LLM Inevitabilism

I hate AI. I'm so sick of it.

I read a story about 14 year olds that are adopting AI boyfriends. They spend 18 hours a day in conversation with chatbots. Their parents are worried because they are withdrawing from school and losing their friends.

I hate second guessing emails that I've read, wondering if my colleagues are even talking to me or if they are using AI. I hate the idea that AI will replace my job.

Even if it unlocks "economic value" -- what does that even mean? We'll live in fucking blade runner but at least we'll all have a ton of money?

I agree, nobody asked what I wanted. But if they did I'd tell them, I don't want it, I don't want any of it.

Excuse me, I'll go outside now and play with my dogs and stare at a tree.

Just remember that machines already do most of the work. Nobody ploughs fields anymore.

I'm just hoping for a huge solar flare to reset this once and for all.

Those machines unlocked more work, different work, that led to better paying jobs!

I am all up for AI if it leads to "better" work and jobs but cutting jobs to cut cost sound like a race to bottom!!

Are AI time /cost savings going to help me pursue creative hobbies, open source, help my community without worrying about livelihood then great. If it is a means to make rich people richer by making most of us worse off, maybe we should stop and think for a while?

There may be a risk here that a zero/negative-sum game is advertised as a positive-sum game (e.g war).

The issue, unfortunately, is that society has failed to recognize the real dangers of social technologies (social media, social AI, perhaps AI in general). 30 years from now if we're lucky, we'll be watching senate hearings with AI billionaires being asked how they didn't realize their products were so harmful.

Yes, of course. What is AI freeing us of? Communicating with other human beings?

Ah what a chore. Other human beings. Wish I could just enter into a cocoon of solitude for the rest of my life. I mean I'm kind of being glib here but the ~amazing future~ we all seem to take as inevitable has me playing solo orchestra conductor, prompt pupettering a massive fleet of hyper intelligent code bots, prompting an AI to make prompts for its sub AIs in a giant scintillating cyberprism. Talking to an AI customer service agent. Having an AI secretary. Having an AI lover.

All alone, in the middle of it all.

Sorry, I actually like talking to my real human colleagues!

It's insane too. Because many of us working on AI were working on it for different reasons. To me, it was to liberate us. To let me go spend more time outside, to stare at trees, and ask people "can I pet your dog?"

We use language and images because they are easier to evaluate. Because we don't know what to actually evaluate. So it's as good of a direction as any, right?

I'm not sure if another direction would have had a different result. But it feels like now we're trying to create AGI by turning humans into robots. It can create works of art, poetry, music, but it has no soul, no depth.

This should tell us that we've still have a long way to go to make AGI, that this ineffable depth needs further exploration. To learn what it truly means to be human (which definitely requires time outside). But I feel many of my peers do not want to see this. It feels like I'm being gaslight. It's like everyone is raving about the genius of Rauschenberg's White Paintings [3 panel], and I see a canvas waiting to be filled. Am I really so out of touch? To think it weird to talk about the "gospel" of Ilya or Karpathy? It seems everyone has found religion/god, but me.

I can see the beauty of a sunset, of a crashing wave, of the complexity of the atom so delicately constructed, the abstraction and beauty of math, but maybe I just do not have a refined enough taste to appreciate the genius of a blank canvas with no soul. Is not the beauty in what it can become? Because I thought the point was to make life. I thought the point was to give it a soul.

These senate hearings are happening right now.

There is no moment in history when we all look back and go, ah, that was a mistake. Nope. That only happens right now, we're all creating the world we want to live in today.

Billions will die from starvation and conflict in that future. Be careful what you wish for.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I feel the same way, though I want to nit with one point you made:

> but at least we’ll all have a ton of money?

I just don’t see it going that way. The only ones that are going to win if this stuff actually makes it out of the primordial AI swamp are the ones training and running the models. It’s like any other capitalistic thing, the ones owning the means (the models and infrastructure and whatnot) make all the money.

The only thing I see in all of this is widening the wealth gap. Sure, there may be some performative, pity pennies thrown in the direction of a lucky few, to keep the envy alive, but it’s just going to enable amassing more and more wealth and resources to those that already have a pile of gold too large to spend even in one hundred thousand lifetimes.

I’ll tend to my tomatoes.

I don’t think we will all have a ton of money in that Blade Runner future unless you mean everything will have inflated like Zimbabwe dollars, and that may be the case.

If it's any consolation, living in Blade Runner will be optional! You'll also have the option of living in full-dive VR where it's permanently 1999. No AI in sight, just print outs of MapQuest directions.

Billions will die from starvation and conflict in a world where we deploy trillions of dollars to increase electricity usage for AI data centers but nowhere near the same amount of capital to decarbonize electricity production, which we can already do with existing technology. This is the world we live in now.

Do we have reasons why AI won't do the same "unlocked more work, different work, that led to better paying jobs" ?

One of the issues with [a change] is that some like it and some don't - but is there any reason to believe that society will get worse as a result?

My only real concern is meritocracy. It is hard enough already, but now rich kids can literally buy intelligence?

I've never agreed with an HN comment so hard as this one.

I am more and more convinced that social networks are causing the increased political instability and breakdown of communication. In the past media was centralized. So the powers that be focused on it and controlled the message. We had a kind of common understanding and language. Some idealize BBC or the great newspapers of the past, but they have been lying to us since forever. Remember the WMD discussions leading to Iraq war?

But now, because everyone can publish, they lost control. So instead they are bombarding us with all sorts of contradictory theories and conspiracies. We have come to be unable to communicate. And maybe that is the intended goal. If you can't control the message, make communication itself worthless. People choose emotionally and based on tribal allegiances. It has become an identity war. We can't even communicate with our parents now, there is an "explanatory gap" between identity tribes.

Oh but they realize. They just don't care because they (the Elites, the wealthy, who are the real decisionmakers, not the politicians) have enough money to never have to interact with the proletariat, the common man, ever again. Enough money to be shielded from the consequences from their actions.

My intellectual strategy to get to the bottom of these grand questions is very straightforward: look at my own life and evaluate what’s important.

In my life, I have found the answer to these questions. Telling a joke and making a colleague laugh. Looking at my 1yo niece crawling toward me. Hanging out in the garden with my wife and my dogs.

I look at these things, and it’s just so obvious. AI boyfriends? Ai email readers or AI taxi drivers or AI app makers? I can talk to a Tesla robot behind the counter at Wendy’s instead of a bored teenager? And that’s gonna ~transform~ my life? What?

You are right to point out that these questions are not adequately resolved. They never will be, not in the abstract and certainly not by technology. In some sense this dialogue has been happening for thousands of years, starting with Plato or before. “What is the point?”

When I was younger I used to wonder a lot intellectually about this stuff as many do but I’ve realized pretty recently that the answer is right here in my own short life and it has god damn nothing to do with technology.

I like solving puzzles and programming and I have a half built robot in the garage. But I will never confuse that with my living breathing niece. They just aren’t the same, my god isn’t it obvious!?

> now we're trying to create AGI by turning humans into robots

Very succinctly put.

  > look at my own life and evaluate what’s important.

I draw on this too. In fact, I draw on many of the same things as you.

I also love to watch my cat play. I spend countless hours wondering about how she thinks. It helps bond us as I train her and play with her. I love to watch the birds sing, to watch them fly in their elegant dance. They way they just know. To watch them feed on my balcony, at first nervous of my cat who is not half as sneaky as she thinks, and watch them acclimate, to learn she just wants to watch. I could go on and on. There are so many beautiful things hidden in plain sight.

What I've learned is that the most human thing, is to look. That it is these connections that make us. Connections to one another. Connections to other animals. Connections to inanimate objects. We've thought about these questions for thousands of years, can it really be as simple as "to be human is to be able to look at someone you've never seen before, with just a glance, without words spoke, but to share a laugh that can't words cannot explain." It just seems so complex.

I still wonder, as I did as I was younger. But I wonder in a very different way. Not all questions can be answered, and that's okay. That doesn't mean we shouldn't ask them, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't ask more. It just means that the point of asking is more than about getting the answer.

And that's exactly what I hate about AI these days. It's why they have no soul. We created a button to give us answers. But, we forgot that wasn't always the point of asking. It feels like we are trying to destroy mystery. Not by learning and exploring, but through religion.

>Because many of us working on AI were working on it for different reasons. To me, it was to liberate us. To let me go spend more time outside, to stare at trees, and ask people "can I pet your dog?"

If you think automation or any other increase in productivity is passed back down to workers, then I'd say I have a bridge to sell you, but you probably already bought 5 of them.

It is easy to be blinded by our passions[0]. I still believe it is possible. I'm not in it for the money. I'm not doing this because it pays well or the clout. I do it because it is a captivating problem. I do it because these questions draw me in. I am aware of many risk, many that are not even being discussed[1].

But I'll also tell you, I don't want to talk to most of my peers. I don't see that same passion. Most want to go to parties and make lots of money. Rather, I seek my peers who have similar passions. They may have different beliefs, different ideas, and we may even argue and fight. But the reason we do it is because we're trying to solve this great mystery. It is getting harder and harder to find them.

Tbh, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with doing things for money, to do things without passion. (I don't think this excuses abuse, theft, lying, or the multitude of things I think you're thinking about. We're probably more aligned than you think. I don't think I'm your enemy here. In fact, I think we have one in common. Even if you wish to be my enemy, I do not wish to be yours) Some people are just trying to get by in this crazy world. But we're not talking about that, are we.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568337

[1] I even specifically use a handle to feel like I have the liberty to speak more openly about these things.

Well, some people will have a ton of money

You hate AI and want to go outside and stare at a tree? How are posts like this on HACKERnews? What is the point of all these types of posts on a site that is literally about hacking technology?

>They spend 18 hours a day in conversation with chatbots.

Engagement metrics like that are what product managers love to see. Promotions incoming. /s

Sad to see it, but I believe these "companions" and "spiritual gurus" will generate the most revenue in B2C. If you have a user base that's on the slop drip 24/7, you can make them pay premium and target them with ads at the same time. The trend is already here: people listen to podcasts, follow influencers and streamers on every platform just for the surrogate friendship effects. Why not automate it away and make the spiritual guru bot sell you the next vpn subscription?

Surely the fact that you're on hackerNEWS does not imply that you like all the news?

What a fascinatingly out-of-touch comment.

It was the BBC that linked me directly to Hans Blix's reports on the UN's search for WMD in Iraq. It was that that convinced me that it was all made up bullshit. It was much more convincing than the obvious wishful thinking that was coming out of the US and UK governments.

For sure social media is propagating conspiracy theories, some of which are the modern equivalent of "Saddam can deploy his WMD in 45 minutes", but I don't agree that old media was doing the same. Quite the opposite.

This is the setup for the matrix.

It feels like some people have devalued their human experience so much that they're itching to burn off the rest of it for the hope of a technological nirvana occasionally punctuated by mundane human needs.

AI/the Internet will never fill the void, and they know it, but like an addict they demand more in the hopes that it will. The AI girlfriend won't be enough, they'll be told to wait for AI girlfriend 2.0 to _really_ experience love. Being played for a fool long enough makes anyone jaded and cynical.

Imagine that...real people with different values, some of whom even prefer unmediated reality, and on a site called Hacker News?

I don't like talking to other people. I'm pretty sure I have social anxiety. It takes a lot of energy from me when I talk. But I will 100% choose to talk to a person than the alternative, a world where that person's worth is taken away by AI.

Fuck this AI shit. I will not smile and hype up something that promises to take away the liberties of my children when they grow up. Because that is what they promise, a future where my children, and other children that grow up with them, will have no jobs. At the very least, I can look my kids in the eye when they ask me what the fuck happened, and tell them I did not smile and welcome it.

"Yes, we're starving and homeless now. But for a beautiful moment in time, I was able to open 20 PRs in one day."