I hope OpenAI will prove its usefulness in stealing joy from mathematicians, engineers, and biologists this time. It feels like there's a chance of warmer feedback this time from everyone out there keeping an eye on what they do.
Personally I would forgive all of the joy being stolen by AI if they discover something fundamental and outstanding that would help all of us.
> stealing joy from mathematicians, engineers, and biologists
This is the weakest possible rationalization against the AI takeover. Solving real world problems isn’t “stealing joy”. Those problems shouldn’t be gatekept. It paints our scientists as rent seekers.
This comment totally misunderstands why scientists get into science. Let me tell you, it isn't the money. It is for the joy of exploring the frontier. LLM's are taking this from us. Maybe they will be better than us but I'm not sure how many scientists will get into science for the joy of being an understudy to an LLM.
Yes, exploration is exactly why I enjoy research. Knowledge is, after all, the final frontier.
(Space is NOT the final frontier; sorry Trekkies. The real barrier to space is the ability to traverse non-trivial expanses of space in human time, and that will only be solved by Science.)
And when it comes to AI in research, we have just been handed a relativistic starship to explore the boundaries of our knowledge, instead of the paddle boats we've been using all this time. I would choose to adapt and try to harness this new power rather than mourn the loss of paddling.
It doesn’t misunderstand, it just treats that as irrelevant, which it is.
If you could press a button and obliterate the joy experienced by every professional at their work, in exchange for a 1% boost in marginal productivity for the next 2 quarters, would you do it?
More to the point, what if the button gives a 10% quarterly boost in productivity for the next 100 quarters. But 80% of the professionals get fired and the other 20% have harder jobs that feel more managerial. Then, yeah I would press it.
What is your plan for the 80% of people losing their jobs in this scenario? Tough luck?
Do you think all those professionals are going to be grateful to finally know the secrets of the universe despite being jobless?
By the time we know the secrets of the universe, the concept of "jobs" would be an ancient, vestigial footnote in our evolutionary history. I mean, if I knew the secret to faster-than-light travel I'd not be hunched over here pecking away at computers! ;-)
In fact, I suspect most of the "jobs" left eventually would be around extracting those secrets out of the universe and making them work for humanity. Which is probably a much better use of human intellect than pretty much anything we do today.
That may be the future we want to end up in, but we'll only get there eventually. Unfortunately, in today's world we neither know the secrets of the universe nor can we survive without jobs. So until society reorients itself towards that future, we are going to have a lot of upheaval.
You already know about DNA, black holes, and the precise age of the universe, yet you still have a job. Do you think that would change if we knew more?
Nobody is going to pay human rates to do the stuff that AI can do for much cheaper either! The quip about jobs being vestigial was also a tongue-in-cheek indication that Economics as we know now also will not apply.
This leaves only one area for humans to expand into: towards the things machines cannot do, which often involve things that neither humans or machines currently understand.
Fortunately, that's basically everything. We know about black holes, but we still don't know enough to figure out FTL travel. We know DNA but we don't know enough to cure cancer, let alone how to reverse aging. We know a negligible fraction of the secrets of the universe, and it would be a much better use of human intellect to figure those out than filling out TPS reports.
Unfortunately, current society is not set up for that future -- essentially where everybody is either a scientist or an artist, both historically terribly-paying jobs requiring a very specific mindset and an appetite for abject uncertainty -- and that's where the upheaval happens.
I think more than you imagine while understanding that it’ll be detrimental to their living.
I'd do it in exchange for nothing, the sooner human labor is rendered obsolete the better.
I'm afraid this only serves to more vividly depict scientists as rent-seeking
I understood them to be arguing that AI models are taking away the joy of certain things like mathematics but not producing commensurate value for humanity. We have a lower bound on twin primes, but that doesn't improve life for anybody, and the cost of getting the bound was removing human involvement from a lot of mathematical research, which was a source of joy for some portion of the human race. If all of this leads to curing major diseases without an AI takeover, it will have been worth it. But if it doesn't, then the ends don't necessarily justify the means.
> Solving real world problems isn’t “stealing joy”
Well, pretty good amount of the training data was stolen. Not only from the repositories without a license, but also archives of books, and they even steal training from each other. Funny enough, they still blame each other for stealing. I don't mind if you think your joy is not stolen. But I mind if you insist when your opinion is the only right one and joy has definitely not been stolen. It's quite sensitive territory starts here, and I don't think anyone (incl.yourself) has a right to speak for everyone in that regard.
I keep hearing these analogies to "rent seekers" - particularly with mathematics.
I just don't understand it. No mathematician would be upset if a total amateur solves a centuries old problem - even one they've worked their whole life on. They cheer and celebrate it.
Nor do they oppose the spread of math knowledge.
Nor do they have high salaries. Nurses make more.
Where is the "rent seeking"?
Yeah evidently wanting to be paid for and enjoy the career you’ve worked to achieve is rent seeking now
“AI shouldn’t make groundbreaking advancements because the scientists who otherwise wanted to make those advancements feel sad”.
All those scientists can go pound sand as far as I am concerned. I don’t give a shit about “joy” I care about curing diseases and solving the universe’s mysteries. If AI can get us there faster then I’m 100% for it.
Until there are no more scientists...
> I don’t give a shit about “joy”
Exactly. Fuck these selfish pieces of shit for delaying me getting administered heroin in a cube until the heat death of the universe.
> I don’t give a shit about “joy”
> solving the universe’s mysteries.
What do you get out of solving the universe's mysteries then? Ennui?
Hopefully not dying with an insufferable disease.