This is a multifaceted problem for sure. As the fruit of leveraging LLM use, from my experience, is held in the hands of experienced, skilled, and gray-haired workers, what hope do young kids today have of BEING in this world?
The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching it's metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Who, in that world, can spend the fiat and for what? I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine. Everyone else is either bunker prepping or plugging into the matrix.
> The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching its metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone.
Not true at all. If you have a robotic servant that can "do everything" for anywhere close to an affordable amount for even a middle-class person, please post a link and specify what it can do.
There a big gap between a tool that can spew out large amounts of code and something you trust to not screw up your house. Once I can tell a robot to do a simple plumbing task in my house, I'll believe in this metamorphosis you're talking about.
Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. I think you're right that plumbing is safe for a bit. Human hands are insanely dexterous
Well even 40k spent 20k years living like the jetsons... There are no analogs for our future. That's one of the core problems here, you have powerful individuals who identify with and aspire to sci-fi, while living in denial of reality. I would argue someone like Musk is more blue pilled and in the Matrix than they think they are...
> robotic servants that can do everything for everyone.
Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast enough to make me think there will be a robot servant doing anything for anyone in my lifetime. As has been the case for the past fifty years or so, they're either hyperspecialized or remote controlled by people, and neither of those spell doom for the economy.
Indeed. The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space, it's game over.
We don't need to engineer plumbing robots - they will engineer themselves. We will see a silicon Cambrian Explosion. Maybe next year maybe in 500, but it's inevitable with the current economic incentives.
> This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least.
.... 3 responses ....
> Thats totally fair, and TBH - I am also very concerned for my wellbeing as well; I and many others are not doing so well because, in my case I no longer see this "vapid" state of existence as ephermial.
I have been reading more and more; I guess looking ot knowledge as some eort of ends vs a means to an end for once. Camus, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dostoevsky's underground man etc...
Camus: The universe was always going to stay silent when you demand meaning from it; the answer isn't a better metric, it's to push the rock anyway ("imagine Sisyphus happy").
Dostoevsky [underground man]: Refusing to be a piano key in someone's optimized Crystal Palace
Stokely Carmichael: "Racism is not a question of attitude, it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism."
My conclusion: AI didn't take our meaning, It made me realize I have always been looking in the wrong place and thus reacting ignoratly when I felt "denied" this thing I feel entitled to.
Love.
Edit: Love; paradoxically, ive felt both entitled to and unworthy of so I'm not sure WTF to do with that.
To wit: Our love of self is so closely tied to our output and if we have no output do we have value?
Edit: tl;dr - I am not sure I understand the point of anything anymore and many others feel the same way. I do not think this is some "existential crisis" I believe it is a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence presented by the day and age we live in.
Something I never thought would happen: ultra-conservative Moms For Liberty and progressive education campaigners agree on something. Namely "get that AI out of our schools".
The industry needs messengers that can put out a positive vision that also aren’t creepy or skeezy seeming dudes. I don’t think Zuck’s WSJ manifesto convinced anyone, plus he’s a terrible messenger.
Why should they worry about the people that are not going to give them money and likely wont ever be convinced to? They don't need to capture literally every person or whole industries to be successful.
Non creepy people were rejected by billionaires class, they just dont fit in. And conversely, non creepy people also avoid the tech bro creepy singularity is here crowd.
When the bubble bursts and tens of millions of people see their retirement accounts with S&P holdings drop 30%, that's when the knives will really come out.
100%. Articles about obscure codename operations is a lot harder to grasp than "You are tracked at all times via your phone and license plate and here are the images to prove it".
It's the same as how communities respond to egregious law enforcement abuses. Accusations get nowhere as opposed to undeniable video of things like George Floyd.
The Snowden leaks had too much of an abstract bogeyman. PRISM couldn't inspire critical mass outrage because, at the time, Big Tech was still genuinely useful and, besides, the Big Tech involved could be sidestepped with some inconvenience. Flock is neither directly useful nor avoidable unless you resolve to never leave your house.
Metadata tracking is, again, too abstract of a concept, too much a statistical what-if. Compare that with Flock which tracks your very countenance.
Most importantly IMO, Flock has a physical manifestation on which people can direct their anger. There is a "frontend" to actively subvert as opposed to a mere "backend" to avoid.
Lots of people cared, it just wasn’t actionable. The situation with flock has avenues for change in town hall meetings or even good ol fashioned vandalism.
Dragnet surveillance by the CIA was a bit harder to oppose.
I'm not. The same people who seemingly magically cared about Flock overnight will move onto something else within the year. There's always something new to be outraged over, Flock is just the flavor of the week.
I think this taps in to why big tech companies are unconcerned as well. How many of these people who oppose data centers have stopped utilizing their outputs? How many of these anti AI folks are using AI either at work or in their personal lives? It's just hot to hate AI right now.
It is more concrete now. For example the footage that was released about the Kirk shooter showed that you are filmed everywhere, including in residential areas.
Is that the case? It seems to me that the people who cared about Snowden are basically the same people who care about Flock. Most of the people I know who didn't like Snowden also don't seem to care about Snowden. I do find it interesting / strange that conservatives (of which I am somewhat) don't care about Snowden or Flock. To me, the things Snowden revealed, and the crap Flock is doing are completely incompatible with the way I think government should function. But, maybe I'm more libertarian than conservative.
If my local groups are any indication the flock stuff is angering both the left and the right, perhaps for different reasons. Same with datacenters.
The datacenter meeting for our board was the largest I've ever seen in town. They had to move it to the school auditorium when 1000+ people showed up the first time.
The world (I guess politics, but more broadly how you envision society to fundamentally function) is far more broad and nuanced than the silly (American) liberal vs conservative buckets.
Just adding a “libertarian vs. authoritarian” axis to both labels changes things up wildly. And shows me at least a little bit how someone can label themselves conservative and also be totally fine with the surveillance state. Or totally against it.
My theory is generational and knowledge shifts, namely that now we're seeing the first substantial cohort of non-techies with a decent understanding of tech culture and politics. This is also why we see a lot more anti-AI and anti tech CEO sentiment among the young than the old in defiance of our previously held assumptions.
This is about the right time for the children, nieces, and nephews of the first and second big generations of post-Web software engineers, IT workers, etc. to be getting old enough to become a political force. There's been an explosion of tech workers since the mid-90s, and that means an explosion of people related to them as well. The kids who watched their parents be stacked ranked at Amazon, saw the difference in how MS treated contractors and employees, listened to their corporate IT parents talk about how hostile MS is, etc. all learned that the big tech companies are not anyone's friend even if the specifics of the tech go over their heads. And while the workers themselves might keep their heads down and be quiet in public for the sake of their careers, their kids and relatives are less constrained.
And they can talk to each other and find that it's a common sentiment. Since they don't necessarily have technical careers or hobbies, they're also able to export this sentiment to a wider variety of people through overlapping hobbies and interests (e.g. the IT guy at a school in suburban Ohio has a kid who's a theatre nerd, and the kid is good at communicating their anti big tech position to this 'new' group of people).
The distribution of knowledge about how tech companies operate is shifting and diffusing into channels and communities it didn't before.
If any one follows culture wars, they'd know that a widespread and mostly crude backlash like this will inevitably trigger the correction and the correction will have a stronger inertia.
You must never play your hand like this or you risk being dunked on for your excessiveness.
There is no equivalence. There is a mass of people who are concerned about "woke." The people who are emotionally invested in AI's success are a tiny minority who have no power to push a backlash.
Hmm wait a minute, unless that small minority is politically well connected with a lot of media access. Then they could manufacture a fake backlash. Much like the backlash to "woke!" Ok nevermind it is the same.
This is a multifaceted problem for sure. As the fruit of leveraging LLM use, from my experience, is held in the hands of experienced, skilled, and gray-haired workers, what hope do young kids today have of BEING in this world?
The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching it's metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Who, in that world, can spend the fiat and for what? I think many humans would prefer going back to picking potatoes out of the ground for a bit of silver than to lose agency to the machine. Everyone else is either bunker prepping or plugging into the matrix.
Will we arrive at the Jetsons? Or Warhammer 40k?
> The economic model since the industrial revolution is approaching its metamorphosis: robotic servants that can do everything for everyone.
Not true at all. If you have a robotic servant that can "do everything" for anywhere close to an affordable amount for even a middle-class person, please post a link and specify what it can do.
There a big gap between a tool that can spew out large amounts of code and something you trust to not screw up your house. Once I can tell a robot to do a simple plumbing task in my house, I'll believe in this metamorphosis you're talking about.
Even if we just have AI that can do every job that can be remote that would be hugely disruptive. I think you're right that plumbing is safe for a bit. Human hands are insanely dexterous
Well even 40k spent 20k years living like the jetsons... There are no analogs for our future. That's one of the core problems here, you have powerful individuals who identify with and aspire to sci-fi, while living in denial of reality. I would argue someone like Musk is more blue pilled and in the Matrix than they think they are...
> robotic servants that can do everything for everyone.
Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast enough to make me think there will be a robot servant doing anything for anyone in my lifetime. As has been the case for the past fifty years or so, they're either hyperspecialized or remote controlled by people, and neither of those spell doom for the economy.
Honest question, did you foresee the last 2 or 3 years happening as fast as they have?
Edit: In terms of AI/LLM's etc..
Indeed. The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space, it's game over.
We don't need to engineer plumbing robots - they will engineer themselves. We will see a silicon Cambrian Explosion. Maybe next year maybe in 500, but it's inevitable with the current economic incentives.
This is so closely related to a comment I just made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49470026 that I am going to just risk and repost it.
> This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least.
.... 3 responses ....
> Thats totally fair, and TBH - I am also very concerned for my wellbeing as well; I and many others are not doing so well because, in my case I no longer see this "vapid" state of existence as ephermial. I have been reading more and more; I guess looking ot knowledge as some eort of ends vs a means to an end for once. Camus, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dostoevsky's underground man etc...
Camus: The universe was always going to stay silent when you demand meaning from it; the answer isn't a better metric, it's to push the rock anyway ("imagine Sisyphus happy").
Dostoevsky [underground man]: Refusing to be a piano key in someone's optimized Crystal Palace
Stokely Carmichael: "Racism is not a question of attitude, it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism."
My conclusion: AI didn't take our meaning, It made me realize I have always been looking in the wrong place and thus reacting ignoratly when I felt "denied" this thing I feel entitled to.
Love.
Edit: Love; paradoxically, ive felt both entitled to and unworthy of so I'm not sure WTF to do with that.
To wit: Our love of self is so closely tied to our output and if we have no output do we have value?
Edit: tl;dr - I am not sure I understand the point of anything anymore and many others feel the same way. I do not think this is some "existential crisis" I believe it is a logical conclusion to draw given the evidence presented by the day and age we live in.
Or, we can go back to reality and observe that people are not obsolete and all human work was not eradicates
Then we can take down monopolies, tax large corporations, regulate them, empower anti white colar crime agencies again and regulate finance.
That will actually do. Bullshitters and sociopaths are too empowered. That is an issue, and acute one.
Something I never thought would happen: ultra-conservative Moms For Liberty and progressive education campaigners agree on something. Namely "get that AI out of our schools".
The Butlerian Jihad has started.
Just remember it will more likely be the version from Dune Encyclopedia, not Herbert's sons' prequels
It makes me wonder how the powers will be will manage to split this issue into powerless factions like they did for Occupy Wall St.
Lasr time it was identity politics, I think they'll use trans as the wedge for these groups.
> The Butlerian Jihad has started.
I'll let you know when it's time
Can't wait for a society dependent on spice and which is still controlled those with political (or super human) powers.
The progressive you speak about are conserving the ideologies they thought were revolutionary.
The conservatives you speak about are conserving ideologies they thought were revolutionary.
What both have in common is that they don't like change.
Vibecoding and viberegulation
For one thing, saying the quiet part out loud takes the covers off: https://www.artisan.co/blog/stop-hiring-humans
For another, apply AI where it's good but stop forcing it where it doesn't belong. Ask the users, they know.
SV is also in denial that AI is the final straw that makes people leave the Internet.
The industry needs messengers that can put out a positive vision that also aren’t creepy or skeezy seeming dudes. I don’t think Zuck’s WSJ manifesto convinced anyone, plus he’s a terrible messenger.
The industry needs to come to grips with the fact that many, many people either have no use for or actively despise GenAI.
Why should they worry about the people that are not going to give them money and likely wont ever be convinced to? They don't need to capture literally every person or whole industries to be successful.
Non creepy people were rejected by billionaires class, they just dont fit in. And conversely, non creepy people also avoid the tech bro creepy singularity is here crowd.
When the bubble bursts and tens of millions of people see their retirement accounts with S&P holdings drop 30%, that's when the knives will really come out.
I'm puzzled how people who didn't care about Snowden are suddenly very upset about Flock. I'm glad they finally decided the 4A is important.
My take is that the difference is simply down to visibility, and by extension broader understanding, of the issue:
- Cameras film me and my family and neighbors everywhere in daily life => Obviously an issue
- Something about secret agencies maybe (?) reading along my messages => “I’ve got nothing to hide in there anyway”
100%. Articles about obscure codename operations is a lot harder to grasp than "You are tracked at all times via your phone and license plate and here are the images to prove it".
It's the same as how communities respond to egregious law enforcement abuses. Accusations get nowhere as opposed to undeniable video of things like George Floyd.
“See that thing? It’s watching you” vs. some complicated story about room 641a… I agree, it makes a degree of sense.
Optics and zeitgeist.
The Snowden leaks had too much of an abstract bogeyman. PRISM couldn't inspire critical mass outrage because, at the time, Big Tech was still genuinely useful and, besides, the Big Tech involved could be sidestepped with some inconvenience. Flock is neither directly useful nor avoidable unless you resolve to never leave your house.
Metadata tracking is, again, too abstract of a concept, too much a statistical what-if. Compare that with Flock which tracks your very countenance.
Most importantly IMO, Flock has a physical manifestation on which people can direct their anger. There is a "frontend" to actively subvert as opposed to a mere "backend" to avoid.
Lots of people cared, it just wasn’t actionable. The situation with flock has avenues for change in town hall meetings or even good ol fashioned vandalism.
Dragnet surveillance by the CIA was a bit harder to oppose.
I'm not. The same people who seemingly magically cared about Flock overnight will move onto something else within the year. There's always something new to be outraged over, Flock is just the flavor of the week.
Are you trying to dismiss Flock and the like as not worthy of outrage?
I think this taps in to why big tech companies are unconcerned as well. How many of these people who oppose data centers have stopped utilizing their outputs? How many of these anti AI folks are using AI either at work or in their personal lives? It's just hot to hate AI right now.
It is more concrete now. For example the footage that was released about the Kirk shooter showed that you are filmed everywhere, including in residential areas.
People are beginning to understand.
Is that the case? It seems to me that the people who cared about Snowden are basically the same people who care about Flock. Most of the people I know who didn't like Snowden also don't seem to care about Snowden. I do find it interesting / strange that conservatives (of which I am somewhat) don't care about Snowden or Flock. To me, the things Snowden revealed, and the crap Flock is doing are completely incompatible with the way I think government should function. But, maybe I'm more libertarian than conservative.
If my local groups are any indication the flock stuff is angering both the left and the right, perhaps for different reasons. Same with datacenters.
The datacenter meeting for our board was the largest I've ever seen in town. They had to move it to the school auditorium when 1000+ people showed up the first time.
The world (I guess politics, but more broadly how you envision society to fundamentally function) is far more broad and nuanced than the silly (American) liberal vs conservative buckets.
Just adding a “libertarian vs. authoritarian” axis to both labels changes things up wildly. And shows me at least a little bit how someone can label themselves conservative and also be totally fine with the surveillance state. Or totally against it.
Libertarians are frequently authoritarians. Maybe even overwhelmingly so. What they dont like are restrictions on their controlling impulses.
My theory is generational and knowledge shifts, namely that now we're seeing the first substantial cohort of non-techies with a decent understanding of tech culture and politics. This is also why we see a lot more anti-AI and anti tech CEO sentiment among the young than the old in defiance of our previously held assumptions.
This is about the right time for the children, nieces, and nephews of the first and second big generations of post-Web software engineers, IT workers, etc. to be getting old enough to become a political force. There's been an explosion of tech workers since the mid-90s, and that means an explosion of people related to them as well. The kids who watched their parents be stacked ranked at Amazon, saw the difference in how MS treated contractors and employees, listened to their corporate IT parents talk about how hostile MS is, etc. all learned that the big tech companies are not anyone's friend even if the specifics of the tech go over their heads. And while the workers themselves might keep their heads down and be quiet in public for the sake of their careers, their kids and relatives are less constrained.
And they can talk to each other and find that it's a common sentiment. Since they don't necessarily have technical careers or hobbies, they're also able to export this sentiment to a wider variety of people through overlapping hobbies and interests (e.g. the IT guy at a school in suburban Ohio has a kid who's a theatre nerd, and the kid is good at communicating their anti big tech position to this 'new' group of people).
The distribution of knowledge about how tech companies operate is shifting and diffusing into channels and communities it didn't before.
Observation of your body feels more intrusive than observation of your text.
I thought this was going to be about h1b and the severe backlash ycombinator partners are facing online.
Nah those articles are rarely allowed to make it to the top
If any one follows culture wars, they'd know that a widespread and mostly crude backlash like this will inevitably trigger the correction and the correction will have a stronger inertia.
You must never play your hand like this or you risk being dunked on for your excessiveness.
2020's woke was like this btw.
There is no equivalence. There is a mass of people who are concerned about "woke." The people who are emotionally invested in AI's success are a tiny minority who have no power to push a backlash.
Hmm wait a minute, unless that small minority is politically well connected with a lot of media access. Then they could manufacture a fake backlash. Much like the backlash to "woke!" Ok nevermind it is the same.
"its the same but in a more nuanced way that you didn't consider"