Who Will Prosper in the New World | Hacker News Reader

Who Will Prosper in the New World

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

54 pointsluu36 comments

There's a lot wrong with that article. If the computer is smart enough to tell you what to do in social situations and can also read, write, and drive cars, the game is pretty much up.

There will be nothing humans can do that computers can't.

The best thing to do will be to plug everyone in to the Matrix, because otherwise millions of wars between people with really smart computers will break out. Wars that will feature weapons designed by smart computers i.e. drones with nuclear/chemical/biological weapons - deadly enough to kill everyone.

The safest route for humans in the coming years is for global scale cooperation to create a basic income, not a stipend, but self-contained self-sufficient virtual reality simulator so that we don't descend into chaos when some of us get access to hyper-intelligent computers.

It's quaint that the good professor thinks we'll just go on seeking jobs after taking coursera courses, and marketing sales letters to each other, but we hackers unfortunately know that that isn't an accurate prediction. The gravitas of the situation is far greater.

edit: Ted Talk by Daniel Suarez (author of Daemon and Freedom) on the drone threat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI

I think we have two eras, each very different than the other.

The first is the immediate future where computers can not act as independent, autonomous agents. This is the era we are in today, and have been for quite some time. Some of the concepts described in the article could be used to describe years ago, from a different perspective. Free online education? Has existed for over a decade, arguably pushing two decades. And so on.

In today's era it pays to use machines as tools of great leverage. It means not only that you get ahead of other humans, but you get way ahead of them. Your wealthy, in good health, and very happy.

The second is the era where "computers" become independent autonomous agents. In movies they always either enslave or exterminate humans. I would expect a more quiet extinction, not in existence but in relevance. In that case, what a columnist writes in the New York Times just doesn't matter, because it would have zero impact on anything that was doing decision making. Perhaps there is a biological transformation in this period as well, where genetically modified humans split off not in to another species but multiple species. In that respects, homo sapiens could become relics at the zoo.

Its all conjecture, but I think one thing here is a certainty -- that machines become both independent of humans and autonomous, able to act, buy, sell, and build things all on their own.

People greatly exaggerate the progress and inevitability of AI.

On the contrary, I think we're now in 'the age of the great underestimation'.

Based on what? The only example we have of human intelligence is human intelligence, and we're still more or less at thinking-this-makes-neurons-here-light-up knowledge of how it all works.

The latest moto X has always listening chip inside. That's pretty significant. There's robocars, ibm watson, siri/gnow. The CEO of the quantum computer recently said that machine learning is progressing faster than people think, having seen some of the secret internal stuff brewing up at big G. Microsoft is developing improved versions of the kinect internally as chips.

Who cares if we don't know how the brain works in detail, we still haven't built bird-like machines that flap, but we do have machines that soar through the sky faster and higher than birds. Same is happening with AI.

Are we making great, amazing advances in pattern recognition, mechanical systems that very cleverly incorporate sensor feedback, and other novel areas? Sure. Are we making super-impressive progress in general intelligence. No.

There's two main fields of thought - one that "general intelligence" is some unified, centralized system, maybe a "symbolic system"; another that "general intelligence" is merely the composition of a bunch of pieces that do certain stuff.

So maybe our advancement in the things you mentioned are making strides towards the latter. I think that's wrong, but it's possible. Even if it is the case, we're still not making strides in the pieces of that composed intelligence that answer questions like - what's bigger, a shoebox or a mountain?

In regards to your bird analogy: we don't have very popular bird machines, but we do know the principles that enable birds to fly. Similarly, we don't need to build brains, but anything we build that is comparably "intelligent" as a brain would be quite surprising if it didn't come from insight we have into the principles that enable general intelligence.

'General intelligence' is wacko amateur thinking that reasonable people in AI don't believe in. You're shooting yourself in the foot mentioning that.

The consensus amongst competent people in AI is that of building practical systems.

I'll be candid with my sources - I took a class with Patrick Winston called The Human Intelligence Enterprise where we went over a history of AI ideas. Nowhere in that class did I get the impression that 'general intelligence' is 'wacko amateur thinking'. Maybe the former director of the MIT AI lab just failed to impress upon us the disdain for general intelligence you say is commonplace.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

Patrick Winston is a disciple of Marvin Minsky. They're considered wackos these days.

Who would you consider the leading authority?

The machine learning/statistics crowd. Some names - Judea Pearl, Tom Mitchell, Pete Norvig, Andrew Ng, Geoff Hinton, John Langford, Jeff Dean. Of course there's many more than that, but these have gained some fame through textbooks/open sources/popular press etc. More generally the approaches taken by Google, like vector space models that power search engines. If Google's doing it it's likely not wacko because they have a low tolerance for tomfoolery down there.

OK, now cite where they think general intelligence is tomfoolery.

They won't, out of politeness and not wanting to make enemies. I will, as an anonymous coward on the internet.

That statement seriously bears repeating. The best algorithms today can't beat an average human at Go; discussions like this tend to remind me of the flying car, Mars colony, hoverboard predictions of sixty years ago. We aren't there yet, people - to be honest, we're not even very close.

I don't understand "PEOPLE WHO DON’T NEED MONEY.", specifically where the author states "We’ll need a new name for the group of people who have the incomes of the lower middle class and the cultural habits of the wealthy or upper middle class."

Don't we have that already? Comparing the present-day to a generation or two ago, incomes and quality-of-life have changed, but the "middle class" is still the middle class. Two generations ago, having 2 television sets, 2+ cars per household, phones for each person (child or adult), trips overseas, eating foods from all over the world, etc. meant upper class (or quite close to it). Nowadays I'm guessing(!) most families have more than one car, everyone has a cell phone, people travel the world, eat foods from various cultures regularly and go to college more than ever before.

But there's still a notion of "middle class", and always will be. The current "middle class" lives fairly close to the "upper class" of a few generations ago in a lot of ways. Why that is is up for debate (lack of savings? lower wages? Could be a lot of things), but overall I'd say based purely on lifestyle, our current middle class has the cultural habits of the upper class of a few generations ago.

He means something different. Normal middle class people always want more money so they can buy a bigger TV or car, or go on better vacations. The author's talking about people who mainly enjoy things that aren't expensive: the Internet, conversation, libraries, art galleries, thrift shop fashions. So with a professional income, their happiness isn't limited by money.

See I'd argue that it isn't about money. It's a matter of wanting things to make life fun/interesting. "Normal middle-class people", whatever those are, are always going to want things/experiences/what-have-you -- it's part of the human condition. Conversation, libraries, art galleries have been around for thousands of years, so that's not really going to change things at all. The internet certainly has changed the pattern of behavior for humans as a whole, and made access to information much less skewed towards the upper classes, but I don't see how that's going to make the "middle class" disappear.

In a sense, I don't think most people's happiness is limited by money. Surely the lack of money can bring unhappiness, but I think generally the middle class is happy, and has been for the recent past (just for the sake of argument, the last 3-4 generations).

Maybe my definition of "middle class" is wrong? To me, the "middle class" encompasses the people who still have to work a job, but are able to pay all of their bills in a timely fashion, save some money, and generally support themselves and their dependents. Lower class would mean people living paycheck-to-paycheck or maybe slightly below: just existing means going backwards. Upper class would mean essentially people whose wealth means they can choose to work or not work, and can essentially afford any needs & wants regardless of hours-worked.

Status Anxiety is what you are looking for

But some of those things are expensive. They are just paid for by someone else. A subtle but important distinction. The funding for the opera for example, a token amount might be ticket sales, but mostly it's the taxes of people who have zero interest in opera. So that needs to be factored into the definition.

Lower class: will never get a mortgage. Middle class, worry about the mortgage. Upper class, will never need a mortgage.

New class: Has no need of a mortgage due to not having interest in owning a house

I strongly suspect membership of this class is temporary.

Hang on, Williamsburg isn't "full of people who are bright, culturally literate, Internet-savvy and far from committed to the idea of hard work directed toward earning a good middle-class living." You kidding, guy? Have you seen the apartment towers rising up down by the water. Must be the Maoists' granola silos.

Also, calling Zuckerberg a "computer genius" shows that this writer is a bit out of his depth. Z'berg isn't a computer genius, his talent is social psychology and game theory if anything.

Makes some good points ... but seems like another out of touch baby boomer trying to convince other baby boomers "where it's at". I wasn't surprised when I googled the author to find out that he wasn't nytimes staff. Yep, seems like just another guy using some big concepts to market his own personal brand (which, of course, is what he is telling us to do in the article). I smell a conference tour.

Summary:

   Winners:

     1. The Conscientious
     2. People who listen to computers
     3. People with a marekting touch
     4. Motivators

   Losers:

     1. People with delicate feelings
     2. People unlucky in health care
     3. People who don't need money
     4. Political radicals

EDIT: Thanks mashmac2

You missed the switch to negative- 1 through 4 are positive, while 5-8 in your list will be at a disadvantage, according to the article.

Is it just me or does "People who don't need money" seem like it should be in the 'winners' list? If you don't need much money, won't you do well come what may?

Ya, was thinking the same. He doesn't present an argument as to why they are losers?

I dont understand who are the PEOPLE WHO DONT NEED MONEY. Should maybe be rephrased: YOUNG PEOPLE WHO DONT THINK THEY WILL NEED MONEY.

Should really be rephrased, "TRUST FUND BABIES," based on who they described.

As Unono, mentions, if computers become that smart, "we" (well, the already rich) won't need anyone (you can get educated for free but if computers have taken the jobs, what use is it, etc, etc). But a good new age con-man can convince some portion of people they want his stuff.

TL;DR; Swindlers and the very smart. But mostly swindlers.

Clearly the author is aiming to be one of them.

Maybe I am overly cynical, but if quality education will be commodity probably the following things will determine success: which country you were born into, the culture of the family you were born into, talent, access to education that cannot be teached on the internet (learning to be a doctor?), family connections, natural resources of the country you live in (-> and politics, and strength of army of the country you live in), knowing country specific knowledge (that cannot be outsourced to poor countries), having English as mother language, etc...

Most of it is already true, as big part of education is already (almost) a commodity. (At least compared to education 100 years ago)

Free education will make the world better. But if we just take the zero sum game of 'who will be successful in society', then there will always be factors. If not education then others, like the ones which I mentioned.

but if quality education will be commodity probably the following things will determine success

I'm gonna side with the author on this one. If a quality education is a commodity, the hardworking will inherit the earth.

Quality education already is a commodity, if you can learn by self-teaching, example, peer study, or through information transfer. Only if you can only learn through rigored instruction will you find education expensive.

Education isn't expensive, credentials are.

You can tell this is U.S.-centric when it thinks you need to be personally wealthy to receive decent healthcare.

Unless everyone who gets free healthcare are considered PEOPLE WHO DON'T NEED MONEY.

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