Comment by HEmanZ
1 month ago
The fear isn’t about now, it’s about trajectory. Everyone’s existential dread would evaporate if this is where it stops.
The dread is: where does this stop? Right now, with ai I can fly. But when does ai no longer need me? Just as an extreme example: a this pace, how far are we from “AI agent, here’s our assets, make money”? If every year 50% of the job disappears, how long until there is no human-ai team, just ai.
Idk, this conversation is endlessly frustrating, because people seem to have so much certainty one way or another about the future. Fear comes from not knowing more than anything.
Yeah, some people are is saying "Oh coding is solved, but we still need people to guide the architecture."
But coding was "solved" by self-play against "small" problems. Is there any reason training couldn't be scaled up to even longer horizon tasks like evolving an architecture in a growing business? The increasing load from a growing business, both in terms of usage and product accretion, can be entirely simulated in a data-center, and therefore trained against.
If there is no jobs, there is no modern economy in today's sense and "money" costs nothing.
That will trigger very interesting consequences.
There is a sort of conceit here that tech is everything. There doesn't need to be "no jobs", it could just (or mostly) be the tech sector that is impacted and jobs are displaced. In the history of concentrated sector losses, the US public hasn't been kind to those displaced. The world marches on, no matter how important we think we are.
You are right, my answer was meant for parent's "“AI agent, here’s our assets, make money”" and "If every year 50% of the job disappears, how long until there is no human-ai team, just ai.". I mean it in a broader sense than just IT workers. The world will be fine without us if that's where it all stops.
If at some point most enterprises run as "agent, make me money" without any humans, then money is a dead concept.
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So far LLM’s have been really bad at creating the most important things in life. Like food, shelter, security, electricity, water, medical breakthroughs, better politics, better connection etc. etc. etc.
So AI’s will have some impact on the economy but it’s debatable how much and how long it will take.
We’ve had them for like 3 years. It feels a lot like saying “internet won’t do much” in 1996
Why would no jobs mean no money?
We use money to exchange resources (actual or promised) in form of credit to each other.
If most of the population doesn't participate in the exchange, money is worthless. You can make numbers, but those are meaningless without the underlying exchange.
It's effectively a disruption of a modern society.
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The imagery is vivid. Am I flying? Or being carried away by some kind of bird?
How hard will I hit the ground if it drops me?