Artificial Intelligence In Our Lives

[BillyJoeJimBob]

...And instead of Apple making stronger junk/spam mail/text/call filters –or adapting Messages' "Delete and Report Spam" button, or maybe fixing all of the deep problems in MacOS that continually spam Console, they're focusing on a generative wallpaper app.

 

[Huntn]

What’s so funny about this quote is that we’ve had machines that do our laundry and dishes for many decades now.

Automation is used to increase efficiency and reduce human drudgery. What about replacing livelihoods?

 

[Huntn]

Have a lot of you reading this thread read Manna by Marshall Brain? Seems apropos

I have not read the book, but the exerpt on your linked page, interesting. What are the 2 Views of Humanity’s future?
As we currently exist, we must choose a profession that provides income. As machines/ automation replace more and more jobs, what was the good paying jobs, taking care of challenging stuff, what is a population of say 400M, do to support themselves? How do we keep this system based on monetary flow going? 🤔

 

[ReliableSource]

I have not read the book, but the exerpt on your linked page, interesting. What are the 2 Views of Humanity’s future?
As we currently exist, we must choose a profession that provides income. As machines/ automation replace more and more jobs, what was the good paying jobs, taking care of challenging stuff, what is a population of say 400M, do to support themselves? How do we keep this system based on monetary flow going? 🤔

It’s really a short story, not a novel; the whole thing is just 8 chapters and they’re all available on that site for free.

But the gist is: America uses the ever-advancing tech to completely replace human workers, and a few rich people get to enjoy being rich while the rest of humanity gets sent to small areas where they’re provided food and shelter for free but it’s not too far off from prison.

Australia uses the ever-advancing tech to completely replace human workers, but there they do essentially socialism and people are allowed to pursue whatever they want, freely using the technology themselves. Their society becomes much more advanced because people get to spend time on whatever passion projects they find interesting since they don’t have to “work.”

It reminds me of a post I saw online that said something like “if people didn’t have to have jobs, you know there would be so many people who would obsessively fix every leaky pipe in a ten-mile radius just for fun.”

Like sure, AI might be able to fully replace human workers some day, but that can either lead to some kind of UBI where people can do whatever they want since there’s no need for humans to work, or it can lead to a few oligarchs controlling all the wealth and resources and leaving the rest of us to a Mad Max or Hunger Games or Pick Your Dystopian Nightmare scenario.

And in our current state and system, I feel like the wind is certainly blowing a particular way

 

[Mainsail]

Automation is used to increase efficiency and reduce human drudgery. What about replacing livelihoods?

You mean like when sailing ships were replaced by steamships and sailmakers and rope beaters lost their livelihoods? Or, maybe you are referring to almost 600 years ago when the printing press replaced the livelihoods of scribes? What about when indoor plumbing replaced the livelihoods of chamber maids? There are thousands and thousands of examples of technology replacing livelihoods.

 

[Happy_John]

I admit that I use ChatGPT and Grok regularly. They help with basic tasks, other than that, I try to avoid AI.

That's not really avoiding AI.

 

[ClaraStahlbaum]

That's not really avoiding AI.

And your problem with that is?

 

[mscriv]

But, but, but ... If someone has mental health issues, how can such a someone be expected to set the correct, strong boundaries for usage of an AI counselor? That is illogical. Ergo, AI should never be used as a therapist.

I’m a therapist and I approve this message. 😂

 

[MicroLab]

Automation is used to increase efficiency and reduce human drudgery. What about replacing livelihoods?

Yes I know. But you don’t need ai to do your laundry and dishes. We’ve had laundry machines and dishwashing machines for decades.

 

[ReliableSource]

What’s so funny about this quote is that we’ve had machines that do our laundry and dishes for many decades now.

View attachment 2631437
Yes I know. But you don’t need ai to do your laundry and dishes. We’ve had laundry machines and dishwashing machines for decades.

Sure, but come on, take the quote in the spirit that was intended: there are still manual parts of using dishwashers and washers/dryers that aren't automated yet, and instead of working on that, these companies are all just pushing generative slop.

I'm sure I've posted about it before, but my theory is that part of the reason all this bad generative AI art is being pushed on us so hard is because art is subjective, and indeed, (intentional) imperfections are part of the charm of a lot of beloved art. So these companies can ship software that produces art nobody likes while saying "this is the worst it will ever be," forever kicking the can down the road. For years, AI proponents have been saying that we're so close to it being able to make a movie and "Hollywood is cooked," but it still can't even get close to The Polar Express.

Meanwhile, what I'd really like is an AI agent that can file my taxes for me. But what LLM out there can actually do that without making mistakes? The stuff that a lot of people would actually like to use AI for requires precision that it doesn't seem anywhere close to being capable of. But these companies can't fundraise on "This thing will get you audited if you let it do your taxes, but this is the worst it will ever be!"

 

[MicroLab]

Sure, but come on, take the quote in the spirit that was intended: there are still manual parts of using dishwashers and washers/dryers that aren't automated yet, and instead of working on that, these companies are all just pushing generative slop.

I'm sure I've posted about it before, but my theory is that part of the reason all this bad generative AI art is being pushed on us so hard is because art is subjective, and indeed, (intentional) imperfections are part of the charm of a lot of beloved art. So these companies can ship software that produces art nobody likes while saying "this is the worst it will ever be," forever kicking the can down the road. For years, AI proponents have been saying that we're so close to it being able to make a movie and "Hollywood is cooked," but it still can't even get close to The Polar Express.

Meanwhile, what I'd really like is an AI agent that can file my taxes for me. But what LLM out there can actually do that without making mistakes? The stuff that a lot of people would actually like to use AI for requires precision that it doesn't seem anywhere close to being capable of. But these companies can't fundraise on "This thing will get you audited if you let it do your taxes, but this is the worst it will ever be!"

Sorry, the laundry dishes example is still too funny to me. How much “labor” would that actually save for the average person, 20 minutes a day? It’s a solved problem already. Is this what’s stopping her from writing her novel?

ChatGPT saved me a ton of time with my accountant and small business because I could check the reasoning as it went.

AI is very useful as a supervised workflow thingy. It’s much less convincing as a magical agentic autonomous precision machine or whatever you’re asking for.

Also, ChatGPT still can’t write a novel you’d actually want to read and it’s not a “just wait six months” problem. That’s not how the thing works.

 

[maxoakland]

I think we need to start advocating more loudly for shared prosperity.

A fortunate tiny percentage of the population rug pulling the rest of us for their own gain isn't supposed to be the end game of technologies this transformative.

How do you think we can advocate more for shared prosperity? I like the idea a lot

 

[maxoakland]

Sorry, the laundry dishes example is still too funny to me. How much “labor” would that actually save for the average person, 20 minutes a day? It’s a solved problem already. Is this what’s stopping her from writing her novel?

ChatGPT saved me a ton of time with my accountant and small business because I could check the reasoning as it went.

AI is very useful as a supervised workflow thingy. It’s much less convincing as a magical agentic autonomous precision machine or whatever you’re asking for.

Also, ChatGPT still can’t write a novel you’d actually want to read and it’s not a “just wait six months” problem. That’s not how the thing works.

According to data, checking AI’s work is slower than just doing it yourself for most things, like code for example

 

[maxoakland]

We've already seen material medical breakthroughs come from AI. It could be argued that every step forwards in technology is a step towards techno-geddon. I get it. But do we just stop trying to advance?

When a technology is as harmful as AI? Yes. We don’t need the world to move faster. We don’t need society to move faster. We don’t need to “progress”

What we need is a more equal, fair society that spreads resources in a way that actually benefits people. AI is moving us away from that, not toward it

 

[maxoakland]

...And instead of Apple making stronger junk/spam mail/text/call filters –or adapting Messages' "Delete and Report Spam" button, or maybe fixing all of the deep problems in MacOS that continually spam Console, they're focusing on a generative wallpaper app.

Seriously good point. Either GenAI is a failed technology that can’t be adapted to do anything useful or Apple’s software team can’t even imagine the most basic use cases that would actually be useful

I wonder which one it is

 

[turbineseaplane]

We don’t need the world to move faster. We don’t need society to move faster. We don’t need to “progress”

No kidding. When people advocate for that, I don’t even know what they think we are racing towards?

There is no race to win. There is no end point.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

According to data, checking AI’s work is slower than just doing it yourself for most things, like code for example

Interesting. Do you have one or more sources for that? In these forums, we often see people stating they get significantly improved productivity using Claude tools, but, who has actually done full project comparisons?

 

[MicroLab]

According to data, checking AI’s work is slower than just doing it yourself for most things, like code for example

Not if you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing (like me)

 

[turbineseaplane]

Not if you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing (like me)

Doesn’t that also mean you’re gonna have no idea if what it’s doing is correct or has other issues?

 

[turbineseaplane]

Seeing more and more stuff like this.
Not good.

 

[Howard2k]

Not if you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing (like me)

It does depend on the task too. I had a repetitive task I needed to complete over and over, and it was a manual and burdensome task.

I had AI write a macro to do the work for me, then I had AI write another macro do double check the work of the first macro.


I may be wrong, but I think the overwhelming portion of the negativity on AI comes from people who don't know how to use AI. Not all, but a significant amount.

Just like the datacentre noise.

Driven by ignorance and conspiracy.

 

[Flowstates]

I use AI for most of my professional function and have a pretty good grip on the science behind it (Academically).

The last 8 months have been a complete shift in capability, with an extremely big caveat that there needs to be formal verification to the result in order to make the results actually useable (whether that formal verification is part of the training process, or during "Test time compute" which is when the model reasons and bounces on it's own thread).

This is the main reason that we still don't see the exponential that we see with Programming elsewhere is that some fields are innately harder to create a formal verification system for.

The models have gained orders of magnitudes of capability (that is if you agree as capability in autonomy to affect change in a given bounded context measured by autonomous time with no outside input and output quality.) Yet the still fail in ridiculous manners, eg. Hallucinations (that are driven by its inability to understand which set of information to retrieve the optimal gradient from, eg. external tool use vs internal model knowledge).

The real productivity for myself has skyrocketed, as did the confidence and ability to tackle bigger problems.

The flip side of this faustian bargain has been a growing distrust for any contemporary unit of information published in a non-trusted environnement. An inability to forsee and apprehend the future more than 6 months out. Intense dread at the scale of incoming societal disruption and growing pessimism into our ability to process it as an empathic society.

With the deepest cut being the downright demotion to pointlessness of certain pursuits; writing, visual arts and music have become unsustainable as anything else than dilettante musing.

And I for once fear for the spirit of community when we all become intermediated by stochastic artifacts, our embodied sensitivities displaced by gradients ran by corporations for profit.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The real productivity for myself has skyrocketed

I guess I would ask if this is ultimately, actually, a net good in any way beyond "metric go up"?

Lately (in recent years) I'm feeling like everyone is trying to run faster and faster in some race, with no finish line or even intermediate goal.

It just seems to be "lets boil the planet, our lives, our sanity, our work/life balance, to do MOAR".

Why?
"Who knows ... just MOAR!"

 

[turbineseaplane]

So much of this tech enables such awfulness.
It's really sad to watch

How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart

After five teen girls were targeted by AI-generated child sexual abuse material, Radnor Township High School in Pennsylvania has become a case study in how schools and police around the country grapple with how to response to deepfake crimes involving children.

www.404media.co

 

[Flowstates]

I guess I would ask if this is ultimately, actually, a net good in any way beyond "metric go up"?

Excellent question.

If you mean productivity as unit output by unit time, yes definitely. I just finished the work that was piloted by a team of contractors for 6 months alone in 3 (that being said, the scenario was in the goldilocks of what was optimal for models to manipulate).

Nevertheless, it took some experimentation to get there and verification is still a real cost given that current systems still collapse under complexity.

Now to address the second part of your statement, assuming a new equilibrium where everyone has access to such tools and you are assuming similar ability to yours from your competitors. No inherent moat (lasting business advantage in a market) can be created from the use of the technology itself.

You either create a lasting business advantage from being enabled in a tertiary function from the systems or cutting overhead. Most leadership is not capable enough to successfully pivot to achieve the first, hence why we are seeing widespread overhead cut.

Unless we start seeing material advances in materials sciences from the technology (which has transformative effects in healthcare, construction and engineering that would unlock more than just automation. As in the dichotomy between automation and transformative change (which leads to a net benefit).

We just added ressource overhead for power centralization and surveillance with no obvious quantitative benefit to humans (That is in the mass of productivity added to society under the assumption that the work that was then done by a thread of human intelligence is now being done by a computational thread with a radically different consumption and externality profile).

The answers to those issues are political, IP attribution, externalities mitigation (Pollution, Displacement, Social Change, Climate Change).

Yet we have just shifted into an era where the political for the masses has become pantomime, hence the pessimism.