Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nevermark | Hacker News Reader

> Bottlenecks rule everything around me

The self-setup here is too obvious.

This is exactly why man + machine can be much worse than just machine. A strong argument needs to address what we can do as an extremely slow operating, slow learning, and slow adapting species, that machines that improve in ability and efficiency monthly and annually will find they cannot do well or without.

It is clear that we are going through a disruptive change, but COVUD is not comparable. Job loss is likely to have statistics more comparable to the Black Plague. And sensible people are concerned it could get much worse.

I don’t have the answers, but acknowledging and facing the uncertainty head on won’t make things worse.

View on HN

I belive the black plague actually caused a massive labor shortage and wages increased. When a huge amount of people die and you still need to have people build bridges and be soldiers and finish building the damn cathedral that's been under construction for the last 400 years then that is what will happen.

Here's an article:

https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-bet...

I meant the jobs die. So I am not sure what would stand in for "labor shortage" in a situation of sustained net job losses. Perhaps a growth opportunity for mannequins to visually fill the offices/shops of the fired, and maintain appearances?

But yes, if lots of people deathed by AI, the remaining humans might have more job security! Could that be called a "soft landing"?

Ahh I see what you mean.

The black plague's capital-concentration aftermath supposedly fueled the renaissance and the city-state ascensions, and ultimately the great land discoveries of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Not sure if there's an analogy to make somewhere though

Gross inequality is going to lead to accelerated human space exploration? It is actually a plausible parallel.

Billionaires are confused why we aren’t excited about an event that’s closest to one that killed 50% of the population in Europe

They're between not caring and welcoming that outcome. A 50% reduction in non-billionaire population is highly desirable for effective altruists.

> Job loss is likely to have statistics more comparable to the Black Plague.

Maybe this is overly optimistic, but if AI starts to have negative impacts on average people comparable to the plague, it seems like there's a lot more that people can do. In medieval Europe, nobody knew what was causing the plague and nobody knew how to stop it.

On the other hand, if AI quickly replaces half of all jobs, it will be very obvious what and who caused the job loss and associated decrease in living standards. Everybody will have someone they care about affected. AI job loss would quickly eclipse all other political concerns. And at the end of the day, AI can be unplugged (barring robot armies or Elon's space-based data centers I suppose).

It is very obvious what and who caused the low living standards in North Korea and yet here we are decades later with no end in site.

Is it obvious? I suspect there are at least two sets of popular answers depending on what propaganda you consume.

> And at the end of the day, AI can be unplugged

We can't stop OpenClaw, because humans are curious. It just takes one unleashed model with a crypto account and some way to make money for the first independent AI's to start bleeding into cyberspace.

We can't opt out of AI competition, because other individuals, organizations and nation states are not going to stop, and not going to leverage their AI if they get ahead of us.

> AI job loss would quickly eclipse all other political concerns.

True. I think this is one of only a few certainties.

> because other individuals, organizations and nation states are not going to stop, and not going to leverage their AI if they get ahead of us.

I don't think that it is likely AT ALL, but it is probably only necessary for China and the US to agree to stop, not all organizations and nation states. It is at least possible given leadership in both countries that see AI as an existential threat.

The hardware needed to run and train SOTA AI can only be made by a very small handful of companies in a small handful of countries that either the US or China have significant influence over. Making AI R&D illegal would stop 99% of it overnight, most of the researchers are in it for money rather than some ideological commitment and there are plenty of other well-paid jobs they could take. Doing local inference in secret with existing models and GPUs would be possible, but training new SOTA models probably wouldn't be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com