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Comment by 0xpgm | Hacker News Reader

I wish there was less focus on AI replacing humans and more focus on AI helping humans do better i.e. Intelligence Augmentation. IA drove a lot of the rapid progress in the earlier days of computing that made computers usable by non-experts.

I suspect a lot of the thinking of replacing humans is driven a lot by the nerd scifi facination with the Singularity, but if a lot of the hype fails to materialize after billions of dollars have been poured into AI there could be an over-correction by the market that would take away funding from even useful AI research.

I hope we'll hear less of AI replacing X, and more of AI enhancing X, where X is radiologists, programmers, artists etc.

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People becoming slightly more productive helps people. People being replaced helps quarterly earnings reports.

People becoming slightly more productive also helps earnings reports.

But automation is all about reducing labor costs. Even shoddy automation such as self checkout.

I don't see this changing any time soon.

Replacing is better than helping, though. It frees people up to develop capital – the very source of progress you speak of! More capital development, more progress.

If you still have to do the same job, but better, then you aren't be freed up for a higher level purpose. If we had taken your stance in earlier days of human history we'd all still be out standing in the field. Doing it slightly better perhaps, but still there, "wasting" time.

No, we are clearly better off that almost every job from the past was replaced. And we will be better off when our current jobs are replaced so that our time is freed up so to move onto the next big thing.

You don't think we have reached the pinnacle of human achievement already, surely?

Capital is a tool for progress not the source.

Newton, Einstein etc. didn’t do neither for nor by the capital.

And we all know that those “freed” people are less likely to gain any capital.

Some schools would consider their ideas capital. But, regardless, if what they did wasn't useful in the development of capital, nobody would have cared. It is their contributions to capital development that have made them household names.

I doubt that the contribution to capital development made Newton and Einstein household names.

When the giant magnetoresistance was discovered it wasn’t useful at first. if all is capital focused we likely miss those discoveries.

Well, let's put it to the test. What "useless" scientific discovery has given someone a household name in recent years?

What useful discovery has given someone a household name in recent years?

Household names are more likely celebrities than scientists.

Hinton has become a household name, at least here in Canada. But only within recent years as his discoveries have now proven useful in capital creation. Nobody knew who he was in the 1980s when his discoveries were "useless".

Which stands to reason. People only think about you if you do something for them. Newton and Einstein enabled the creation of capital that changed the world, so they are remembered. The guy who discovered something amazing beside them, but that which we still haven't figured out how to use, remains unknown.

Maybe we should define household first.

Are we talking about HN households or average Joe‘s

Average Canadian Joe, at least.

I don't expect anyone in Zimbabwe knows who he is, just as I cannot name a single person in Zimbabwe despite being sure they too have household names. His capital enablements, while significant, haven't become world changing.

Is it because he won the Nobel Prize or more of a longer lasting fame?

But I doubt people could name a winner after he’s out of the news.

Maybe Canada is different.

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