Comment by AltruisticGapHN | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AltruisticGapHN | Hacker News Reader

AltruisticGapHN

On a bird's eye perspective... you know as much as I love and enjoy crafting with css/html/javascript ... as I grow older I am not that entertained in having to learn yet another API to do the same thing that we did years ago, only "more elegantly/faster/with less code/etc".

The truth is, if I'm perfectly honest, that to KNOW those APIs in itself, is not real knowledge. It's just empty. Talk to your wife holding your newborn, about the latest tailwind version, or native Javascript additions. Seriously who gives a flying rat's ass?

At this stage of human evolution, we live in a reality bubble where we're told that a life "well lived" is one where you have a "real" job, and one where you "work hard". And your parents tell you to "become somebody"... well maybe it's because they have never know anything else?

Maybe the best thing that will come out of artificial intelligence, is to destroy all this supposed knowledge. All those mountains of nothing.

Imagine you create a new API for a service, and EVEN WItHOUT feeding any examples to the deep learning, it manages to figure out the best way to solve xyz problems using your API, and even highlights inefficiencies in your API. Now we're talking. Why would anybody waste their human potential writing the 1000th tutorial on how to use your API ? That's gonna be replaced by another better API from someone else in 5 days?

I love my work. I love CSS; JS .. I really do but honestly it's also all so empty.

Would I do it all over again? I don't even remember how I wrote in assembler on the Amiga and 486. How I used the copper/blitter etc. All vague distant memories. Everything shifting...

edit: I guess this comes off as a mini rant, simplifying. Not sure what my point is, frustrated with what "learning" means perhaps. Frustrated with the notion that knowledge is repeating stuff.

Actually here's a good question : are teachers really necessary or have we yet to envision a world where children, helped with AI tools, can learn whatever they want - as an innate ability? curiosity?

This resonates with me. Tangentially related — for a few years now I've had my sights set on AI eventually driving the automation of all menial labor needed for human subsistence. Food, water, clothing, housing, healthcare — I see these all as things that every human should have for free. Survival should be free. I've often wondered what amazingly good and horrifyingly bad things humanity will do once nobody has to fight for their basic subsistence any more.

I feel like so much turmoil in the world is caused by people acting irrational because they're afraid of going hungry, becoming homeless, being hurt, etc. A world where that fear is largely gone could be a marvelous utopia where everyone is free to chase after their dreams. It could also result in everyone living in VR 24/7 and our society decaying into hedonistic madness. I think it'll be a little bit of both.

i think that people who believe that such a world is even remotely possible, even with most "menial" tasks automated, are utterly delusional.

resources are finite, even if you're using very efficient fully automated planning & execution systems to utilize said resources. something's got to give, and most likely in such a world it will be the ability to procreate (get neutered, receive shelter, sustenance and healthcare for life).

Considering that most rich first-world countries aren't having enough kids to keep up the rate of replacement, I don't think this is going to be reality. There's a strong correlation between quality of life going up and birthrates going down already, no need to sterilize people.

Also—we're already living in a world where a lot of menial labor is automated. I'm not sure I'd call it "utterly delusional" to see that there's a long history of humans automating tasks and to think that eventually we'll automate everything we need to survive. We've been moving towards that goal for the past 200 years!

automation doesn't solve the resource problem. we can automate seven way to Sunday, it won't change the fact that arable land, fuel, drinking water are all finite and scarce resources, and are set to become even more scarce as the effects of climate change worsen.

I fully subscribe to that goal, but I think we'd need some far broader changes in society to make that a reality. We could already greatly reduce the amount of working hours and distribute essential resources more fairly. But what actually happens is that any increase in efficiently is frantically translated into an increase of output, even if that output is completely unnecessary.

Work as of now is not a necessity to archieve some outcomes, it's what society is organised around in many aspects.

I agree that we could be already making some of these changes, and that the increase in output is definitely gobbling up a bunch of our capacity to do so. That said, we have seen a huge rise in average quality of life over the past 200 years of industrialization. The percentage of people in abject poverty is still much too high, but it's trending downwards [0] and I think AI automation could accelerate that change. I think it may be easier to just scale output so far that it overwhelms human greed — which might sound crazy, but in my opinion is easier than effecting large-scale societal change. We should absolutely be working on societal change as well, though!

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#/media/File:Wo...

We won't stop working unless the AI can give us everything we could desire. With or without UBI we'll be just as busy. Let's say you have lots of time, and super smart AI toys. You got the basics but no luxuries. What would you do? Nothing?

Nope! Which is why I think it would be great—I'd work on things that aren't motivated by needing to pay rent, buy food, provide basic necessities for me and anyone who's dependent on me, etc. I agree that humans are pretty industrious by nature, which is why I think a world where we can be industrious without being forced to be industrious would be pretty cool.

Sorry, that sounds awfully nihilist to me. No, I'm not terribly excited in becoming an expert for the latest API or framework either, but I'm very interested in understanding how the world around us works. There are also some skills I'm proud to have and others I'd like to have.

I share the worry of the article that AI might become the ultimate competitive artifact: Make us able to realise any idea on a whim, while at the same time making it actually harder to gain a deeper understanding of something or acquire a skill. In that world, everyone will basically become a pure consumer.

It's not the only path a world with AI could take, but it's one that I worry is quite likely. And I don't think this would make anything better.

At least I don't support the notion that as soon as you have a child, the entire rest of the world stops being relevant. First of all, that sounds horrible, secondly, not everyone will have kids.

> a world where children, helped with AI tools, can learn whatever they want - as an innate ability? curiosity?

That would be a better vision. I read in some other thread that at some point we all might get personal assistants that go with us through life like some non-imaginary imaginary friend. I think this could actually be awesome.

> have we yet to envision a world where children, helped with AI tools, can learn whatever they want - as an innate ability? curiosity?

If there's any danger of a world like this happening, rent-seekers will step in to prevent it. We have the internet, and somehow educational materials for every single trade and science aren't freely available and neatly organized on it. In fact, we spend almost all of our worry on the internet trying to prevent information from flowing through it.

We invented a world brain, and spend all of our time installing and shoring up virtual amyloid plaques on it.

A bit confused by this comment.

If AI gets to a point where it’s as advanced as you’re describing, 99% of everyone reading this comment will have a job that’s rendered obsolete with 1% of people employed (to manage the AI) leading to a massive concentration of wealth to the very few people necessary to manage the AI and its inputs/outputs.

In such a world, what value do us engineers provide, if any?

Going from their sentiment, probably to be a father. The value you provide as an engineer changes, from being a 40-hr-per-week programmer for a company you may or may not have any personal connection to, to being a father to your child in whatever way you believe the world needs more of, and letting the machine program itself. That we should not get lost devoting a huge chunk of our entire life learning how to maintain an advertising system, just to earn the right to have a place to live in comfort.

Good luck finding a mate and raising kids with no wealth

Just imagine the imense wealth that will be generated if we can displace 99% of the workforce from what they are doing now. This is something to cheer, not to feel doomed.

You think that what, the benevolent trillionaires will give money to the unemployed out of the goodness of their hearts?

That's more a discussion of wealth distribution, systems of government and the flaws of capitalism. Theoretically speaking if you free human labor through the use of machines you're creating wealth because the same or greater output can be achieved with less resources and those resources can be allocated elsewhere. Of course some people believe that machines will replace all jobs eventually but historically that has not been the case. Generally new technology makes some jobs obsolete but humans adapt and find different ways to contribute to society.

We've already replaced 99% of the workforce once. Now instead of subsistence farming, people can live, eat basically any kind of food they want, own a multi-room house, and fly around the world once or twice a year on a vacation, all in exchange for less labor than that same person would have needed to expend to simply not starve a few thousand years ago.

Is that because billionaires "give [you] money out of the goodness of their hearts"? Are you unemployed because all those farming jobs have been eliminated? Obviously not. Rather, the efficiency gains of modern infrastructure have simply made your labor that much more valuable.

Ironically, you're literally describing the 1% lifestyle. (That includes me, but I'm aware that most people don't get to enjoy the great lifestyle you mention.)

It’s not possible to have “trillionaires” if the economy is so small it has unemployed people in it.

That’s literally the plot of Atlas Shrugged, not real life.

? We're on the verge creating the first trillionaire in the next few decades with our current economy which, gasp, has millions of unemployed people in it.

How are 99% of us making money? The government is going to redistribute all the wealth to us?

Most likely they will have to. The governments main role is to make sure the majority of people can live together in a society. If a something as suddenly as 99% of people becoming unemployment overnight the governing bodies will have no choice but to redistribute wealth, kill/enforce any rioters, or dissolve into anarchy.

No, you continue to work for a living, just on something else that's 100x more valuable than before (and you consequently become 100x more wealthy than before).

It's already happened once. 99% of farming jobs that existed a few thousand years ago now long gone. Are we all unemployed and starving because of that? No, in fact we're all far more wealthy than we would have been before all that technological progress was made. We just don't think of it as wealth, and instead complain that the guy next door has more than us and the government ought to do something about that, because he clearly wouldn't be that rich if not for all this darned technological progress taking our jobs.

> No, you continue to work for a living, just on something else that's 100x more valuable than before

This just doesn't make sense. If there's something I can (want to and capable of) work on that's 100x more valuable than what I'm doing now, why isn't somebody hiring me to do that now?

The farming example goes like this -- you may think food is less valuable than your phone because it costs less. But that's just because supply is greater and it costs less to produce, so the cost is lower.

Similarly, if some AI is capable of writing better software than I do now, I don't get to choose another job that pays 100x. It's just that my current job will cost less, and if I continue doing my work, it will be rewarded at 1/100x due to competition from cheap AI. Perhaps I'll be flipping burgers at restaurants and it will be 100x pay compared with writing software. I won't be getting 100x more wealthy though!

> If there's something I can (want to and capable of) work on that's 100x more valuable than what I'm doing now, why isn't somebody hiring me to do that now?

That's like asking why 2000 years ago the farmers didn't just buy a tractor and a combine and do their farming that way, since that would have generated so much more value. The technology doesn't exist right now, we're talking about a scenario where it will.

> Similarly, if some AI is capable of writing better software than I do now, I don't get to choose another job that pays 100x. It's just that my current job will cost less

Correct, assuming that it's only writing software that gets automated, and nothing else. Society as a whole will be wealthier by virtue of being able to afford more software, but not 100x wealthier. But if 99% of everything gets automated, the jobs that remain (and the new ones that get created as a side-effect) will indeed pay 100x more in terms of real purchasing power. Whether you think of that as "this job is 100x more valuable" or "everything else costs 99% less" is just a matter of perspective.

Did you miss an /s?

It's clear that the current economic system cannot accommodate a world like that and we either change or live in a world with a handful of trillionaires and billions of desperately poor people.

With nothing to spend their wealth on, all those wealth becomes meaningless, except for a few intrinsically valuable stuff.

> In such a world, what value do us engineers provide, if any?

We would do systems engineering at the domain level. And when AI can do that, we don't have to worry about jobs anymore.

Lots of people with no jobs, nothing to do, just sitting and taking the UBI? I think people will demand the right to work to support their needs. Even if that means just helping people get land, materials, tools and energy. People can't be passive wards of the state.

Your job won’t be obsoleted by AI even if the AI is literally better at the job than you are. One, that’s not how comparative advantage works, and two, the AI probably costs more than you.

You may want to shift your perspective then.

I derive zero intrinsic enjoyment out of learning frameworks or APIs, the only reason that I do so is that they help me achieve a vision of something that I want to build. Yesterday I cobbled together a Kotlin app with the help of chat GPT that when a phone is detected in freefall using the accelerometer it would start screaming. I've never used kotlin before, and I was able to put it together in a single day.

If chat GPT or some AI better facilitates the ability for me to build and create new things that I'm just as happy.

What sound should it make when it's using up your battery monitoring for freefall conditions?

Maybe some sort of radar ping... vigilance mode enabled...

I get you and I think you are spot on.

We spend a lot of our time in life being rewarded for showing up on time, following instructions, and filling our time keeping busy. Learning yet another way to accomplish the same task is right in the middle of this.

Then there’s the real results-oriented perspective. Where we choose a goal, a good goal to make our world better for ourselves and others. Where you measure progress towards that goal and not just time and money spent.

And so what if all the drudgery disappeared tomorrow? If we could leave a thousand overcomplicated methods behind and just speak what we want and have it created.

Sounds wonderful to me and I would leave my tools in the dusts of history.

return of the sacred ?

some things in life are deeper, and I think the electronics/computing era was half pragmatism half 'what-if' and we reached the what-if, it's everywhere, it's near omnipotent.. the itched is scratched, and while it's cool, the impact is not all glorious, other factors (sometimes archaic ones) weigh in our societies (the current state says it all) and our lives.

but back to computing, that's why I'm aiming a lot more on some mathy topics, it has a longer life time, more poetry. That and cosmology like fields. There's something strangely peaceful about wondering about the universe.

ps: other fields of value: biology/medicine, pragmatic sociology (how to help groups living better), and agro/ecology.

>we live in a reality bubble where we're told that a life "well lived" is one where you have a "real" job, and one where you "work hard".

Who is telling you that??

> children, helped with AI tools, can learn whatever they want - as an innate ability? curiosity?

That's a cute naive sentiment, that kids want to learn on their own. You have to make them want to learn, that's the role of a teacher.

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