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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

I don't think laughing at people for their concerns is helpful. Especially when you don't seem to be bothered by the possibility that this is a civilization-ending development.

For the record, I don't think it is, personally. But people are terrified, and not taking their fear seriously and dealing with it compassionately is a recipe for serious, and unnecessary disaster.

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A civilization-ending development, no.

A job-ending development for many people, yes.

The chattering classes see themselves becoming obsolete. Fast. They're freaking out. From professors of English literature to op-ed writers, word slingers are in trouble. Not novelists, though; none of these systems can hold a story together for any great length.

If everything you get paid for goes in and out over a wire, you're in trouble.

It's not just the chattering classes that are freaking out. It's the majority of ordinary people that I've talked with.

Majority of the 'ordinary people' don't care, and don't want to care. They just want to think about their next tourist trip, or getting coffee, or where to get lunch and dinner next. You try talking about the world-historical impact, the job-ending impact, the sci-fi level progression, THEY DON'T CARE. And that even includes tech workers.

The time to adapt to AI is now (Getting a trade is the safest bet), but obviously 99% of the population doesn't want to do any adaptation. So when GPT5,GPT6 comes out, only then will they confront AI, without any mental preparation.

That's why there's no point slowing down. People won't be alerted until the AI's get advanced enough, so better push it forward, to shock people into action. Institutions can move suprisingly fast when pushed to, every school and university has had to respond to ChatGPT already, and it kind of works. Otherwise people will just try and pretend this doesn't exist, forever.

In a sense, I hope that you're right. It's just not how it looks to me from here. I'm hearing a great deal of fear from all quarters.

You're suggesting we accelerate the danger to shock people awake?

So like putting poor performing FSD on public streets (daring regulators to ... do their job)?

Or connecting the nukes to some SkyNet-esque "defense" system, knowing its propensity for illogical and undefined behavior?

>If everything you get paid for goes in and out over a wire, you're in trouble.

So… almost everyone who posts here?

Not sure why everyone here is so excited to be out of a job. I guess they all think that UBI will fall out of the sky. I think they’ll be in for a rude awakening.

If you were to eliminate 10% of jobs with no replacements available, in the span of say a year, that would likely be a civilization ending development. People unable to feed their families tend to take drastic actions.

That drastic action is usually working a menial service job.

I’d probably adjust that to at least 50%. Many European counties had extended high youth unemployment, but minimal political unrest.

OpenAI's monster is too dangerous to be in peoples hands unless people pay $20pm to use it

Yeah, OpenAI isn't helping. The only thing that really concerns me about LLMs is how people are reacting to them, and OpenAI seems very intent on scaring the daylights out of as many people as possible.

Fear makes us stupid. Frightened people are dangerous people.

Laughing at Elon is always helpful to me personally.

The civilization ending development is going to happen or not happen. It’s hubris to think any one person or one country has a say at this point.

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

I think global climate change is also a civilization ending development but we don't see the world activate to battle that in unison.

> Especially when you don't seem to be bothered by the possibility that this is a civilization-ending development.

Lots of people freak out based on concerns divorced from reality. I laughed at the people who thought the mayan calendar meant 2012 was the end of the world. I laughed at the people who thought the LHC would create a black hole that would gobble the earth. I laughed at the people who thought covid vaccines were a eugenics mass sterialization campaign.

Why shouldn't I? The magnitude of the risk they propose does nothing to change the sheer ridiculousness of it.

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