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Comment by paulific | Hacker News Reader

The quotes in the Wired article are all kind of the opposite though. For example:

"Today, 99.9 percent of humanity cannot beat the best commercial software at blitz chess. Within the decade, it's likely the machine on your desk will know how to play chess better than any human has played the game since its invention in AD 600."

I suppose that really just makes your point though. Even in 1995 we were only really trying to delay the inevitable. If playing chess is ultimately a mechanical process and baking bread is ultimately a mechanical process, then ultimately we should be make able to make a machine that does it better than we can.

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> Even in 1995 we were only really trying to delay the inevitable.

Do people do this? Are there really people out there that are resistant to believing that machines can or eventually will outperform humans in any discrete task? I can see a reasonable doubt about general intelligence, but other than that surely every mechanical advance since the plow paints a clear trajectory.

These kinds of articles always strike me as absurdist handwringing. I suspect that it's just fear mongering for views. Is anyone here[0] actually in doubt about machines performing better than humans? I mean despite all of recorded history.

[0]I mean you, the reader yourself. Not speculation of other people's doubt, because I'm not sure these people exist.

Fair assertion. One I mostly agree with too.

But, what's the point then? I mean, if there's no point in pursuing anything because a machine will always be better and no one is going to appreciate anything handmade anymore... What's the point? To... eat, sleep and die?

I personally don't understand why a good portion of the population nowadays is okay with the idea that humans will be obsolete.

The point is simple: to paraphrase Marie Kondo, does it spark joy?

There are many things a human is better at, for example creativity and art. Maybe a computer will eventually be a better painter, but it's impossible for a computer to be a human. A work of art draws its power from how it speaks to the human experience, as such I don't think a computer will ever make good art in that sense.

Even speaking to something more concrete, just because a computer can play chess better than I can (as can the vast majority of humans), doesn't mean a game of chess with a friend is worthless. It's about the conversation, the challenge of matching wits, pushing your mind to see new things, all those things have meaning.

That's the point.

Musicians and artists have been co-creating with machines (including AI) for about 50 years. We play with the machines. Look at any artist working with AI and you will see that the human artist does a lot of process, experimentation, editing and presentation. I think it's a weird personification to declare that computers will do everything themselves.

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