through their own decisions. Of course, they won't take any responsibility or change their approach, though.
It's a free rider/prisoner's dilemma problem.
If everyone cooperates then we all come out ahead. If you all cooperate while I defect then I end up even better (I don't have to train anyone). But if we all defect then we're fucked.
It used to be that there was entry level work that needed to be done by humans and so you didn't have this problem. If the entry level work can be done by AI then you need something else. Either government coordination and incentives to hire humans (this is the kind of things gov't is good at). Or people stay in education for longer/education becomes different.
Why? Traditional family unit is over and generations are at war. Let them figure it out. Meanwhile let's not have kids without a clear plan for their future.