I'm tired boss
By something that is going to replace my job by writing better code and shipping more features at a fraction of the cost, without asking for vacation? I don't know, boss; I'm also trying to understand why I'm tired.
The real problem is zero-sum work, especially when the only moat was knowledge asymmetry that is now public knowledge.
Have you seen a different perspective? Cause in my informational bubble SaaS ain't doing too well since vibecoding became more common.
Though for the later ones, one might also ask themselves if they are worth their cost when using 20-30% of provided functionality.
Even then past performance is not an indicator of future results. Just because you think internal combustion engines were a great invention, doesn't mean AI cannot be bad for humanity.
>Even then past performance is not an indicator of future results.
It is not perfect or guaranteed, but it can definitely be an indicator. Technological progress is the main reason for the massive standard of living increases that we have witnessed in the last ~200 years. If someone wants to argue that this trend will stop or even reverse, they need very strong arguments, IMHO.
Do you have an argument why "normal" technology can be good or bad, but "consequential" technology is always good?
Because consequential technology has many applications in diverse fields. And applications of technology are more often beneficial than harmful. So if the technology is broadly useful, in aggregate the beneficial applications will outweight the harmful ones.
It also already assumes that the technology is more often benefical than harmful.
This analogy is great, because your grandchildren will probably not consider gasoline to be a great technology, they'll consider it the thing that caused the wars and the famines.
They will also realize that industrial civilization enabled by gasoline was a necessary step towards the renewable energy utopia they are living in. Developing advanced technology takes a lot of energy.
Your grandchildren won't be living in a renewable energy utopia, precisely because you believe that burning fossil fuels is necessary for advancement.
So it’s not clearly a net-negative technology.
You cannot judge aggregate positively and conclude that therefore each segment was positive.
It's not nonsense. If you think so, provide one great technology that has been a net negative.
Fracking
Social media infinite scrolling and targeted ads
Short form videos (tik tok, YouTube shorts, instagram reels)
Coming soon: Deep sea mining
Some of these are not great technologies, you might say. Well if they're impactful enough to turn everyone I love into a phone zombie and make the political landscape violent and insane then that's enough.
Yes, it is. You cannot go "overall progress was positive" and conclude "every change was positive".
> provide one great technology that has been a net negative
nuclear weapons + nuclear energy (luckily we had no nuclear war, but benefits here are not worth risks)
AI in general and LLM specifically so far
smartphones in general and social media specifically
maybe internet overall, maybe computers overall
biological weapons
leaded gasoline
(I know that you already excluded "social media" as "specific applications of some technology", I disagree with it)
>AI in general and LLM specifically so far
>smartphones in general and social media specifically
>maybe internet overall, maybe computers overall
I disagree that these are net negatives.
The things I’d be truly missing from today 30 years ago, would be the advances in medicine really and the fact that we don’t have the ozone layer threat.
Most other things have peaked back then. Rising kids was definitely easier, and healthier.
We'll see about that, long term. The billions and trillions being wasted right now to get the foot in the door need to be earned back somehow at some point...
"Nice company you have there, totally reliant on our AI tech. Oh by the way we gotta increase the rent again."
Nuclear reactions are way more powerful, but we've harness them to power our world.
There is no rational reason to think that. A rising tide lifts all boats.
I’ve been on leave for a month, and am super excited (/s) to re-learn everything because all the tooling and ways to prompt “correctly” will have also changed.
LLMs that can build a computer vision pipeline are a direct threat to my ability to sustain myself. At the same time, being able to prompt an LLM to build a computer vision pipeline doesn't really positively affect my life at all, because personally I don't care that much about computer vision pipelines (or frankly, any software).
It is true that competition could have short-term negative effect on people who sustain themselves by creating software, though.
It has benefits for people with enough leverage (money and formerly labour) to obtain those benefits.
> It is true that competition could have short-term negative effect on people who sustain themselves by creating software, though.
I'm guessing that even if the unlikeliest of all unlikely things does happen and we all live off of some UBI some day, the short-term negative effects won't be "short-term" in the context of a human life.
That's pretty much everyone. Even poor people benefit from technological progress.
> I'm guessing that even if the unlikeliest of all unlikely things does happen and we all live off of some UBI some day, the short-term negative effects won't be "short-term" in the context of a human life.
That depends on the pace of technological acceleration. It could be just a few years, or a decade. Which is why I am a pedal-to-the-metal accelerationist. The quicker we get through the short-term negative/turbulent phase towards the long-term positive phase, the better for me. If reversing is not possible, then going quicker is actually better than going slower. Let's get this shit over with.