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- Hacker News
- >Before LLMs, what was there to be excited about in the near future? Solar power? Self-driving cars? The energy transition? It’s laughable.
I, for one, would have welcomed our green energy revolution overlords.
Also, VR/AR, before the Great Powers deep-sixed any real efforts. Growing up on .hack, GitS, and SAO, it really is a bummer. How come I must know, where the techbros lead me to go?
by underlipton - > what if GPT-3 hadn’t worked? What would we have to look forward to, in this alternate 2026?
One would hope maybe boring things like healthcare, better living conditions, better functioning societies, and so on.
Not as exciting as flying cars and thinking machines for sure.
by aranelsurion - I’ve never had this worry. When I was funemployed last year, I spent my time reading books and writing code and hanging out with friends. If the future is an infinite UBI-funded vacation, I know what I’ll do. “Before the Singularity, read books and throw house parties; after the singularity, etc.”
yeah it's obvious the author has a really high IQ who can keep himself busy with intellectual pursuits and a nice social life of other smart people . His experience will not map to the general population, who find themselves with idle time. Also, a barebones UBI will be hardly sufficient to cover other expenses unless the AI also solves housing, healthcare, insurance, childcare, transportation etc.
by paulpauper - > if humans are economically useless, the state does not need them. Why pay out UBI to people who have neither economic nor political power?
Forgive me if I'm naïve. But wouldn't people just vote for UBI in this case?
by throwawayk7h - > What’s the last major life decision you made without at least consulting an AI?
This seems like asking what's the last major decision you made without at least doing a web search. There's nothing wrong with doing a search. The trouble is when you rely too much on what you read, without checking it.
by skybrian - The issue with devaluation of human work is that the automation doesn't have to be real. All you have to do is make nearly all employers agree that a particular job can pay less.
And that's the case today - new AI being a sufficient programmer replacement is enough of a statement to do layoffs with record profits without impact on stock prices.
by ArcHound - I'm not sure what happens (I think no one does), but with every other technology, I can opt-out if I don't want to use it.
Even if I get unemployed, I don't see how I can opt-out when it comes to everyone everywhere using it.
Governments historically have considered humans as assets - it's even called "human capital", and they require us for tax revenue and to run the state. What happens when we aren't needed? Even if the AI is magically aligned to the state, I don't see how I end up the winning side of that. It's not like we're getting a voice in how this is shoved down our throats today. Why would it get any better when AGI can do everything humans can do? What still gives us a voice in the world?
by rahulyc