A belief: Just as human exceptionalism misled us to believe in a geocentric universe, we'll discover we've been wrong about consciousness too. That is, non-human animals have degrees of consciousness, and we'll see that it's possible for machines too.
A correlated belief: AGI is coming, eventually, AI technology will get there before climate change and economic pressures stop it from happening.
An obvious observation: Large scale upheaval doesn't affect everyone to the same degree or even in the same direction. Some people and companies actually prospered during the Great Depression. People died and suffered during wars and plagues, while others gained advantage and opportunity -- often due to circumstances and chance, but sometimes beliefs/decisions/actions/preparation made a difference.
An example of my bias: during Covid, people told me that remote work was the new normal and moved away. I said in 5 years we'll all be back in the office. I was wrong, but so were they.
People will eventually realize that they've become dependent on an increasingly expensive and worsening AI subscription in a way that echoes the worsening and rising costs of streaming services.
But the impact of depending on the tech giants for search and cognition and job skills will be significantly greater.
Why will employers five years from now pay for your $300 AI subscription when there exist other candidates who will absorb the cost themselves?
I believe that there will be a shift to other types of jobs because of AI. For me its currently increasing my productivity in my job. During the transition period people will get fired, learn new skill and go further in other types of jobs.
I believe it's here to stay, and that the next 3 years are going to be very transformative. Hard for many people. That the best skills you can develop are self-learning, reading comprehension, and the "strength of mind" to accept that novel solutions can be outdated/replaced within months.
I also believe that this transformative period will create many many solopreneurs.
What makes this hard to predict is that it's a question about human behaviour as much as about technology... if we do it well, I don't think AI should take everyone's job but it should certainly make our jobs more fun and give us more free time. But when did humanity really do things well...
On the other hand, jobs are about money in the end, who spends money? Humans, not AI (I mean, AI does but still ultimately because humans wanted it to). Products & services sell because humans want or value them. Since the technology/building side becomes so cheap (especially in software), who will actually earn money is determined by who can produce stuff/services that humans actually want to pay for (not what they actually need, but what they think they need/want). I'd say that should keep a large human component in decision making, at least on a strategic level. On a tactical and detailed implementation level, yeah AI is gonna be doing most of the work.
My best guess is it will be similar to tractors and farming.
1 guy on a tractor does the work of a whole team of animals and men. But I don't think any commercial farm has ever gone down to 0 men, and I don't think they ever will. Too many things need real eyes on the ground to make decisions and adjust.
Outside context gained through sensory input (eyes, ears) may be hard to fully replace. You'd need a human to at least give the AI that extra context. Help it work inside the bubble it's contained to.
Destructive things like warfare, I think AI will do great. But even if massive armies of land/air/sea robots controlled through starlink satellites become the norm, there will almost certainly still be human soldiers around. Context, working in civilian populated zones where judgement is needed, etc.
I believe in a few years we'll have moved on to some other amazing new technology and LLMs will just be another tool in that stack. Datacenters will become relatively obsolete and most of them will hopefully become indoor MTB and/or skate parks, maybe indoor e-moto tracks.
In a way I wish this would become true, and to some extent I believe it will (excitement will go down, and some part of the bubble will burst). But I can't fully see it happening this way, these tools are just so disruptive in so many different areas... perhaps not all, but it can speed up the development of almost anything so I don't see it disappearing. I hope it'll help improving its own efficiency as well so we can still get rid of some of the datacenters (or at least stop building more of them), but I don't see it going away as "just another tool", it really sits on top of other tools I think.
If the goal is genuine artificial intelligence (or artificial cognition), and I think it is, then an LLM can only ever be a piece of that puzzle, they represent the language center of the AI brain. True cognitive intelligence will require a completely new and novel technology that doesn't yet exist and it will itself rely on a language model for all its powerful reasoning tools. Reasoning is only part of cognition, the role of an LLM in the AI puzzle.
A belief: Just as human exceptionalism misled us to believe in a geocentric universe, we'll discover we've been wrong about consciousness too. That is, non-human animals have degrees of consciousness, and we'll see that it's possible for machines too.
A correlated belief: AGI is coming, eventually, AI technology will get there before climate change and economic pressures stop it from happening.
An obvious observation: Large scale upheaval doesn't affect everyone to the same degree or even in the same direction. Some people and companies actually prospered during the Great Depression. People died and suffered during wars and plagues, while others gained advantage and opportunity -- often due to circumstances and chance, but sometimes beliefs/decisions/actions/preparation made a difference.
An example of my bias: during Covid, people told me that remote work was the new normal and moved away. I said in 5 years we'll all be back in the office. I was wrong, but so were they.
Following Michael Levin’s work, one could argue that small collections of skin cells are conscious. AI tech has a long way to go.
People will eventually realize that they've become dependent on an increasingly expensive and worsening AI subscription in a way that echoes the worsening and rising costs of streaming services.
But the impact of depending on the tech giants for search and cognition and job skills will be significantly greater.
Why will employers five years from now pay for your $300 AI subscription when there exist other candidates who will absorb the cost themselves?
I believe that there will be a shift to other types of jobs because of AI. For me its currently increasing my productivity in my job. During the transition period people will get fired, learn new skill and go further in other types of jobs.
I believe it's here to stay, and that the next 3 years are going to be very transformative. Hard for many people. That the best skills you can develop are self-learning, reading comprehension, and the "strength of mind" to accept that novel solutions can be outdated/replaced within months.
I also believe that this transformative period will create many many solopreneurs.
What makes this hard to predict is that it's a question about human behaviour as much as about technology... if we do it well, I don't think AI should take everyone's job but it should certainly make our jobs more fun and give us more free time. But when did humanity really do things well...
On the other hand, jobs are about money in the end, who spends money? Humans, not AI (I mean, AI does but still ultimately because humans wanted it to). Products & services sell because humans want or value them. Since the technology/building side becomes so cheap (especially in software), who will actually earn money is determined by who can produce stuff/services that humans actually want to pay for (not what they actually need, but what they think they need/want). I'd say that should keep a large human component in decision making, at least on a strategic level. On a tactical and detailed implementation level, yeah AI is gonna be doing most of the work.
My best guess is it will be similar to tractors and farming.
1 guy on a tractor does the work of a whole team of animals and men. But I don't think any commercial farm has ever gone down to 0 men, and I don't think they ever will. Too many things need real eyes on the ground to make decisions and adjust.
Outside context gained through sensory input (eyes, ears) may be hard to fully replace. You'd need a human to at least give the AI that extra context. Help it work inside the bubble it's contained to.
Destructive things like warfare, I think AI will do great. But even if massive armies of land/air/sea robots controlled through starlink satellites become the norm, there will almost certainly still be human soldiers around. Context, working in civilian populated zones where judgement is needed, etc.
Don't believe - That LLMs alone would be enough to reach AGI.
Humans are bad at predictions.
Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936234
Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278
Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2023?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125628
I believe in a few years we'll have moved on to some other amazing new technology and LLMs will just be another tool in that stack. Datacenters will become relatively obsolete and most of them will hopefully become indoor MTB and/or skate parks, maybe indoor e-moto tracks.
In a way I wish this would become true, and to some extent I believe it will (excitement will go down, and some part of the bubble will burst). But I can't fully see it happening this way, these tools are just so disruptive in so many different areas... perhaps not all, but it can speed up the development of almost anything so I don't see it disappearing. I hope it'll help improving its own efficiency as well so we can still get rid of some of the datacenters (or at least stop building more of them), but I don't see it going away as "just another tool", it really sits on top of other tools I think.
If the goal is genuine artificial intelligence (or artificial cognition), and I think it is, then an LLM can only ever be a piece of that puzzle, they represent the language center of the AI brain. True cognitive intelligence will require a completely new and novel technology that doesn't yet exist and it will itself rely on a language model for all its powerful reasoning tools. Reasoning is only part of cognition, the role of an LLM in the AI puzzle.
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