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Comment by weatherlite | Hacker News Reader

What will be the point of learning anything if A.I will soon do everything better?

So you don't learn anything that you're not the absolute best at? Impressive.

Some people learn things for pure pleasure (like learning Japanese or playing an instrument) but most things we learn are absolutely not for pure pleasure. Think school, college and all the stuff you learn for work. That's like 95% of the learning we do.

But everything you learned in school, college, work, etc you consider yourself the absolute best at? Or perhaps is it the case that there has always existed someone better than you at everything you do, and the fact that an AI will soon do the same doesn't change anything?

The difference is that "someone better than me at any task" means only 8 billion people, whilst an AI better than me at any task can be copied over any amount of times, works for only operating cost, and can work 24 hours a day, 365.2425 days a year without losing focus or needing a vacation.

Still, it's comforting to know that the AI will be able to take over all tasks humans do eventually, hopefully the computer overlord will soon deem us unnecessary and we'll be able to follow in the footsteps of the dodo, the great auk, and all the other innocent critters we drove to extinction.

> hopefully the computer overlord will soon deem us unnecessary

Imagine a guy like Putin with this kind of power. Why the heck would he need 120 million angry citizens when the robots can do EVERYTHING faster and better? Sure he will need a few concubines and keep a few family and friends...all the rest seem to be quite redundant...Same goes for Iran, China. I'd be surprised if there aren't American billionaires entertaining similar thoughts, us redundant masses suck up resources and pollute and create emissions. Robots don't have to eat and you won't need 8 billion of them.

Kind of a false equivalence. Human talent is not infinitely replicable. AI talent is

this is the same vein of question a third grader has asking why he should learn how division or multiplication works when a calculator (or computer) can do it better and faster no matter what... which is akin to asking why learn carpentry when a drill can place screws more perfectly than you twisting the head with your thumb and forefinger.

It's important to have an understanding of the fundamentals of your task before relying on the tools to do the complex version of it, so you can reason about the next step and decide what the task is, not just how to do it.

To understand what AI expects of us, and perform what it wants properly. Of course.

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