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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Precisely. I have both feelings simulataneously. I am impressed by what it can do and horrified because I realize what it will do to the job market and society in general. Meanwhile everybody seems to believe that AI will cure cancer and therefore we should let it do all the damage it will do without realizing that people will die because of AI as well (in fact have already died because of AI).

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This is a reply to the dead comment of buriram:

> If anything, it should make me more optimistic, not less. If you have an idea, you can turn it into product within 30 minutes, no matter how complicated it is.

There is no product in that anymore because someone else could copy your product in the same time.

Right? If it's so easy and cheap where is the value? There is no value.

This fallacy is second to only every SME believing their jobs are going to be the jobs AI can't replace.

You have QA engineers chiming in about how "QA" isn't going anywhere.. On threads talking about code, tests, and PR reviews being completely automated.. PR reviews being a quality assurance activity..

Cure cancer lol. It'll send unemployment over 20% and nobody will have insurance for treatments much less cures.

Cancer deaths are going to sky rocket before this is all over.

Devil's advocate: People will become poorer but stuff in general will also become cheaper so it all balances out in the end

Hyperbole much? If you are serious, then what cohort of people are dying more per million, than before 2025?

Girls attending school in Iran.

Give it some time and you'll be adding to that list.

I don't think that's true, Gaza residents die at much higher rates. Give it another 30 years for all the truth to come out and we'll probably learn that 98% of them were already dead as of the time of this comment.

Yes, what is happening in Gaza is disgusting, but the context was people dying on account of AI and this was the most concrete example that came to mind.

Tesla autopilot has also killed dozens of people.

If anything, AI could have prevented this strike by invalidating stale targeting data. The school building had originally been part of an IRGC military installation, then was physically separated about ten years ago. Satellite data would have made it abundantly clear that it was functioning as a school. A human in the loop could have prevented this tragedy by looking at the satellite data, but so could an AI system.

That's the problem when you're vibe bombing you take that human out of the loop. Humans take time and cost money, this is so much more efficient. /s

Bad example.

In every war, countless innocent people die due to mis-targeting or other failure modes. At times the casualty count there exceeds military deaths. It is so common that we have a term for it: collateral damage.

So the question is: does AI lower such damage?

If AI had not been used in the attack on Iran, history indicates the death tolls in this regard would likely been much higher.

Not making a political statement or implying support for the war. Just making a point that these comparisons are more complicated that your example.

AI cannot possibly do meaningful bio science because it cannot run experiments on its own. It's limited by the crap science papers others have written, often with "third party" funding, i.e. in direct or indirect dependency from pharma.

You may want to read up on the state of the art of bio labs, this is just one example:

https://globalmecho.com/lights-out-lab/

Nice.

I guess my wording was really bad. The point I was trying badly to make: I wasn't thinking about cell-level stuff, but rather human-level observations, experiments, etc. and these are not possible in a lab but only out in the "real world." I don't see AI running anything on that level.

edit: that would be more like medicine, not bio-science

Shall we keep doing this? :

https://learn.hms.harvard.edu/insights/all-insights/how-arti...

Haha, I didn't mean it that way, but appreciate the perspective.

Yes, detection with AI is obviously already superior to doctors, but on research I remain skeptical.

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