[gruez]

Do you think the average dirt farmer in the 1800 is going to be assuaged by the prospect of almost all farm work being mechanized, because he can be a "medical and health services manager" or "data scientist" instead?

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm

[justonepost2]

In this case there is, by definition, no “medical and health services manager” or “data scientist” in the future. Nothing comes next.

[yunwal]

> "by definition"

Who's definition are we talking about here

[justonepost2]

The definition of AGI?

[yunwal]

Nobody has mentioned AGI in this thread until this comment. And either way, there's no evidence that AGI as you're defining it is going to be solved anytime soon. Sam Altman and Dario may claim it will to pump their incoming IPOs, but outside of la la land, OpenAI and Anthropic aren't making any big robotics plays, which leaves a huge chunk of the "G" in AGI completely unattended to.

[dofm]

Literally Sam and Dario's.

[yunwal]

Ok, the 2 CEOs want investors to believe their technology is all-powerful. Is that assessment worth anything?

[dofm]

I wasn't saying it is or isn't.

But it unambiguously is who is leading the promise to replace labour; it is whose bullshit is provoking the backlash.

It is whose variously-confident definition of near-term AGI involves completely eliminating a large enough shar of jobs that Altman thinks he has to talk about UBI and fund pilot studies so he doesn't lose all his cool California friends.

It is who has set the tone for the entire punditsphere and everyone who emulates them.

Their definition is the one the media and governments have swallowed; they need the fear so they get regulatory capture.

I will tell you that I think though: I think Sam Altman should be nowhere near the power and proximity to power that he has, band I think Dario Amodei would be better off tucked away in a research unit where the only person who has to listen to him tolkien bollocks is his immediate boss.

I think they are manipulating truly grotesque amounts of fear that are in many ways worse than the fear we felt in the COVID pandemic, and I think they are doing it for money and power.

But I also think people have listened and the message has not got through to tech people that they aren't good people and they are fucking weird.

[AnimalMuppet]

"By definition"? If you define that to be the future, yes. But that's the problem with vitorfblima's statement upthread. Are we talking about all labor? That's still a very big, unproven assumption. It's an assumption that I question. And given that I don't buy the premise, I don't buy the conclusions, either.

And the farm analogy is somewhat on point. We went from 67% of people working on farms to... I think it's more like 3% than 1%, but a very small amount. That's two thirds of labor being replaced.

[dofm]

Where does this agricultural labour point come from?

It's so common here and so obviously wobbly. That labour was displaced (and in most cases into way more gruelling and dangerous factory work).

The AI pitch is that the giant superbrain will do all the knowledge work and rapidly self-improve faster than humans (and therefore, do more future jobs we could do). That is a pitch for replacing human labour.

You can't simultaneously have a machine that is said to be likely to wipe out entire categories — not market sectors, categories of work — and then say that all those people will get jobs elsewhere. Because, where? The timescales they are talking about are short. Where's the work going to come from in time?

[justonepost2]

As far as I can tell many people, especially tech practitioners, are as a whole desperate to believe that there is an iron law of the universe that “technological progress” is always a net good. Maybe there are some bumps along the way, but you can’t make an omelette…

The next couple of years will see these people contorting themselves into increasingly complex knots to try and argue that AI is making the world a better place. The arguments will get far weirder, and far more detached from reality, than bad comparisons to agricultural labor.

[dofm]

> The next couple of years will see these people contorting themselves into increasingly complex knots to try and argue that AI is making the world a better place.

I mean, if it delivers. So far we're only really f**ing ourselves in the face; outside the tech industry everyone else is figuring out how to push back on AI.

[dofm]

What's a dirt farmer?

[alamortsubite]

As opposed to a moisture farmer, presumably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aran_Islands#History

If you're never seen Man of Aran, you're in for a treat! Far more thought provoking than the fluff Lucas made, but by which I always assumed his fictional homestead on Tatooine was inspired.

[vitorfblima]

You guessed it.

[watwut]

What I do think is that your comparison have squat zero with history, society or tech of 1800. People like to make historical comparisons based on pure fantasies and this is one of them.