ksey3

Depends on the type of problem being solved. You need different kinds of ppl at different phases. Similar to the Explore-Exploit Tradeoff.

Once you find a gold mine in the jungle, you dont need undisciplined creative explorers, you only need people who dig. And dig well. Night and Day. Obediently. With nothing else going on in their head. The non diggers become excess baggage.

Then the system flips once the gold mine runs dry (Exploit phase completed). Its the turn of the army of mindless diggers to turn useless. And now you bring back the explorers to go search the deep dark jungles to find the next gold mine.

Progress in physics was/is also slow. People couldn't explain what the compass was doing for a few thousand years. Systematic futzing about and day dreaming was required over multiple centuries. That is the norm when you are given a 3 inch chimp brain to grok the universe. The history of science shows us how much luck and blundering about in the darkness is required. Wish it was taught more.

SIO covers this as if they are fixing software bugs. No rage against the machine. They have become part of the machine. We have such a fit for nothing intellectual class.

OP is more worried about how it effects Ambitious people.

Ambitious people are a small subset of the chimp troupe, and they usually end up in charge cause they dont mind doing mindless bullshit everyday, as long as they get their status elevated. Society calls this activity 'hard work' and rewards it cause it keeps the factory lights on. When the chimps run a factory/institution/military/govt you need a "socio-economic ladder" structure to keep the chimps in line. A hierarchical structure based on domination and obedience, rewards and punishment, respect and trust and even that thing called love. Will we require all this when robots do things better?

Sort of like in sports you have these ever optimizing robotic humans practicing night and day, to gain some milli second advantage over some other robot. For what? So nike and coke can sell more unnecessary shit to everyone. Now if coke and nike can entertain you with two AGI robots instead, ever optimizing to entertain and "break records" every other game (for optimal attention capture) then what do we need sports stars for?

When robots do what robots do - their 'hard work', 'calculated risk' night and day, day in day out, do we call it Ambition to climb the 'socio-economic ladder'?

This is interesting. I hope it grows in scope cuz AT&T needs to go die already.

I dont know how big Telcos havent been gobbled up by larger groups yet. They are such a slow moving gigantic revenue generating juicy targets. Big tech (advertising/media/cloud) is not big enough to do the gobbling. But big retail Walmart/Amazon are most def large enough to take out AT&T. And hope they do so cause I prefer dealing with them than the telcos.

Sometimes I think PhD's should be awarded to Groups or atleast Pairs of researchers.

Let the group find each other and defend a thesis. If the group breaks apart they loose their certification of expertise. And can reform and reprove it. Those who want to do things alone can, ofcourse do things the old way.

This would reduce the the unrealistic expectations on some folk who work better in groups, while allowing them to hone whatever skills they bring to the table.

Groups basically compensate for each others limitations and in the modern highly competitive world, with it's time/resource constraints and complex problems certifying individual expertise is looking over rated.