Comment by lsy
7 hours ago
I imagine this is like how microwaves put restaurants out of business, how TTS obviated literacy, how the automobile age made it unnecessary to walk, how Zoom caused every office to close, how helicopters put mountaineering firmly behind us, Amazon obsoleted brick and mortar stores, and payment cards made cash disappear.
It's not only ahistorical to fail to consider preferences and politics, but it's also an indictment of the author's ability to judge the quality of a machine output versus that of a competent person. No doubt that like any of the examples above, some displacement of resources and effort will happen. But that doesn't indicate that something as central as "thinking" (lol) will fade into the past.
Mechanisation/Mechanization of farming basically put 99% of farm-workers out of a job.
Banking apps closed 99% of high street banks (here in the UK at least).
Amazon is basically destroying the shopping high streets.
Technology has a way of disrupting what we've been doing for generations. I think the whole AI thing isn't made up - we're going to see rapid change in a very short time frame. Personally I'm trying my hardest to adjust, as I don't want AI to "happen" to me, by learning the skills that I can only predict will be important.
* Some figures may have been pulled out of the air :)
> Mechanisation/Mechanization of farming basically put 99% of farm-workers out of a job.
Stats like this get thrown around a lot but it's worth considering that the ABSOLUTE numbers might not actually change that much over time.
With agriculture specifically, we can make some rough estimates that, before mechanization (say, 1760-1800 period), there was maybe 10^9 people on Earth and they were all employed in agriculture. So ~10^9 farm-workers.
As of 2024, FAO estimates of global agricultural workforce put the total at about 892 million; call it ~9x10^8. [1]
So, more precise (but perhaps not much more accurate) to say that mechanization put 10% of farm workers out of a job, not 99%.
Now, it certainly IS true that mechanization allows (or forces, depending on your perspective) 90% of the population of Earth to do something other than farming, which is the real point you were making - Technology DOES have a way of disrupting what we've been doing for generations.
[1] https://www.fao.org/statistics/highlights-archive/highlights...
Something doesn't add up --
> The agricultural sector employed 892 million people worldwide in 2022, which corresponds to 26.2 percent of total employment.
However, in the USA:
> Direct on-farm employment accounted for about 2.6 million of these jobs, or 1.2 percent of U.S. employment.[1].
The USA grows enough food to feed itself[2], so this indicates that either the rest of the world still hasn't mechanized farming (possibly due to poverty/cheap labor), or that crops in the rest of the world are particularly resistant to mechanization. If the rest of the world was at the same level of mechanization as the USA, the total number of people employed would be about 5% of what it you cited.
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/58282 [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6041859/
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Yah - people get fooled by the drop in the relative percentage of the population when the absolute numbers are not actually changing that much. What is real is that the structure of overall society does change - food production becomes less of a concern and people shift their focus to producing other things - but it's wrong to imagine that food production is less important. It just becomes relatively well optimized and less economically productive (i.e. lower ROI for capital). You still need the food just as much.
I feel like we’re all scurrying away from a lava flow while saying, “oh this is going to be great for the environment’s health!”
>Banking apps closed 99% of high street banks (here in the UK at least).
I don't believe this is true. High street banks are still common. 99% closed means we previously had 100 times as many, which would be absurdly high. It's probably closer to 50% closed.
When I went to a bank recently, I discovered my local high street "bank" branch is now mostly just internet kiosks with an under-trained and probably underpaid assistant there between the handful of kiosks to help people log on to it.
It is nothing like the experience of growing up in the early 90's and what banks were then.
Consider that everyone did their banking in person and people dealt with a lot of cheques. Oh, and banks didn't tend to open at weekends, you had to find time during the week.
There was a need for a lot of tellers, and banks were incredibly busy places.
"99% closed" is obviously hyperbole, especially counting by branch, but if you were to count by tellers or by people visiting their bank, I could well believe it.
In my town they ALL closed. We previously had 6; we now have a community centre where two different banks operate personal banking consultations for one workday a week each, but they only do appointments, they don’t handle cash or do any banking.
If I want to visit a branch I need to go to the next city.
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Not just a matter of binary open/closed, though. In some countries now, in branches that remain open have slashed staff, leading to very long waiting times or the need to book an appointment in advance. Very different physical-location landscape than 15 years ago.
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Here's a recent article from the FT [1] (paywalled):
> Across the country, there are now barely 4,000 bank and building society branches, down 80 per cent in 40 years.
So, a big decline, but still 20x as many high street banks than what a 99% decline claims.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/10ce1086-a9ae-4851-92e4-3b6efc8a0...
> Amazon is basically destroying the shopping high streets.
A lot of people that I know would strongly prefer to go to some brick and mortar shop. The problem is: most of items that I buy on the internet (e.g. on Amazon) are simply not easily available in a shop in my town (and I am not living in a small town).
For example:
- lots of obscure scientific books that are written in German or even English (I live in Germany)
- similarly: lots of rather niche belletristic books (think into the direction: some obscure novel recommendation on HN) often in various foreign languages
N.B. It is true that an important reason why Amazon got big among early computer enthusiasts in Germany in the 90s is that it was one of the few ways for easily getting computer science textbooks delivered from the USA - though with long delivery times.
- 3D printing supplies (why doesn't there exist a brick an mortar store for this?)
- very niche indie games (they are by now basically all sold on Steam, GOG, Epic Store or itch.io)
- very specific parts for Maker projects
- ...
So, the situation is not that people necessarily want to buy on the internet or specifically Amazon, but rather that there exists barely any way to get what they want in a brick and mortar store in even large cities.
>The problem is: most of items that I buy on the internet (e.g. on Amazon) are simply not easily available in a shop in my town (and I am not living in a small town).
Because it is not cheap or available if its not made in China.
Risky move making a point that relies on made-up numbers.
At least in the US, there are roughly the same number of bank branches today as 20 years ago. And I think you would have to compare to hundreds of years ago to find anything like a 99% decline in farm laborers.
When it comes to banking, the US is an outlier in many ways; its diversity of banks (which may play a role in the survival of so many physical locations) doesn't necessarily apply to other countries where there may be only 4-5 full-scale banks and they have all taken extreme cost-cutting measures. In Finland, for example, physical bank branches started to be slashed well over a decade ago.
If we are making up numbers, I’d be willing to bet there are more farm laborers today than at the height of farming pre mechanization.
I’d make a similar bet for assembly programmers. People say “no one programs in assembly anymore”, but I’d guess today there are more assembly programmers than when everyone programmed assembly.
And people unthinkingly went along with it.
Technology, like AI, is a force multiplier. A lever.
It's not "technology did this or that", humans did using technology.
Selling stuff to people without them understanding the consequences is a technology, too.
All of those shifts you exaggerate here involved an accumulation of many technological and non-technological factors that spanned decades or more, occurred to different degrees in different places, and may not even prove a wholly stable and permanent change (at least in the case of consolidated e-commerce).
Society does indeed evolve over time, but it's only in 8th grade history surveys that it can be presented so simply as you take for granted above.
But travel agents…
…never mind.
I think there's another variable missing in this historical comparison. Farm workers were working hard, with very few affordance (tool, medicine) for subsistence. It's somehow justified to want to rise above sea level. Less so today. We're not struggling to survive to the point of needing yet another full skin shedding.
It's good to reduce pain, but not to kill everything. At least not in one fatal fell swoop.
> Amazon is basically destroying the shopping high streets.
Yet Ikea, H&M, etc are thriving. COVID was supposed to be the deathknell for brick and mortar retail but I'm fairly sure it's bounced back. Buying a lot of stuff will just always be better in person.
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And microwaves put housewives out of business (or …into it)
> Personally I'm trying my hardest to adjust, as I don't want AI to "happen" to me, by learning the skills that I can only predict will be important.
Since you're so certain of this impact "AI" will have, what "skills" do you "predict" are required on the human end of this?
I have to admit that's a rhetorical question to demonstrate the absurdity of your stance. Don't make my eyes roll out of my head by insisting that "AI is indeed an absurd change, but we must acknowledge... (blah blah)" or whatever and double down.
We've had years of these silly takes and we're all fed up with the mass-plagiarism machine. It's not science fiction. It's a big lookup table for sale and wrapped in lies, and no it's not equivalent to other computation by definition. I'm sure you could run some people out of business that way, but not all. When the job is done did we really achieve "AI", or just ruin the economy by taking advantage of the feeble minded?
Any politician has a massive opportunity here to enforce the law. It's only a question if they'll keep pretending to be blinded by the science.
> Since you're so certain of this impact "AI" will have, what "skills" do you "predict" are required on the human end of this?
Not Flere-Imsaho:
I think if one made a serious effort, one could easily find a well-founded answer to this question that is based on a solid rational foundation.
The problem rather is: people (often in decision positions, but also employees who fear for their jobs) don't act rationally on AI:
- For example, managers firing good programmers because programmers are to be replaced by AI. By now you can find many reports of companies who try to convince their programmers that they fired "because of AI" to come back.
- Similarly, panicking employees who demand irrational restrictions on AI. EDIT: with this I mean for example "legal restrictions on AI with on a pretense of say 'AI is too dangerous for the public'".
These very non-rational factors and irrational actions are very hard to predict.
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> how the automobile age made it unnecessary to walk
In many places they made it more difficult to walk. Not the existence of the machine mind you, but the intent to supplant every other method of transportation.
Side note, I did stop using motorized transport (due to the luxury of full remote jobs) and it's quite an eye opener. For places in a 3 miles radius, walking is often a full blown bonus. Less time, more fun, incredibly better for mental and somatic health. Morning and evening walks are priceless.
Mostly did this myself about 18 years ago. Walk most places, public transit other cases, cars only when necessary.
Zero. Regrets. Outside of the rare errand where I need serious cargo capacity, or visiting family, cars are only for fun now.
As a non-"car person" once agreed with me: "Yep, I hate COMMUTING in a car. But I love DRIVING."
Microwaves still produce low quality food, TTS is still slow and works poorly in loud environments, and in many parts of the USA, walking is a hobby (unless you mean walking to your car). Brick and mortar stores are definitely struggling, and cash has virtually disappeared from many parts of the world.
Are you arguing that AI companies will fail to achieve their goals, and perpetually be worse than human thought? That's currently a pretty fair bet, but if you're wrong it's got some heavy consequences.
> Are you arguing that AI companies will fail to achieve their goals, and perpetually be worse than human thought? That's currently a pretty fair bet, but if you're wrong it's got some heavy consequences.
I think this is really the crux of the issue, and in general I find the whole debate frustrating because it completely hinges on this point, and both sides seem extremely sure of their viewpoint with little evidence/data to back it up.
That is, if current AI approaches eventually "hit a wall" with respect to their capabilities (and many have argued that recently, specifically in respect to OpenAI's math results), then humans will still have primacy and all this talk of "thinking will become a hobby" is ludicrous. If, on the other hand, current approaches can scale into RSI and super intelligence, then yes, the world is going to look very different and strange (and scary, IMO). But just because AI has been advancing at a breakneck speed since 2017 doesn't necessarily mean it will continue to do so - I like the analogy that exponential growth and an S-curve look the same in the beginning.
So I guess what I'm saying is that unless one has some specific evidence that we're in "exponential growth land" vs. "S-curve land", it doesn't really make sense to take sides, because everything depends on that point.
> how the automobile age made it unnecessary to walk
Given how little Americans walk and how much blame their sedentary lifestyle has gotten for obesity and diabetes and so on, i don't think this is a good example.
EDIT: If anything it's something of a counter-example: of an activity that technology has made to a great degree superfluous, and which has to be added to one's lifestyle simply for the purpose of wellness.
It is actually a very good example, IMO. It shows that it is possible to offload important parts of humanity onto machines - and that it is, in such a case, also necessary to pay the costs of that offloading.
Bearing the burden of a civilization-wide illness such as obesity and diabetes is such a cost. But, hey, at least a large amount of the country is designed in a way that mandates commute via cars and makes "adding to one's lifestyle simply for the purpose of wellness" even more inconvenient.
The predominance of cars (and the alternative of mass transit) doesn't do anything to change the fact that some technology or technologies have scratched walking from many people's list of central activities, and that some people who have seen the ill effects of this change have found another, more or less corrective, place for it. I take that to be the author's meaning, and I agree with them that this would be a sad diminution of a fundamental human practice.
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You created an account just to say this? :(
If you're making the restaurant comparison, look at how many restaurants now just order everything premade from Sysco and "cook" it with a TurboChef™ convection-oven-microwave.
Some don't even bother to use more than a conventional microwave, which I've sometimes just sent back and asked for a refund.
Fairly sure convection ovens aren't microwaves. They use a standard resistive heater and a fan, totally different physics for heating.
it's a product of its own.
https://www.amazon.com/TurboChef-Electric-Countertop-Microwa...
Audiobooks replaced reading for a lot of people once those audiobooks became available on their smartphones, for others it was podcasts. For many, they walk only to and from their car.
I've saved no end of hours of transport thanks to Zoom and Teams meetings, and hybrid is now a thing (just not for me).
Bricks and mortar stores around here have been empty for years in some cases, and I'm the last person in the office who carries cash.
You do realize that a number of those are true right?
Cash is dead in many places. Stores all around me have "cash not accepted" signs.
For many Americans walking is dead. Sad but true. Cities got designed or redesigned to be car first.
Amazon put numerous types of stores out of business. There are entire categories of products that can now only be bought online.
> Cash is dead in many places. Stores all around me have "cash not accepted" signs.
Side note, but here in Australia smaller stores are starting to preference cash again due to high card fees that legally cannot be (directly) passed into the customer.
All this says is that America has been specifically altered by those prior advancements, and nothing on the rest of the worlds or their handling of LLMs
When those things did happen, how much of that was because people had multiple options and chose one of them over the other?
I think the solution is in education. Do not teach people about the things that are useful right now. Teach people to value the things that make their lives better.
I'm ok with thinking as a hobby. That's doing it because you value it. If there are not enough people doing it, the problem is that they don't value it or don't know how to value it.
thanks, I was starting to feel "wat? yes! totally"
Automobiles partially killed walking; e-scooters are here to all but finish the job. Walking is going to be a purely indoor activity done within buildings for most people and a hobby for outdoorsy types.
> Walking is going to be a purely indoor activity done within buildings for most people and a hobby for outdoorsy types.
That's ridiculous.
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walking is a nice way to experience your surroundings at a gentle pace that might allow for surprising, inspiring interactions or discoveries
or even the chance to practice smiling while greeting a stranger
Only maybe in US, more probably only in some weird micro bubble you live in. Otherwise all you write is false obscure projection. Maybe go outside more? Its pretty healthy also mentally
yeah but credit cards are since the 70s, that's 50 years ago
what are you gonna do, be an AI bro for 50 years telling me "just one more year bro"?
I'm already 30, I'm not gonna live till 80 reading unbearable ai bro comments.
None of them are true. They might be almost true in little bubbles of the West. Will those bubbles expand and encompass the world? Personally I doubt it.
China is not a Western bubble. Mobile payment is the norm.
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in Germany its the opposite, "cash only" :)
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Seriously, how can people read this and take it serious lmfao
Your argument is like Terrence Tao’s yesterday for Math 2.0 - “don’t you want to understand your cancer treatment?” Simple answer “I couldn’t give a flying f**” you give a series of examples that span over 100 years, and imply that the progress over the last 6-12 months is just another instance. It’s a contrarian ignorance, but in reality nobody cares about snowflake thinking except your family, friends and art lovers. That’s why Etsy crafts are irrelevant compared to steadily improving cheap quality you get for the most products they you rely on every day - none of them depend for production on someone’s “craft” it’s simple economics driving them instead. Realize that the process happens now for thinking - and useful to distinguish hubris from reality.
> Nobody cares about snowflake thinking
> Steadily improving cheap quality you get for the most products
Have you proof read what you wrote? With your lack of specificity for the word "thinking", you're casting a rather broad argument; there is a troubling implications between your words.
* Trust what you're told, consume what you're sold; Do as you're bid, do as you're told.
* Don't question the script, don't step out of line; keep your "snowflake thinking" benign.
* The market knows best, so don't second-guess; Our Ford will provide, just consume and say yes.
Fooooord!^[1]
- [1] Brave New World; by Aldous Huxley
> Have you proof read what you wrote?
yes, but not in a meaningful way
> With your lack of specificity for the word "thinking", you're casting a rather broad argument;
that's intentional— specific = snowflake → broad = cattle. Same goes for craft vs at-scale manufacturing.
Also Ford was right about horses. Who's the horse now? I've been saying it from the horse perspective too for a while https://x.com/clehene/status/1768411925057347822
At the end of the day, your thoughts are important to everyone else but the "market"— you, your mom, etc. But the market doesn't care about your reasoning and hence can be "irrational" longer than you can be "right".
Also note that rational/irrational is a reasoning aspect. Automating it was on Aristotle's mind too.
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> how the automobile age made it unnecessary to walk
It made it unnecessary to ride a horse.
> Amazon obsoleted brick and mortar stores
Pretty much did.
> payment cards made cash disappear
Pretty much did in China. A good example how something seems essential for someone is just completely replaceable for the others.