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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

> What makes you think everybody will be able to adapt to 'the new reality'? That's pretty cruel.

I don’t, necessarily; but I do know that if you’re not even trying, then you’re putting yourself at greater risk. This isn’t one of those developments that people can just stubbornly dig their heels in about.

Life throws obstacles at everyone. Learning how to dodge and weave is essential to survival.

> I suspect that when all this is over 1929 will look pretty good.

Oh come on. Let’s not be so dramatic, shall we?

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> I don’t, necessarily; but I do know that if you’re not even trying, then you’re putting yourself at greater risk.

We could also all put our gifts toward preventing the "new reality" you see as inevitable, and put you at greater risk.

The future isn't written yet. Your ability to predict it is an illusion. In aggregate, people whose job it is to predict large-scale economic events are worse than chance in their predictions.

Happy to come back to this in 5 years and see whether you were right :-)

You'll note that I didn't make a prediction. Nor did I tell someone their prediction was wrong. I called into question someone's certainty about their own prediction.

> We could also all put our gifts toward preventing the "new reality" you see as inevitable, and put you at greater risk.

I can read between the lines.

Also, this new reality is today. You may not be seeing this in your place of business or culture yet, but for many of us, it arrived up to 2 years ago.

Good lord. The technology is nowhere near profitable and there is no clear path for it to become so. The new reality is not in any way stable.

How closely do you work with it already? How is your company retooling around it?

As mentioned elsewhere, my org is asking us to reduce usage because it is expensive and there's no evidence it improves productivity.

If that's happening at [redacted] of all places, I think it's reasonable to think that the technology may not be as transformative as predicted due to its (currently) poor performance in generating revenue.

We're profiting from its inefficiency by selling compute to other companies, especially AI startups. It's expensive and unprofitable for them and a cash cow for us. The position we're taking is bearish and somewhat more reversible than that taken by Meta, for example.

> In aggregate, people whose job it is to predict large-scale economic events are worse than chance in their predictions.

Sounds good, but isn't supported by data. Tetlock did not establish that all experts are worse than chance.

> The average expert was slightly better than chance.

-Tetlock

I am thinking of a study showing that political pundits do worse than chance at predicting the political future (this does not include election modeling, which is not punditry).

There's no realistic way to compose a statistical model for what will happen to a society when a powerful new technology is introduced. Predictors of our brave new AI world are going to be about as accurate as our pundits.

> Life throws obstacles at everyone.

This is sensible and pragmatic, but I think you're talking past the other commenter.

Obstacles presented by, for example, your boss, or your company's competitors, or your political system, are not the same as obstacles like heartbreak, natural disasters, emotions, illnesses we cannot yet cure.

> Learning how to dodge and weave is essential to survival.

A lot of people perceive that elites are throwing dodgeballs at them in order to increase their own profits. Saying "them's the breaks, it's just the way it is" appears to be deflecting criticism from those elites and that system.

It probably depends on whether you think we could actually feed everyone, today, if we chose to, or if you think e.g. human nature prevents that from being possible.

> Oh come on. Let’s not be so dramatic, shall we?

You'd have said the same thing in 1928...

Seriously: this is a massive problem that we are creating and given that the tools that make the problem require better tools to solve them I really am not all that happy about how this is going.

> You'd have said the same thing in 1928...

Hindsight is 20/20. Besides, what good is panicking? It won’t help with the inevitable; better to adapt and save for it.

> the tools that make the problem require better tools to solve them

You’ve found the opening :-)

Sorry but you are coming off as utterly tone deaf and patronizing. People are losing their jobs. This is not a small thing and it will cause a lot of misery for those people. To effectively tell them to man up and to adapt when that simply isn't an option is losing sight of the human angle. Not every problem is a technical one and not every problem can be solved with technology.

I'm not worried about myself, I've had a lot of luck in my life for which I'm super greatful. But I'm also quite aware of the exceptional position that puts me in and how many people are not so fortunate that they could probably live on their savings for the rest of their life if things ground to a halt.

Most people live paycheck to paycheck, or they may have a few thousand bucks in savings at most. They've worked hard all their lives and simply were never in a position to save enough against this kind of eventuality because the deck was stacked against them.

Have a heart, and realize that barring a couple of unfortunate moves it could be you looking at your last 500 bucks with rent due and a couple of mouths to feed.

> Sorry but you are coming off as utterly tone deaf and patronizing.

I’m sorry if it’s coming across that way. It’s not my intent, and I’m aware that many people are a lost paycheck away from a crisis.

But if you really think the right thing to do in response is to complain and commiserate, I don’t think that is helpful, either. I think it’s much better to encourage behavior that has a chance of being effective.

If you think it’s somehow wrong to encourage people to behave in such a way that has a better chance of setting them up for success, then I vehemently disagree.

> To effectively tell them... to adapt when that simply isn't an option is losing sight of the human angle.

You must have a pretty low opinion of people if you think they can’t adapt.

You really don't get it, and I think I've tried my best so have a nice life.

Whatever, dude.

> But if you really think the right thing to do in response is to complain and commiserate, I don’t think that is helpful, either.

What if complaining and commiserating leads to fighting for political actions that lead to outcomes we like better?

Possibly. But 1/this thread doesn’t seem designed for that; and 2/I’m not sure what outcome you’re contemplating. If it’s “we need better unemployment insurance and public healthcare,” I’m totally down with that. If it’s “ban the use of AI for writing software,” I think that’s a fool’s errand: the genie is not going back into that bottle.

> 1/this thread doesn’t seem designed for that;

This thread is not designed for discussion? I'm not even sure what that means. If the sentiments expressed in this thread lead to people discussing the same topic elsewhere, does it matter what this thread is "designed for"?

> 2/I’m not sure what outcome you’re contemplating

What does that have to do with anything? I'm responding to a comment complaining about the fact that others were complaining about a narrowly envisioned future which seems, to them, inevitable. I'm merely pointing out that the dissenting opinions could have value to individuals who want different outcomes from the ones predicted.

> This thread is not designed for discussion? I'm not even sure what that means. If the sentiments expressed in this thread lead to people discussing the same topic elsewhere, does it matter what this thread is "designed for"?

It means that that’s not where the conservation in this thread is going, and in my experience on HN, almost never does. There’s no organizing going on here. It’s not even clear what a group of organized people would fight for based on the conversations here.

Finally, I’m not telling people they can’t commiserate or complain. It’s an open forum for people to speak their minds. However, that freedom cuts both ways; people are equally allowed and encouraged to have contrarian views that are respected.

> There’s no organizing going on here

How do you know there aren't people organizing after discussing something online and realizing there are others out there who agree with them? You assume, but you don't know.

And yet, you speak confidently, as though you do know. What's with that?

Happy to be proved wrong. Do you have evidence that this is happening?

Do you have evidence that rules it out? It's a distinct possibility. A lot of complaining and commiserating had to happen before unionization took place en masse.

It’s never someone’s burden to prove the absence of something.

Nevertheless, you seem to insist on one vision of the future, predicted without evidence. I suggest the unpredictability of (or absence of) that future and you expect that I should explain exactly what the alternatives are.

The evidence is that it’s happening right in front of our eyes. The fear and anxiety are driven by some people’s natural responses to that, as they see it, too.

I’m not going to produce a laundry list of how it’s already impacting engineering productivity and practice. You can look that up yourself.

> I’m not going to produce a laundry list of how it’s already impacting engineering productivity and practice

That's because you don't have one.

I work for a big tech company. My org is being asked to be more judicious with AI usage because there is no evidence that it improves productivity and is in fact slowing some work down. Recent studies back this up. It is affecting practice, not productivity.

> The fear and anxiety are driven by some people’s natural responses to that, as they see it, too.

How do you separate that out as the cause of the anxiety, when the leaders of AI companies are actively fearmongering about the power of their technology?

Your still just coming with patronizing, pithy, platitude slop. Not sure how that's any better or helpful.

You just disagree with me and are insulting my character instead of attacking my argument head on. It’s weak sauce.

I'm insulting your comments. Hollow platitudes aren't arguments.

You haven’t identified a specific comment to attack.

>Sorry but you are coming off as utterly tone deaf and patronizing.

I agree, but I'd like to think these people come from a optimistic point of view.

A lot of people don't seem to understand that the "human in the loop" is exactly the thing the big AI leaders want to cut out as much as possible.

That's being willfully blind at this point in time.

I hate the idea that it’s considered “tone deaf” to encourage people to adapt to changing conditions. I’m not going to adopt a pessimistic tone and say “yup we’re all fucked, ain’t nothing we can do.” It’s intentionally changing the tone, not being deaf to it.

How long would you be able to sustain a mostly-comfortable lifestyle if you were to lose your job right now with no chance of finding new employment? If the answer is, say, more than a year, that might alter your perspective on the issue.

As the conversation was about the societal trend. For the vast majority of people the answer is <= 1 month and it drops off precipitously adding months on.

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