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A comment on Hot takes on Devin, the AI software engineer. Parent comment

Re:Hot takes on Devin, the AI software engineer by squigz on Monday March 18, 2024 @09:17AM (#39744012)
> In an age where AI has replaced most humans, people would lose all leverage, and would be forced into zero-sum games (killing and maiming other people to steal their wealth) as they would not have any other mechanism to prove their worth and improve their standing in society.

I don't know about you but maybe the fact so many people determine their entire worth from their job is more problematic than inventing technology that will enable people to pursue more worthwhile objectives of their own choosing.

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Re:Hot takes on Devin, the AI software engineer by supriyo-biswas on Monday March 18, 2024 @09:25AM (#39744127)
I strongly suspect that a forcing function that causes people to have challenges that proves their self worth, society is likely to collapse in the style of the "behavioral sink" experiment[1] (though I agree the way it'd play out in humans would be a bit different).

Traditionally, these challenges have come through challenges associated with a hunter-gatherer or an agricultural lifestyle, and in contemporary times, it is associated with a job.

There are other forms which can make feel people rewarded, such as through the excess consumption of food or social media activity, but since they do not have an associated mental or physical challenge, they only have negative worth and cannot be the basis for someone's self worth and value.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

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Re:Hot takes on Devin, the AI software engineer by squigz on Monday March 18, 2024 @09:28AM (#39744184)
> Traditionally, these challenges have come through challenges associated with a hunter-gatherer or an agricultural lifestyle, and in contemporary times, it is associated with a job.

Maybe it's time we found other "forcing functions"?

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Re:Hot takes on Devin, the AI software engineer by supriyo-biswas on Monday March 18, 2024 @09:32AM (#39744238)
I'm not aware of mechanisms that could replace these; could you propose some that would work in a world where most or all jobs have been replaced with AI or other automated systems?
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Re:Hot takes on Devin, the AI software engineer by squigz on Monday March 18, 2024 @09:37AM (#39744304)
Practically everything that people do that isn't a "job" - sports, cooking, crafts, philosophy, etc. In short, "creating stuff"

Furthermore, it seems silly to me to think that all human intellectual endeavors will simply disappear. We will still need to drive science, build bigger and better AI systems, improve and repair the world, etc.

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