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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

> Like Louis CK said: "Everything is amazing and no one is happy."

Everything is not amazing. Sure things are amazing from a technical perspective. But most tech advancements I think have been harmful to society in the last 30 years or so. Its awesome that computers are so powerful and we have awesome video and photos and can share things so easily. But technology should better lives, and not cheapen it, which it often does. Tech is being used to try and replace essential human lived experiences to try and inject advertising into it and extract money.

Technology can not replace the human, its impossible. No matter how good the AI is at reading the book, it will never replace sitting next to your parent and them reading it. No matter how easy it is to share a video or a photo, it will never replace sitting next to someone and them showing you photos, or better yet being there when the photo was taken.

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I forget the exact quote but the thing I've seen making the rounds sums it up pretty well: Computers were supposed to do the work so people could make art and write poetry. Now the computers are making art and writing poetry and I still have to have a job.

In another life I'd love to do voice over work. (I even have a face for radio!) But, instead, technology is being used to avoid even having humans do that type of work. Sure, today it's PG, but they're definitely doing this with an eye to replacing actual voiceover actors.

Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?" And it's going to continue until it's "what the fuck do we do with all these jobless people who've been replaced?"

It will probably all fall apart when there is no one left to purchase this stuff, no job, no money, no purchasing power.

Once purchasing power has evaporated, then and only then will the system change.

Alternatively AI will also replace the jobless.

We'll invent a third World War long before that happens - to thin the herd and remind everyone using rationing and austerity about how great consumerism is, while creating plenty of jobs rebuilding the industrialized world.

it's simple and it works.. every time. /s

I wouldn't blame folks wanting to work on fast takeoff AI with no human alignment concerns. Heads, the world ends because you've bootstrapped something unsympathetic and more powerful than humanity. Tails, you've bootstrapped something that might be able to overpower entrenched interests, providing a chance at a better societal outcome.

As software developers, we know what getting workers to have better lives while working less looks like. There's some sleight of hand at play, though, in the employer/employee relationship (favoring the employer).

> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?"

It's not just AI, but technology generally. And it's because when it comes to managing people, organizations for the most part don't actually concern themselves with getting their employees to produce value—that is, whether they are, and how much, and at what cost (to the business) it comes at, and where that measure of productivity lies (objectively) when scored against some rubric. Instead what they make their most immediate concern is whether their employees are exposed to sufficient toil. Look at any example that involves someone accepting a new job with a set of work duties/expectations where they proceed to automate part of their workload and thus provide the same value (or more) in comparison to what they were doing before, or in comparison to their coworkers, or in comparison to whomever would have ended up with the job if the person who did accept and automate it had accepted an offer elsewhere instead: they end up soliciting feedback (or opining themselves) about whether what they're doing is unethical.

This is the mechanism that wealth disparity through concentration of wealth comes from, but everyone (the employer and the employee alike) walks around as if they either don't notice it or—if they do—as if it's wrong when there's a known path for the concentration to flow upward but it isn't happening.

Wealth in a free market is not concentrated, it is created. It does not "flow", either, as free trades are an exchange of value, not a flow of value.

Wealth disparity comes from people creating different amounts of value.

I think it’s more complex than that. Wealth is often created by monopolising things (e.g. enclosures) instead of by creating them.

There are 33 million businesses in the US. Are they monopolies?

On what do you base these statements?

Some Iyn Rand novel would be my guess.

Listening to and reading books by economists. If you think about it, you'll see it in action all the time. After all, consider yourself. Does wealth "flow" to you? Or do you create value at your job, and exchange that value for your paycheck?

You haven't responded (clearly) here to anything I actually said. You just posted two short, dismissive comments consisting of glib non-specifics.

If you want to dispute what I'm saying, how about starting with the example I gave (an employee figures out how to automate part of their job, enabling them to either 1. deliver the same amount of value to their employer at a fraction of the effort, or 2. deliver something like 2x–10x or more value, owing to the fact that they've been able to automate it)?

If you automate part of your job resulting in a 2x improvement of your productivity, you have demonstrated a skill that you can sell for more money. That's how you realize the value you created.

The wealth didn't "flow" to you. You created it.

> The wealth didn't "flow" to you. You created it.

Er, right. The "flow" here refers to what happens to the wealth after creation.

If after you create it you or your employer then undertake some change to the work arrangement (e.g. imposing a higher quota on productivity—thus allowing your employer to capture the additional value that you created while keeping your net wealth constant, along with the day-to-day toil you the worker are subjected to, probably—or maybe even increasing it), that would be an example of wealth flowing upward.

You created outsized value relative to needs of the employer. Your (wealthier) employer captured it and enriched themselves. That's wealth concentration.

When buying lunch are you paying the (fixed) price asked by its creator or are you sharing (some of) the future value that hamburger is providing you in nourishment and work energy for the rest of the afternoon?

What?

Only until your business is targetted by big corp and goes bust/bankrupt.

Or acquired. Then the wealth flows upwards, employees are cut, to make things more profitable, and the people who originally created something great are not getting much for it. Instead, if they are not let go, they are under new lords, who take a big chunk of the profits.

Or a competitor gets VC funded and by means of marketting and sales, instead of actually making a better product and your business' product's adoption is dwarfed.

I think there are many reasons why some business can fail, and most of them are not about the amount of created value. The free market is not a rationally acting person.

The reason businesses fail is they cost more to operate than the value they produce.

> favoring the employer

If you've ever been an employer, you'd be disabused of that quickly.

Disabused of what?

> their most immediate concern is whether their employees are exposed to sufficient toil.

Protestant work ethic, twisted and disfigured through late capitalism has become a sadistic and wholly disgusting human trait. To impose moral, intellectual and physical labour on others, not of necessity, nor to create value, but to serve a system rooted in guilt and a craving for validation in the eyes of others is about as un-Christian as can be.

> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?"

I think what happens is that the repeat jobs are automated, and the (remaining) people get the hard corner cases.

I think the thing that has surprised everyone in this revolution is that the opposite has happened. Musk wasted billions trying to automate vehicle manufacturing while AI is threatening to take the jobs of novelists and graphic designers.

It hasn't been a surprise to anyone in the field. Turns out it's much easier to read digital content in the form of bits then to read real world data. Hardware is harder than software.

These kinds of responses are so easy to write after the fact. Show us a quote from ten years ago then, please, that says that creative writing and art will be among the first things to be automated at a mass scale. Since this

> hasn't been a surprise to anyone in the field

apparently, it should be pretty easy to find such a quote.

On the other hand, I am reminded of a quote by Christopher Hitchens (from memory), “They say that everyone has a book in them. For most of them, it would be better if it stayed there".

Some of the films and TV programmes I've watched recently have made me wonder, as I gaze across at the writers on strike who have some legitimate concerns but who have also provided some bloody awful writing, if I wouldn't prefer AI to take over the production of art - it certainly wouldn't be able to produce a messy bed, would it? That'd be a win too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Bed

90% of books and movies are not worth the time to read or watch.

> I gaze across at the writers on strike who have some legitimate concerns but who have also provided some bloody awful writing

Too often the writing of film and TV is dictated by the producers/studio -- people who have an interest in financial returns, not quality. Those writers would probably love to write their own show, their way, unhindered, and would probably produce something watchable.

Of course, writers subvert their instructions sometimes to great effect. On BSG I believe they were told their show was "too dark" and someone insisted someone have "a birthday party". Which they duly put in, and then had them all die in some kind of terror/bomb incident.

> Every advance in AI is "how can we replace people and save money?"

this is not true now, and also does not have to be true. Instead of a "look at the incentives" talk to someone having a bad comment moment.. instead we can be reminded of Doug Englebart, who said "computer systems can augment human intelligence and team interaction" and specifically NOT "replace humans" .. As I understand it, in Palo Alto, Doug found great interest among the DoD crowd .. a good portion of whom would have a second meeting after his demos, and then discuss how they can get back to the important work of replacing people.

Consider the incentives, consider who has an interest in this hype cycle, and sales profits. When you see a US visit to Vietnam this week, with MSFT pitching "social trust" AI services to "ordinary people" .. does this really sound like trust in the making? Is AI drones in combat really what we need now ? Replacing striking Hollywood writers and getting name-brand actors for pennies on the dollar, is that what "we" need?

I do not agree that AI can only replace people.. however, there is a lot of short term profit and control ready for those that do.. maybe something needs to be done about that?

> what the fuck do we do with all these jobless people who've been replaced?

Around 1800, 93% of labor in America worked on farms. Today we have jobs that were unimaginable in 1800.

> "how can we replace people and save money?" and not "how can people have better lives and work less?"

Those two are actually the same thing.

> Those two are actually the same thing.

How exactly are they the same thing? It seems that the savings are made by the employer here at the expense of the employee.

There’s no guarantee that the savings will be passed on as price cuts.

> There’s no guarantee that the savings will be passed on as price cuts.

Profit margins tend to be consistent across industries, meaning savings wind up as price cuts sooner or later.

(Unless the government interferes with the price setting incentives.)

In my opinion we seriously need to think about providing people with new perspectives, as we replace their jobs / automate them away. We need a social system, that encourages learning at every step in people's lives. A nation should have an interest in getting people back into meaningful jobs and should act according to that interest. The coal mining industry worker, who loses their job, because we no longer want to mine coal? How can we get that person a good new job? How can we make it so that that person gets the necessary qualifications?

We are still (I think in most countries around the world and at the very least where I live.) throwing away enormous amount of human potential.

> I'd love to do voice over work

Voice over work and screen actors put stage actors and burlesque workers and traveling minstrels out of business.

> it will never replace sitting next to someone and them showing you photos

It definitely does replace that. It sucks so much to be trapped next to someone showing you their photo album or vacation slides, when you don’t really care, that this became a stock scene in 20th-century comedy TV series and films. Nowadays when people are sharing their photos online, that gives their peers the choice of whether to look or whether to ignore, and that is immensely freeing.

You’re talking about _being shown_ photos you don’t care about, while GP is talking about showing your own photos to someone. I agree with the example you’re discussing, though.

Ah, you’re talking about main character syndrome. Showing pictures to someone is one of the cruelest things you can do; you’re probably boring and a terrible storyteller (most people are) but they’re going to feel obligated to not tell you that.

It’s always amazing to me that people almost universally hate other people’s slideshows, and then don’t have the self awareness to realize that they do the exact same thing.

>Showing pictures to someone is one of the cruelest things you can do

So you are saying that friends, family and significant others better no share old photos and memories with you? Because that is one of the cruelest things to do?

They can share those old photos and memories on social media, where their friends, families, and significant others can choose whether to look or ignore it.

That’s not what I’m talking about, just for clarity.

The photo slide show of someone's vacation was a stock scene in comedies. But have you never sat down with family and went through old photos? Having conversations about where was that? who was this? who was this as a baby? Its a very different and much more personal experience than flipping through facebook.

He cherry-picked one of the three examples in your post and attacked it. He won't choose the other two because he has no argument for them. Ignore.

Sure have, it’s hellacious. I don’t give a fuck about who that baby was, why would I? Relations who my parents only vaguely remember going somewhere boring that I would never go, or someone’s 12th trip to the same lake, is a great use for Facebook. Most people are crazy boring, if I care I can always ask.

To quote a GP comment:

> But most tech advancements I think have been harmful to society in the last 30 years or so.

I thought this was overly cynical until I read your comment. Now I'm not so sure. Has our attention span really become so shot that just being with family has become a chore, and we'd rather our parents just post their life stories into the void that is Facebook?

Sounds like I struck a nerve. Next time you’re telling someone a detailed story about what route you took to dinner, stop and ask yourself if it’s actually that interesting.

Seriously though, technology has nothing to do with this. People have been bored out of their mind by other people for centuries, the only difference is there’s no excuse for having nothing interesting to say now.

I'd suggest reading How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell [1]. I think it addresses some of the concerns you have.

1. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42771901

Please don't dissect an aphorism by a standup comedian like it was a Ph.D. thesis.

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