Why Even Try If You Have A.I.?

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I really wish that machines could just take over at some point and we could be free of the pointless jobs we have.<p>There are two problems with this: machines can’t do that right now, despite everyone trying to make them, and somehow we humans are amazingly capable of inventing new and new jobs to do, because we somehow hate leisure.<p>Already almost a century ago Bertrand Russel observed in the Praise of Idleness that we have the capacity to greatly relieve ourselves from the burden of jobs, if not fully then enough to create the space to do excellent, intrinsically motivated things.<p>Alas, this never happens. We always have to invent some other job. And what’s the point of super AI (please forgive me for using this vague and misleading term, I’m doing so sarcastically) if it can’t even give us a minute more of time with our kids, or tinkering on our personal projects?

People ceasing to think because AI can &quot;reason&quot; sounds a lot like people ceasing to go outside and move because now jobs can be done from a computer screen, and so can tasks like grocery shopping, prescription filling, bill paying, services, clothing shopping, take-out food, and more. We lost something when we moved everything online - much of our physical health. I wonder if we won&#x27;t lose much of our mental health if we outsource physical, on-the-spot thinking to the virtual world, too.<p>Though of course, there is the argument that using calculators didn&#x27;t make us more mentally inept, so why would AI? But I&#x27;m not sure, this seems different.

The author opens with a story of building ramps and repeating endless combinations until they excel at ramp-building, expanding their possibilities through experimentation until they can say they’ve acquired quite some skill at ramp building.<p>Consider though, how many ramps would be built if each time they had to first design and injection-mould the ramps? This would slow iteration. Fortunately there are already ramps to play with. The ramps are a tool used to build ramp courses.<p>AI is also a tool, but it’s a tool for thinking at a certain level of abstraction. The author misses that infinite levels of abstraction exist in thought; in this way having tools of thought to lift you to higher levels lets you play in even more abstract thought-space.<p>Having AI for the basic bits of thought is like already having ramps ready to go.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but generative AI truly is the miracle solution to a lot of my problems. As a solo entrepreneur with a huge, multi-year project that was bordering on impossible to achieve alone, it has done wonders for my ability to follow through on my opportunities and ambitions.

I find that the concept of shifted &quot;worth&quot; was nicely done in the series The Orville[1]. This is a surprisingly deep series under a layer of comedy.<p>The idea is that a device that gives you whatever you want was discovered, and this completely changed the priorities for people. The one that became the most important was &quot;trust&quot;. You earn it, you lose it, you are defined by it. I like the concept.<p>I would be happy to not do a lot of things that are &quot;socially accepted&quot; - job, clean environment etc. and more focus on people relationships as a determinant.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Orville" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Orville</a>

For the inevitable comparison to the advent of the automobile.<p>You still have to think about how that introduction changed how humans lived. What are the changes that will happen here?<p>PS: I must add - we talk about LLMs as reasoning machines, but they are narrative machines. They do not reason because they do not have a model making mind. If the content generated is similar enough to expert output, it doesnt matter if it came from a parrot or from a person. Its &quot;good enough&quot; provided it passes inspection.<p>Any prognotication on our future work habits and mental resilience will have to recognize how verification is the crux of our physical and information economies.

Call me when AI will be able to shortlist 2 job offers ready to be accepted by me and then 2 affordable real estates nearby every job location. Until then don&#x27;t bother me with it.

After twenty years building out products in Silicon Valley I have come to the point where I have lost the plot. None of the projects at my last company seemed interesting, none of the projects I see other companies seem interesting. All AI, no substance.<p>So I’ll just sit at home and build robots till something interesting does pop up or my robots gain sentience and decide I’m the problem.

The fear of AI reminds me of the fear of automation, that it will replace us. Part of me understands, part of me doesn&#x27;t understand. Humanity has been dreaming of the future and writing about it for hundreds of years. It&#x27;s closer than ever, and a lot of people are terrified that we&#x27;re not going to have anything left to do.<p>That&#x27;s why I think it&#x27;s a matter of mindset. This is going to sound dumb, but I keep thinking about the interactions between Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark and Jarvis in Iron Man. That&#x27;s the AI I always wanted: something that could do deterministic (here&#x27;s the weather, here&#x27;s your schedule) and non-deterministic (research) things.<p>Jarvis wasn&#x27;t the inventor. Jarvis was a tool Tony used to invent things.

&gt; Now that machines can think for us<p>They don&#x27;t

What an overly verbose article.

AI does feel like it sucks the joy out of any human creative endavour by replacing it with effortless, good enough slop.<p>Why try to engage in the arts when you won&#x27;t be able to make a living as illustrator or musician because AI slop is good enough to feed the capital machine?<p>Why try to engage in engineering quality software when the power structure has decided that you better be using AI for it?<p>Why do anything that makes us think or exhibit any human qualities when it&#x27;s not the most cost effective way in our lovely capitalist AI dystopia?<p>All that&#x27;s going to be left for humans is going to be shitty manual labor that nobody wants to do - sweatshops coming back to the US again soon thanks to the Trump tarrifs! All the intellectually or creatively stimulating work is going away, sacrificed to the machine at the altar of mammon.