Comment by dwa3592 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dwa3592 | Hacker News Reader

While I agree with this and appreciate Tao and other mathematicians to take the time to do this. There are similar concerns for many many other fields aka there is a general misalignment of technology. Take Software engineering for example, I can't believe there is a class of software engineers who wake up everyday and tell themselves, "today is the day I am going to automate the rest of my job".

Lets forget the hyper intellectual fields like maths and software engineering for a moment. What about taxi drivers? The best minds in silicon valley wake up everyday to automate the jobs of taxi drivers - TFA can be reworded as - 'The misalignment of AI/Tech in Transportation'. Remember the Nepal disaster that happened a couple weeks ago - the largest cranes that they had were stuck in the mud and couldn't move. There were no tools which could help the rescue teams at that time. Its weird that billions have been spent on making a ride automated to make a taxi driver redundant but no improvement in tech for rescue teams.

> can't believe there is a class of software engineers who wake up everyday and tell themselves, "today is the day I am going to automate the rest of my job".

The whole point of software engineering is automating processes; it's literally all that we do.

Not only that, but the endgame has been explicitly stated by Our Lady Ada of Lovelace herself:

> [The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine... Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.

>>can't believe there is a class of software engineers who wake up everyday and tell themselves, "today is the day I am going to automate the rest of my job"

>>The whole point of software engineering is automating processes

There is a difference between 'automating a process' and 'automating oneself' and making one obsolete a benchmark. I can sympathize if it's confusing for you to understand that.

We still are automating the process, it's just that the automated part of the process covers much of what we regularly do.

The point of transportation is to get from point A to point B, so almost nobody will care whether that's done via automation.

The point of e.g. art isn't just to produce a finished piece, so people may care about more than the end result, making AI replacement of human artists more contentious.

Tao is arguing that the point of math is also not just to produce solutions to problems.

If that is the case, if the pursuit of math is not instrumental, then there is no issue with ai.

You can take a leisurely drive on your Mc even when self driving taxis can take you from a to b.

It must necessarily reduce to a fear of reduced funding to math fields.

Which is congruent to the taxi analogy.

>The point of transportation is to get from point A to point B so almost nobody will care whether that's done via automation.

Would you say the job of a musician is to just produce sound? and the job of a surgeon just to cut and suture??? Well then the job of a mathematician is also just to provide proofs. You completely misunderstood the above comment and Tao's argument.

> Take Software engineering for example, I can't believe there is a class of software engineers who wake up everyday and tell themselves, "today is the day I am going to automate the rest of my job".

And here I thought this was the whole point…

I doubt taxi drivers were forced to experience an ego death to the same extent

Not being able to feed your family for a large group of people should likely be taken graver.

We will definitely see a large group of people needing therapy, but suggesting that it is worse than people loosing what little they have is poposterous.

>I doubt taxi drivers were forced to experience an ego death to the same extent

How do you know? because their complaints didn't make it to HN front page? Imagine being a taxi driver and a father of 2 and thinking that any day could be the last day at your work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com