Hacker News Reader

Comment by kashyapc | Hacker News Reader

> What would it take for LLMs to make me 100× more productive? Without this, I am doomed to irrelevance.

Are you, though? You will only be "doomed" if your place your value system squarely on "productivity". Then what is to differentiate you from a machine?

    * * *

Edit: I'm not sure how I can feel confident about a proposal that puts so much value on "productivity". How can you reconcile this with "self-actualization"? (Don't get me wrong, I like my LLM-based productivity gains as the next person, but I care more about wisdom than becoming "100x more productive".)

Edit 2: "the goal of GA is to preserve individual human cognitive liberty and flourishing" — so the proposal is to do that by overlaying a software bot that continuously mimics your "self"?

View on HN

Agreed, re: placing value squarely on productivity.

The thing is, we're all eventually irrelevant. That's the way the universe works. Every single one of us, after enough time. Claiming we're "doomed" to it is just ego talking.

The idea that longevity = meaningful is a value judgement derived from culture. In nature, many significant things happen in extremely small amounts of time.

One of the example Gwern brings [1] is a GA as an agent for public discourse and political life, to bring your "set of values" to have an effect in solving society's issues, when you yourself don't have the time or energy to.

I don't think it solves or reconciles with self-actualization, but, from a pragmatical point of view, it offers the promise of extending causally your set of views and philosophies to politics.

Gwern also mentions that it allows to keep "human values" (if the GA truly upholds yours) in the loop, in processes that are to eventually be automatized beyond human's reach.

[1] https://gwern.net/guardian-angel#use-cases-politics-politics

that sounds uncomfortably like the public sphere version of spam - using an automated process to amplify some self-serving message and thereby increasingly clutter up the space and tax everyone's scarce and valuable attention.

> One of the example Gwern brings [1] is a GA as an agent for public discourse and political life, to bring your "set of values" to have an effect in solving society's issues, when you yourself don't have the time or energy to.

I'm sorry, that doesn't sound meaningful. If I don't have the energy, I'd rather shut up than have a stupid "avatar" of me yell on the internet in the name of "bringing my values" or "participate in an online discourse". I'm all for forward-looking thinking, but we must show humility. "Society's issues" are complex and deep. Those who propose internet-based solutions to troubling social ills don't often demonstrate a deep understanding of the nature of the problem. You can't plug it all with "agents"! Socrates would be rolling in his grave.

I know Silicon Valley is in a perpetual rush, but this idea needs more soak-time (3-4 years) to see if it actually holds any water. But this kind of thinking won't you get that sweet VC money.

It also presupposed the fact that everyone can articulate what their political and moral stances are

I don't know if this is really about the public sphere as ut exists today. I suspect that the core idea is more along of the lines that in a world where policy is made by artificial super intelligences, you will need your own ASI to advocate on your behalf if your convictions are to have any impact at all.

How would you even form convictions in such a world?

> when you yourself don't have the time or energy to.

You don't have time, you take time. But what this boils down to is that they propose automating being politically or socially active, or have a bot speak for you.

First off, nobody human will take someone's digital replacement seriously. Second, if everyone did that, then you have a load of AIs just burning compute to talk in circles. This will not have meaningful outcomes, unless you reach for sci-fi stories where the outcome is that humans need to be imprisoned/destroyed for their own good.

If someone lacks the time and energy to stand behind their views, how much of that is a result of those views? If you care about the world and justice, if you love life and living things, that's your source of energy right there. If you have half-assed ideas that sound good in the bubble and zero charisma, you have no energy, and interacting with you doesn't give anyone energy.

So much of this just strikes me as "now that I've taken a wrong turn and am in a dead end, what deus ex machina could make this work after all and turn a shitty personality into something grand?", but that will never, ever work. Whatever problem you try to solve that way, now you have two.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com