Comment by hn_throwaway_99
6 hours ago
Doesn't this seem to be where all domains are headed?
I get kinda freaked out when I feel like all the AI "utopianists" haven't taken the next logical step of thinking about what society looks like when humans are subpar in every domain (and you may argue this won't happen, though I'm becoming more and more a believer that it will, but my point is the utopianists believe that this absolutely will happen, and that it's also a wonderful thing). How motivated do you think folks will be to do the hard cognitive work to focus on things like math problems when there is a good chance AI will do it better?
I don't think humans necessarily become subpar when AI can do most of the work. Taking my own personal example, I have far more intellectual curiosity and improved my skills in programming far more with Claude Code than for 15 years of programming without AI simply because I was bogged down by boilerplate and grunt work. Now that AI handles most of the boilerplate and grunt work and can handle harder and harder problems, I have the time and space to work on unexplored frontier problems.
So, no, my skills have not become subpar, but have only become stronger because of the presence of AI.
> what society looks like when humans are subpar in every domain
> when AI can do most of the work
You're not really responding to the core hypothetical of his comment
To me it reads as that: for utopians, you may benefit from LLMs now, but they'll still surpass you later, what then ?
Doesn't the premise that there's something inferior about these AI solutions, imply that there is something superior about human intelligence and that there will continue to be some kind of useful work for humans to do?
> Doesn't the premise that there's something inferior about these AI solutions, imply that there is something superior about human intelligence and that there will continue to be some kind of useful work for humans to do?
Not necessarily. The "something superior about human intelligence" may have dependencies that "these AI solutions" are able to eliminate, such as the motivation to refine intellectual talent to a high level. Basically, AI could kick the ladder out from under human intelligence but be incapable of actually surpassing it in important ways, enabling a burst of advancement that's also a dead end. Sort of like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_stor....
So the AI could be inferior but there's still no useful work for humans, because the environment doesn't allow them to work up to that level anymore.
This is kinda feeling a bit like SBF's coin flip bet: https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-coin-flip-.... Achieve human-superior AGI this generation or humanity stagnates.