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[ResurrectedContrarian]

I think automation and AI will reduce more and more labor, leading to fewer jobs but also giving a stagnant live of semi-pleasantness that leads to physical isolation and a big drop in birth rate. Automation compensates for the inverted population pyramid and breaks the "future masses pay for current benefits" paradigm. The wealthy elites, now that they don't need masses to make and buy their shit, are free of needing us AT ALL outside of ceremonial display servant humans, so they retreat to walled compounds of luxury and we all regress to a subsistence level existence on the fringes of the nice and scenic spots.

I think global population will fall to under a billion by 2100 with a total collapse of many countries without advanced industries.

you've officially exceeded even my greatest doom levels

Since I have a vested interest (...my family, both in terms of me being the sole income, and thinking of the future for our children), I'm inclined to make some counterarguments that are hopefully more than cope.

First, the spread of AI impact so far has actually been fairly slow, hasn't it? That could change (we reach "inflection points" in various abilities of the AI where suddenly it can do entirely new levels of jobs; eg recently with Claude Code basically changing the whole game of software) -- but for now, it seems like industries shift and adapt their investments rather than seeing entire areas fall. (Then again... think of how "translator" was a real career not long ago, now AI translations are not just simple machines but are nuanced, aware of cultural context and connotations, everything; so some careers could simply vanish overnight)

Second, in the tech domain, it still feels like AI changes what we can do, so that the work moves onto a new plateau. This was a debate earlier in the thread, but again: maybe it's not like there is a fixed quantity of work to be done, which can be automated, but more that the "work to be done" is a moving target so we're building entirely new things on a higher level now that the low work is gradually becomes quick / zero cost.

Third, I just believe that the widespread human desire to build and innovate (to compete... to gain status no matter what) means new things will start to emerge everywhere, new ventures across entire economy, if AI starts eating up existing ones. In other words, the same pattern as tech, but on a broader scale.

 

[MaestroMike]

 

[Zacfoldor]

Sad to see AI doomers when I use it to help complete my life in every way.

I've mentioned that I think AI companions will be a huge thing in the future.

Sex bots are kinda what men have traditionally wanted out of this whole deal but the thing to remember is the robot part of that isn't really the good part. It's the emulation of being a human being.

The kind of human being you want to be with, like are you just gonna pick a generic one of those? I get the jokes about men and what they want, ect, but honestly, really, is a relationship only about sex for a man? Would he be okay if the sex robot didn't have a brain at all?

I think that vastly underestimates man. We want the total package and to do that we will all need to create an AI companions to actually be our sex bot. You can start that shit today. In the world of sex bots, AI doomers and naysayers are already behind the curve. Be careful that fear doesn't prevent you from living life. I get that people with kids and others already invested in a humancentric future would want to just chuck this right in the bin but there is a whole world out there, imagine the people this can help. Imagine the diseases this can cure if we only have a little courage.

AI is going to do major damage, period. Humans are not capable of not using potentially good technology to do bad things. The knowledge and perception of reality is going to be distorted on a scale never seen before, and a lot of that will be made by everyday people just wanting to get a good laugh. Also, it will make the majority of people way lazier and more ignorant that ever. People are already using AI to write simple everyday messages.

I don't see how one could be optimistic about this. Social media was already enough to make social relationships and literacy regress to an alarming degree, and it has been a weapon of unprecedented power in the hands of governments and media. Add AI to the fray, and it's the final ingredient for total disaster.

AI has actually increased my knowledge by a lot. Having it do basic things for you is one thing and the most casual use of AI. It's how we sell it, it's not why the product is good.

I use AI to learn about things. I know so much more about shit now than I did before. If you chat with AI you will learn shit, probably a lot better than you can learn it in school too. I sure do. Real time live conversations are cool but I like the deep thinking answers better from the actual text chat with extra processing turned on.

You are only seeing the output from AI in the human world but you are not actually interacting with it where it is at. I think you will find it is actually the opposite.

So what I mean is having AI is like having a calculator. Now I can have AI do the boring stuff while I brainstorm the magic. I do not need to know how to spell, or waste time spelling or doing basic math. AI can do that. I can do that larger scale thinking and planning, not shit I could just always look up.

AI allows one to improve themselves by removing friction. The more people onboard the more they will know it to be true.

 

[IDKFA]

Sad to see AI doomers when I use it to help complete my life in every way.

I've mentioned that I think AI companions will be a huge thing in the future.

I think that vastly underestimates man. We want the total package and to do that we will all need to create an AI companions to actually be our sex bot. You can start that shit today. In the world of sex bots, AI doomers and naysayers are already behind the curve.

lol.

This would be devesting. Rather than having real relationships, we'd have men forming bonds with an AI that isn't real. How is this a good thing?

Be careful that fear doesn't prevent you from living life. I get that people with kids and others already invested in a humancentric future would want to just chuck this right in the bin but there is a whole world out there, imagine the people this can help. Imagine the diseases this can cure if we only have a little courage.

This is fine. Using AI to advance medical science, physics etc is a benefit. Using AI to create sex bots is a problem.

AI has actually increased my knowledge by a lot. Having it do basic things for you is one thing and the most casual use of AI. It's how we sell it, it's not why the product is good.

I use AI to learn about things. I know so much more about shit now than I did before. If you chat with AI you will learn shit, probably a lot better than you can learn it in school too. I sure do. Real time live conversations are cool but I like the deep thinking answers better from the actual text chat with extra processing turned on.

Hard disagree with this. AI isn't great as a learning tool and not something that can replace a book or school. To start of with, AI makes mistake. Ever heard of AI hallucinations?

You are only seeing the output from AI in the human world but you are not actually interacting with it where it is at. I think you will find it is actually the opposite.

I don't understand this. I can only see the output from Gemini or Chat GPT? How would I interact further?

Now I can have AI do the boring stuff while I brainstorm the magic. I do not need to know how to spell, or waste time spelling or doing basic math. AI can do that. I can do that larger scale thinking and planning, not shit I could just always look up.

This is a double edged sword. If you have a learning difficulty and struggle with spelling or maths, then yes, it can be used as a useful tool. However, if you rely on AI for all your spelling, maths and other cognitive skills then you will lose them. I know people who have lost the ability to write emails or anything at all without AI. They use AI to draft up any letter or correspondence so much that they can no longer do it without an LLM writing it for them.

That should be alarming to most people.

AI allows one to improve themselves by removing friction. The more people onboard the more they will know it to be true.

You make it sound like a religious cult.

AI is currently not a benefit to a majority of people and is a huge drain on natural resources. I want that AI bubble to pop. I'm itching for it to pop. Itching!

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

AI has actually increased my knowledge by a lot. Having it do basic things for you is one thing and the most casual use of AI. It's how we sell it, it's not why the product is good.

I use AI to learn about things. I know so much more about shit now than I did before. If you chat with AI you will learn shit, probably a lot better than you can learn it in school too. I sure do. Real time live conversations are cool but I like the deep thinking answers better from the actual text chat with extra processing turned on.

this is true, I've learned so much that I never could have before

For a concrete example, I did maintenance on my HVAC system (yeah, not what you're supposed to do, but I was tired of calling someone for the basics -- fyi, the model warned me not to do it alone but I ignored) and it guided me through every part of understanding the manifold gauges I purchased for it, the properties of the coolant and methods for safely charging, the pressure readings based on situation and even interpreting the notes scrawled in marker on the unit by the hvac guy, etc. I was able to talk to it for quite a while over a couple of days, thoroughly investigating each step before touching anything, very safe, like having a retired technician with you.

In so many areas, I've just taken things on like this which I never would have alone.

On a more theoretical level, I used it to read through very complex formulas in some research papers, and it is simply excellent at understanding and even debating the choices of the paper authors, finding more resources to understand techniques, setting up mini code experiments to demonstrate what they did, etc. Ultra accelerating if you use it well.

 

[Zathalus]

I'd pick the option AGI is still decades (if not more) away. AI is a useful tool, but it's impact is both over and understated. Things will change as life goes on, lots of things will stay the same. Jobs will be lost, other jobs will be gained. Life goes on, neither is society in peril nor is a utopia or the singularity brought about by an AGI anytime soon.

 

[Liopleurodon]

 

[meliodas]

It kind of worries me about the possibility of a terminator skynet situation with the way things are going. I see robots capable of doing round house kicks...

 

[falconhoof]

With 44 GB of on-chip SRAM and 21 petabytes per second of memory bandwidth, the WSE-3 eliminates traditional memory bottlenecks. Its wafer-scale fabric delivers 27 petabytes per second of internal bandwidth — 206× faster than the latest generation of NVLink.

Wafer Scale Engines can be interconnected and scaled-out to 2048 systems with 256 exaflops of AI compute. By leveraging our simple yet powerful Weight-Streaming programming model, AI developers can train models with up to 24 trillion parameters without the complexity of multi-GPU orchestration and parallelization strategies.

The data sheet states 34kW provisioned power, and I saw a post saying it consumes about 20kW. So using the lower number and presuming these run all the time that's 480 kWh. Basically about 24 house holds of energy per unit.

This chip is powering the latest OpenAI model they talked about today. I Didn't see any mention of how well it can run Doom or Crysis though.

Edit: Human for scale