Yeah it’s fucked, our job has been destroyed from a fun team-based intellectual activity to being a button pusher. I imagine something similar happened to tailors who became factory sweatshop workers.
No point crying about it or coping that some bubble will pop and the genie will go back in the bottle. I’m pretty confident that’s not happening, though in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated, that society will look very different and probably won’t happen in my lifetime (it will for one, I predict bring back tailors too).
So here’s my solution, leave the field. If what you enjoyed most was creative problem solving then moving to a field that enables that is the best solution. Yes the next Ruby on Rails app will involve even lesser creativity than before, but is that the situation for the next good aeroplane? Flying car? Small modular nuclear reactor. I suspect just button pushing for that won’t work nearly as well and that’s my plan anyway.
>in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated
No, everything that can be automated SHOULD be automated, but the automation should benefit everyone instead of just the 0.1% (actually this percentile keeps getting smaller and smaller, so the percentage of people outside of the "permanent underclass" is probably even less than that now).
The problem about AI (at its current level, barring AI2027 type scenarios) is not about AI, but about the way we've organized society as a whole.
I've brought this up before, if the USSR existed today how would Soviet mathematicians react to AI? Would they be dismayed or overjoyed? You never see mathematicians acknowledge this point, but it's the crux of the issue. In our society employment justifies existence, in a society where existence is inherently justified AI would mean freedom to people instead of causing existential dread.
> I've brought this up before, if the USSR existed today how would Soviet mathematicians react to AI? Would they be dismayed or overjoyed? You never see mathematicians acknowledge this point, but it's the crux of the issue. In our society employment justifies existence, in a society where existence is inherently justified AI would mean freedom to people instead of causing existential dread.
Yeah, but even once we've achieved a society in which existence is inherently justified, some things are about the destination and some things are about the journey. We need to organize society around producing people and lives, good lives, as the final economic output. A person we "produce" under such a system will probably be highly skilled and want to participate in society's productive processes, because mastery and participation are real human needs for living a good life.
The question is how we distinguish between processes that are important to the people participating in them, and those that are not. Factory work was and is a massive improvement over subsistence farming, but no population in world history has been permanently satisfied spending their lives on the assembly line, so either we can take advantage of highly automated manufacturing to just have machines do the work or we can redirect automation towards re-involving human craftspeople into producing less interchangeable, higher-quality products (the market has been moving towards customizable commodities anyway).
I agree with your first paragraph. I myself do not use AI for my personal projects (such as the game engine I'm developing), and do not intend to do so in the future regardless of how far AI develops.
I'm not arguing in favor of a human existence that is completely based on consumption, but one that maximizes automation as much as possible for the benefit of society as a whole so that all human labor becomes voluntary. At that point people will decide which processes are important for them to participate in on their own.
sashank_1509 · · focus · HN ↗
No point crying about it or coping that some bubble will pop and the genie will go back in the bottle. I’m pretty confident that’s not happening, though in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated, that society will look very different and probably won’t happen in my lifetime (it will for one, I predict bring back tailors too).
So here’s my solution, leave the field. If what you enjoyed most was creative problem solving then moving to a field that enables that is the best solution. Yes the next Ruby on Rails app will involve even lesser creativity than before, but is that the situation for the next good aeroplane? Flying car? Small modular nuclear reactor. I suspect just button pushing for that won’t work nearly as well and that’s my plan anyway.
monospacegames · · focus · HN ↗
No, everything that can be automated SHOULD be automated, but the automation should benefit everyone instead of just the 0.1% (actually this percentile keeps getting smaller and smaller, so the percentage of people outside of the "permanent underclass" is probably even less than that now).
The problem about AI (at its current level, barring AI2027 type scenarios) is not about AI, but about the way we've organized society as a whole.
I've brought this up before, if the USSR existed today how would Soviet mathematicians react to AI? Would they be dismayed or overjoyed? You never see mathematicians acknowledge this point, but it's the crux of the issue. In our society employment justifies existence, in a society where existence is inherently justified AI would mean freedom to people instead of causing existential dread.
eli_gottlieb · · focus · HN ↗
Yeah, but even once we've achieved a society in which existence is inherently justified, some things are about the destination and some things are about the journey. We need to organize society around producing people and lives, good lives, as the final economic output. A person we "produce" under such a system will probably be highly skilled and want to participate in society's productive processes, because mastery and participation are real human needs for living a good life.
The question is how we distinguish between processes that are important to the people participating in them, and those that are not. Factory work was and is a massive improvement over subsistence farming, but no population in world history has been permanently satisfied spending their lives on the assembly line, so either we can take advantage of highly automated manufacturing to just have machines do the work or we can redirect automation towards re-involving human craftspeople into producing less interchangeable, higher-quality products (the market has been moving towards customizable commodities anyway).
monospacegames · · focus · HN ↗
I'm not arguing in favor of a human existence that is completely based on consumption, but one that maximizes automation as much as possible for the benefit of society as a whole so that all human labor becomes voluntary. At that point people will decide which processes are important for them to participate in on their own.