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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36398 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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"AI will automate/do tasks A,B,C easily...here is an example of said task...major economic disruption promised, jobs will be destroyed!"

Unless the AI solution is 100% intuitive, somewhere in this chain a human has to teach another human how to use it, or has to learn how to input stuff into the AI, etc. Sure, AI can produce amazing outputs, but this depends on what you input. Too much hype focuses on the output, ignoring the input side. It's like in the 60s making a similar claim about computers and spreadsheets and eliminating accountant jobs. Rather than eliminating those jobs, it lead to the entire software/programing industry, of people who specialize in how to make inputs into computers, which still a hard enough job that those who can do it well are among the highest paid in the world. Not just coders, but people who write guides/books on coding.

You’re missing the speed of growth. We’re seeing what in previous generations was a decade or two of change happen in weeks. The reason that those industries still exist as viable careers because the technology didn’t adapt to human needs nor did it adapt to taking on more of the work. GPT has learned — in a week — to assign other ais to help it, and to solve a problem it had never seen before. So if that’s true, the pace will be too quick for humans to insert themselves.

Absolutely humans will be necessary in the near and even medium term. But there’s no question that this will 5x the production of many jobs and 10x or 100x others. This is a foolish objection because even if there is a human in the loop there will be a need for far fewer humans than there currently are.

Why? Why not just use those productivity gains to just make more things?

I swear I rarely see AI doomers actually engage with the Schumpeterian argument on its terms. If you agree that humans are still in the loop at all, then how is this not creative destruction?

Is the idea that we'd run out of material ressources faster than humans? Why not use the gains to get to space and get more then?

I’m not a doomer to be clear. I do believe the coming AI framework is creative disruption. That being said, it will happen fast. I think it’ll be too fast for our society to adapt without massive unrest.

During the industrial revolution there was also massive unrest, as a downthread discussion on anarchy went into. This revolution by nature of it being digital and software based, will likely happen far faster than the industrial revolution. You don’t think that will lead to massive societal issues?

I see. That's indeed a much more agreeable position. It's hard to argue that fast change isn't a generator of unrest.

Any ideas for how to address it? Butlerian jihad?

We've done (something like it) before so the blueprints are all there for us: WWII scarcity programs. Rations, 'victory gardens,' etc.

Bit trickier now that everyone is living in an apartment building with 1000 strangers speaking different languages, but in principle...

Have the government heavily regulate AI and create corrupt monopolies that will massively stifle innovation?

Say the word "flexicurity" a lot whilst doing barely anything significant to curb the problem?

Have a big economic crisis and world war?

So many possibilities. I do like the idea of smashing the machines though.

Maybe all of the above.

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