Really? Maybe it’s my bubble, but I’ve heard a ton of developers in the field discussing the various paths we see future dev work taking, with theories anywhere from “there will be even more human...
Really? Maybe it’s my bubble, but I’ve heard a ton of developers in the field discussing the various paths we see future dev work taking, with theories anywhere from “there will be even more human dev work a couple of years when slop code works its way into critical systems and starts imploding”, through “we need architects, but half the jobs are going to be gone soon and nobody’s training juniors anymore”, and right up to “fuck it, I’m off to become an HVAC tech”.
And to put my cards on the table here: I want my job automated away, assuming a machine can do it well enough. We don’t need jobs, we need purpose and we need the means of acquiring food and shelter. The former I can find for myself, and if it really comes to it I’d rather fight tooth and nail for equitable distribution of the latter than waste my life emulating something a computer can (in this hypothetical) do just as well because I’m forced to facilitate some cargo cult justification of wealth distribution.
This isn't necessarily true, for better or for worse. Google's top scientist (like, THE guy who made Google Search and Translate) recently left to make an AI firm focused on automating AI...
To what end? According to their marketing material, automating and accelerating science itself. It sounds laudable, but...well, we can really only hope it ends well.
I’ve long anticipated a future where humans need to do no work. It’s called post-scarcity and could very well be the beginning of the best phase of human existence. What no one wants is to be the...
nobody wants this
I’ve long anticipated a future where humans need to do no work. It’s called post-scarcity and could very well be the beginning of the best phase of human existence. What no one wants is to be the generation that lives through the transition. Some countries, small and wealthy ones, may jump right to the end game once the process begins. Others will languish.
What do we do when we don’t need to work a job? We can take care of each other with all of that free time. It may be the means by which the frequency of abuse, abandonment, and illness speed towards 0.
If you want to see what that looks like today, talk to people who have retired, early or otherwise. There are plenty of retirees to talk to! In my case, I do spend time helping relatives and I'm...
If you want to see what that looks like today, talk to people who have retired, early or otherwise. There are plenty of retirees to talk to!
In my case, I do spend time helping relatives and I'm glad I've been able to drop everything and go when people needed me. I'm not helping random strangers, though, except with my donations. That's real work and I don't think it's going to automated any time soon?
Assuming there is a decline in other kinds of work (I'm uncertain about that), I imagine more work is going to be care-giving of various sorts. Healthcare is already a growing industry.
But even "everything except care-giving is automated" seems rather utopian? There are too many fields that AI has had no effect on yet.
Even for something like teaching where the effect of AI is important, I see it having an effect like "kids learn some more things from computers," but not "therefore nobody needs to take care of them." I imagine that the aspects of the job that are more about taking care of kids and motivating them get even more emphasis?
I'll preface this by saying I'm generally more pessimistic than optimistic on AI + future. What makes you think that all that free time will lead to us caring more for each other? I've seen enough...
I'll preface this by saying I'm generally more pessimistic than optimistic on AI + future. What makes you think that all that free time will lead to us caring more for each other? I've seen enough shitty humans to know that plenty of people will spend at least part of that time creating drama or deliberately hurting other people. Also, if an AI agent can do it better, I think it will take the meaning out of even little human niceties. Maybe not completely, but I think they will be diminished (e.g. no point helping your son with his maths homework when he can just ask an AI agent. Apply this to all human endeavour).
If we imagine a post-scarcity future in good faith, an important contributor to human shittiness would be removed from the equation: scarcity. Children would grow up with their needs met, their...
I've seen enough shitty humans to know that plenty of people will spend at least part of that time creating drama or deliberately hurting other people
If we imagine a post-scarcity future in good faith, an important contributor to human shittiness would be removed from the equation: scarcity. Children would grow up with their needs met, their parents wouldn't be focused on survival and would be less exploitative and more exploratory. There is so much research about what a huge difference these things make in the kind of adults those kids would grow into. Smaller/less active amygdala, higher IQs, greater empathy and so on. Cultural values and expectations would shift as a result, resulting in a virtuous feedback loop.
It wouldn't happen overnight, it would introduce new kinds of problems, and there will always be shitty people, but if people had more resources and time the world would undoubtedly be better.
Note that I'm not saying AI will deliver this. Not doubt it can contribute, but we were already most of the way there pre-AI in theory. If a lower percentage of wealth was extracted by financial markets and the wealthy, we could already be living in a world where people worked dramatically less while having more resources.
All those are good points, but in a post scarcity world what is valuable? Scarcity and desire defines value and I think all those zero sum games like social status will become more valuable. I...
All those are good points, but in a post scarcity world what is valuable? Scarcity and desire defines value and I think all those zero sum games like social status will become more valuable. I worry a post scarcity society where most things we do lack meaning (as in an AI can do whatever we do better which removes the value of many of our actions), most things lack value and humans are disenfranchised of any power (which is underpinned by our ability to be useful) that humanity won’t be able to cope. I see a future of hedonism and lack of suffering but also a lack of meaning and satisfaction. I see a future where social status means much more, and putting people down is effective as pulling yourself further up.
I’m not saying your wrong that post scarcity will solve lots of problems, but combined with a lack of meaning from AI I worry about that we will not use all that time in a good way. I’m middle class but I grew up around enough unpleasant rich people to see what some people do in those situations.
Less suffering definitely has potential downsides (rich kids). We'd have a lot to figure out. But I'll take the problems that come with basic needs universally met over the alternative...
Less suffering definitely has potential downsides (rich kids). We'd have a lot to figure out. But I'll take the problems that come with basic needs universally met over the alternative nonetheless.
Feels like fantasy in the near term in any case, the near term probably being the lifespan of everyone reading this. I think it's worth working towards though.
I think most people will want to have human friends, human parents/guardians, human therapists, etc. People are shitty in part because of sources of stress that would be no more. It would be a net...
I think most people will want to have human friends, human parents/guardians, human therapists, etc. People are shitty in part because of sources of stress that would be no more. It would be a net win, not even close.
Your probably right, people will still want to connect with other humans, but I still worry that our time will be meaningless when AI can do everything we can do but better.
Your probably right, people will still want to connect with other humans, but I still worry that our time will be meaningless when AI can do everything we can do but better.
That's already the case with things like chess and yet we still play chess. Amateurs play chess, grand masters play, and we still give a shit about how good the best human chess players are....
That's already the case with things like chess and yet we still play chess. Amateurs play chess, grand masters play, and we still give a shit about how good the best human chess players are.
Humans spend a lot of time learning to reproduce music on an instrument in a way that a computer can outdo. Computers can recall images better than humans. We don't really care. They are different categories.
Yeah we do, and I enjoy a game of chess and music. But I specifically don’t get a sense of meaning or life satisfaction from them. It doesn’t give me purpose, it’s just another hobby. I do think...
Yeah we do, and I enjoy a game of chess and music. But I specifically don’t get a sense of meaning or life satisfaction from them. It doesn’t give me purpose, it’s just another hobby.
I do think that religion will become more important as people lose meaning in their life.
Sure but there are some people that do get meaning from chess even in a post-Deep Blue age. I would hope people focus more on the community side of religion than the grifting side.
Sure but there are some people that do get meaning from chess even in a post-Deep Blue age.
I would hope people focus more on the community side of religion than the grifting side.
Maybe I will find some meaning in such a world. My children will give me meaning, but more than anything else I worry about the meaning they will find in their life. Perhaps I would find less...
Maybe I will find some meaning in such a world. My children will give me meaning, but more than anything else I worry about the meaning they will find in their life. Perhaps I would find less suffering by embracing a Buddhist eightfold path.
Re: religion, I would hope so too, but I remain to be convinced!
Hot take: We already live in a post-scarcity society. We have the means to eliminate scarcity. It is 100% a lack of will to reallocate resources to where scarcity exists. There are entire...
Hot take: We already live in a post-scarcity society.
We have the means to eliminate scarcity. It is 100% a lack of will to reallocate resources to where scarcity exists.
There are entire billion-dollar businesses operating purely to create scarcity in the digital world that obliterates it by default, rather than let the old economics fail to be recreated anew with the underlying assumption of non-scarcity.
Putin thought that conquering Ukraine was an act of will. Israel convinced Trump that regime change in Iran was an act of will. Turns out that other people will oppose acts of will.
Putin thought that conquering Ukraine was an act of will. Israel convinced Trump that regime change in Iran was an act of will.
Turns out that other people will oppose acts of will.
You have highlighted difference between a despot seeking to continue the status quo, and (ideally) a democratic attempt to eliminate it. Authoritarian governance rarely ends well.
You have highlighted difference between a despot seeking to continue the status quo, and (ideally) a democratic attempt to eliminate it.
I’m not entirely sure how to define an “act of will,” but winning elections doesn’t seem like an “act of will” either, for the same reason: people will oppose you! Convincing people to vote for...
I’m not entirely sure how to define an “act of will,” but winning elections doesn’t seem like an “act of will” either, for the same reason: people will oppose you! Convincing people to vote for your candidate instead of one of the others isn’t easy.
Post scarcity of food, clean water, and yes digital goods. We could run the world on a fraction of the labor. But I think if we have robotics harvesting food, running factories, and most digital...
Post scarcity of food, clean water, and yes digital goods. We could run the world on a fraction of the labor. But I think if we have robotics harvesting food, running factories, and most digital processes automated then that's a different kind of post scarcity. Post scarcity of labor.
Even if the nightmare scenario of full human redundance is not imminent, the fact that a considerable number of people claim that this is their goal is unsettling. This view is perhaps most succinctly stated by the startup Mechanize, which aims to “fully automate the economy”. As a participant in the economy, I find this goal deeply objectionable. I think that trying to fully replace all human labor is not a morally acceptable goal to have. It’s frankly horrifying. To be clear, “fully automate the economy” means “destroy society as we know it”. Unfortunately, similar goals are articulated by quite a few inside and outside Silicon Valley. I think the callousness of such objectives should be called out whenever they are encountered.
The great irony of this is that those who claim to want to automate all human labor are typically the kind of competitive, smart, high-agency persons who absolutely need to have a purpose and something to build. They would hate to be redundant. Yet, here they fly, like so many moths to a flame.
[...]
Why didn't I just quit AI research? My predicament would seem like that of a vegan butcher, or a monk who makes money on Onlyfans. But me quitting and becoming an Uber driver would not make the world better. The pace of AI progress would clearly not slow down noticeably. And I assure you, I still love AI research, even if I sometimes hate what AI does to the world. I'm not even very good at anything else. AI is what I do. And I think that I can do more good by trying to steer my field in a good direction than if I became an Uber driver. So I’d rather think of myself as akin to a hypochondriac doctor, or a pilot with a fear of heights.
[...]
From this perspective, the history of AI is a history of attempts to mimic the specific combination of behaviors and capabilities that humans have; most of them successful in some way, but all of them quite different to humans. The onslaught of LLMs becomes a push in a particular capability direction. Understanding that direction becomes crucial to figuring out which types of human intellectual patterns and capabilities will become more important in the future. Where the new domains of human excellence will appear. But this understanding can also help us develop different types of AI that are more complementary to what humans can do and like to do. Seeing intelligence as a scalar, where machines can overtake humans, is a recipe for paralysis; dissolving this faulty notion gives us the freedom to act. More of this argument in the article I linked above; what's important here is that there are things that can be done. Indeed, there's a lot to do. Such as building mechanisms for meaningfully incorporating humans in creative search processes, and open-ended learning and discovery processes that are not based on imitating what humans do.
But not everything has a technical fix. Norms, structures, and laws are probably more important. I still think that trying to automate humans out of the processes that give them, and our civilization, meaning is immoral. We need to build counter-narratives, and be vocal that "fully automating the economy" is not an acceptable goal to work towards. We also need to push hard to counter the centralization of power that so easily comes with lavishly funded tech companies trying to achieve monopolies on some layers of the AI stack. Our best bet for a future where we all matter is one with a myriad different forms of intelligence, open and accessible for all to use as tools for our natural intelligences. Let's get to work.
I find the author's other post on "complimentary intelligence", linked toward the end, fascinating:
I find the author's other post on "complimentary intelligence", linked toward the end, fascinating:
In the following, I will try sketch a way of thinking about human intelligence and human nature through emphasizing its difference from the various methods and systems we call artificial intelligence. This is rooted in my strong belief that talking about a single-dimensional “intelligence” that one can have more or less of, and the obvious extension to asking whether humans or machines are “more intelligent”, is actively harmful for understanding both human and machine intelligence. What matters is the qualitative difference. Between humans and machines, but also between different approaches to AI. We can even think of the different approaches in a geometric framework, with the implication that any type of intelligence must have a direction as well as a magnitude. This perspective, which I call Complementary Intelligence, also suggests a positive research program, that seeks to find the types of intelligence that we do not currently have but that could be interesting to humans, rather than simply imitating human intelligence.
A.I. proponents never talk about automating away their own jobs & the news media never asks them that question.
Really? Maybe it’s my bubble, but I’ve heard a ton of developers in the field discussing the various paths we see future dev work taking, with theories anywhere from “there will be even more human dev work a couple of years when slop code works its way into critical systems and starts imploding”, through “we need architects, but half the jobs are going to be gone soon and nobody’s training juniors anymore”, and right up to “fuck it, I’m off to become an HVAC tech”.
And to put my cards on the table here: I want my job automated away, assuming a machine can do it well enough. We don’t need jobs, we need purpose and we need the means of acquiring food and shelter. The former I can find for myself, and if it really comes to it I’d rather fight tooth and nail for equitable distribution of the latter than waste my life emulating something a computer can (in this hypothetical) do just as well because I’m forced to facilitate some cargo cult justification of wealth distribution.
This isn't necessarily true, for better or for worse. Google's top scientist (like, THE guy who made Google Search and Translate) recently left to make an AI firm focused on automating AI research.
To what end? According to their marketing material, automating and accelerating science itself. It sounds laudable, but...well, we can really only hope it ends well.
ETA: Discussion here on Jeff Dean's departure.
I’ve long anticipated a future where humans need to do no work. It’s called post-scarcity and could very well be the beginning of the best phase of human existence. What no one wants is to be the generation that lives through the transition. Some countries, small and wealthy ones, may jump right to the end game once the process begins. Others will languish.
What do we do when we don’t need to work a job? We can take care of each other with all of that free time. It may be the means by which the frequency of abuse, abandonment, and illness speed towards 0.
If you want to see what that looks like today, talk to people who have retired, early or otherwise. There are plenty of retirees to talk to!
In my case, I do spend time helping relatives and I'm glad I've been able to drop everything and go when people needed me. I'm not helping random strangers, though, except with my donations. That's real work and I don't think it's going to automated any time soon?
Assuming there is a decline in other kinds of work (I'm uncertain about that), I imagine more work is going to be care-giving of various sorts. Healthcare is already a growing industry.
But even "everything except care-giving is automated" seems rather utopian? There are too many fields that AI has had no effect on yet.
Even for something like teaching where the effect of AI is important, I see it having an effect like "kids learn some more things from computers," but not "therefore nobody needs to take care of them." I imagine that the aspects of the job that are more about taking care of kids and motivating them get even more emphasis?
I'll preface this by saying I'm generally more pessimistic than optimistic on AI + future. What makes you think that all that free time will lead to us caring more for each other? I've seen enough shitty humans to know that plenty of people will spend at least part of that time creating drama or deliberately hurting other people. Also, if an AI agent can do it better, I think it will take the meaning out of even little human niceties. Maybe not completely, but I think they will be diminished (e.g. no point helping your son with his maths homework when he can just ask an AI agent. Apply this to all human endeavour).
If we imagine a post-scarcity future in good faith, an important contributor to human shittiness would be removed from the equation: scarcity. Children would grow up with their needs met, their parents wouldn't be focused on survival and would be less exploitative and more exploratory. There is so much research about what a huge difference these things make in the kind of adults those kids would grow into. Smaller/less active amygdala, higher IQs, greater empathy and so on. Cultural values and expectations would shift as a result, resulting in a virtuous feedback loop.
It wouldn't happen overnight, it would introduce new kinds of problems, and there will always be shitty people, but if people had more resources and time the world would undoubtedly be better.
Note that I'm not saying AI will deliver this. Not doubt it can contribute, but we were already most of the way there pre-AI in theory. If a lower percentage of wealth was extracted by financial markets and the wealthy, we could already be living in a world where people worked dramatically less while having more resources.
All those are good points, but in a post scarcity world what is valuable? Scarcity and desire defines value and I think all those zero sum games like social status will become more valuable. I worry a post scarcity society where most things we do lack meaning (as in an AI can do whatever we do better which removes the value of many of our actions), most things lack value and humans are disenfranchised of any power (which is underpinned by our ability to be useful) that humanity won’t be able to cope. I see a future of hedonism and lack of suffering but also a lack of meaning and satisfaction. I see a future where social status means much more, and putting people down is effective as pulling yourself further up.
I’m not saying your wrong that post scarcity will solve lots of problems, but combined with a lack of meaning from AI I worry about that we will not use all that time in a good way. I’m middle class but I grew up around enough unpleasant rich people to see what some people do in those situations.
Less suffering definitely has potential downsides (rich kids). We'd have a lot to figure out. But I'll take the problems that come with basic needs universally met over the alternative nonetheless.
Feels like fantasy in the near term in any case, the near term probably being the lifespan of everyone reading this. I think it's worth working towards though.
I think most people will want to have human friends, human parents/guardians, human therapists, etc. People are shitty in part because of sources of stress that would be no more. It would be a net win, not even close.
Your probably right, people will still want to connect with other humans, but I still worry that our time will be meaningless when AI can do everything we can do but better.
That's already the case with things like chess and yet we still play chess. Amateurs play chess, grand masters play, and we still give a shit about how good the best human chess players are.
Humans spend a lot of time learning to reproduce music on an instrument in a way that a computer can outdo. Computers can recall images better than humans. We don't really care. They are different categories.
Yeah we do, and I enjoy a game of chess and music. But I specifically don’t get a sense of meaning or life satisfaction from them. It doesn’t give me purpose, it’s just another hobby.
I do think that religion will become more important as people lose meaning in their life.
Sure but there are some people that do get meaning from chess even in a post-Deep Blue age.
I would hope people focus more on the community side of religion than the grifting side.
Maybe I will find some meaning in such a world. My children will give me meaning, but more than anything else I worry about the meaning they will find in their life. Perhaps I would find less suffering by embracing a Buddhist eightfold path.
Re: religion, I would hope so too, but I remain to be convinced!
Hot take: We already live in a post-scarcity society.
We have the means to eliminate scarcity. It is 100% a lack of will to reallocate resources to where scarcity exists.
There are entire billion-dollar businesses operating purely to create scarcity in the digital world that obliterates it by default, rather than let the old economics fail to be recreated anew with the underlying assumption of non-scarcity.
Putin thought that conquering Ukraine was an act of will. Israel convinced Trump that regime change in Iran was an act of will.
Turns out that other people will oppose acts of will.
You have highlighted difference between a despot seeking to continue the status quo, and (ideally) a democratic attempt to eliminate it.
Authoritarian governance rarely ends well.
I’m not entirely sure how to define an “act of will,” but winning elections doesn’t seem like an “act of will” either, for the same reason: people will oppose you! Convincing people to vote for your candidate instead of one of the others isn’t easy.
Post scarcity of food, clean water, and yes digital goods. We could run the world on a fraction of the labor. But I think if we have robotics harvesting food, running factories, and most digital processes automated then that's a different kind of post scarcity. Post scarcity of labor.
From the blog post:
[...]
[...]
I find the author's other post on "complimentary intelligence", linked toward the end, fascinating: