We really need to start having a serious conversation about this....

[user 37518]

I don’t think AI is anywhere close to sending anyone to the moon or Mars; or sending satellites out. That’s the coding I’d be focusing on.

Sure, because most engineers in the industry work on that.

 

[Recording Engineer]

Sure, because most engineers in the industry work on that.

There’s certainly a lot of bases and contractors with the military that spin off that type of coding.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

There’s certainly a lot of bases and contractors with the military that spin off that type of coding.

"A lot" doesn't convey anything. Realistically, a large percentage of SW jobs are business middleware, web front and back end code, and UI stuff. The more difficult hard engineering positions will take longer to automate, but what happens when, say, 30% of the easier SW jobs become 40% more efficient with AI "assisting?" 12% reduction in high-paying white collar SW jobs. And a call to "learn to hammer," maybe.

 

[user 37518]

"A lot" doesn't convey anything. Realistically, a large percentage of SW jobs are business middleware, web front and back end code, and UI stuff. The more difficult hard engineering positions will take longer to automate, but what happens when, say, 30% of the easier SW jobs become 40% more efficient with AI "assisting?" 12% reduction in high-paying white collar SW jobs. And a call to "learn to hammer," maybe.

I guess that, in a not so distant future, most of the "intellectual" jobs will be supplanted or assisted (as you say) by AI. Perhaps the only hope for the majority of people will be to resort to trades, as many have been saying for years now; "don't go to college" rings a bell.

Whatever the outcome is, I think we can all agree that the utopia of many who claim that AI will give people more free time to enjoy, without having to worry about working all day on tasks that can be done by machines is bullshit.

 

[cyrano]

Glory halleluja for the overworked. I'm sure the corporations will praise you for believing that.

 

[JohnRoberts]

On the topic of AI... I saw a comment in passing that wall street geeks ("quants") have been trying apply machine intelligence to investing for something like 40 years... they do not appear to have nailed that yet.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Greed is good ? sounds like something shot out of d'Trumpfs gobshite mouth ,Gordon Gekko was only fictional ?bears a striking resemblance though ,no?

 

[user 37518]

Glory halleluja for the overworked. I'm sure the corporations will praise you for believing that.

Overworked to me sounds much better than unemployed. Plus, what's wrong with working too much? I enjoy work. Ora et labora.

 

[Tubetec]

 

[user 37518]

View attachment 108453

Freemasonry written all over the place.

 

[Tubetec]

Musks long game plan appears to be populating other planets , have we already gone past the point of no return with mother earth ? What does he know that we dont ?
Its like a modern day Noah's Arc scenario , and all the animals went up the ramp 2x2 .

Realistically if were not around for the next few hundred thousand years to contain the mess left behind after the nuclear energy industry all we might be left with is a few hardened species of Deinococcus radiodurans and AI to run the show .
Nobody factored in the cost of safely decomissioning nuclear power . The Germans are calling a halt to this folly , the French nuclear industry is already in serious trouble as maintaining the ageing infrastructure is gobbling up more and more of the profits as time goes on .

The profligacy and waste of resources by the computer and electronics industry will also have to come to an end at some point . It seems to me that we all need to go back to a more basic way of life otherwise the divide between rich and poor continues to widen .

What will the chatbot say about us after were gone ,
' here lies the remains of humanity ,victims of their own success '

 

[JohnRoberts]

Try to cheer up...

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Sure is dark subject matter , but Im just trying to be as realistic as I can about the conundrum we find ourselves in .
Point taken though , I'll try lightening up a bit

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Humans have always had a sub-population driven to explore the unknown, so this is nothing new. Couple that with long range thinking and wanting to have a "Plan B" and there's nothing to be worried about.

Many nuclear plants have been decommissioned and dismantled successfully. Only a small fraction of the entire plant is exposed to radiation in most designs. Nothing comes without tradeoffs (TANSTAAFL).

 

[JohnRoberts]

Sure is dark subject matter , but Im just trying to be as realistic as I can about the conundrum we find ourselves in .
Point taken though , I'll try lightening up a bit

Thanks

I worry about the mental health of young people being constantly bombarded with doom and gloom messaging. If we were to believe the nonsense about our planet being destroyed in only years from climate change, long range future plans make little sense.

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

The "dark subject matter" we should be concerned about are developments like this:

https://public.substack.com/p/united-nations-harvard-and-facebook

 

[JohnRoberts]

The "dark subject matter" we should be concerned about are developments like this:

https://public.substack.com/p/united-nations-harvard-and-facebook

Even tik tok has announced that they will censor climate posts. It is unclear what the Chinese position is other than to be disruptive.

JR

 

[user 37518]

Thanks

I worry about the mental health of young people being constantly bombarded with doom and gloom messaging. If we were to believe the nonsense about our planet being destroyed in only years from climate change, long range future plans make little sense.

JR

I almost finished reading a book (which I highly recommend) called "Broken Genius", it is the biography of William Shockley, one of the Nobel prize laureates for the discovery of the transistor effect. In William Shockley's mind there was also an idea of impending doom, he also thought environmental disaster was around the corner (in the 1960s), but what bothered him the most is the idea that 'stupid people' were reproducing at a faster rate than 'intelligent people', and the end result was (in his mind) that the human species would 'devolve' into a lower intelligence life form, reaching dire consequences. He came to the conclusion that some races were dumber than others, and started openly promoting sterilization of black people, abortion, and other similar ideas; something which he called "dysgenics", which is no other than eugenics or a soft form of Nazism.

I have seen this type of behavior many times from people who are clearly very intelligent, but reach a point in which they believe they have to save humanity from impending doom or catastrophe, and they claim to know something that the general public is oblivious to. These are two characteristics mentioned by Thomas Sowell in his book "The Vision of The Anointed"; William Shockley is the perfect example of these 'Anointed' ones, highly intelligent people who elevate themselves to the level of saviors of human kind. Bill Shockley didn't seem to have such ideas before in his life (at least not so prevalently), it was only until society elevated him to a higher plane that he felt he had to save the human race, only then did he start touring and appearing on television shows making a fool out of himself.

Interestingly, even though Shockley was a Nobel Prize winner and a PhD in physics, the field in which he placed most of his efforts in the latter part of his life was a wicked version of genetics, a field in which he had absolutely zero formal training, yet it didn't stop him from preaching to people and carry out conferences on his ideas. Fortunately, most people back then saw through this and ignored him. In the end, William Shockley ended as a buffoon, worthy of a book depicting his fall from glory. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about current personalities like Bill Gates, Al Gore, and Greta Thunberg, which exhibit the same "expert by self-appointment" syndrome as Shockley, but who are highly esteemed by many as authorities in the field(s) (I added the 's' because it seems to me that Bill Gates is an expert on climate, COVID, vaccines, and many other issues; as some articles with the title "Bill Gates Predicts That..." have been published. I am old enough to remember that, only a few decades ago, Gates was considered by many as a heartless business tycoon who stole Windows from Xerox, defrauded Steve Jobs, and people were throwing cakes at his face on the streets, but now he is a prophet for man kind).

Obviously, William Shockley is by no means the only one who has these ideas, he was what senator John N. Kennedy refers to as "High-IQ Stupid People" (although, apparently, Shockley flunked the IQ test twice to be considered a genius, which suggests that the IQ test is mostly worthless). I think we have seen many examples of such type of individuals just recently, starting with Dr. "The Science" and other similar characters. Unfortunately, a vast majority of the general population think that, because these people have lots of degrees and are highly intelligent, they are infalible and everything they say must be blindly followed. "Listen to the experts" is commonly heard (it seems one of the 'experts' is a then 16-17 but now 20 year old girl from Sweden). In most cases so far, the only result these experts have created is the type of gloom Tubetec describes and panic, with people throwing soup at paintings.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

C. S. Lewis

 

[Tubetec]

I heard a good quote the other day , not sure where it originated but its was Irish band Aslans front man Christy Dignam who said it ,
He said 'religion is for people who want to go to heaven , spirituality is for people who've come back from hell '

The government here are trying to pass legislation regarding so called 'hate speech'' , theres no doubt this will end up being used to supress dissent ,which is an important part of a functioning democracy.
The leader we have now was never given a mandate by public vote , if he called an election in the morning the result would be so disasterous for his party ,he would be instantly shown the door .

What was done in the name of Covid and lockdown has led to a serious recruitment crisis in law enforcement , on average around 1000 Gardai come through Templemore college every year , last year around 170 recruits graduated and around 110 serving members resigned early , politically the country has swung very much in favour of Sinn Féin ,which is the poltical wing of the IRA , so called libertarian values have been forced down peoples throats by a handfull of city centric posh boys who havent a notion about rural life .