[zemvpferreira]

This is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their continued wellbeing, reduced to a hobby or sport. But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.

[discreteevent]

> But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.

Why would you make this comment? Is it envy? They were able to do things only some people can do. They enjoyed what they did and it provided value. Now the fun has been taken out of it and you seem to be saying that they deserve to have no fun? What should they have done? Prove theorems while whipping themselves in case they might have fun? Maybe it's a puritan thing? Customer value is the only value.

[bonoboTP]

No. The "only value" is the one that people decide to give you, based on their choice. This can be coordinated via taxation and redistribution, but it's still paid from someone to you. Someone has to decide that you doing this thing is something that they like so much that they pay you a token, which you can use to redeem useful work from other citizens, such as repairing you car, or remodeling your bathroom.

Many many people enjoy various things in life, such as eating nice meals (quite spiritual to do it in good mood in friends' circle), go camping, or play music. But they don't get paid to do this.

It's very simple to understand. It doesn't depend on deserve. It depends on a concrete person or group of persons having to specifically decide that you get things in return to your time (such as your washing machine repaired, or getting petrol at the gas station) for your efforts at something that they appreciate. It's not God who gives you these things. It's not the universe and it's not Mother Nature. It's concrete people. You have to think about how what you do is actually appreciated by concrete people. You have to do something that people appreciate, whether you agree with their assessment of appreciation or not, it will be that way. You can't simply expect people to give you gas at the gas station simply because you yourself appreciate your own way of spending your time.

[pillefitz]

Not everything in life is a transactional zero-sum game. We as society can afford people to work on beauty, without anything else in return. I'd even argue that this should be one of mankind's ultimate goals.

[bonoboTP]

I agree. It's aesthetically pleasing to know that there are people out there thinking about deep beautiful and elegant concepts somewhere, it's a nice part of having a society to be able to afford supporting such people. They may however start to feel a bit self conscious, like we keep them as a kind of quaint curiosity. People usually like to feel actually useful and impactful.

[vslira]

The issue seems to be with the expectation that personal enrichment and subjective aesthetic appreciation should be socially instead privately funded

[skeledrew]

The fun hasn't been taken out of it. The economic value has. And good riddance. This clearing of the air has been needed for a long time. Now join everyone else who has to actually choose to either do something for fun, or for income, but not both.

[consensus1]

The AI will not stop them, or anyone else, from doing what they enjoy. It will stop them from getting paid for it. And nobody has the right to get paid for having fun. To get paid you need to deliver customer value.

[tom_]

"Or threaten to hurt them, or their family, or their friends. Then just take the money. What about that option? Didn't think of that, did ya son."

"Don, I..."

"Listen. I think this racket just ain't for you. But you're a good kid - too good, maybe - and I promised your father I'd find you something. I'll ask Giovanni. Maybe he can find something for you in bookkeeping."

[vouaobrasil]

A large part of enjoyment is having a community who cares about what you're doing. So people will find it harder to enjoy it. Plus, some jobs actually are fun. Are you saying we should eradicate that fun because you hate your job? Some human being you are.

[consensus1]

You should stop asking people for money for any other reason except that you provide value in return. Your enjoyment is your own business.

[vouaobrasil]

True, what I'm saying is that if we can create jobs that also provide enjoyment, we shouldn't be so quick to destroy them for the sake of greater efficiency because that provides social benefits beyond immediate financial ones. Of course, from your previous responses, you probably have more than enough money not to care about that and that's a typical response from the better off in society: screw you, I got mine.

[zemvpferreira]

Because I’ve often been with professors in math, literature, arts who pride themselves on a certain intellectual purity that makes them a cut above, while living on wages paid by the taxpayer. Suddenly the golem of basic market dynamics comes for them and these extremely smart people are struck by the unfairness and bruteness of it all. Whole careers having fun publishing useless nothings, funded by people sowing soccer balls and scrubbing toilets. I have nothing against having fun while doing your job, I have it often. But I have a job first to serve society, not myself.

[knollimar]

Don't complain that you lose funding if you sacrifice utility for a cirlejerk around craftsmanship.

I'm sure there's a programming equivalent. I believe theyre saying don't lose sight of the trees.

[qsort]

Many of my friends are mathematicians, they are saying pretty much the same thing the article is saying. Unfortunately, even the "I have wondered if it is the express goal of these companies to make me kill myself" line I haven't heard for the first time today.

I assure you they're not in it for the money, I make more than they do and hardcore math research is definitely harder than whatever the fuck it is that I do.

I don't think that trying to be a little bit more understanding towards people who are obviously struggling would cost us that much.

[skeledrew]

If they want to jump off a bridge or seppuku because discoveries with the potential of improving lives in some way are accelerating... well let me say no more.

[vouaobrasil]

And what about the discoveries that are worsening lives like military appplications and people who'll use the tech to discover better weapons?

[skeledrew]

Technological advances have been militarily applied since wars were a thing. Many times it's the military application that drove the advancement; like GPS was originally for military navigation and targeting, computers advanced quickly for codebreaking, the internet itself began as ARPANET (defense networking project), jet engines for faster fighter planes, etc. And look at where those advancements stand today in our lives.

[iahds9uasd]

Customers? It's math. This is like a comment a golem built to raise the S&P 500 would write.

[consensus1]

If somebody is paying you to do something and someone else comes along that can do that thing much better than you and/or for less money you've got a problem. Whether or not you call the person paying that money a customer or use some other term the fundamental issue is the same.

[jbxntuehineoh]

just another pathetic case of terminal economicsbrain. sadly there's nothing to be done to help these people; it's best to just ignore them

[koito17]

> This is like a comment a golem built to raise the S&P 500 would write.

That's neoliberalism for you.

[tmhn2]

It's important to remember that historically many advances have been made without "customer value" in mind. Indeed, freeing oneself from such concerns can open up unexpected avenues for discovery which only later provide "customer value".

[robotpepi]

Exactly! I have some many colleagues who typically say that they do "math for the beauty" while holding permanent research positions funded by the state.

[tmhn2]

That seems OK to me. I'd rather live in a state that funds beauty than one that doesn't. Think grants for artists, etc. A strictly practical world is not a good world to live in.

[fraboniface]

One could also see it this way: shouldn't the goal of society be to allow more and more people to do things for the beauty of it rather that producing ever more useless stuffs and destroy the planet on the way?

[Arodex]

Progress is made by these people - including progress you rely on heavily as a programmer, such as cryptography. Not by the industry.

[mike_hearn]

Cryptography has always been largely driven by industrial mathematicians.

Elliptic curve cryptography spent years requiring commercial licenses because it was made practical by Certicom, who patented many of the core inventions.

A lot of the work on homomorphic encryption was done by mathematicians at IBM.

The DES standard was developed by IBM.

RC4, RC5 and RC6, some of the earliest stream ciphers, was a commercial secret because it was developed by Ron Rivest at RSA Security.

NTRU post-quantum crypto was developed as a commercial product from the start.

Many of the earliest cryptosystems were developed commercially, like Enigma and Crypto AG.

A lot of the crypto for mobile phone networks is/was commercial.

Academia did contribute to the early stages of public key cryptography both integer factorization based and elliptic curve based, but given the extensive history of commercial mathematics this stuff would almost certainly have been invented even if there was no academic mathematics at all.

[NitpickLawyer]

> Progress is made by these people [...] Not by the industry.

Eh, debatable? Maybe a bit of both? Industry certainly brings research-level stuff to the masses. And has a way to winnow what's ultimately useful from the vast amounts of research that amounts to "huh, that's weird". And in turn that vast amount of stuff serves as the starting point, and round and round it goes. Research without industry would be pointless (from the masses perspective). And industry without research would be clueless or stagnant or outright dangerous.

Industry can also bring vast amounts of money into research. Just look at the field of Machine Learning.

[cauch]

But "value provided to your customer" is not in itself what the society need. Or at least, it is a matter of opinion and you can probably find theoretical situations where even you would admit that maximizing actions based on the customer needs is not a good thing.

Same here: the value for the society may be more about "making art" than "being a cog in the paperclip factory".