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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

Some get it, though. When I quipped that Claude may eventually replace me, my manager was visibly shaken as he mentioned it would probably come for him first.

I feel better about it than I did a few months ago. Still seems like there’s something missing that is going to be hard to make happen. I forsee humans being necessary for a long while yet.

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> Still seems like there’s something missing that is going to be hard to make happen.

I think part of the negative societal response to AI is the uncertainty of it all. AI killing me, taking my job, augmenting me, curing me of old age, all seem like viable futures within my lifetime given the information I have. People want to know it's going to be okay and even the smartest experts can't credibly promise them that.

Realistically, I've only seen evidence about AI taking people's jobs, as is the case with LLMs, and in the case of robotics, killing people. Augmentation has always been something that gets talked about in research labs but I've never seen an actual product; and curing disease and old age is the domain of more traditional ML methods.

I know Altman has been going around selling visions of curing cancer and the like, but when he talks about standing up new DC or getting a new investment most of that is going towards LLMs, not cancer research.

I meant augmentation in an abstract way, like making you more productive and freeing up your time from drudgery. This is the sales pitch that AI labs have started to pivot towards in their communication with the public after realizing the public don't want the creation of Skynet. There's a tension there because they want to sell the other vision (full replacement of labor) to investors so they can raise capital for DC builds at reasonable financing costs.

"Ingenuity" is what I think is missing. The sheer _want_ of solving a problem that is distinctly a living creature's concern.

The irony is if we ever taught machines how to have this, they'd probably not want to work for us anymore.

The billionaires building doomsday bunkers get it.

”We drop the bomb ourselves.”

No they do not - sheltering make sense only if there is anything worth waiting for on the other side.

Yeah, seems like a big downgrade to go from being a billionaire in society to a nobody in a bunker with no society waiting for you outside the bunker.

Oh imagine some society will be outside the bunker, waiting.

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