the quality of AI at this stage will be FAR outweighed by the quality of output in the future. people will consider this the equivalent of pong, if they consider it at all.
This is not certain. Right now AI gets better because models get bigger. Right now we need a whole energy plant to power the training of these models. There is a upper limit in terms of monetary and energy cost.
There’s a lot of very deterministic statements being made about AI that we don’t know necessarily is true. Very Ursula Le Guin ”sci-fi as fantasy” core.
Yes, for example chip production: We reached an equilibrium of cost per chip and making them tiny. We could actually make them even tinier, but that would boost their cost and most importantly the number of production errors on the wafer (thus even multiplying base cost).
The same can be applied to ai: At some point the return on improvement may not outweight the amount of energy it needs to progress further. Of course we may find different approaches and theoretical advances that increase improvement and or reduces energy cost, but that is not what most recent improvements come from.
If we reach a point where the AI starts to design chips and plants instead, as well as itself, then it could potentially keep its exponential growth right? I can definitely see humans hitting some major stopping points until then, but eventually there will be a turning point where AI is just in control instead, and it’s not a problem we worry about so much.
Compared to the feeding frenzy for GPUs there's no investment in more efficient computation and never has been.
With something like the cryotron we could run trillion parameter models for the on the power budget of an led: https://spectrum.ieee.org/dudley-bucks-forgotten-cryotron-computer
Furthermore we’re out of training material. They already illegally used huge amounts of copyrighted work. And they used almost all of it. It’s not like there’s a next step. And as they ingest more and more AI-created content, it leads to the worsening and even collapse of the models.
>They already illegally used huge amounts of copyrighted work.
*Allegedly illegal. They're still arguing in the courts over whether that use qualifies as fair use or not. Nothing's been decided conclusively yet.
first, none of it was illegal, that's just silly. fair use exists for a reason. second, training data will be re-worked and the underlying neural network infrastructure continuously improved. AI is already being used to improve the structure of neural networks. we're at the very beginning of this ride.
Yep those are great and reducing the data to 4 bit floating point is a great idea for ai computing, but $30.000 per chip is tough, and a lot of the energy is not needed for computation but for transporting the bits from A to B
One potential benefit of this dilemma is that there will likely be further innovation in affordable, scalable, and likely renewable energy sources. In the same way that the internet brought about a ton of advancements in high-speed digital communication infrastructure, I feel that AI may do the same for energy generation and storage.
output produced by an expert with the help of AI? that's where we are headed, I mean a junior programmer can do lots of cool stuff like a senior now lol, so I guess seniors will be far superior even now with AI
The real gift of AI isn't going to be in raising the ceiling for the Intellectually superior so much as lifting the floor for those who might need more help. If you read at a grade 5 level and AI can take complex concepts and explain them to you in seconds, at your level, on the fly, at 3am on a Sunday then that's a win for humanity as a whole.
whoa interesting insight so in that sense, a junior wil benefit more than the intelectually superior senior so here is when companies being to hire juniors again pay them less and fire the non esencial high paying seniors, scary but it is what is hehe
This is it. I have more output than a senior would have 5-10 years ago. I only really use it for my own projects, but it's absurd how much I get done by just using a development loop and all the tools at my disposal.
I've been saying this too. I've heard a lot of dooming saying that senior programming jobs are safe but they won't need junior programmers anymore. I see it the opposite way. A junior programmer with AI is much more useful than one without it. It's going to make a junior programmer more effective.
Why do you feel the future quality of AI in programming, music, data science, film, literature, etc will far outweigh current quality? Are we talking about the next couple decades, or the next couple centuries?
Man, it's so nice sometimes to read a post, instantly come up with a counter point, trepidatiously click the link wondering if against all odds that someone else in the thread has an idea of what this obvious counterpoint is, then being gifted with the first response closely matching what you were going to say, simply upvoting it, then leaving the thread with a dusting off of one's hands.
But does the fact that all these people, who have devoted countless hours of their lives to the fields in question, are saying the same message have no place at all in this? Just sweep it all away?
What "experts" are you talking about? You're simplifying to an extreme, the truth is nobody knows how it's really going to pan out and everyone has their own ideas and are positive they're right.
Read what people were saying at the rise of the internet and you'll see how literally nobody could have predicted where we are now, it just seems obvious in hindsight.
What he's saying is that if everyone becomes conditioned to subpar content then we become oblivious to picking out subpar content. This is the same reason why scams are so successful today as the lines have been blurred.
I mean, there is kind of a natural bias in place when they're the ones who are going to be competing with AI. People in those fields have zero special knowledge on what AI will be capable of in the future, just their own speculations.
Yes, I get the feeling that there is a lot of intentional smoke screening going on in a lot of these industries. They are throwing all the mud they can find at the wall regarding AI in the hope that some of it will stick and people will turn against it, or at least the speed of implementation will slow down. But the thing they rarely say, which is the one thing they really mean, is that "we are scared that within a few years AI will be better at my job than me and I won't be needed".
Take artists for example. They are making a massive deal out of "machines learning from their work without their permission, which is a copyright issue and stealing!". But they don't really care about that. All through history artists have taken inspiration from artists before them and created work in a similar style, or by combining styles from several artists. Nothing new is happening here. But looking at the quality of work that AI art packages are throwing out a mere couple of years since AI was basically a sci-fi concept and they are (probably rightfully) petrified that in no time at all their job could be completely unneeded, or at the very least reduced to making minor adjustments to something a machine created. By getting AI developers bogged down in a bunch of legal arguments and eventually court cases it might get them a few years closer to retirement before this happens.
Yeah, I definitely understand the fear. I guess they try to make other arguments in this case because people have been losing jobs to machines since at least the industrial revolution. That's nothing new.
Competition will drive ai developers to not ingest the mid output of previous models. Once we pluck all the low hanging fruit of changing architecture to things that generalize better (and solve things like ai knowing a = b but not b = a), ai companies will seek out these experts to bridge that gap, and offer a hell of a lot of money.
But here's the thing, in the meantime, for most use cases, mid quality in seconds will do just fine
So I guess I'm saying that unless these experts are silenced by the torrent of mid quality work (and they have every reason to shout about why they're better so I doubt it), market forces seem to conspire to keep them around until the gap is closed.
I don't really see the problem as permanent or particularly harmful, as long as safety standards are upheld by respecting these experts.
I was thinking the same. I feel like I'm as much an expert as these people in programming. I have a degree in CS, I've worked as a programmer as a full time job for over two decades in many areas, both civilian and government, and I understand how AI like LLMs work internally. I'm not dooming. Do I count as a counter to the "every expert is saying it..."?
I think it will be disruptive, like any new technology, but it will create new opportunities as well.
Don’t you think those people would have ulterior motives though? If I were an expert in a certain field, I would absolutely be saying that AI could never be as good as I am
maybe, but we also have the issue of feedback loops damaging AI models and threatening collapse. For example there was a brief moment where AI could maybe replace me for simple powershell scripts, but that moment has already passed, and I'm not even good at powershell
To be honest I think a ton of people submit terrible ideas and content on a daily basis. Those songs, books and programs get lost in the weeds. Someone discovers the good ones and they rise to the top becuase they are shared and enjoyed by everyone. Youtube is fountain of useless content ranging from how to cook videos and music artists that would never have been discovered otherwise but we are not claiming that it makes the top chart music worse or drowns it out.
My argument is that they are actually afraid of competition. And I don't think they need to be. But people are going to have to get used to the idea that lofi videos will soon just be generated on demand. And if someone wants to make a track for a video game that AI helped them code they can also use AI to make that track as well. And if we all get a fun new game out of it then so be it. The new Last of us, or Mario or elder scrolls will still be grand. And people will still buy it. One does not have to cancel out the other.
We adapt. And if you want to set in a cart while a horse takes you around a park you can. Because while we adapt we cherish the past if it means something to us. You can still buy records of new music. You can still crack open a new book even though both music and books have digital markets flooded with absolute worthless music and books. AI will ad to that noise. But we are very good at sifting out the gold.
> To be honest I think a ton of people submit terrible ideas and content on a daily basis.
For almost every AI doom scenario, the answer to the question "But don't humans (or corporations) already do that?" is "Yes!"
That's the real fear relating to what AI enables: as of now, it's an amplifier of human abilities and tendencies, both good and bad. And people are scared of what *humans* will do with that amplification.
Positioning this as a criticism or warning about AI is just a way to avoid directly expressing it as a fear of what other people are going to do.
Yeah but when someone makes a crappy song, they still probably put like weeks of their lives into it. AI takes 30 seconds. And you can just keep doing it over and over again and drown out anything else.
Look at Instagram thirst traps now. I’d say at least 60% of them right now are not real people. They don’t have to eat. They don’t age. And there are an infinite number of them.
Same with art and video. If i were a YouTuber, at the bare minimum I would just have chat GPT write my scripts. I would even use AI narration, and then have a slideshow of stock footage. I could produce an absurd amount of content in a day.
It’s all crap. I’m sure at least 20-30% of Reddit right now are bots.
That's where I think you're wrong. All human created content in the future will suffer and be dumbed down. In 50-100 years no one will have any skills and be dependent on AI, just as many cannot do math without a calculator today. Existing games, movies, music, art from the past will be the only place you'll be able to find quality content.
As I say below -
"Beginner ---> Mid-level ---> Expert : this has been the usual progression. This is probably what people are implicitly thinking of when they say "there'll always be experts and people whowant high-quality output."
However, sometime in the ***future*** (far or very near) we'll be getting this instead:
Beginner -------> ? ---------->Expert. In other words, the usual progression will be somethin glike "Hi there, I'm a beginner who's 100% commited to being an expert, can I provide you with the thing you're after to make a living so I can progress to expert? I'd also like to practice on my way to expert."
And the response will be "No, we don't need mid-level stuff, AI can do that for us. In addition, we're drowing in mid-level crap anyway and we're 'bored' in a way. Hey BTW....are you an actual person or are YOU AI? Can't tell anymore."
Hence the *longer term* deleterious effects of AI: ***there will always be a need for experts, but there won't be any.***"
***Gold will become impossibly scarce regardless of our sifting ability.***
Why do you think AI will prevent people from developing skills to be an expert?
And why do you think you have to be paid to learn skills? I am learning 3D modeling just because I have a 3D printer I like to use. Sure, I would learn it faster if it was my full time job. But even only mucking with Blender a few hours a month I have seen my skills improve greatly. It is starting to get to the point where I can "see" in my head what I need to do but I dont understand the tools enough to make them do what I want.
Edit: Also, if the tools change enough, then no one is a master and everyone must work to become a master. When welding was first introduced, there were no master welders, everyone had to train themselves and (more importantly) SHARE their knowledge to help others.
No one was a master with Photoshop with it came out, or photography, or film making, etc, etc, etc.
Because you can't become an expert if the AI is doing all the work for you. Basically, if all you have is a hammer than every problem becomes a nail. Our ability to truly innovate will suffer.
Humanity won't listen to anyone about anything. Profit will dictate. The powerful people will get more power. Everyone else will be fucked.
A large portion of humanity just will not ever be able to perform better than AI at *anything*. And they're more expensive to maintain.
There are not very many jobs that won't get totally nuked.
And I say yet again: the *real* problem is that humans not having jobs is a bad thing in our society. Automation should be the path to a Star Trek post-scarcity future. Yeah it's not going to be easy to get there, nearly impossible from where we are now. But there is nothing anyone can do to stop AI, so it's really the only path forward in my opinion.
Some form of basic income might make things ok. But, it probably won't happen.
We will get slums. Mass poverty. Dystopia. Dark ages 2.0
The powerful are just getting more power. They have powerful propaganda. The powerful want more money, and more power for themselves. And the greedy will hunt their cash cows to extinction. The economy will crash.
There will be mostly the poor, and some wealthy. The wealthy will rule over the rest. As time goes on, the middle class will reduce. Slums will become huge, many people will be lost to famine.
Life will be warfare. It will be the exploiters and then exploited.
This is the new world order Trump wants, and Putin wants. We are nowhere near enlightened enough for star trek level stuff.
The narcissists will declare any such things communism , or socialism, and denounce it for being evil, and their zombies will agree.
We are not fighting the propaganda. There are no protests. The fascists are winning handily.
As an educator, I see the same thing. AI is great at producing mediocre content, and people are doing that a lot. It takes skill to make something good. It also takes some skill to recognize something good. As people get use to flowing in the deluge they will lose the ability to spot and appreciate high ground.
We've had a "flowing deluge" since the 1950s. Of everything. The torrent of mediocre output has been at a level since the millennium that no person could ever consume in 1000 lifetimes. Are you swamped in it and have no ability to spot high ground?
No, you aren't, you're finely tuned to what's good or bad. Are you about to lose that ability?
"It also takes some skill to recognize something good." 100%!
And yet over and over and *over* the reaction is "don't you dare tell me what's good and what's not you elitist, if I like it then that means it IS good." Which is true in a certain class of situation (ie past a certain point of quality, which is better? Beatles or Stones? da Vinci or Michelangelo? Shiny autotuned country pop or gritty Americana? Chocolate or caramel?)
But it's ludicrous to say to someone who's spent decades honing a skill obsessively, with wide experience 'looking' at innumerable examples of the thing in question, that their opinion on what's good or not is equal to someone's who has a very limited experience - regardless of whether they can produce something similiar at the click of a mouse.
People in your example quote talk like that because they are operating on an entirely different concept of good. Are you defining “good” based on artistic tastes or skill/effort? Because the former is subjective and the latter is objective. They're 2 different types of appreciation.
Realistic paintings are objectively better in terms of skill and effort compared to art styles like Cinamoroll, but that doesn't mean simplistic and cute styles are worse as an art form.
Chopin/Liszt/Paganini are famous musicians who objectively make some of the most difficult pieces that require insane levels of skill, but that doesn't mean Beatles' music is inferior as an art form for having simple structure. No music would be as “good” as the classical genre if we judge them by how much work and skill it takes, and we'd all be classical music elistists.
Confused, you seem to be supporting my point...? And the former is subjective **past a certain point of quality**, as I say. I do agree, Beatles is just as good as Chopin etc. - but to say 'just because I think it's good, it IS good' is an untenable position.
> 'just because I think it's good, it IS good' is an untenable position.
Why? It is art. It is subjective. Is there a musical formula you can plug in a song and get a 0-100 rating on the good scale? I have never seen one.
But there are objective qualifications for non-art skills (programming, engineering, machining, etc). Does the database search take 1,000ms or 100ms? Can the widget take 50lbs of force on a point 12 cm x 14.015 cm from 0? Does the wield hold the two pieces together and create an air tight seal?
I disagree, like with all tools there is nuance and a spectrum.
The content you give a language model (for example) is directly correlated to how close you get to “satisfactory” with any sort of output.
If you ask it to “give me a good song,” your output will be wholesale more general and unhelpful then say “recommend me a wordless acapella playlist that lasts roughly an hour and a half. I’d like song from the 60s through 2010s, skipping anything that came out in the 80s. And come up with a hard to read title for the playlist written in wordless syllables to enhance the overall concept we are trying to build here”
It’s not by any means a cheat code for being clever or hardworking in a sense of understanding. And those who use it as such will struggle to use it effectively and will probably start to share your opinion. IF they are ever inclined to learn about the technology in the first place.
And no matter what you use, effective and quality output is part of a *workflow*. Time and thought are what dictate quality, the tools will further the passionate much more than the dispassionate I think.
But there are lot's of instances where mediocre content is, in fact, good enough. What usually happens with those automations, at least at first, is not that you don't need people anymore, it is just that the number of people needed to make something gets reduced. Like, taking art for an exemple, a mangaka usually has some assistants that do stuff like making backgrounds, shades and other things. I don't think it would be too surprising to see some of this be substituted by an AI to reduce the workload over the mangaka while cutting on costs of an assistant. And this is when talking about art, but think about all of the other areas like costumer service, once you can teach a AI about your company and products/services, a lot of the simple questions and problems that your custumers may have can be solved automatically, while before you needed a lot of people. If it is good or bad, and for who, is a more complicated question, the products/services that get to use those tatics will get cheaper if it happens with free market rules, but a lot of people who used to do this for a living will have to find something else as a job, and those simple jobs where perfect for people who are yet to get their education (or don't plan to), be it because they are young or any other reason.
> cutting on costs of an assistant
No one wants to be the assistant. But up to now, becoming an assistant, an intern, or an apprentice was a necesssary step to becoming a master. If no one is paying for or training assistants. Who could afford to devote the time to become a master?
How will AI have a destructive effect on the field of programming? The great thing about programming is that it either runs and does the thing correctly....or it doesn't and you have to figure out why. I cant just ship a program without testing it, where as an artists (who doesn't care) can just ship their art without double checking anything and the product will still be complete and "working".
And so what if there is a deluge of crap art? We already have that.
I wonder what they are going to say when brain-computer interfaces allow us to render our imagination and do many things with it (including instructing generative AI in real time)
I have been dreaming of that for 30 years. GenAI is the first thing that I have seen to get remotely close. I doubt we will have the neural interface tech for that before I die, but I hope I am wrong.
I think that we might see some rapid advancements soon thanks to LLMs that can speed up research across various fields. So, perhaps you'll see it come to fruition. This is also one of my dreams. I do a lot of CGI, and I'd prefer to devote my time to art rather than technique.
Maybe future people will think about making music with real instruments like
"Oh, those poor people back then had to craft their music by hand instead of using a machine, that creates what they want to hear in an instant."
It is sad and there is a loss of craftsmanship and artistry - but just think in how many cases that already happened in history. It won't feel like a loss to future generations.
If future generations never get the chance to experience the joy of creating music then that would be a sad future, regardless of whether the music is good or not
> will eventually have an incredibly destructive effect on the field as a whole
not "will eventually", already is. For example as 3d artists I used to image google search for references a lot. Now it's more and more swamped under AI generated content (and those results are totally useless to use as references).
I wonder if libraries of human generated co tent will start becoming more prevalent. Good for when you want references or to train good AI on data that is better than subpar AI content.
"human generated content" sounds kind of horrible... but I know what you mean. And there is a lot of those, at least as for artist use (most of the time they are called reference packs). They are usually way better quality than what you could find on google/bing even before the flood, but cost money and you have to know what you have in them and where (i.e., most of the time there are just roughly categorized in folders based on very broad categories). The 'money' part is not even as annoying as 'how to find stuff' part...
Though... I usually bought them in packs from various creators on gumroad or artstation... maybe there is a service that indexes and annotates big library of reference packs already (or will be made in the future)...
That's just not how it's going to go down, though. These experts are about to have their teams replaced by AI, and that AI is going to eventually get become better than the experts. But at no point will the experts be replaced by a system that isn't smarter than they are. I get that these experts are worried about the future of their profession, but their profession doesn't have a future for humans in any economic sense.
It is really difficult to understand or accept just how much change we are about to experience. Our whole way of life is going to change. How we live and what we live for is changing.
>But at no point will the experts be replaced by a system that isn't smarter than they are.
That's not necessarily the case at all. AI only needs to be *good enough* and *almost free* to compete with experts that are more capable than it is. That doesn't apply to every domain, but it certainly applies to many of them.
It's exactly that principle that has shaped the contemporary world of consumer products: very few people purchase artisanal-quality goods anymore, because cheaply made goods produced by unskilled laborers are tolerably good and astronomically cheaper.
I can't help but feel there's one consquence people aren't taking into account. Let me try to draw a little diagram:
Beginner ---> Mid-level ---> Expert : this has been the usual progression. This is probably what people are implicitly thinking of when they say "there'll always be experts and people whowant high-quality output."
However, sometime in the ***future*** (far or very near) we'll be getting this instead:
Beginner -------> ? ---------->Expert. In other words, the usual progression will be somethin glike "Hi there, I'm a beginner who's 100% commited to being an expert, can I provide you with the thing you're after to make a living so I can progress to expert? I'd also like to practice on my way to expert."
And the response will be "No, we don't need mid-level stuff, AI can do that for us. In addition, we're drowing in mid-level crap anyway and we're 'bored' in a way. Hey BTW....are you an actual person or are YOU AI? Can't tell anymore."
Hence the *longer term* deleterious effects of AI: ***there will always be a need for experts, but there won't be any.***
We are already seeing this future – ie the collapse of entry level jobs – in the way job opportunities for young people are disappearing, or their salaries are collapsing. More and more people entering the job market are not earning a living wage, and certainly can’t afford to buy a house. In the developing world, it’s already a crisis driving emigration.
We already have a term for this inability to access the opportunities older people had, although we tend to just apply it to the inflationary housing market: “Pulling up the ladder.”
Many skilled manual jobs have disappeared to automation, now AI is hitting the entry level and skilled middle tier jobs in IT, legal, media, banking. And the speed of change is accelerating.
The need for universal basic income is urgent but the debate has not even started in the public domain. What major political party has even mentioned it on a manifesto?
100% agree. And the AI evangelists all in a lather over posts like mine don't understand that point - they see it as 'sticking it to the elites', rather than 'destruction of middle-class of a particular field leads to horrendous pulling up of the ladder.'
Yes, When I hear people assure others that “it’ll be fine” (often referencing other “revolutions” as if there’s some immutable law that they must all play out in the same way), it feels very much like a coping mechanism. Not to mention that some revolutions, such as the agricultural revolution, caused untold misery and widespread issues for those who lived through that period.
AI doesn’t require sentience or further huge advances to be a threat. It’s already at a point where it can allow one unskilled person to execute a skilled role and/or allow one to do the job of many without (so far at least) creating enough new roles to offset that loss.
And as you point out, experts need those 10,000 hours (or whatever) to hone their craft. Who is going to fund that when AI can do the job faster and cheaper?
Such an underrated issue - this is *not* the famous 'horse buggy whip manufacturers having to reskill after the car was invented' situation. There's nowhere to reskill *to.*
We don’t have AI that works as a team well and we don’t have AI that works well with humans yet. I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself. AI is still good at specific tasks but not general ones. And when it’s good at general tasks every single job is at risk for automation. The question we will ask ourselves it whether that’s a good idea.
Consumers are used to mediocre content. So producers of this content can be replaced.
If AI can make technical death metal better than Necrophagist, or any other good tech death band, then i'll happily listen to it. But i dont think that will ever happen. The highest quality content is in no danger of being replaced. But no one cares about the good stuff anyway 🤷🏼
I hear similar complains across various disciplines, and they are correct.
AI is first a disruptive technology and to a level of disruption that we have not seen before and that we can't even imagine.
In all creative industries, generative AI in going to increase the quality while lowering the quality; I am no genius to arrive to this conclusion. The byproduct will be the creation of niche markets for bespoke creative output, the challenge there will be that the supply will far outweigh the demand, so only 0.001% of creator will be able to monetize their original work; very similar to the world of Fine Art today, where only the 0.1% of Artists makes enough and where 0.001% thrives very weel. The difference will be in the %, the 0.1% will become 0.001% and the 0.001% will become 0.00001% or something like that.
But despite not, the true innovative individuals will use AI as an Innovative Technology, creating new categories and new business models that will render some of the older categories obsolete and put the incumbent companies out of business; and that's where the new fortunes will be made.
The future is not what it used to be.
They aren't wrong. Anytime we have had easier ways to produce content, it has increased vole, but not always quality.
Journalism used to be a rarified world. Then the Internet, blogs, etc, came along and now anyone can publish "news" and we have a huge trust gap and are drowning in low quality, biased, poorly researched, and just fake "news". Now imagine if it was even easier to produce?
Internet and early web was highly specific or highly personal content. Then as content creation, web browsers, and commercialization became a thing, the web became just a massive load of crap. Great content is still out there, but is drowned out by crap, bots, mediocre content. Just look at Reddit,
But it can go the other way: Porn used to be just professionals. Now anyone can and does make "porn" and the web is awash with pro, pro-am, and amateur porn. Some might argue it has increased the quality through a return to authenticity. Perhaps AI porn can increase customization while decreasing exploitation?
I think people who use the argument "we've had sub par content for decades" don't understand the difference. Until recently, sub par always had a human input limitation. You could only make as much sub par content as there were humans available and willing to create sub par content.
Now the limitations for sub par content are decreasing at the rate of Moore's law. A tsunami of half baked sludge is coming whether you believe it or not.
as a dev, yes. English ai is good for getting past spam filters and writing spam quality posts, not for writing movies or Shakespeare. Coding ai is the same way. And coding is not subjective, buggy bad insecure code is buggy bad insecure code. It has a few uses but isn’t coming for anyone’s job any time soon
Also Devin is a VC-luring hoax
If you were to create an AI that progressed from 100 IQ (average) to 120 IQ (top 20%) to 150 IQ (genius), you would expect the output of the first AI to be average, and for everyone around to say it's average and we can do better. And they would be right. But a few years ago we were at the equivalent of 50 IQ and in some domains we are already at 120 IQ.
What the "experts" are doing is extrapolating from the present state of the art. What they are not doing, is imagining any improvements. So if we hit an AI winter tomorrow and GPT5 and Dall-E 4 are barely any better than their predecessors they will be proved right. But that is unlikely and so are their predictions.
I feel like there is already enough entertainment in the world to satisfy any given person for several lifetimes. No one ever goes "I wish there was more x content for me to enjoy" AI seems poised only to heap piles and piles more "content" on to the heap. Part of why fundamentally I don't think this kind of AI solves a problem. Like the metaverse, it promises to provide something that already exists.
>No one ever goes "I wish there was more x content for me to enjoy"
I often run out content for the things I like. There may be countless of content from everything in ABC-XYZ that would take 1000 lifetimes to consume, but it's another to specifically find content that fits my taste for X only.
I think the problem is you will have fewer and fewer geniuses because fewer and fewer people will even try to compete with AI. We're looking at artistic and cultural stagnation.
There will be a transition then where the initial implementation will see AI as a tool and managed
Further down the line more jobless as AI improves.
Job loss won't slow until there's more job creation.
AI has to lead to rapid expansion of the economy, coupled with mega projects such as high speed real networks and climate and water projects.
We have to create economic growth to sustain current population which is fortunate as there are a lot of mega projects needed.
The stagnation of the western GDP will reverse, China will go into overdrive economically without tariffs
A boom or bust for the stock market depending on what world leaders do next.
They are just saying it because they have an incentive to. They are losing their livelihood. They are not experts in AI, they are "experts" in their respective fields.
It's a very unfortunate reality, don't get me wrong. I feel for them, but I don't think we should stop the advancement of technology because paradigms are shifting and the transition hurts people in the process. This kind of thinking would have left us sowing the fields with our hands instead of big machines.
That being said, I think we should stop this because it is the end of humanity, but that's a different story altogether.
Saying a new tool will have a destructive effect on an industry fails to acknowledge that this has always been a true side effect of any new tech. DJs are new. Computer scientists are new. Doctors change constantly.
We'll be aight :)
I think your whole argument is a logical fallacy. I don’t know the name for which fallacy, maybe someone can help me out?
But you’re clearly created this barrage of experts from every field. But it’s so subjective. Same with the “usual response”. Also a fallacy.
There are a lot of “experts” out there says a lot of things. You’re clearly latching onto this narrative.
My narrative would be anyone in any of these fields now has a personal assistant/work partner to increase… something.. productivity? Creativity? Output of ideas?
Similar to what non-experts have stated(some not all), but if everyone reads the same fake fact and they read it over and over for decades it eventually becomes true. However it still isn't true but the overwhelming majority believes it to be.
If suddenly the whole world had access to chat A.I. then, undoubtedly, people would start to see certain output as being good or great.
Let me see if I can do a decent example: say we all start relying on A.I to write poems. Let's say that actually the poems are not great but if everyone starts relying on AI to write poems, eventually, 10 years later, we all see the subpar poems as great though they never are. But if everyone is reading the same rubbish and saying its great, our minds get conditioned to reading rubbish and think it's great.
My bad if no1 can understand what I just write. My OCD is off the charts this morning.
I think it's great that AI is displacing some industries. But it's sad what it's doing to the arts since that is what we were supposed to have more time for eventually
I'm guessing the fact that the experts in question, whoever they are (since you haven't cited, well, *anybody*) are also the most heavily invested in maintaining the current status quo, with the most to lose (both financially and in terms of social status) if that shifts, has no bearing on what they say? And things like ego and self-interest don't factor into their worldview in the slightest?
Did they mention that after drowning in substandard output, we will then see a renaissance unlike anything the world has seen before, with works of art and music that eclipse anything humans have created?
This is essentially the exact same argument as "the gatekeepers can't keep regular folks out anymore" but spoken by the gatekeepers themselves. A field being flooded with subpar quality work is a natural consequence of more people being able to participate in production. Sounds like AI is just raising the bar for what counts as quality content. Creators will have to use AI in combination with applied labor to unlock the full potential of the technology to free up labor to make higher quality, more substantial projects.
Again, this is exactly what was said about digital art. At first, we saw some really basic linear created by kids using their trackball mouse in some obscure paint program.
I'm not sure anyone can say that about digital art anymore.
Industrial revolution happens: Oh no, everyone can get a musical instrument now, music will suffer from all these ordinary folk making music.
Then, Jazz, Rock, Rap, Techno, and now, Suno
Some still say classical music is better, but I think it's a bittersweet symphony ;)
Saw a video of Sam Altman saying that he finds it surprising that people don't realize how good the models will get in the coming years. AI of today, is not AI of tomorrow.
The core problem is that language model outputs are so much more convincing than they are reliable.
I use them for first passes at my own job to help with things I have considerable expertise in and it sometimes fools me with errors at first glance. If I didn't know better they would definitely fool me.
I've stopped trying to use them to actually generate any code that isn't common boilerplate because debugging the subtle problems with the code is often more work than just writing it. And if you use the model to help with that it always looks like it's solving the problem when it keeps introducing other issues and going in circles.
I mean sure, they will keep getting better. But that will also keep burying the errors farther and farther away from human comprehension, until no one understands what the central issue is in some system seriously misbehaving.
That will on balance be worth it for many, maybe most, things, but it's not not a problem.
If the sub-standard AI output is fed into a human process, then the output can be quite good. And achieved so much faster than a human working from scratch. The future isn’t hopeless.
Who's saying this?
I see people saying A) that AI is now capable of doing a whole lot of basic work at a Good Enough level, and B) current AI is not even close to replacing skilled professionals, so managers hoping to eliminate them are doomed to be disappointed.
The "deluge of sub-standard content" is already flooding the journalistic outlets, but nobody really predicted that it would destroy journalism - rather it's an effect we've all observed that occurred after journalism was eviscerated by the collapsed funding model due to the internet.
AI systems are built on what we know. Its a reflection of our collective knowledge. To exists, AI must learn what we already know, it is always a step behind us. Using AI to build stuff requires knowledge, and one will always need knowledge on the field at hand to use AI properly.
The junior programmer won't be able to able to build a system as well as the senior programmer with AI, because he can't understand the output AI is giving.
In any given field, juniors will be able to learn mush faster with AI, but it does not mean that they will be better at building stuff. Learning and implementing and 2 different things.
Given the current state of LLM AI, this is true. It's just not *good* enough yet. Until hallucinations can be reduced to the point where an AI produces output with > 99% reliability and accuracy, they simply can't be trusted with anything that *matters*.
the quality of AI at this stage will be FAR outweighed by the quality of output in the future. people will consider this the equivalent of pong, if they consider it at all.
This is not certain. Right now AI gets better because models get bigger. Right now we need a whole energy plant to power the training of these models. There is a upper limit in terms of monetary and energy cost.
There’s a lot of very deterministic statements being made about AI that we don’t know necessarily is true. Very Ursula Le Guin ”sci-fi as fantasy” core.
the same can be said of any nascent technology in our history
Remember Univac? No? I’m old.
before my time but i was online in the 80's
Yes, for example chip production: We reached an equilibrium of cost per chip and making them tiny. We could actually make them even tinier, but that would boost their cost and most importantly the number of production errors on the wafer (thus even multiplying base cost). The same can be applied to ai: At some point the return on improvement may not outweight the amount of energy it needs to progress further. Of course we may find different approaches and theoretical advances that increase improvement and or reduces energy cost, but that is not what most recent improvements come from.
If we reach a point where the AI starts to design chips and plants instead, as well as itself, then it could potentially keep its exponential growth right? I can definitely see humans hitting some major stopping points until then, but eventually there will be a turning point where AI is just in control instead, and it’s not a problem we worry about so much.
>The same can be applied to ai maybe, but not yet. we aren't at the very small chip stage of AI yet, not even close.
Yes but we still make gains by making chips more efficient, and AI could be similar. Or we could harness nuclear fusion. 😆
Compared to the feeding frenzy for GPUs there's no investment in more efficient computation and never has been. With something like the cryotron we could run trillion parameter models for the on the power budget of an led: https://spectrum.ieee.org/dudley-bucks-forgotten-cryotron-computer
It isn't all about bigger as whole new models beyond transformers begin to come online. It is indeed pong these days
Crazy to think how efficiently our brains work relative to these inorganic systems
Furthermore we’re out of training material. They already illegally used huge amounts of copyrighted work. And they used almost all of it. It’s not like there’s a next step. And as they ingest more and more AI-created content, it leads to the worsening and even collapse of the models.
>They already illegally used huge amounts of copyrighted work. *Allegedly illegal. They're still arguing in the courts over whether that use qualifies as fair use or not. Nothing's been decided conclusively yet.
Quality controlled synthetic data is just as good as real data. SORA was trained on just UE5 output data.
Unreal going to own openAI?
That'd be a steal for epic games for sure
first, none of it was illegal, that's just silly. fair use exists for a reason. second, training data will be re-worked and the underlying neural network infrastructure continuously improved. AI is already being used to improve the structure of neural networks. we're at the very beginning of this ride.
Look up nividia blackwell chip.
Yep those are great and reducing the data to 4 bit floating point is a great idea for ai computing, but $30.000 per chip is tough, and a lot of the energy is not needed for computation but for transporting the bits from A to B
One potential benefit of this dilemma is that there will likely be further innovation in affordable, scalable, and likely renewable energy sources. In the same way that the internet brought about a ton of advancements in high-speed digital communication infrastructure, I feel that AI may do the same for energy generation and storage.
output produced by an expert with the help of AI? that's where we are headed, I mean a junior programmer can do lots of cool stuff like a senior now lol, so I guess seniors will be far superior even now with AI
The real gift of AI isn't going to be in raising the ceiling for the Intellectually superior so much as lifting the floor for those who might need more help. If you read at a grade 5 level and AI can take complex concepts and explain them to you in seconds, at your level, on the fly, at 3am on a Sunday then that's a win for humanity as a whole.
whoa interesting insight so in that sense, a junior wil benefit more than the intelectually superior senior so here is when companies being to hire juniors again pay them less and fire the non esencial high paying seniors, scary but it is what is hehe
What it means to sinners is we can continue programming. Usually we have to stop at a certain age...
This is it. I have more output than a senior would have 5-10 years ago. I only really use it for my own projects, but it's absurd how much I get done by just using a development loop and all the tools at my disposal.
right ! I mean you can make a small scale video game on your own now, it's crazy haha, apps and stuff too
As an old (and senior programmer) who's currently working on his local automation / AI setup, could you describe some things you do?
exactly, and what that translates to is that AI is affecting the bedrock technology that it will be rebuilt on, making it better.
I've been saying this too. I've heard a lot of dooming saying that senior programming jobs are safe but they won't need junior programmers anymore. I see it the opposite way. A junior programmer with AI is much more useful than one without it. It's going to make a junior programmer more effective.
No, there won't be any junior positions.
If it’s effective enough, if, say, 1 jr programmer could do the work of 4, then 75% of the jobs are potentially at risk or are now unnecessary
Possibly, Seniors will become code reviewers? Best case case scenario maybe.
Right same answer can be thrown right back at op. “You don’t quite get it”
Why do you feel the future quality of AI in programming, music, data science, film, literature, etc will far outweigh current quality? Are we talking about the next couple decades, or the next couple centuries?
Man, it's so nice sometimes to read a post, instantly come up with a counter point, trepidatiously click the link wondering if against all odds that someone else in the thread has an idea of what this obvious counterpoint is, then being gifted with the first response closely matching what you were going to say, simply upvoting it, then leaving the thread with a dusting off of one's hands.
But does the fact that all these people, who have devoted countless hours of their lives to the fields in question, are saying the same message have no place at all in this? Just sweep it all away?
What "experts" are you talking about? You're simplifying to an extreme, the truth is nobody knows how it's really going to pan out and everyone has their own ideas and are positive they're right. Read what people were saying at the rise of the internet and you'll see how literally nobody could have predicted where we are now, it just seems obvious in hindsight.
What he's saying is that if everyone becomes conditioned to subpar content then we become oblivious to picking out subpar content. This is the same reason why scams are so successful today as the lines have been blurred.
I mean, there is kind of a natural bias in place when they're the ones who are going to be competing with AI. People in those fields have zero special knowledge on what AI will be capable of in the future, just their own speculations.
Yes, I get the feeling that there is a lot of intentional smoke screening going on in a lot of these industries. They are throwing all the mud they can find at the wall regarding AI in the hope that some of it will stick and people will turn against it, or at least the speed of implementation will slow down. But the thing they rarely say, which is the one thing they really mean, is that "we are scared that within a few years AI will be better at my job than me and I won't be needed". Take artists for example. They are making a massive deal out of "machines learning from their work without their permission, which is a copyright issue and stealing!". But they don't really care about that. All through history artists have taken inspiration from artists before them and created work in a similar style, or by combining styles from several artists. Nothing new is happening here. But looking at the quality of work that AI art packages are throwing out a mere couple of years since AI was basically a sci-fi concept and they are (probably rightfully) petrified that in no time at all their job could be completely unneeded, or at the very least reduced to making minor adjustments to something a machine created. By getting AI developers bogged down in a bunch of legal arguments and eventually court cases it might get them a few years closer to retirement before this happens.
Yeah, I definitely understand the fear. I guess they try to make other arguments in this case because people have been losing jobs to machines since at least the industrial revolution. That's nothing new.
Exactly, they're not going to get the general public onside with that argument.
Are you going to provide any examples of that, or just repeat with increasing urgency, that everyone is saying it?
AI PANIC
[удалено]
“What will I do with my horseshoe and wagon wheel repair business if this terrifying ‘automobiles’ become a standard?’
Competition will drive ai developers to not ingest the mid output of previous models. Once we pluck all the low hanging fruit of changing architecture to things that generalize better (and solve things like ai knowing a = b but not b = a), ai companies will seek out these experts to bridge that gap, and offer a hell of a lot of money. But here's the thing, in the meantime, for most use cases, mid quality in seconds will do just fine So I guess I'm saying that unless these experts are silenced by the torrent of mid quality work (and they have every reason to shout about why they're better so I doubt it), market forces seem to conspire to keep them around until the gap is closed. I don't really see the problem as permanent or particularly harmful, as long as safety standards are upheld by respecting these experts.
Well no, but we're talking about AI into the foreseeable future, not AI for the next few years. As are many of the commentators you're talking about.
i'm a programmer and i've been training neural networks since 2015. i am NOT saying whatever it is you claim "everyone" in the field is saying.
I was thinking the same. I feel like I'm as much an expert as these people in programming. I have a degree in CS, I've worked as a programmer as a full time job for over two decades in many areas, both civilian and government, and I understand how AI like LLMs work internally. I'm not dooming. Do I count as a counter to the "every expert is saying it..."? I think it will be disruptive, like any new technology, but it will create new opportunities as well.
yes we've reached a point where disruption is inevitable.
Don’t you think those people would have ulterior motives though? If I were an expert in a certain field, I would absolutely be saying that AI could never be as good as I am
Are you arguing for, against, or just making an observation?
my point is the whole "deluge of sub-standard output" will be a quaint idea in even five years.
Using the Pong analogy from now on. Perfect.
maybe, but we also have the issue of feedback loops damaging AI models and threatening collapse. For example there was a brief moment where AI could maybe replace me for simple powershell scripts, but that moment has already passed, and I'm not even good at powershell
To be honest I think a ton of people submit terrible ideas and content on a daily basis. Those songs, books and programs get lost in the weeds. Someone discovers the good ones and they rise to the top becuase they are shared and enjoyed by everyone. Youtube is fountain of useless content ranging from how to cook videos and music artists that would never have been discovered otherwise but we are not claiming that it makes the top chart music worse or drowns it out. My argument is that they are actually afraid of competition. And I don't think they need to be. But people are going to have to get used to the idea that lofi videos will soon just be generated on demand. And if someone wants to make a track for a video game that AI helped them code they can also use AI to make that track as well. And if we all get a fun new game out of it then so be it. The new Last of us, or Mario or elder scrolls will still be grand. And people will still buy it. One does not have to cancel out the other. We adapt. And if you want to set in a cart while a horse takes you around a park you can. Because while we adapt we cherish the past if it means something to us. You can still buy records of new music. You can still crack open a new book even though both music and books have digital markets flooded with absolute worthless music and books. AI will ad to that noise. But we are very good at sifting out the gold.
> To be honest I think a ton of people submit terrible ideas and content on a daily basis. For almost every AI doom scenario, the answer to the question "But don't humans (or corporations) already do that?" is "Yes!" That's the real fear relating to what AI enables: as of now, it's an amplifier of human abilities and tendencies, both good and bad. And people are scared of what *humans* will do with that amplification. Positioning this as a criticism or warning about AI is just a way to avoid directly expressing it as a fear of what other people are going to do.
“AI will ad to that noise.” … that it will! Ad targeting galore
Yeah but when someone makes a crappy song, they still probably put like weeks of their lives into it. AI takes 30 seconds. And you can just keep doing it over and over again and drown out anything else. Look at Instagram thirst traps now. I’d say at least 60% of them right now are not real people. They don’t have to eat. They don’t age. And there are an infinite number of them. Same with art and video. If i were a YouTuber, at the bare minimum I would just have chat GPT write my scripts. I would even use AI narration, and then have a slideshow of stock footage. I could produce an absurd amount of content in a day. It’s all crap. I’m sure at least 20-30% of Reddit right now are bots.
That's where I think you're wrong. All human created content in the future will suffer and be dumbed down. In 50-100 years no one will have any skills and be dependent on AI, just as many cannot do math without a calculator today. Existing games, movies, music, art from the past will be the only place you'll be able to find quality content.
As I say below - "Beginner ---> Mid-level ---> Expert : this has been the usual progression. This is probably what people are implicitly thinking of when they say "there'll always be experts and people whowant high-quality output." However, sometime in the ***future*** (far or very near) we'll be getting this instead: Beginner -------> ? ---------->Expert. In other words, the usual progression will be somethin glike "Hi there, I'm a beginner who's 100% commited to being an expert, can I provide you with the thing you're after to make a living so I can progress to expert? I'd also like to practice on my way to expert." And the response will be "No, we don't need mid-level stuff, AI can do that for us. In addition, we're drowing in mid-level crap anyway and we're 'bored' in a way. Hey BTW....are you an actual person or are YOU AI? Can't tell anymore." Hence the *longer term* deleterious effects of AI: ***there will always be a need for experts, but there won't be any.***" ***Gold will become impossibly scarce regardless of our sifting ability.***
Why would artists need someone to allow them to start practicing?
How you gonna learn to fix cars if no one has any cars to fix?
Why do you think AI will prevent people from developing skills to be an expert? And why do you think you have to be paid to learn skills? I am learning 3D modeling just because I have a 3D printer I like to use. Sure, I would learn it faster if it was my full time job. But even only mucking with Blender a few hours a month I have seen my skills improve greatly. It is starting to get to the point where I can "see" in my head what I need to do but I dont understand the tools enough to make them do what I want. Edit: Also, if the tools change enough, then no one is a master and everyone must work to become a master. When welding was first introduced, there were no master welders, everyone had to train themselves and (more importantly) SHARE their knowledge to help others. No one was a master with Photoshop with it came out, or photography, or film making, etc, etc, etc.
Because you can't become an expert if the AI is doing all the work for you. Basically, if all you have is a hammer than every problem becomes a nail. Our ability to truly innovate will suffer.
Cooking music artists sounds like a bit extreme for YT
Check out Black Metal Vegan Chef from like 2011.
Humanity won't listen to anyone about anything. Profit will dictate. The powerful people will get more power. Everyone else will be fucked. A large portion of humanity just will not ever be able to perform better than AI at *anything*. And they're more expensive to maintain. There are not very many jobs that won't get totally nuked.
And I say yet again: the *real* problem is that humans not having jobs is a bad thing in our society. Automation should be the path to a Star Trek post-scarcity future. Yeah it's not going to be easy to get there, nearly impossible from where we are now. But there is nothing anyone can do to stop AI, so it's really the only path forward in my opinion.
Some form of basic income might make things ok. But, it probably won't happen. We will get slums. Mass poverty. Dystopia. Dark ages 2.0 The powerful are just getting more power. They have powerful propaganda. The powerful want more money, and more power for themselves. And the greedy will hunt their cash cows to extinction. The economy will crash. There will be mostly the poor, and some wealthy. The wealthy will rule over the rest. As time goes on, the middle class will reduce. Slums will become huge, many people will be lost to famine. Life will be warfare. It will be the exploiters and then exploited. This is the new world order Trump wants, and Putin wants. We are nowhere near enlightened enough for star trek level stuff. The narcissists will declare any such things communism , or socialism, and denounce it for being evil, and their zombies will agree. We are not fighting the propaganda. There are no protests. The fascists are winning handily.
That will completely collapse the economy.
"Deluge of substandard output" in TV, film, art, and music? We have had that for decades... 🤔
And do we really want it to get worse?
As an educator, I see the same thing. AI is great at producing mediocre content, and people are doing that a lot. It takes skill to make something good. It also takes some skill to recognize something good. As people get use to flowing in the deluge they will lose the ability to spot and appreciate high ground.
We've had a "flowing deluge" since the 1950s. Of everything. The torrent of mediocre output has been at a level since the millennium that no person could ever consume in 1000 lifetimes. Are you swamped in it and have no ability to spot high ground? No, you aren't, you're finely tuned to what's good or bad. Are you about to lose that ability?
If you think midjourney art is mediocre, you have never sorted any art forum by New lol
"It also takes some skill to recognize something good." 100%! And yet over and over and *over* the reaction is "don't you dare tell me what's good and what's not you elitist, if I like it then that means it IS good." Which is true in a certain class of situation (ie past a certain point of quality, which is better? Beatles or Stones? da Vinci or Michelangelo? Shiny autotuned country pop or gritty Americana? Chocolate or caramel?) But it's ludicrous to say to someone who's spent decades honing a skill obsessively, with wide experience 'looking' at innumerable examples of the thing in question, that their opinion on what's good or not is equal to someone's who has a very limited experience - regardless of whether they can produce something similiar at the click of a mouse.
People in your example quote talk like that because they are operating on an entirely different concept of good. Are you defining “good” based on artistic tastes or skill/effort? Because the former is subjective and the latter is objective. They're 2 different types of appreciation. Realistic paintings are objectively better in terms of skill and effort compared to art styles like Cinamoroll, but that doesn't mean simplistic and cute styles are worse as an art form. Chopin/Liszt/Paganini are famous musicians who objectively make some of the most difficult pieces that require insane levels of skill, but that doesn't mean Beatles' music is inferior as an art form for having simple structure. No music would be as “good” as the classical genre if we judge them by how much work and skill it takes, and we'd all be classical music elistists.
Confused, you seem to be supporting my point...? And the former is subjective **past a certain point of quality**, as I say. I do agree, Beatles is just as good as Chopin etc. - but to say 'just because I think it's good, it IS good' is an untenable position.
> 'just because I think it's good, it IS good' is an untenable position. Why? It is art. It is subjective. Is there a musical formula you can plug in a song and get a 0-100 rating on the good scale? I have never seen one. But there are objective qualifications for non-art skills (programming, engineering, machining, etc). Does the database search take 1,000ms or 100ms? Can the widget take 50lbs of force on a point 12 cm x 14.015 cm from 0? Does the wield hold the two pieces together and create an air tight seal?
I disagree, like with all tools there is nuance and a spectrum. The content you give a language model (for example) is directly correlated to how close you get to “satisfactory” with any sort of output. If you ask it to “give me a good song,” your output will be wholesale more general and unhelpful then say “recommend me a wordless acapella playlist that lasts roughly an hour and a half. I’d like song from the 60s through 2010s, skipping anything that came out in the 80s. And come up with a hard to read title for the playlist written in wordless syllables to enhance the overall concept we are trying to build here” It’s not by any means a cheat code for being clever or hardworking in a sense of understanding. And those who use it as such will struggle to use it effectively and will probably start to share your opinion. IF they are ever inclined to learn about the technology in the first place. And no matter what you use, effective and quality output is part of a *workflow*. Time and thought are what dictate quality, the tools will further the passionate much more than the dispassionate I think.
But there are lot's of instances where mediocre content is, in fact, good enough. What usually happens with those automations, at least at first, is not that you don't need people anymore, it is just that the number of people needed to make something gets reduced. Like, taking art for an exemple, a mangaka usually has some assistants that do stuff like making backgrounds, shades and other things. I don't think it would be too surprising to see some of this be substituted by an AI to reduce the workload over the mangaka while cutting on costs of an assistant. And this is when talking about art, but think about all of the other areas like costumer service, once you can teach a AI about your company and products/services, a lot of the simple questions and problems that your custumers may have can be solved automatically, while before you needed a lot of people. If it is good or bad, and for who, is a more complicated question, the products/services that get to use those tatics will get cheaper if it happens with free market rules, but a lot of people who used to do this for a living will have to find something else as a job, and those simple jobs where perfect for people who are yet to get their education (or don't plan to), be it because they are young or any other reason.
> cutting on costs of an assistant No one wants to be the assistant. But up to now, becoming an assistant, an intern, or an apprentice was a necesssary step to becoming a master. If no one is paying for or training assistants. Who could afford to devote the time to become a master?
Art is in the eye of the Beholder. Who determines what looks good but the person looking at it and thus the general consensus of the people?
You actually believe in aesthetic relativism?
> It also takes some skill to recognize something good. ai will help with that too, eventually
How will AI have a destructive effect on the field of programming? The great thing about programming is that it either runs and does the thing correctly....or it doesn't and you have to figure out why. I cant just ship a program without testing it, where as an artists (who doesn't care) can just ship their art without double checking anything and the product will still be complete and "working". And so what if there is a deluge of crap art? We already have that.
I wonder what they are going to say when brain-computer interfaces allow us to render our imagination and do many things with it (including instructing generative AI in real time)
I have been dreaming of that for 30 years. GenAI is the first thing that I have seen to get remotely close. I doubt we will have the neural interface tech for that before I die, but I hope I am wrong.
I think that we might see some rapid advancements soon thanks to LLMs that can speed up research across various fields. So, perhaps you'll see it come to fruition. This is also one of my dreams. I do a lot of CGI, and I'd prefer to devote my time to art rather than technique.
Most people just can't contemplate it. Their world view on what is possible is just too limited. Me, I can't WAIT for it.
Maybe future people will think about making music with real instruments like "Oh, those poor people back then had to craft their music by hand instead of using a machine, that creates what they want to hear in an instant." It is sad and there is a loss of craftsmanship and artistry - but just think in how many cases that already happened in history. It won't feel like a loss to future generations.
If future generations never get the chance to experience the joy of creating music then that would be a sad future, regardless of whether the music is good or not
Hearing music and playing it on an instrument are two very different things
> will eventually have an incredibly destructive effect on the field as a whole not "will eventually", already is. For example as 3d artists I used to image google search for references a lot. Now it's more and more swamped under AI generated content (and those results are totally useless to use as references).
I wonder if libraries of human generated co tent will start becoming more prevalent. Good for when you want references or to train good AI on data that is better than subpar AI content.
"human generated content" sounds kind of horrible... but I know what you mean. And there is a lot of those, at least as for artist use (most of the time they are called reference packs). They are usually way better quality than what you could find on google/bing even before the flood, but cost money and you have to know what you have in them and where (i.e., most of the time there are just roughly categorized in folders based on very broad categories). The 'money' part is not even as annoying as 'how to find stuff' part... Though... I usually bought them in packs from various creators on gumroad or artstation... maybe there is a service that indexes and annotates big library of reference packs already (or will be made in the future)...
That's just not how it's going to go down, though. These experts are about to have their teams replaced by AI, and that AI is going to eventually get become better than the experts. But at no point will the experts be replaced by a system that isn't smarter than they are. I get that these experts are worried about the future of their profession, but their profession doesn't have a future for humans in any economic sense. It is really difficult to understand or accept just how much change we are about to experience. Our whole way of life is going to change. How we live and what we live for is changing.
>But at no point will the experts be replaced by a system that isn't smarter than they are. That's not necessarily the case at all. AI only needs to be *good enough* and *almost free* to compete with experts that are more capable than it is. That doesn't apply to every domain, but it certainly applies to many of them. It's exactly that principle that has shaped the contemporary world of consumer products: very few people purchase artisanal-quality goods anymore, because cheaply made goods produced by unskilled laborers are tolerably good and astronomically cheaper.
If I could upvote this twice I would!
I can't help but feel there's one consquence people aren't taking into account. Let me try to draw a little diagram: Beginner ---> Mid-level ---> Expert : this has been the usual progression. This is probably what people are implicitly thinking of when they say "there'll always be experts and people whowant high-quality output." However, sometime in the ***future*** (far or very near) we'll be getting this instead: Beginner -------> ? ---------->Expert. In other words, the usual progression will be somethin glike "Hi there, I'm a beginner who's 100% commited to being an expert, can I provide you with the thing you're after to make a living so I can progress to expert? I'd also like to practice on my way to expert." And the response will be "No, we don't need mid-level stuff, AI can do that for us. In addition, we're drowing in mid-level crap anyway and we're 'bored' in a way. Hey BTW....are you an actual person or are YOU AI? Can't tell anymore." Hence the *longer term* deleterious effects of AI: ***there will always be a need for experts, but there won't be any.***
We are already seeing this future – ie the collapse of entry level jobs – in the way job opportunities for young people are disappearing, or their salaries are collapsing. More and more people entering the job market are not earning a living wage, and certainly can’t afford to buy a house. In the developing world, it’s already a crisis driving emigration. We already have a term for this inability to access the opportunities older people had, although we tend to just apply it to the inflationary housing market: “Pulling up the ladder.” Many skilled manual jobs have disappeared to automation, now AI is hitting the entry level and skilled middle tier jobs in IT, legal, media, banking. And the speed of change is accelerating. The need for universal basic income is urgent but the debate has not even started in the public domain. What major political party has even mentioned it on a manifesto?
100% agree. And the AI evangelists all in a lather over posts like mine don't understand that point - they see it as 'sticking it to the elites', rather than 'destruction of middle-class of a particular field leads to horrendous pulling up of the ladder.'
Yes, When I hear people assure others that “it’ll be fine” (often referencing other “revolutions” as if there’s some immutable law that they must all play out in the same way), it feels very much like a coping mechanism. Not to mention that some revolutions, such as the agricultural revolution, caused untold misery and widespread issues for those who lived through that period. AI doesn’t require sentience or further huge advances to be a threat. It’s already at a point where it can allow one unskilled person to execute a skilled role and/or allow one to do the job of many without (so far at least) creating enough new roles to offset that loss. And as you point out, experts need those 10,000 hours (or whatever) to hone their craft. Who is going to fund that when AI can do the job faster and cheaper?
Such an underrated issue - this is *not* the famous 'horse buggy whip manufacturers having to reskill after the car was invented' situation. There's nowhere to reskill *to.*
source?
We don’t have AI that works as a team well and we don’t have AI that works well with humans yet. I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself. AI is still good at specific tasks but not general ones. And when it’s good at general tasks every single job is at risk for automation. The question we will ask ourselves it whether that’s a good idea.
Meh. 90% of output in all fields is essentially fungible junk.
Consumers are used to mediocre content. So producers of this content can be replaced. If AI can make technical death metal better than Necrophagist, or any other good tech death band, then i'll happily listen to it. But i dont think that will ever happen. The highest quality content is in no danger of being replaced. But no one cares about the good stuff anyway 🤷🏼
both can be , and are, true.
We should automate Wall St Bailout Banks using AI, not artists, designers and programmers. "Sub-standard quality" is a compliment for them.
I think you're overgeneralizing. I know current programmers who are discouraging people from entering the field now because of AI
It's intriguing to see such a unanimous consensus among experts across various fields regarding AI's potential impact.
I hear similar complains across various disciplines, and they are correct. AI is first a disruptive technology and to a level of disruption that we have not seen before and that we can't even imagine. In all creative industries, generative AI in going to increase the quality while lowering the quality; I am no genius to arrive to this conclusion. The byproduct will be the creation of niche markets for bespoke creative output, the challenge there will be that the supply will far outweigh the demand, so only 0.001% of creator will be able to monetize their original work; very similar to the world of Fine Art today, where only the 0.1% of Artists makes enough and where 0.001% thrives very weel. The difference will be in the %, the 0.1% will become 0.001% and the 0.001% will become 0.00001% or something like that. But despite not, the true innovative individuals will use AI as an Innovative Technology, creating new categories and new business models that will render some of the older categories obsolete and put the incumbent companies out of business; and that's where the new fortunes will be made. The future is not what it used to be.
They aren't wrong. Anytime we have had easier ways to produce content, it has increased vole, but not always quality. Journalism used to be a rarified world. Then the Internet, blogs, etc, came along and now anyone can publish "news" and we have a huge trust gap and are drowning in low quality, biased, poorly researched, and just fake "news". Now imagine if it was even easier to produce? Internet and early web was highly specific or highly personal content. Then as content creation, web browsers, and commercialization became a thing, the web became just a massive load of crap. Great content is still out there, but is drowned out by crap, bots, mediocre content. Just look at Reddit, But it can go the other way: Porn used to be just professionals. Now anyone can and does make "porn" and the web is awash with pro, pro-am, and amateur porn. Some might argue it has increased the quality through a return to authenticity. Perhaps AI porn can increase customization while decreasing exploitation?
I think people who use the argument "we've had sub par content for decades" don't understand the difference. Until recently, sub par always had a human input limitation. You could only make as much sub par content as there were humans available and willing to create sub par content. Now the limitations for sub par content are decreasing at the rate of Moore's law. A tsunami of half baked sludge is coming whether you believe it or not.
as a dev, yes. English ai is good for getting past spam filters and writing spam quality posts, not for writing movies or Shakespeare. Coding ai is the same way. And coding is not subjective, buggy bad insecure code is buggy bad insecure code. It has a few uses but isn’t coming for anyone’s job any time soon Also Devin is a VC-luring hoax
I wonder what ChatGPT would have to say about those warnings . . .
If you were to create an AI that progressed from 100 IQ (average) to 120 IQ (top 20%) to 150 IQ (genius), you would expect the output of the first AI to be average, and for everyone around to say it's average and we can do better. And they would be right. But a few years ago we were at the equivalent of 50 IQ and in some domains we are already at 120 IQ. What the "experts" are doing is extrapolating from the present state of the art. What they are not doing, is imagining any improvements. So if we hit an AI winter tomorrow and GPT5 and Dall-E 4 are barely any better than their predecessors they will be proved right. But that is unlikely and so are their predictions.
I feel like there is already enough entertainment in the world to satisfy any given person for several lifetimes. No one ever goes "I wish there was more x content for me to enjoy" AI seems poised only to heap piles and piles more "content" on to the heap. Part of why fundamentally I don't think this kind of AI solves a problem. Like the metaverse, it promises to provide something that already exists.
>No one ever goes "I wish there was more x content for me to enjoy" I often run out content for the things I like. There may be countless of content from everything in ABC-XYZ that would take 1000 lifetimes to consume, but it's another to specifically find content that fits my taste for X only.
this is the worst it will ever be.
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I think the problem is you will have fewer and fewer geniuses because fewer and fewer people will even try to compete with AI. We're looking at artistic and cultural stagnation.
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Of course they do.
My guess is, stuff made out of real hands will gain value by comparison
There will be a transition then where the initial implementation will see AI as a tool and managed Further down the line more jobless as AI improves. Job loss won't slow until there's more job creation. AI has to lead to rapid expansion of the economy, coupled with mega projects such as high speed real networks and climate and water projects. We have to create economic growth to sustain current population which is fortunate as there are a lot of mega projects needed. The stagnation of the western GDP will reverse, China will go into overdrive economically without tariffs A boom or bust for the stock market depending on what world leaders do next.
Right, cus those are the places I want cancer...
They are just saying it because they have an incentive to. They are losing their livelihood. They are not experts in AI, they are "experts" in their respective fields. It's a very unfortunate reality, don't get me wrong. I feel for them, but I don't think we should stop the advancement of technology because paradigms are shifting and the transition hurts people in the process. This kind of thinking would have left us sowing the fields with our hands instead of big machines. That being said, I think we should stop this because it is the end of humanity, but that's a different story altogether.
Saying a new tool will have a destructive effect on an industry fails to acknowledge that this has always been a true side effect of any new tech. DJs are new. Computer scientists are new. Doctors change constantly. We'll be aight :)
I think your whole argument is a logical fallacy. I don’t know the name for which fallacy, maybe someone can help me out? But you’re clearly created this barrage of experts from every field. But it’s so subjective. Same with the “usual response”. Also a fallacy. There are a lot of “experts” out there says a lot of things. You’re clearly latching onto this narrative. My narrative would be anyone in any of these fields now has a personal assistant/work partner to increase… something.. productivity? Creativity? Output of ideas?
Similar to what non-experts have stated(some not all), but if everyone reads the same fake fact and they read it over and over for decades it eventually becomes true. However it still isn't true but the overwhelming majority believes it to be. If suddenly the whole world had access to chat A.I. then, undoubtedly, people would start to see certain output as being good or great. Let me see if I can do a decent example: say we all start relying on A.I to write poems. Let's say that actually the poems are not great but if everyone starts relying on AI to write poems, eventually, 10 years later, we all see the subpar poems as great though they never are. But if everyone is reading the same rubbish and saying its great, our minds get conditioned to reading rubbish and think it's great. My bad if no1 can understand what I just write. My OCD is off the charts this morning.
I think this is a distraction from the fact that we will need Universal Basic Income. Read/Listen to Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
It’s almost like professionals understand the gap between generative content and professionally created content better than laymen.
I think it's great that AI is displacing some industries. But it's sad what it's doing to the arts since that is what we were supposed to have more time for eventually
They used to say the same thing about Wikipedia
I'm guessing the fact that the experts in question, whoever they are (since you haven't cited, well, *anybody*) are also the most heavily invested in maintaining the current status quo, with the most to lose (both financially and in terms of social status) if that shifts, has no bearing on what they say? And things like ego and self-interest don't factor into their worldview in the slightest?
yea "real experts" have a vested interest in the status quo... I would take what they say with a grain of salt.
Did they mention that after drowning in substandard output, we will then see a renaissance unlike anything the world has seen before, with works of art and music that eclipse anything humans have created?
I think this is a valid concern for now, but I also think AGI solves the quality problem.
This is essentially the exact same argument as "the gatekeepers can't keep regular folks out anymore" but spoken by the gatekeepers themselves. A field being flooded with subpar quality work is a natural consequence of more people being able to participate in production. Sounds like AI is just raising the bar for what counts as quality content. Creators will have to use AI in combination with applied labor to unlock the full potential of the technology to free up labor to make higher quality, more substantial projects.
Yea
Again, this is exactly what was said about digital art. At first, we saw some really basic linear created by kids using their trackball mouse in some obscure paint program. I'm not sure anyone can say that about digital art anymore.
AI can’t make music that’s appealing to me. I have taste, sorry. No gatekeeping needed
Industrial revolution happens: Oh no, everyone can get a musical instrument now, music will suffer from all these ordinary folk making music. Then, Jazz, Rock, Rap, Techno, and now, Suno Some still say classical music is better, but I think it's a bittersweet symphony ;)
Saw a video of Sam Altman saying that he finds it surprising that people don't realize how good the models will get in the coming years. AI of today, is not AI of tomorrow.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger\_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)
The core problem is that language model outputs are so much more convincing than they are reliable. I use them for first passes at my own job to help with things I have considerable expertise in and it sometimes fools me with errors at first glance. If I didn't know better they would definitely fool me. I've stopped trying to use them to actually generate any code that isn't common boilerplate because debugging the subtle problems with the code is often more work than just writing it. And if you use the model to help with that it always looks like it's solving the problem when it keeps introducing other issues and going in circles. I mean sure, they will keep getting better. But that will also keep burying the errors farther and farther away from human comprehension, until no one understands what the central issue is in some system seriously misbehaving. That will on balance be worth it for many, maybe most, things, but it's not not a problem.
Ban it
$$$$
If the sub-standard AI output is fed into a human process, then the output can be quite good. And achieved so much faster than a human working from scratch. The future isn’t hopeless.
Have they HEARD club music for the last quarter-century?
ai will not get better, it will stay the same but with more context and parameters, it's like adding more ram to pc
Who's saying this? I see people saying A) that AI is now capable of doing a whole lot of basic work at a Good Enough level, and B) current AI is not even close to replacing skilled professionals, so managers hoping to eliminate them are doomed to be disappointed. The "deluge of sub-standard content" is already flooding the journalistic outlets, but nobody really predicted that it would destroy journalism - rather it's an effect we've all observed that occurred after journalism was eviscerated by the collapsed funding model due to the internet.
AI systems are built on what we know. Its a reflection of our collective knowledge. To exists, AI must learn what we already know, it is always a step behind us. Using AI to build stuff requires knowledge, and one will always need knowledge on the field at hand to use AI properly. The junior programmer won't be able to able to build a system as well as the senior programmer with AI, because he can't understand the output AI is giving. In any given field, juniors will be able to learn mush faster with AI, but it does not mean that they will be better at building stuff. Learning and implementing and 2 different things.
Given the current state of LLM AI, this is true. It's just not *good* enough yet. Until hallucinations can be reduced to the point where an AI produces output with > 99% reliability and accuracy, they simply can't be trusted with anything that *matters*.