[yashap]

I hope so, but for different reasons. Agreed they spit out plenty of gibberish at the moment, but they’ve also progressed so far so fast it’s pretty scary. If we get to a legitimate artificial general super intelligence, I’m about 95% sure that will be terrible for the vast, vast majority of humans, we'll be obsolete. Crossing my fingers that the current AI surge stops well short of that, and the push that eventually does get there is way, way off into the future.

[smallmancontrov]

It doesn't have to be super, it just has to inflect the long term trend of labor getting less relevant and capital getting more relevant.

We've made an ideology out of denying this and its consequences. The fallout will be ugly and the adjustment will be painful. At best.

[rbetts]

I believe (most) people contribute their ambitions to nurture safe, peaceful, friend-filled communities. AGI won’t obsolete those human desires. Hopefully we weather the turbulence that comes with change and come out the other side with new tools that enable our pursuits. In the macro, that’s been the case. I am grateful to live in a time of literacy, antibiotics, sanitation, electricity… and am optimistic that if AGI emerges, it joins that list of human empowering creations.

[szundi]

Wise words, thank you.

[jeezfrk]

Current AI degrades totally unlike human experts. It also, by design, must lag its data input.

Anything innovated must come from outside or have a very close permutation to be found.

Generative AI isn't scary at all now. It is merely rolling dice on a mix of other tech and rumors from the internet.

The data can be wrong or old...and people keep important secrets.

[hmottestad]

Gotta wonder if Google has used code from internal systems to train Gemini? Probably not, but at what point will companies start forking over source code for LLM training for money?

[throwuxiytayq]

It seems much cheaper, safer legally and more easily scalable to simply synthesize programs. Most code out there is shit anyway, and the code you can get by the GB especially so.

[hmottestad]

How do they synthesize programs?

I would assume that internal code at Google is of higher quality than random code you find on Github. Commit messages, issue descriptions and code review is probably more useful too.

[youssefabdelm]

Or liberating... as Douglas Rushkoff puts it.

If and only if something like high-paying UBI comes along, and people are freed to pursue their passions and as a consequence, benefit the world much more intensely.

[shadowerm]

How can one not understand that UBI is captured by inflation.

Its just a modern religion really because anyone can understand this it is so basic and obvious.

You don't have to point out some bullshit captured study that says otherwise.

[Aerroon]

Inflation is a lack of goods for a given demand though. Ie if we can flood the world with cheap goods then inflation won't happen. That would make practical UBI possible. To some extent it has already happened.

[NumberWangMan]

My intuition, based on what I know of economics, is that a UBI policy would have results something like the following:

* Inflation, things get more expensive. People attempt to consume more, especially people with low income. * People can't consume more than is produced, so prices go up. * People who are above the break-even line (when you factor in the taxes) consume a bit less, or stay the same and just save less or reduce investments. * Producers, seeing higher prices, are incentivized to produce more. Increases in production tend to be concentrated toward the things that people who were previously very income-limited want to buy. I'd expect a good bit of that to be basic essentials, but of course it would include lots of different things. * The system reaches a new equilibrium, with the allocation of produced goods being a bit more aimed toward the things regular people want, and a bit less toward luxury goods for the wealthy. * Some people quit work to take care of their kids full-time. The change in wages of those who stay working depends heavily on how competitive their skills are -- some earn less, but with the UBI still win out. Some may actually get paid more even without counting the UBI, if a lot of workers in their industry have quit due to the UBI, and there's increased demand for the products. * Prices have risen, but not enough to cancel out one's additional UBI income entirely. It's very hard to say how much would be eaten up by inflation, but I'd expect it's not 10% or 90%, probably somewhere in between. Getting an accurate figure for that would take a lot of research and modeling.

Basically, I think it's complicated, with all the second and third-order effects, but I can't imagine a situation where so much of the UBI is captured by inflation that it makes it pointless. I do think that as a society, we should be morally responsible for people who can't earn a living for whatever reason, and I think UBI is a better system than a patchwork of various services with onerous requirements that people have to put a lot of effort into navigating, and where finding gainful employment will cause you to lose benefits.

[gershy]

I'm not sure passion exists in a world without struggle...

[kerkeslager]

The idea that AI will ever remove all struggle, even if it reaches AGI, is absurd. AI by itself can't give you a hug, for example--and even if advances in robotics make it possible for an AI-controlled robot to do that, there are dozens of unsolved problems beyond that to make that something that most people would even want.

AI enthusiasm really is reaching a religious level of ridiculous beliefs and this point.

[gershy]

I doubt ai will remove all struggle. I suspect we wouldn't see great extents of human passion in a world where everyone is fed, clothed, housed, etc without needing to exert themselves at all.

[kerkeslager]

And AI isn't going to feed, clothe, or house people either.

AGI, at best, would provide ideas for how to do those things. And the current AI, which is not AGI, can only remix ideas humans have already given it--ideas which haven't fed, clothed, or housed us all yet.

[smallmancontrov]

"I only make you struggle because I love you!"

(Mmmhmm, I'm sure the benefits received by the people on top have nothing to do with it.)

[drdaeman]

That requires achieving post-scarcity to work in practice and be fair, though. If achievable, it’s not clear how it relates to AGI. I mean, there’s plenty of intelligence on this planet already, and resources are still limited - and it’s not like AGI would somehow change that.

[roboboffin]

One thing I thought recently, is that a large amount of work is currently monitoring and correcting human activity. Corporate law, accounting, HR and services etc. If we have AGI that is forced to be compliant, then all these businesses disappear. Large companies are suddenly made redundant, regardless of whether they replace their staff with AI or not.

[drdaeman]

I agree that if true AGI happens (current systems still cannot reason at all, only pretend to do so) and if it comes out cheaper to deploy and maintain, that would mean a lot of professions could be automated away.

However, I believe this had already happened quite a few times in history - industries becoming obsolete with technological advances isn’t anything new. This creates some unrest as society needs to transition, but those people are always learning a different profession. Or retire if they can. Or try to survive some other way (which is bad, of course).

It would be nice, of course, if everyone won’t have to work unless they feel the need and desire to do so. But in our reality, where the resources are scarce and their distribution in a way that everyone will be happy is a super hard unsolved problem (and AGI won’t help here - it’s not some Deus ex Machina coming to solve world problems, it’s just a thinking computer), I don’t see a realistic and fair way to achieve this.

Put simply, all the reasons we cannot implement UBI now will still remain in place - AGI simply won’t help with this.

[roboboffin]

I guess the point I am trying to make, is that paradoxically the more an AI company's products are integrated into the economy, the less value they can extract from the economy. As a large amount of the world's economic output is just dealing with the human factor.

[diego_sandoval]

I'm not sure if that is something we actually would want.

Lots of people certainly think they want that.

[Hasu]

Why wouldn't you want it, unless you are currently benefiting from employing people who would rather be doing literally anything else?

[hackinthebochs]

For the vast majority of people, getting rid of necessary work will usher in an unprecedented crisis of meaning. Most people aren't the type pursue creative ends if they didn't have to work. They would veg out or engage in degenerate activities. Many people have their identity wrapped up in the work they do, or being a provider. Take this away without having something to replace it with will be devastating.

[youssefabdelm]

Good. Finally they’ll realize the meaninglessness of their work and how they’ve been exploited in the most insidious way. To the point of forgetting to answer the question of what it is they most want to do in life.

The brain does saturate eventually and gets bored. Then the crisis of meaning. Then something meaningful emerges.

We’re all gonna die. Let’s just enjoy life to the fullest.

[pixl97]

>They would veg out or engage in degenerate activities

"Oh no the sinners might play video games all day"

I do expect the next comment would be something like "work is a path to godliness"

[hackinthebochs]

>I do expect the next comment would be something like "work is a path to godliness"

And you think these kinds of maxims formed out of vacuums? They are the kinds of sayings that are formed through experience re-enforced over generations. We can't just completely reject all historical knowledge encoded in our cultural maxims and expect everything to work out just fine. Yes, it is true that most people not having productive work will fill the time with frivolous or destructive ends. Modernity does not mean we've somehow transcended our historical past.

[gehwartzen]

The way most of the world is setup we will need to first address the unprecedented crisis of financing our day to day lives. We figure that out and I’m sure people will find other sources of meaning in their lives.

The people that truly enjoy their work and obtain meaning from it are vastly over represented here on HN.

Very few would be scared of AI if they had a financial stake in its implementation.

[szundi]

Even then he’ll probably like employing AI more.

Lots of new taxes and UBI!

[nntwozz]

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” — Buckminster Fuller

[amarcheschi]

everything points to the opposite

[youssefabdelm]

It may be impossible in this world to expect a form of donation, but it is certainly not impossible to expect forms of investment.

One idea I had is everyone is paid a thriving wage, and in exchange, if they in the future develop their passion into something that can make a profit, they pay back 20% of their profits they make up to some capped amount.

This allows for extreme generality. It truly frees people to pursue whatever they fancy every day until they catch lightning in a bottle.

There would be 0 obligation as to what to do, and when to pay back the money. But of course would have to be only open to honest people, so that neither side is exploiting the other.

Both sides need a sense of gratitude, and wanting to give back. A philanthropic 'flair' "If it doesn't work out, it's okay", and a gratitude and wanting to give back someday on the side of the receiver, as they continue working on probably the most resilient thing they could ever work on (the safest investment), their lifelong passion.

[cactusplant7374]

I think of ChatGPT as a faster Google or Stackoverflow and all of my colleagues are using it almost exclusively in this way. That is still quite impressive but it isn’t what Altman set out to achieve (and he admits this quite candidly).

What would make me change my mind? If ChatGPT could take the lead on designing a robot through all the steps: design, contract the parts and assembly, market it, and sell it that would really be something.

I assume for something like this to happen it would need all source code and design docs from Boston Dynamics in the training set. It seems unlikely it could independently make the same discoveries on its own.

[randmeerkat]

> I assume for something like this to happen it would need all source code and design docs from Boston Dynamics in the training set. It seems unlikely it could independently make the same discoveries on its own.

No, to do this it would need to be able to independently reason, if it could do that, then the training data stops mattering. Training data is a crutch that makes these algos appear more intelligent than they are. If they were truly intelligent they would be able to learn independently and find information on their own.

[guerrilla]

> I’m about 95% sure that will be terrible for the vast, vast majority of humans, we'll be obsolete.

This isn't a criticism of you, but this is a very stupid idea that we have. The economy is mean to serve us. If it can't, we need to completely re-organize it because the old model has become invalid. We shouldn't exist to serve the economy. That's an absolutely absurd idea that needs to be killed in every single one of us.

[insane_dreamer]

> we need to completely re-organize it because the old model has become invalid

that's called social revolution, and those who benefit from the old model (currently that would be the holders of capital, and more so as AI grows in its capabilities and increasingly supplants human labor) will do everything in their power to prevent that re-organization

[jprete]

The economy isn't meant to serve us. It's an emergent system that evolves based on a complex incentive structure and its own contingent history.

[guerrilla]

Economic activity is meant to serve us. Don't be a pedant.

[dawidloubser]

But surely you can see that the economy does not serve us. Who is "us", anyway?

The economy, and the worldwide technological system that it fuels, behaves like its own organism with its own ultimate goal unbeknownst to us.

By looking around you, is it not perfectly clear to you too that it does not have anything to do with the well-being of people?

[guerrilla]

People work to eat. You missed the point entirely. I refer you to my first post on this.

[baq]

Nevertheless the modern economy has been deliberately designed. Emergent behaviors within it at the highest levels are actively monitored and culled when deemed not cost effective or straight out harmful.

[fny]

The problem is no one is talking about this. We’re clearly headed towards such a world, and it’s irrelevant whether this incarnation will completely achieve that.

And anyone who poo poos ChatGPT needs to remember we went from “this isn’t going to happen in the next 20 years” to “this is happening tomorrow” overnight. It’s pretty obvious I’m going to be installing Microsoft Employee Service Pack 2 in my lifetime.

[achierius]

Very true but the question, as always, is by what means we can enact this change? The economy may well continue to serve the owner class even if all workers are replaced with robots.

[BurningFrog]

Workers have been replaced with machines many times over the last 250 years, and these fears have always been widespread, but never materialized.

I concede that this time it could be different, but I'd be very surprised while I starved to death.

[guerrilla]

I think the options are pretty clear. A negotiation of gradual escalation: Democracy, protests, civil disobedience, strikes, sabotage and if all else fails then at some point, warfare.

[kbr-]

The economy is meant to serve some people; some people take out of economy more than they give, some people give more than they take.

[llamaz]

A position shared by both Lenin and Thatcher

[danielovichdk]

Great theory. In reality the vast majority us serves only the economy without getting anything truly valuable in return. We serve it only, with noticing it, to grow into less human and more individual shells of less human. Machines of the Economy.

[hackinthebochs]

This doesn't engage with the problem of coordinating everyone around some proposed solution and so is useless. Yes, if we could all just magically decide on a better system of government, everything would be great!

[guerrilla]

Identifying the problem is never useless. We need the right understanding if we're going to move forward. Believing we serve the economy and not the other way around hinders any progress on that front and so inverting it is a solid first step.

[jay_kyburz]

It's not _that_ scary. I kind of like the idea of going out to the country and building a permiculture garden to feed myself and my family.

[wiml]

Until you try and you find that all the arable land is already occupied by industrial agriculture, the ADMs/Cargills of the world, using capital intensive brute force uniformity to extract more value from the land than you can compete with, while somehow simultaneously treating the earth destructively and inefficiently.

This is both a metaphor for AGI and not a metaphor at all.

[skulk]

Sure, if you can survive the period between the obsolescence of human labor and the achievement of post-scarcity. Do you really think that period of time is zero, or that the first version of a post-scarcity economy will be able to carry the current population? No, such a transition implies a brutish end for most.

[jay_kyburz]

Sorry, I was being too subtle. When nobody has a job anymore and the economy is crashing, I'm looking forward to moving into the country and becoming self sufficient.

We'll be very very poor, and it will be really hard work, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Human labour will never be obsolete because you can always work for yourself.

Post scarcity will never happen unless some benevolent AI god chooses to give it to us like in a Banks novel.

[accra4rx]

think more deeply . who benefits with super intelligence ? at the end it is game of what humans desire naturally. AI has no incentive and are not controlled by hormones.

[markus_zhang]

It's already impacting some of us. I hope it never appears until the human civilization undergoes a profound change. But I'm afraid many rich people want that happen.

It's the real Great Filter in the universe IMO.