[michaericalribo]

These "augmented intelligence" applications are so exciting to me. I'm not as interested in autonomous artificial intelligence. Computers are tools to make my life easier, not meant to lead their own lives!

There's a big up-front cost of building a notes database for this application, but it illustrates the point nicely: encode a bunch of data ("memories"), and use an AI like GPT to retrieve information ("remembering"). It's not a fundamentally different process from what we do already, but it replaces the need for me to spend time on an automatable task.

I'm excited to see what humans spend our time doing once we've offloaded the boring dirty work to AIs.

[pessimist]

In chess we had a tiny window of a few years when humans could use the help of computers to play the world's best chess. By 2000, computers were far better than humans and the gap has increased. Chess players are now entertainers, like all us humans are destined to spend our time doing.

[somenameforme]

The story of what happened with chess deserves a lot more elaboration, because it's fun and interesting (and may also foretell outcomes in other scenarios)!

In chess the first "new" (unplayed in a high level game) move in a game is called the novelty, or theoretic novelty. In times before computers this would not infrequently be an objectively strong move that simply had not been played in a given position before. And this continued for time after computers became quite strong with players using computers to find interesting strong ideas in all sorts of positions. Each time these sort of novelties would be sprung, positions would become redefined and our broader knowledge of the game continued to stretch on outward.

But then something fun happened - the metagame shifted. Now it's no longer really about founding some really strong move as your novelty - but often about finding a technically mediocre, if not simply bad, move that gives you good practical chances. So you're looking for moves that your opponent probably has not considered because they look bad (and the computer would agree that they're bad) but you're much more prepared and comfortable in than he is.

The big difference now also is that instead of a novelty redefining a position in a positive way, it's often something you spring once or maybe twice - and then never touch again. And this is now happening regularly at the absolute highest levels of chess. So rather than having humans just desperately trying to emulate machines, those machines became yet another tool to exploit and improve our practical results with.

It's kind of funny watching a game when this happens and less experienced players will immediately begin shouting "BLUNDER!" when the computer evaluation of a position suddenly drops, without realizing the player who just "blundered" is still well within his preparation. But the other guy is now probably out of his. Even the players themselves, there's often a sort of "u srs?" type response. This [1] is a fun one from the always emotive Ian Nepomniachtchi during the most recent world champions candidates event. He is now playing for the world championship. In any case, it's at that point that the game begins!

[1] - https://youtu.be/AwgIksw1go0?t=30

[rlayton2]

While reductive, isn't that true in many professional sports though? I have a wide variety of tools I can use to travel 100m faster than Usain Bolt, but its incredible to watch him do it on his own.

[l33t233372]

I agree that professional athletes are entertainers, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at with that point.

[haswell]

The way I read this, in a world with machines that can travel at high speeds, people still watch professional runners because they are interesting to watch, and we’re inspired by human achievement.

For similar reasons, it doesn’t really matter that computers are better at chess than us.

[tomjakubowski]

The cool thing I think is that we watch both, running and race cars.

[sixstringtheory]

Also, I can drive my car to get places quickly, but sometimes I enjoy cycling or walking instead because it allows me to take in my surroundings more fully at the slower pace, and the exercise makes me feel good.

[cjohansson]

Yes but humans are required (as runners or drivers) to make it interesting to watch. Humans are human-centered by nature (of course)

[lynx23]

Well, isn't that true for most skills which have been suplemented by technology? In fact, if you look at the handcrafting bussiness, hand-made is now a selling point. Like someone prefers a product to be handmade, others will prefer watching a game of chess between two humans. Just because machines are better at something doesnt mean that humans have become useless. Its just a question of the point of view, IOW, how depressing you want to see the world.

[prox]

It’s always interesting that this point is always from a competing context That is to say from a survival point of view. I mean nobody really wants AI because it could be fun. We are as a species really inept to move beyond our survival idioms I feel.

[lm28469]

> like all us humans are destined to spend our time doing

Automation has been here for quite a long time now, if it took people out of the work pool for them to become entertainer we'd know about it.

It's always the same issue in fact, replacing workers by machines is good, but if your goal is still to have a "full employment" society you have to make them work somewhere else. It's not even a new concept but we seem to rediscover it every now and then apparently

> Automation, the most advanced sector of modern industry as well as the model which perfectly sums up its practice, drives the commodity world toward the following contradiction: the technical equipment which objectively eliminates labor must at the same time preserve labor as a commodity and as the only source of the commodity. If the social labor (time) engaged by the society is not to diminish because of automation (or any other less extreme form of increasing the productivity of labor), then new jobs have to be created. Services, the tertiary sector, swell the ranks of the army of distribution and are a eulogy to the current commodities; the additional forces which are mobilized just happen to be suitable for the organization of redundant labor required by the artificial needs for such commodities.

Guy Debord, 1967

[throwawaylinux]

If you think the people who own the machines will be happy to support everyone else just sitting around "entertaining" themselves, you're in for a rude shock.