Ask HN: Will Humans Become Useless? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will Humans Become Useless?

2 pointsmisano5 comments

We are seeing a shift in the emergence of new tools towards humans and agents so that the product can be used by these two. It is likely that the next generation of tools will only be used by agents, and humans will only be consumers, not producers. So what will be human use?

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In the ancestral environment, prior to even agriculture, was the “use” of humans merely to hunt and to gather? To reproduce? What is your “use” to your friends and family? What is the “use” in a smile, or a laugh, or tears, that an LLM could possibly take from you?

In the ancestral environment one didn't have to justify their existence. There were no taxes and no one would bat an eye if you built a cabin out of straw in the middle of nowhere to try and survive.

If you stayed in the tribe you were born in, no one would expect more from you than to contribute a bit of your time and effort for the well-being of the social group. Every pair of arms is useful, and on average there are enough that you can deal with the random invalid tribesperson; in fact even the invalid tribesperson would have a legitimate 'usefulness' to the tribe.

Given that this was the state of things for million of years, we shouldn't taint our assumptions by basing it on our modern utilitarian view of society. For most of our time on Earth, for every animal except the human, only the individual has determine their own usefulness, even if it is just to eat, reproduce and die. There's nothing wrong with that.

Too bad most societies are built around the concept of utility, it's going to lead to a lot of issues (it already does) once both mental and physical human labor can be mostly replaced by capital. I always liked the world view of indigenious societies like e.g. native American tribes regarding this (not all their views), as they see humans simply as part of nature, you do not need to fulfill a purpose or be useful, you can just exist.

No, not in our lifetime. Our kids - maybe. But not in our lifetime. Although work-life balance will look different in the next 10-15 years for sure.

The primary use case for humans today is the metabolism of fossil fuels into carbon dioxide, long-chain polymers, pornography, machines for generating pornography, shit, and other environmental contaminants.

Are you suggesting something’s changed?

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