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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

So far the history of automation technologies is that they both augment the capabilities and replace them. Automated looms replaced manual weavers, but the result was much cheaper better quality cloth which massively increased demand for cloth. Information technology is the same, it does what human mathematicians used to do, but has massively increase demand for information processing services.

So I don’t think AI technologies we have now, or plausibly have in the next few decades minimum, look like they will have materially novel effects.

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I would still say that it is the replacement and attempts at replacing that are harmful.

Good examples of this are automated customer "service" and "self"-driving technologies. The latter has done nothing but spin its wheels by burning off R&D dollars and time while killing people along the way. Eventually, people will realize that a much better goal is to simply assist drivers in more effective ways and to pour the resources into better urban design and non-automotive transportation. Unfortunately, that's happening not because of realization of this but because of the realization that self-driving is a pipe dream of being able to solve intractible societal and technological problems.

I remember when the internet started I was telling a friend of mine she should look for a new career. She works as a travel agent. I was convinced the internet would relace all those jobs. You know she still works as a travel agent.

I assumed the ratio of travel agents to travelers has gone down since the advent of flight search engines, is that not true?

I certainly haven't used travel agents since I became aware of Google Flight Search etc

But maybe older people / business travelers still use them for convenience?

That’s a weird example: there used to be 6-7 travel agencies in my neighborhood, two specifically focused on travel too Eastern Europe. There was only two left when COVID hit, and now there is only one. Sure, there a still travel agents but it’s not a booming trade to say the least.

I have only used a travel agent once. It was a helpful service for me at the time, but I think I paid roughly 40% over what I could have had I arranged everything myself.

In other words -- a great business to be in!

There are also still farmers. There is just a massively smaller number of them than what there was in the past. Now, lots of them moved to tractor factories, but those have automated, and the jobs moved to service and intelligence jobs.

The word 'all' is not something we should focus on. Technically if one farmer or travel agent existed, then 'all' those jobs have not been automated away. The structural integrity of society (or at least a desirable society) demands that we have some means providing for our existence at large population scales. Now it doesn't matter so much if this is a job, or UBI, or something we've not thought of yet as this should hopefully avoid a fascist collapse scenario where large amounts of unemployed people vote in or demand rather human hostile governments.

I did software development for a travel agency in the 1980s. That industry no longer exists today in anything resembling the form that it did then. Your anecdote is literally meaningless.

> So I don’t think AI technologies we have now, or plausibly have in the next few decades minimum, look like they will have materially novel effects.

Anything you can do with chatGPT-4 today, you can also do with Google Search and a little more, or maybe less, work.

A search also lets you do it with agency, transparency, and skepticism. You can evaluate the trustworthiness of a source given its actual context rather than blindly accept the first opaque answer you're given.

Our practice of judgment and strategy in learning and finding answers is critical. We're not encyclopedias.

I don't guess you're keeping up with things like tree of thought chaining in things like GPT-4 and 'show your work' RLHF that are occurring now. Straight LLM answers are like a single thought in our head without any follow up and reflection on if it's correct. As you say, when performing mental work we rarely accept the first thought on something without additional thought on why it's right or wrong.

These techniques do improve the model, but if the target is "replacing humans" which means 100% autonomy, that last 1% is exponentially harder.

So you're saying it only replaces 99% of their value and not 100%?

Of course this won't be the way it works. In some places it will replace vast swathes of human workers. In other places it won't replace so many. The questions are how quickly and will these people be able to find the ways to provide for their needs without destabilizing society.

Google search is much more than “a little more” work if you’re trying to get up to speed on something you’re not familiar with. The difference is GPT’s ability to respond meaningfully to specific questions, and provide fleshed-out solutions tailored to specified requirements. Traditional search can’t provide that, unless what you’re trying to do is standard enough that someone else has already written up the exact solution you need.

There's not going to be organic life in a few decades

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