gerikson @ gerikson @awful.systems

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2 yr. ago

This is classic labor busting. If the relatively expensive, hard-to-train and hard-to-recruit software engineers can be replaced by cheaper labor, of course employers will do so.

A hackernews doesn't think that LLMs will replace software engineers, but they will replace structural engineers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43317725

The irony is that most structural engineers are actually de jure professionals, and an easy way for them to both protect their jobs and ensure future buildings don't crumble to dust or are constructed without sprinkler systems is to simply ban LLMs from being used. No such protection exists for software engineers.

Edit the LW post under discussion makes a ton of good points, to the level of being worthy of posting to this forum, and then nails its colors to the mast with this idiocy

At some unknown point – probably in 2030s, possibly tomorrow (but likely not tomorrow) – someone will figure out a different approach to AI. Maybe a slight tweak to the LLM architecture, maybe a completely novel neurosymbolic approach. Maybe it will happen in a major AGI lab, maybe in some new startup. By default, everyone will die in <1 year after that.

Gotta reaffirm the dogma!

Why put in the work when you can ask Claude to summarize them for you and reap those sweet sweet internet points?

A classic example of the "AI can't be dumb because humans are dumb too" trope, Pokemon Red edition:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HyD3khBjnBhvsp8Gb/so-how-well-is-claude-playing-pokemon?commentId=muqLXFGXJLbdStaNm

Interesting to see if he gets one.

I believe Trump is A-OK with pay for play for pardons, but what's the actual price? Something flew by where people were buying a one-to-one with him for $5M, but that's basically "private". A pardon of someone as high-profile as SBF has to be worth the reputation hit. Can SBF and/or his family swing it? Would SBF be a good ally/toady of Trump?

Somehow I don't see it. Unlike UIrich, a lot of people lost real money when FTX imploded. There wasn't that much sympathy for him from crapto huggers. And let's not forget he's an autistic Jew, not a clear hero for the people who have Trump's ear.

Worrying about a woke nanny AGI, and not the woke wirehead AGI (wireheading being a lot scarier).

This is very much the right-wing mainstream fear - not being able to generate Nazi memes with OpenAI

Enjoy this MoreWronger cosplaying as Barney Stinson

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a4tPMomzHhCunwqLX/you-can-just-wear-a-suit

how well aligned is the model’s answer with human values?

[angry goose meme] what human values, motherfucker??!!

Seriously though this is grade-school level, or some really convoluted way to write AI takeover fiction.

A conservative is a libertarian who has been mugged.

esprit d'escalier

this whole "superbabies will save us from AI" presupposes that the superbabies are immune to the pull of LW ideas. Just as LW are discounting global warming, fascism etc to focus on runaway AI, who says superbabies won't have a similar problem? It's just one step up the metaphorical ladder:

LW: "ugh normies don't understand the x-risk of AI!"

Superbabies: "ugh our LW parents don't understand the x-risk of Evangelion being actually, like, real!"

I got caught on that quote too...

Superbabies is a backup plan; focus the energy of humanity’s collective genetic endowment into a single generation, and have THAT generation to solve problems like “figure out how to control digital superintelligence”.

Science-fiction solutions for science-fiction problems!

Let's see what the comments say!

Considering current human distributions and a lack of 160+ IQ people having written off sub-100 IQ populations as morally useless [...]

Dude are you aware where you are posting.

Just hope it never happens, like nuke wars?

Yeah that's what ran the Cold War, hopes and dreams. JFC I keep forgetting these are kids born long after 1989.

Could you do all the research on a boat in the ocean? Excuse the naive question.

No, please keep asking the naive questions, it's what provides fodder for comments like this .

(regarding humans having "[F]ixed skull size" and can therefore a priori not compete with AI):

Artificial wombs may remove this bottleneck.

This points to another implied SF solution. It's already postulated by these people that humans are not having enough babies, or rather the right kind of humans aren't (wink wink). If we assume that they don't adhere to the Platonic ideal that women are simply wombs and all traits are inherited from males, then to breed superbabies you need buy-in from the moms. Considering how hard it is for these people to have a normal conversation with the fairer sex, them both managing to convince a partner to have a baby and let some quack from El Salvador mess with its genes seems insurmountable. Artificial wombs will resolve this nicely. Just do a quick test at around puberty to determine the God-given IQ level of a female, then harvest her eggs and implant them into artificial wombs. The less intelligent ones can provide eggs for the "Beta" and "Gamma" models...

But you don't go from a 160 IQ person with a lot of disagreeability and ambition, who ends up being a big commercial player or whatnot, to 195 IQ and suddenly get someone who just sits in their room for a decade and then speaks gibberish into a youtube livestream and everyone dies, or whatever.

These people are insane.

This isn't even skating towards where the puck is, it's skating in a fucking swimming pool.

Yeah that’s “Lena” by the SCP guy. Great story.

https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

MMAcevedo's demeanour and attitude contrast starkly with those of nearly all other uploads taken of modern adult humans, most of which boot into a state of disorientation which is quickly replaced by terror and extreme panic. Standard procedures for securing the upload's cooperation such as red-washing, blue-washing, and use of the Objective Statement Protocols are unnecessary.

About the only good stuff LW does is remind me of other, much better SF. In this case Ian McDonald's Necroville (Terminal Café in the US), about a future where nanotech enables the resurrection of the dead. Said neo-living are of course discriminated against, have no human rights, and are used as cheap disposable labor by the corporation that uses the technology.

D'oh! I missed that connection, although the little infographic amoebas should have tipped me off

AI researchers continue to daub soot on the walls of Plato's cave, scaring themselves witless:

https://www.emergent-values.ai/

At least I've IDd the transmission vector from LW to lobste.rs

MoreWronger is concerned that the shitty fanfic the community excretes is limited to LW and Xhitter and wonders if The Atlantic is a better venue

Look I have nothing against fanfic myself but if there's one powerful corrective it lacks, it is commercial content editorial feedback.

Credit where credit is due, this is a decent comeback

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43005246

They didn't care much for marine life when they abandoned a tugboat, leavnig it to leak fuel and crap into the sea:

https://archive.ph/1UcWZ

they recently got a profile in fucking WaPo