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Sandbar101 t1_iwhou8r wrote

My exact thought process at any given moment of the day. God I envy the younger generation

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Nieshtze t1_iwihbne wrote

The younger generations will face an existential crisis. We are living in a time of unprecedented peace (relatively), powered by the blazing rise of technology over the last century or so. We went from traveling by horse drawn cart to putting a man on the moon in around 50 years. After the pace of the improvement of other technologies slowed down, the microchip made an entrance and ensured that the constant march of progress continued without impediment.

Not really the case any more. Moore's law is dead. Chips aren't becoming that much faster anymore. Planes aren't flying faster. People in poorer countries are living longer, but not necessarily in advanced economies as we are hitting walls in the field of medicine. AI is successful in certain cases, but is nowhere near taking over office jobs. We don't have self-driving cars or nuclear fusion, nor have we set up a habitat outside earth.

Our grandchildren are doomed to find meaning in a world where constant technological progress is not the norm. I eel scared for them. When technology became stagnant, life isn't good. Look at the middle ages in Europe, for example.

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Sandbar101 t1_iwirhkj wrote

…I don’t know what world you think you’re living in but we are living in the most explosive period of technological growth in history. We are living RIGHT NOW in the second industrial revolution. Every one of those technologies you mentioned will be operational and revolutionary within 20 years.

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UnrulyNemesis t1_iwjg0yh wrote

Bro, you just spit in the face of everyone who works or studies in STEM lmao 😂 We are living in a time where people in any science field is overwhelmed with the constantly changing and improving technology that almost appears to happen exponentially. For example, recently AI went from being able to show a couple hundred protein structures to being able to generate almost every single possible protein and many of it's interactions. This means you can sit down and design a drug from scratch on your computer before you touch a single physical compound. That is going to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry and other industries are having similar constant transformations. If anything I'm worried we are moving too fast without wondering if we should. For example, we should ban the creation of stronger synthetic opioids that can be abused and instantly kill someone if the dosage is off by a milligram. Of course I can see your points with some technology, like smart phones. However, those technologies are purposely stagnant to make more money. For example, why do you have a phone and a laptop, when your phone is as powerful as a supercomputer made a couple years ago? It's because selling two devices is more profitable than selling a phone that can also connect to a separate bigger screen with a keyboard and work perfectly as a laptop (the software on current devices that can do this is currently purposely glitchy and subpar).

Tldr: Technological development is developing dangerously fast, and if you do not see that progress, you likely are not working in any specialized stem field and are looking at technologies that are purposely stagnant to make more money like smart phones.

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visarga t1_iwk988q wrote

Moore's law slowed down from 2x every 1.5 years to 2x every 20 years. We're already 7 years deep into this stage. Because of that AI research is expensive, state of the art models are inaccessible to normal researchers, and democratic access to AI is threatened. Building a state of the art fab is so necessary and difficult that it becomes a national security issue. I think there's room for concern, even while acknowledging the fast progress.

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UnrulyNemesis t1_iwl18w2 wrote

I agree that Moore's law is slowing down, but that isn't because scientists are stupid-it's because they are too good. Moore's law worked mainly because we were shrinking down the size of the transistor (the functional unit of a microchip) to fit exponentially more transistors on a microchips each year. However, they have gotten so small that the transistors do not follow the same rules of physics that normal particles, they are following quantum mechanics. This will open up a whole new avenue for quantum computers in the future and in my opinion it will quickly be able to solve hashes in a Blockchain to the point that is destroys NFTs and Crypto 👍. Also it's a good thing that development in transistor size and sheer processing power has stopped, since now focus is on other aspects of a microchip, such as efficiency. This is a very good thing as microchip technology development can be explained similar to a steam powered train. Instead of creating new power sources for a better train overall, we have been finding ways to put more coal inside the train to increase power and have hit a natural limit. Development for different architectures, is like using a different energy source for a train, for example the ARM chips in our phone are getting very powerful extremely fast and are extremely energy efficient compared to the processors in our desktop PCs. Hopefully we will continue making these processors more energy efficient and powerful, as soon everyone in the third world countries will want these devices and that energy consumption will add up quickly. As for sheer processing power, cloud computing has become very popular and effective in the past couple years for researchers, but I agree that it could be absolutely dangerous if someone hoards computing power to create a dangerous AI.

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RemyVonLion t1_iwiwjuo wrote

You really think technological progress has become stagnant just because certain limits have been reached? workarounds are always found sooner or later and AI is allowing us to find them faster than ever, and developing AI is the focus of much of modern humanity so we are definitely only advancing exponentially more as the days pass, the singularity is pretty much inevitable unless something like WW3 sends us back to the stone age.

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many-such-cases t1_iwk8woe wrote

I envy the older generation. I don’t want to live in a world where nearly everything is done by machines, where I can’t tell if the person I’m speaking to is real or a bot, where I can’t tell if the video I see actually happened or is a deepfake, where I can never find unique personal purpose or fulfillment in a hobby because a machine can do it better or faster, where all human purpose is made irrelevant due to hyper-intelligent machines doing everything (all art, research, writing etc) better, where mass surveillance is even more severe now as government-owned AI breathes down our necks tracking us in ways humans never could, etc.

I could go on, but I wish I was born in the 40s and died before 2010, as a happy old man who lived a normal, simple pre-mass social media, pre-AI life. Because thanks to AI, life doesn’t feel worth living anymore, and as a guy in my 20s, I dread how much life I have ahead of me.

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simonbachhuber t1_iwkpk3q wrote

I think everyone always wants something different, than they have. That's the classic the grass-is-greener Syndrom and it's painful.

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blueSGL t1_iwlh1in wrote

> where I can never find unique personal purpose or fulfillment in a hobby because a machine can do it better or faster

What??

Hobbies are done because people enjoy the activity and fruits of their labor, either the activity has no path to profit (Money goes in > Enjoyment comes out) or when these activities do go up against professionals doing the same activity with much higher quality tools, experience and better 'final product' the hobbyist chooses to do them anyway. People play instruments even though they will never make it into a symphony orchestra, do wood working who will never be a named brand furniture designer.
People tend gardens, race RC cars, go paint balling, rock climbing, do knitting, collect stamps, watch trains, watch birds, draw, paint, mess with electronics, build sculptures, go fishing, golfing, cosplay, etc... For the times where there actually are professional equivalents to the hobby, swap those out for an AI and I really don't see the difference.

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many-such-cases t1_iwmczbu wrote

Ok, now address all my other points.

Also, setting hobbies aside for a moment, the fact that human artists, authors, songwriters etc will be replaced should be seen as a human tragedy. It’s sad to think that great creative individuals from Picasso to Paul McCartney will just be seen as a type of human from eras past, as even if you did write and record your own album in 2040 (let’s say for example), even if your songs were great enough that they would make you regarded as a legend in any other time period, people will assume you just used AI to make them - even if you didn’t.

Genuine human creative greatness will be completely disregarded - I don’t see that is anything but a tragedy.

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blueSGL t1_iwmg46h wrote

Why? Would I prefer to watch a movie with a consistent script, zero plot holes or one lovingly made by humans that requires reshoots desperate fixes in editing and god knows how many man hours to remove the buttholes or pixel fucked explosions to get the reflections looking just right? packaged up with a trailer that either gives too much away or is deceiving in editing promising a much greater experience than the one that is delivered. Give me the machine created version each and every time.

Same with songs I don't listen to them to connect with other humans, I do it because they are entertaining patterned structures that some people happen to be better at creating than others, why wouldn't I want an endless library constantly generated that delivers the perfect emotional response that I want at that moment.

Why should I care that instead of having to wait for the brownian motion to churn someone out at the far end of a bell curve, spend years honing their craft and then I get to listen to something for 10 seconds on spotify and skip to the next one, rather than have that just generated. and the person can instead spend their time working on something they enjoy, not for money but because they enjoy the process.

Why on earth are 'legends' required in any way, and having a lack of them make my experience worse? I really don't get it.

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many-such-cases t1_iwn1197 wrote

> with a consistent script, zero plot holes

That’s what defines a “good movie” to you? K, interesting.

Honestly reading over your comment it sounds like you’re in dire need to connect with other people. There’s a weird not so subtle disregard for members of your fellow species present here that I don’t think my words alone could cure. Maybe some day a “therapist AI” will sort you out - after all you sound like you’d be more inclined to listen if the machine is talking to you.

Anyway, the benefit of legends to you personally is that they influence us to aspire to something greater. Everyone wants to leave a legacy behind, and the presence of AI limiting human achievement will leave a void of purpose in us that I believe will lead to mass depression and mental illness.

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blueSGL t1_iwn3yj7 wrote

Yes, a good movie is one that is a fun ride that I'm either not taken out of by a glaring plot hole or if you prefer plot convenience whilst watching or shortly after when thinking about it. A solid script is the most important thing in a movie and it seems to be the one aspect given the least amount of thought. Endings are another one, would I read more Stephen King novels if an AI was sure to spruce them up and give them a satisfying ending. You betcha.

Also good job on the arm chair psychology I'm sure you'll go far dismissing people with other takes on things as 'broken' I don't hang my identity on the media I consume.

>Everyone wants to leave a legacy behind, and the presence of AI limiting human achievement will leave a void of purpose in us

Most people don't leave a legacy behind, go a couple of generations back and if you are lucky you'll be a name someone reads in a report that 23 and me sends out. "Legacy Building" is a failure for the vast majority of humans that have ever lived (if you don't count basic reproduction, something so common in nature it hardly is worth mentioning) Legacy is the remit of the rich and famous and If you look hard enough at your heroes there will be some skeletons in the closet, they just so happened to be good at X that you know them for. Why should legacy be the linchpin of an argument for AI devaluing life is beyond me (because I'm not celebrity obsessed or a starfucker)

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botfiddler t1_iwmf7x3 wrote

This has already been addressed by other people. It will enable more content and more competition, it's not the end of human creativity. Also, if a AI could make up the best art, entertainment or VR worlds for everyone, then that wouldn't be a tragedy. Who cares? Many of the employed "artists" were gatekeeping content creation at least during the last decade or so anyways (Marvel, Disney, DC Comics, ...). Yeah, tragic for the Tumbler Mafia 🤷‍♂️

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botfiddler t1_iwmjtcv wrote

Thought about it a bit more:

  • There will always be niches for humans expressing their individuality.
  • The interests of some celebrities or special humans don't outweigh all the positives.
  • Computer games are essentially creating artificial problems, for us to solve and feel satisfaction, so that the solution. You should also get into it, I guess.
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many-such-cases t1_iwn1vhy wrote

The problem I have though is with AI doing everything - even creative tasks - for humans is that I believe it will leave a void of purpose in us that I believe will lead to mass depression and mental illness. Furthermore, look at all my other points together, such as the impact AI will have on mass surveillance.

We’re going to become glorified pets of a higher intelligence. We might live more secure lives on paper because of that, but will we be “happy”? It seems that with AI we are cedeing what makes us as a species unique, and not only that but also what makes us the dominant species. We’re take the nightmare scenario of getting invaded by stronger, more intelligent aliens and bringing it upon ourselves.

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buddypalamigo19 t1_iwq8ylr wrote

I'm not going to touch the problems of verifiable authenticity or governmental surveillance, because those are legitimate issues, but as far as purpose and fulfillment goes, how does a machine doing something better than you take away your ability to find purpose or fulfillment in that thing? I will never be the best knife thrower in the world, but I still enjoy going out back every once in a while and chucking my throwing knives at a target. It's fun.

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