5 ms·

A decade is nothing. If issues will be worked through a decade from now, that means the best time to think about opportunities/coonsequences related to that is

A decade is nothing. If issues will be worked through a decade from now, that means the best time to think about opportunities/coonsequences related to that is now.

modeless 11mo ago
Yeah, I see people pooh-poohing the idea of humanoid robots being useful this decade, saying it will take at least 20 years. Oh yeah? Instead of 5 years to render all human labor obsolete, it will take 20? The magnitude of that change is so large that the implications of it happening anytime in our lifetimes are too big to ignore. The important thing is that this is not going to be perpetually 20 years in the future like fusion. This is something that will happen.
- rhetocj23 11mo ago
  I think its more likely that it wont happen and the hubris of folks like you is going to look comical in hindsight.
- rsynnott 11mo ago
  > The important thing is that this is not going to be perpetually 20 years in the future like fusion. This is something that will happen. Meanwhile, in 1950: "the important thing is that fusion is not going to be perpetually 20 years in the future like the eradication of all disease [there was a time in the 40s and 50s where people, a bit over-excited about then-new antibiotics and chemotherapy, often did believe this]. This is something that _will happen."
- chronci739 11mo ago
  > This is something that will happen. Not in our lifetime. The iPhone came out less than 20 years ago. And what, you scan QR codes at restaurants with iphones?
  - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
    You do. And so does your non-technical mother (or a friend of your mother). The impact of the iPhone and its competitors is felt everywhere, it diffused into every domain of people's lives. Think: the whole of social media was pretty much enabled by smartphones. Or a more pedestrian, random example: every day I go to the office, I see endless store managers, restaurant managers, etc. walking around their store, making photos to upload to HQ. But this is merely a symptom - the actual consequence is the change in busines structure. It's because smartphones make this easy, that it makes franchise and subcontracted businesses more viable, because it's easier for the HQ to micromanage more semi-independent subordinates. There are many, many more examples like this everywhere you look. Which is why I'm inclined to agree with Karpathy: computers, iPhones, LLMs, are all the same thing - it's just the more notable manifestations of how we've been staying on 2% growth exponential curve for many hundreds of years now, and why we'll continue to stay on this curve. But the caveat is: that curve is getting steep enough that the world is starting to transform faster than we can handle.
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    The iPhone came out less than 20 years ago, and now I: • Don't get out my debit card while shopping. • Don't get lost exploring a new city. • Have zero-cost video calls with anyone I want. • Use most spare moments of my time — walking to the shops, or on public transport, or while hiking in the countryside — learning something new. When I'm not too damp for the capacitive touch screen, that can be interactive lessons, not just passive; but even for the passive consumption, mobile internet beats pre-loaded content on an MP3 player. • Have a real-time augmented-reality translator, for the German I've not yet learned while living in Berlin, and all the other languages I don't (or barely) know while travelling outside the country.
    - asadotzler 11mo ago
      • Don't get out my debit card while shopping. You take out your phone though. How is taking your phone out of your pocket, logging in, and tapping it on a terminal significantly different from pulling a credit card or cash from your pocket and tapping the terminal or handing it to the checker? • Don't get lost exploring a new city. You're young, I guess. We had GPS in cars well before iPhone. GPS navigation in cars was taking off mid-90s to mid-2000s. I had a Garmin in 2002. • Have zero-cost video calls with anyone I want. I was doing that on my laptop and desktop before iPhone. Heck, I was doing free video conferencing with European friends in 1995. • Use most spare moments of my time I did much of this filling in empty times on my laptops years before iPhone but you are right, not as much of it as with smartphones. Cramming my day full of even more noise, however, rather than having more breaks from it, feels like devolution to me. • Have a real-time augmented-reality translator This is an improvement over pocket electronic translators I was using in Japan in the early 2000s, but really the improvements are mostly in fidelity and usability, not in function. Don't get me wrong, smartphones changed a lot, but it seems like you're eliding at least a decade of pre-iphone advancements here and focusing on when these tasks became easy and in everyone's hands, rather than when the tasks actually became possible and were in reasonably widespread use. You're not a youngster like many here, so I can't attribute that to naivete and that leaves me thinking haste was at work here. Happy to hear back why I'm wrong and willing to change my mind on any of these.
- ben_w 11mo ago
  > Oh yeah? Instead of 5 years to render all human labor obsolete, it will take 20? The magnitude of that change is so large that the implications of it happening anytime in our lifetimes are too big to ignore. While true, I would suggest two things: First, that nobody actually knows how long it will take to make fully-general AI to drive robots, humanoid or otherwise. Look how long self-driving cars have taken, and that they're still geo-fenced. Second, that it doesn't take AI for the robots themselves to have 90% of this impact. All those jokes about AI meaning "Actually Indians"? Well, the same robots controlled not by artificial intelligence but by remote control from cheap 3rd world labourers who charge $5/day, will make current arguments about the effect of immigration on unemployment look laughably naïve. Likewise, unfortunately, crime, because one thing we can guarantee is that someone's going to share their password or access token and some rich person's cheap robot servant will become Mr. Stabby the unknown assassin.

A decade is nothing. If issues will be worked through a decade from now, that means the best time to think about opportunities/coonsequences related to that is now.

modeless 11mo ago

Yeah, I see people pooh-poohing the idea of humanoid robots being useful this decade, saying it will take at least 20 years. Oh yeah? Instead of 5 years to render all human labor obsolete, it will take 20? The magnitude of that change is so large that the implications of it happening anytime in our lifetimes are too big to ignore. The important thing is that this is not going to be perpetually 20 years in the future like fusion. This is something that will happen.

rhetocj23 11mo ago
I think its more likely that it wont happen and the hubris of folks like you is going to look comical in hindsight.
rsynnott 11mo ago
> The important thing is that this is not going to be perpetually 20 years in the future like fusion. This is something that will happen. Meanwhile, in 1950: "the important thing is that fusion is not going to be perpetually 20 years in the future like the eradication of all disease [there was a time in the 40s and 50s where people, a bit over-excited about then-new antibiotics and chemotherapy, often did believe this]. This is something that _will happen."
chronci739 11mo ago
> This is something that will happen. Not in our lifetime. The iPhone came out less than 20 years ago. And what, you scan QR codes at restaurants with iphones?
- TeMPOraL 11mo ago
  You do. And so does your non-technical mother (or a friend of your mother). The impact of the iPhone and its competitors is felt everywhere, it diffused into every domain of people's lives. Think: the whole of social media was pretty much enabled by smartphones. Or a more pedestrian, random example: every day I go to the office, I see endless store managers, restaurant managers, etc. walking around their store, making photos to upload to HQ. But this is merely a symptom - the actual consequence is the change in busines structure. It's because smartphones make this easy, that it makes franchise and subcontracted businesses more viable, because it's easier for the HQ to micromanage more semi-independent subordinates. There are many, many more examples like this everywhere you look. Which is why I'm inclined to agree with Karpathy: computers, iPhones, LLMs, are all the same thing - it's just the more notable manifestations of how we've been staying on 2% growth exponential curve for many hundreds of years now, and why we'll continue to stay on this curve. But the caveat is: that curve is getting steep enough that the world is starting to transform faster than we can handle.
- ben_w 11mo ago
  The iPhone came out less than 20 years ago, and now I: • Don't get out my debit card while shopping. • Don't get lost exploring a new city. • Have zero-cost video calls with anyone I want. • Use most spare moments of my time — walking to the shops, or on public transport, or while hiking in the countryside — learning something new. When I'm not too damp for the capacitive touch screen, that can be interactive lessons, not just passive; but even for the passive consumption, mobile internet beats pre-loaded content on an MP3 player. • Have a real-time augmented-reality translator, for the German I've not yet learned while living in Berlin, and all the other languages I don't (or barely) know while travelling outside the country.
  - asadotzler 11mo ago
    • Don't get out my debit card while shopping. You take out your phone though. How is taking your phone out of your pocket, logging in, and tapping it on a terminal significantly different from pulling a credit card or cash from your pocket and tapping the terminal or handing it to the checker? • Don't get lost exploring a new city. You're young, I guess. We had GPS in cars well before iPhone. GPS navigation in cars was taking off mid-90s to mid-2000s. I had a Garmin in 2002. • Have zero-cost video calls with anyone I want. I was doing that on my laptop and desktop before iPhone. Heck, I was doing free video conferencing with European friends in 1995. • Use most spare moments of my time I did much of this filling in empty times on my laptops years before iPhone but you are right, not as much of it as with smartphones. Cramming my day full of even more noise, however, rather than having more breaks from it, feels like devolution to me. • Have a real-time augmented-reality translator This is an improvement over pocket electronic translators I was using in Japan in the early 2000s, but really the improvements are mostly in fidelity and usability, not in function. Don't get me wrong, smartphones changed a lot, but it seems like you're eliding at least a decade of pre-iphone advancements here and focusing on when these tasks became easy and in everyone's hands, rather than when the tasks actually became possible and were in reasonably widespread use. You're not a youngster like many here, so I can't attribute that to naivete and that leaves me thinking haste was at work here. Happy to hear back why I'm wrong and willing to change my mind on any of these.
ben_w 11mo ago
> Oh yeah? Instead of 5 years to render all human labor obsolete, it will take 20? The magnitude of that change is so large that the implications of it happening anytime in our lifetimes are too big to ignore. While true, I would suggest two things: First, that nobody actually knows how long it will take to make fully-general AI to drive robots, humanoid or otherwise. Look how long self-driving cars have taken, and that they're still geo-fenced. Second, that it doesn't take AI for the robots themselves to have 90% of this impact. All those jokes about AI meaning "Actually Indians"? Well, the same robots controlled not by artificial intelligence but by remote control from cheap 3rd world labourers who charge $5/day, will make current arguments about the effect of immigration on unemployment look laughably naïve. Likewise, unfortunately, crime, because one thing we can guarantee is that someone's going to share their password or access token and some rich person's cheap robot servant will become Mr. Stabby the unknown assassin.