AIs gunning for our precious freelancers

[Raphael]

Where here does it say the AI is doing what you claim it is? A human is still involved in the decision process; a human is still doing the decision they have been qualified to make: the AI is assisting rather than replacing. Lives are being saved and no humans are losing their jobs. What is so bad about this?

Sure but many AI advocates are working on models that make human workers completely superfluous as opposed to merely assisting them with drudgery. You can point to AI models that politely limit themselves to enhancing images and letting humans make the final call. Meanwhile many in the tech industry look forward to AI outdoing humans at everything and leaving us with no place in the economy.

malloc, do you remember how much money Facebook used to pump into the Metaverse, even renaming itself after it, and telling us all that it would be The Future Of Everything?

[Raphael]

Meanwhile many in the tech industry look forward to AI outdoing humans at everything and leaving us with no place in the economy.

Elon Musk =/= many

On this, I disagree with you. Yes, Elon Musk alone might not count as "many" people, but he's far from alone in the tech industry when it comes to that attitude. malloc isn't wrong about what many in the tech industry want. He's just wrong when he buys their hype.

[Travis B.]

Where here does it say the AI is doing what you claim it is? A human is still involved in the decision process; a human is still doing the decision they have been qualified to make: the AI is assisting rather than replacing. Lives are being saved and no humans are losing their jobs. What is so bad about this?

Sure but many AI advocates are working on models that make human workers completely superfluous as opposed to merely assisting them with drudgery. You can point to AI models that politely limit themselves to enhancing images and letting humans make the final call. Meanwhile many in the tech industry look forward to AI outdoing humans at everything and leaving us with no place in the economy.

Do you realize what we actually use AI for in MR? It's not replacing a human radiologist, it is cleaning up MR images so the features that a radiologist is looking for are more apparent by removing noise and artifacts from the images that would otherwise hinder the radiologist. There is still very much a 'human in the loop' here, and that is not going to change.

[MacAnDàil]

Meanwhile many in the tech industry look forward to AI outdoing humans at everything and leaving us with no place in the economy.

Elon Musk =/= many

On this, I disagree with you. Yes, Elon Musk alone might not count as "many" people, but he's far from alone in the tech industry when it comes to that attitude. malloc isn't wrong about what many in the tech industry want. He's just wrong when he buys their hype.

Also, Musk is not even among those hypertechbros, as he has mentioned the dangers of AI himself.

[Torco]

you can talk about how models can cause all sorts of mayhem while at the same time working towards models that will cause either the same sorts of mayhem, or different ones.

incidentally, they're trying to have models run small businesses. this entails having the model (more precisely, a sort of thing they call an "ai agent", which amounts to a bunch of models connected together through a bunch of pieces of code which prompts itself over and over) make decisions about pricing, buying stuff from suppliers etcetera

it didn't work very well, and was run in a sort of sandbox, pretend environment, but it means they're building the infrastructure to allow for a software instance to have access to an email box [which can send emails to the real world], a bank account [which can issue and receive payments from the real world] and other similar stuff. even without AGI (and, as i've said before, what does AGI even mean), this can cause... well, you know, all sorts of mayhem.

[linguistcat]

you can talk about how models can cause all sorts of mayhem while at the same time working towards models that will cause either the same sorts of mayhem, or different ones.

incidentally, they're trying to have models run small businesses. this entails having the model (more precisely, a sort of thing they call an "ai agent", which amounts to a bunch of models connected together through a bunch of pieces of code which prompts itself over and over) make decisions about pricing, buying stuff from suppliers etcetera

it didn't work very well, and was run in a sort of sandbox, pretend environment, but it means they're building the infrastructure to allow for a software instance to have access to an email box [which can send emails to the real world], a bank account [which can issue and receive payments from the real world] and other similar stuff. even without AGI (and, as i've said before, what does AGI even mean), this can cause... well, you know, all sorts of mayhem.

I'm not as anti ai as a lot of folks on my side of the internet, but unless I knew the business was worker owned and the ai was incentivized to make money for those workers while still offering fair prices to customers, I think I would avoid any business run by an ai whenever possible. I'd love to replace every CEO with something that doesn't take any pay, like how some places want to replace workers where possible. But I also can imagine in our capitalist hellscape the CEOs would stay on and get payed for literally doing nothing. At least at this point you can say they are doing SOMETHING even if what they are doing is optimizing their pay and that of shareholders.

[Torco]

absolutely, the thing is... will we know which businesses are run by software ?

[keenir]

absolutely, the thing is... will we know which businesses are run by software ?

one could argue "does it matter?" as a badly-run business is a badly-run business. though thats in the broad strokes of the matter; we need to keep track of the finer details, like employee satisfaction and product quality.

[malloc]

incidentally, they're trying to have models run small businesses. this entails having the model (more precisely, a sort of thing they call an "ai agent", which amounts to a bunch of models connected together through a bunch of pieces of code which prompts itself over and over) make decisions about pricing, buying stuff from suppliers etcetera

That's the kind of thing that chills me to the bone. They really do want us gone and they're making an alarming amount of progress toward that goal.

[Travis B.]

I, for one, welcome our new tungsten cube-selling overlords.

[keenir]

we need good prices for our tungsten cubes, and we can count on AI overlords to set good prices for them.

incidentally, they're trying to have models run small businesses. this entails having the model (more precisely, a sort of thing they call an "ai agent", which amounts to a bunch of models connected together through a bunch of pieces of code which prompts itself over and over) make decisions about pricing, buying stuff from suppliers etcetera

That's the kind of thing that chills me to the bone.

??
which part? where someones are trying to get one computer program to interact with another computer program? I suppose this is a bad time to mention that they already exist: ever use a tv remote control, to program your VCR?

They really do want us gone and they're making an alarming amount of progress toward that goal.

*sigh* and who is the nebulous "they" this time?

if you mean the "ai techbros", they've made less progress than Trump et al have towards stomping a jackboot across the country, and you've already rolled over and shown your belly to the latter, so why bother worrying about AI regulating prices for things you may or may not ever buy in the first place?

[zompist]

incidentally, they're trying to have models run small businesses. this entails having the model (more precisely, a sort of thing they call an "ai agent", which amounts to a bunch of models connected together through a bunch of pieces of code which prompts itself over and over) make decisions about pricing, buying stuff from suppliers etcetera

it didn't work very well, and was run in a sort of sandbox, pretend environment, but it means they're building the infrastructure to allow for a software instance to have access to an email box [which can send emails to the real world], a bank account [which can issue and receive payments from the real world] and other similar stuff. even without AGI (and, as i've said before, what does AGI even mean), this can cause... well, you know, all sorts of mayhem.

On the one hand, it'd be hilarious if the one profession that LLMs can automate is managers.

On the other... this seems like a solution in search of a problem. Who is this aimed at? A small business, more of less by definition, has very few purchasing and pricing decisions to make. If it's a sole proprietor, they want to make those decisions themselves.

I don't quite get the alarm at letting programs at your checking account. You don't think that happens now? Only now it's a procedurally coded banking app, or ApplePay, or Alexa, or the million-line monstrosity at your bank. People already have software for accounting, payroll, filing taxes, property management.

Using LLMs instead might give you a natlang interface (probably not needed) and a series of weird mistakes.

[malloc]

??
which part? where someones are trying to get one computer program to interact with another computer program? I suppose this is a bad time to mention that they already exist: ever use a tv remote control, to program your VCR?

No, turning over management of entire businesses to artificial intelligence. That could mean the destruction of millions of jobs or alternatively the remaining human employees reduced to taking orders from artificial intelligence and denied any opportunity to rise to management.

*sigh* and who is the nebulous "they" this time?

if you mean the "ai techbros", they've made less progress than Trump et al have towards stomping a jackboot across the country, and you've already rolled over and shown your belly to the latter, so why bother worrying about AI regulating prices for things you may or may not ever buy in the first place?

Yes, the techbros, and they certainly have made a lot of progress. The very fact that they are experimenting with automating small business administration demonstrates that much.

[linguistcat]

absolutely, the thing is... will we know which businesses are run by software ?

That's why I said where possible. We can only act on the information we have at hand at the time.

[keenir]

??
which part? where someones are trying to get one computer program to interact with another computer program? I suppose this is a bad time to mention that they already exist: ever use a tv remote control, to program your VCR?

No,

no what? no you don't know that multi-program controllers already exist?

turning over management of entire businesses to artificial intelligence.

so...you don't like the idea of denying people the opportunity to siphon money from hard-working people?

That could mean the destruction of millions of jobs

millions?

or alternatively the remaining human employees reduced to taking orders from artificial intelligence and denied any opportunity to rise to management.

as opposed to reducing people to taking orders from remote, uncaring humans & denied any opportunity to rise to management?

*sigh* and who is the nebulous "they" this time?

if you mean the "ai techbros", they've made less progress than Trump et al have towards stomping a jackboot across the country, and you've already rolled over and shown your belly to the latter, so why bother worrying about AI regulating prices for things you may or may not ever buy in the first place?

Yes, the techbros, and they certainly have made a lot of progress. The very fact that they are experimenting with automating small business administration demonstrates that much.

didn't Facebook experiment with something along the lines of The Sims not too long ago? strangely, nobody lost their facebook account to artificial people there.

[rotting bones]

The non-technical techbros have a very different view of the state of the art than researchers themselves. Most researchers have a very contextualized view of AGI.

[alice]

No, turning over management of entire businesses to artificial intelligence. That could mean the destruction of millions of jobs or alternatively the remaining human employees reduced to taking orders from artificial intelligence and denied any opportunity to rise to management.

If we're very lucky, all those millions of now unemployed humans might just decide to get together and do something about it.

[Raphael]

No, turning over management of entire businesses to artificial intelligence. That could mean the destruction of millions of jobs or alternatively the remaining human employees reduced to taking orders from artificial intelligence and denied any opportunity to rise to management.

If we're very lucky, all those millions of now unemployed humans might just decide to get together and do something about it.

Knowing recent political developments, I worry that if millions of newly unemployed humans do something about their situation, the most likely thing for them to do is to lash out at them funny-speaking or funny-looking people over there, or at "out of touch elitists", that is, people like most members of this forum, and probably both of us included.

[Travis B.]

I can't believe I'm shopping for exotic metal cubes. (No, I'm not actually going to buy them j/k.)

[Torco]

incidentally, they're trying to have models run small businesses. this entails having the model (more precisely, a sort of thing they call an "ai agent", which amounts to a bunch of models connected together through a bunch of pieces of code which prompts itself over and over) make decisions about pricing, buying stuff from suppliers etcetera

That's the kind of thing that chills me to the bone. They really do want us gone and they're making an alarming amount of progress toward that goal.

as much as we disagree over, you're pretty on point on this one: I recently saw this expressed as "what's the big problem AI is solving? them having to pay us wages"

I don't quite get the alarm at letting programs at your checking account. You don't think that happens now? Only now it's a procedurally coded banking app, or ApplePay, or Alexa, or the million-line monstrosity at your bank. People already have software for accounting, payroll, filing taxes, property management.

there's a difference between having software look at my checking account and software having its own checking account, i think. this is because you could prompt the kind of agent they're trying to bring into existance with "here's 10k usd, make it grow" and sure, it could decide to do something relatively harmless, like import something that is cheap somewhere and sell it where it's expensive somewhere else, or buying banged up furniture, fix it and sell it [for example, using fiver or some other micro-employment platforms to do the actual work], but it could just as easily decide to scam people, set up fake gofundmes, catfish, set up MLM schemes or whatever else. and this breadth of possibility will almost certainly get actualized because, well, it's not going to be one instance, it's going to be a vast array of servers running hundreds or thousands of such bots, pulling the plug on the ones that are making the least money and copying the ones that are making the most.

not to get into how much worse the problem of most money going to a very few really rich people, this would also, I think, mean a vast increase in scams, catfishing etcetera. not to mention, well, automated lies, making the problem of

Knowing recent political developments, I worry that if millions of newly unemployed humans do something about their situation, the most likely thing for them to do is to lash out at them funny-speaking or funny-looking people over there, or at "out of touch elitists", that is, people like most members of this forum, and probably both of us included.

even worse.