[9rx]

> Computers replaced humans as the best chess players, not computers with human oversight.

Oh? I sat down for a game of chess against a computer and it never showed up. I was certain it didn't show up because computers are unable to without human oversight, but tell me why I'm wrong.

[p-e-w]

Apparently human chess grandmasters also need “oversight” from airplanes, because without those, essentially none of them would show up at elite tournaments.

[9rx]

Things like trains, boats, and cars exist. Human chess grandmasters can show up to elite tournaments, and perform while there, without airplanes. Computer chess systems, on the other hand, cannot do anything without human oversight.

[ben_w]

> Things like trains, boats, and cars exist. Human chess grandmasters can show up to elite tournaments, and perform while there, without airplanes.

Those modes of transport are all equivalent to planes for the point being made.

I (not that I'm even as good as "mediocre" at chess) cannot legally get from my current location to the USA without some other human being involved. This is because I'm not an American and would need my entry to be OKed by the humans managing the border.

I also doubt that I would be able to construct a vessel capable of crossing the Atlantic safely, possibly not even a small river. I don't even know enough to enumerate how hard that would be, would need help making a list. Even if knew all that I needed to, it would be much harder to do it from raw materials rather than buying pre-cut timber, steel, cloth (for a sail), etc. Even if I did it that way, I can't generate cloth fibres and wood from by body like plants do. Even if I did extrude and secrete raw materials, plants photosynthesise and I eat, living things don't spontaneously generate these products from their souls.

For arguments like this, consider the AI like you consider treat Stephen Hawking: lack of motor skills aren't relevant to the rest of what they can do.

When AI gets good enough to control the robots needed to automate everything from mining the raw materials all the way up to making more robots to mine the raw materials, then not only are all jobs obsolete, we're also half a human lifetime away from a Dyson swarm.

[9rx]

> Those modes of transport are all equivalent to planes for the point being made.

The point is that even those things require oversight from humans. Everything humans do requires oversight from humans. How you missed it, nobody knows.

Maybe someday we'll have a robot uprising where humans can be exterminated from life and computers can continue to play chess, but that day is not today. Remove the human oversight and those computers will soon turn into lumps of scrap unable to do anything.

Sad state of affairs when not even the HN crowd understands such basic concepts about computing anymore. I guess that's what happens when one comes to tech by way of "Learn to code" movements promising a good job instead of by way of having an interest in technology.

[ben_w]

> Everything humans do requires oversight from humans. How you missed it, nobody knows.

'cause you said:

  Computer chess systems, on the other hand, cannot do anything without human oversight.

The words "on the other hand" draws a contrast, suggesting that the subject of the sentence before it ("chess grandmasters") are different with regard to the task ("show up to elite tournaments"), and thus can manage without the stated limitation ("anything without human oversight").

> Maybe someday we'll have a robot uprising where humans can be exterminated from life and computers can continue to play chess, but that day is not today. Remove the human oversight and those computers will soon turn into lumps of scrap unable to do anything.

OK, and? Nobody's claiming "today" is that day. Even Musk despite his implausible denials regarding Optimus being remote controlled isn't claiming that today is that day.

The message you replied to was this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46201604

The chess-playing example there was an existing example of software beating humans in a specific domain in order to demonstrate that human oversight is not a long-term solution, you can tell by the use of the words "end state", and even then hypothetical (due to "if"), as in:

  If successful, the end state is full automation

There was a period where a chess AI that was in fact playing a game of chess could beat any human opponent, and yet would still lose to the combination of a human-AI team. This era has ended and now the humans just hold back the AI, we don't add anything (beyond switching it on).

Furthermore, there's nothing at all that says that an insufficiently competent AI won't wipe us out:

And as we can already observe, there's clearly nothing stopping real humans from using insufficiently competent AI due to some combination of being lazy and/or the vendors over-promising what can be delivered.

Also, we've been in a situation where the automation we have can trigger WW3 and kill 90% of the human population despite the fact that the very same automation would be imminently destroyed along with it since the peak of the Cold War, with near-misses on both US and USSR systems. Human oversight stopped it, but like I said, we can already observe lazy humans deferring to AI, so how long will that remain true?

And it doesn't even need to be that dramatic; never mind global defence stuff, just correlated risks, all the companies outsourcing all their decisions to the same models, even when the models' creators win a Nobel prize for creating them, is a description of how the Black–Scholes formula and its involvement in the 2008 financial crisis — and sure, didn't kill us all, but this is just an illustration of a failure mode rather than consequences.

[9rx]

> The words "on the other hand" draws a contrast, suggesting that the subject of the sentence before it

I know it can be hard for programmers stuck in a programming language mindset, especially where one learned about software from "Learn to code" movements, but as this is natural language, technically it only draws what I intended for it to draw. If you wish to interpret it another way, cool. Much like as in told in the Carly Simon song of similar nature, it makes no difference to me.

[saberience]

What planet are you on? What relevance does this have at all? Computers don't need to go and fly somewhere, they can just be accessed over a network. Also, the location and traveling is irrelevant to the main point, that is, that computers far exceeded our capacity in Chess and Go many years ago and are now so much better we cannot even really understand their moves or why they do them and have no hope to ever compete.

The same will be true of every other intellectual discipline with time. It's already happening with maths and science and coding.

[9rx]

> What planet are you on?

The one where computers don't magically run all by themselves. It's amazing how out of touch HN has become with technology. Thinking that you can throw something up into the cloud, or whatever was imagined, needing no human oversight to operate it... Unfortunately, that's not how things work in this world. "The cloud" isn't heaven, despite religious imagery suggesting otherwise. It requires legions of people to make it work.

This is the outcome of that whole "Learn to code" movement from a number of years ago, I suppose. Everyone thinks they're an expert in everything when they reach the mastery of being able to write a "Hello, World" program in their bedroom.

But do tell us what planet you are on as it sounds wonderful.

[vlovich123]

The amount of people it takes to maintain a server rack is minimal and low cost labor. Most of the money is spent on hardware and paying people to right software for that hardware.

Writing that software is becoming automated and it’s not hard to imagine that buying will as well. So you’re left with the equivalent of a plumber running your data center based on what automated systems flag as issues and other automated systems explain you the troubleshooting to go do. There might be a specialist they fly in for an insane rate (in the shorter term) if none of that works but we’re talking about a drastic reduction in workforce needed, and this is for the data center maintenance which not many companies have anymore since the cloud migration

[9rx]

> The amount of people it takes to maintain a server rack is minimal and low cost labor.

So what you're saying is that it requires human oversight. Got it.

Glad you finally caught up to where the rest of us were many comments ago. But why did it take so long? Inquiring minds want to know.

[fsflover]

Yes, a computer chess system replacing a thousand chess players requires a couple of developers for the oversight.

[9rx]

Computer chess systems don't need developer oversight. They do, however, require oversight from, let's call them, IT people.