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Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

(www.nytimes.com)
388 points pseudolus | 5 comments | 25 Mar 25 17:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bryanlarsen ◴[26 Mar 25 18:14 UTC] No.43485099[source]▶
At least for the moment, AI still needs knowledge workers to spec and prompt and check. AI makes knowledge workers more productive, but it doesn't eliminate the need for them.

And if knowledge workers are more productive, then knowledge work is cheaper. Cheaper knowledge work increases demand for knowledge work. So the number of workers required might actually increase. It also might not, but first order analysis that assumes decreased knowledge workers is not sufficient.

C.f. garment makers. Partial automation of clothes making made clothes cheaper, so now people have closets full of hundreds of garments rather than the 2 sets our great-grandparents likely had. There are now more people making garments now than there was 100 years ago.

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MoonGhost ◴[26 Mar 25 20:37 UTC] No.43487017[source]▶
According to this cheap food is good because people just start eating more. Actually cheap imports can be really bad for local businesses.

Now imagine dystopian world where AI can solve most data / engineering / science problems for cheap. Or even for free, just ask.

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delusional ◴[26 Mar 25 22:20 UTC] No.43488118[source]▶
AI working isn't the dystopian option. Imagine AI can do none of those things, but the people who control the capital believe they can.

That's the dystopia.

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1. bluefirebrand ◴[27 Mar 25 00:09 UTC] No.43489006[source]▶
> Imagine AI can do none of those things, but the people who control the capital believe they can.

I don't need to imagine, that's the reality we live in right now

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2. MoonGhost ◴[27 Mar 25 06:27 UTC] No.43490884[source]▶
If you recall how it was just 4 years back. Since then more progress in AI than in previous 40. Which in turn better than prev 400. It's accelerating and unstoppable. It will be very different world in 10 years from now. I hope I live this long...
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3. johnnyanmac ◴[27 Mar 25 14:17 UTC] No.43493927[source]▶
Idk if I'd call it "progress" at this point. There were a few big steps and then companies poured billions to shove it in our face. And from what I hear we hit a plateau with current approaches.

I don't think AI is really following Moore's law here.

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4. MoonGhost ◴[27 Mar 25 20:48 UTC] No.43497988{3}[source]▶
> I hear we hit a plateau with current approaches

Then we need new. The important last year step was distillation as mainstream. In my opinion. Now using old models to train new is normal or even necessary. That was done before, but it was sort of experimental. Creating targeted datasets is a very powerful thing. Now big models can be trained on quality data instead of internet random mix. This includes long thinking and tools use examples from the beginning and not as fine tuning.

Another way of thinking is AI is steadily getting close to human level IQ. Not approximating, it will cross the line. This distance had reduced dramatically in last few years. Then it's singularity that everybody was talking about for so long.

This year we already have google's robotic multimodal. It's closed, but likely will be reproduced. Significant step toward useful generic robots.

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5. johnnyanmac ◴[28 Mar 25 00:01 UTC] No.43499721{4}[source]▶
We do. But we're not in an innovation environment anymore. It's pump and churn what we're currently doing and hope we brute force "intelligence". Ironic situation.

There's lots of promises out there but not much action nor real world appeal to this stuff. That's pretty much textbook gifting as of now.