It's true for all automation we do get more comfort. We build systems so that we humans have as little struggle as possible, not realising that struggle is the only reason for existence. By eliminating it, we are erasing ourselves from this world.
This kind of argument flies in the face of the fact that plenty of inherited rich people seem to lead very happy lives. Of course, they do find things to struggle with, but it's much more pleasant to struggle to score 72 at the golf course or to outbid a rival for a piece of contemporary art than to struggle for basic needs.
I can live a happy life without struggling for basic needs and without playing golf all day long. If you strip off every obligation from life, then you exist, not live.
Facing challenges and overcoming obstacles, friends and family is what makes me happy. When you’re rich, most people only care about your money, not the person you are. And I think that’s exactly what a happy life is about.
I guess to each their own. But in the little free time I have as a non-rich version, I like to face low-stakes challenges I myself choose, e.g. in my case those currently mostly are learning Chinese and learning to play a musical instrument. Those still provide obstacles, difficulties, the feeling of progress and moments of success/failure, but I can do them at my own pace and with no serious consequences if I fail.
I can imagine I could be perfectly happy with a life full of challenges of that kind, instead of being forced to work at given scheduled times which often imply I spend less time with my son than I would like, including days I don't feel like it, and including boring tasks (I love my job, but like almost every job, it also has its paperwork, pointless meetings, etc.), knowing I depend on that work to live.
In short, I think we all do need the challenge, the struggle, the successes and the failures, otherwise life would just be boring and pointless. But I don't think we (or at least I) need the obligation component and the high stakes.
What you mention about the rich attracting people focused on money rings true, but it would be moot if AI led us all to lead lives more similar to the rich, which was the point here. (Of course, there's also the issue of whether there is widespread or unequal access to AI, but that's another story...).
It's fairly easy to be submarine rich, and fly completely below the radar. Just brush off questions about your work with vagueness. If you're not flashy, nobody will suspect you're rich
i agree, but i doubt anyone on hn is struggling for basic needs. so the struggle is almost always fun, and i think that goes for most white collar jobs. it's a fun struggle. getting to the office, doing some chores, and that's something AI is slowly killing off
Automation is also for reducing drudgery - the work that prevents us from meaningful struggle by taking up resources that can be better applied elsewhere. Not all struggle (or pain) is created equal.
I wouldn’t count on reduced drudgery. The assembly line automated many movements needed for manufacturing. But which work involved more drudgery—-craftsman-style car production or standing on an assembly line at Ford?
With any new technology, subsequent drudgery depends on the technology, its concomitant economics, and the imagination of the people using it.
Being inquisitive doesn't equate to loving, or needing, struggle in my brain. Also, struggle differs for many people. Running a half marathon was a struggle for me, but I can't compare it to a family who is struggling to pay bills.
If we take Maslows hierarchy of needs, me running a half marathon is self actualization. Something I'm privileged to be able to do. A family struggling to put food on the table is still on the Lower tier of the pyramid.
You're wasting a ton of tokens doing that though. Right now you don't realize it because they're being heavily subsidized, but you will understand the point of have good orchestration and memory files when you will have to pay the real cost of your use.
Cost cannot go up, only down with time (with occasional short term fluctuations). Competition, including open weight models and consumer hardware (ie upcoming M5 Ultra) keeps moving ceiling of what you can charge down.
Company pays for company’s tokens, so company’s problem, not mine. I am happy to skill up and avoid overusing tokens for my personal sub, but if it’s getting results then I couldn’t care less how much my employer has to pay for it. They’re begging me to use it in the first place anyway.
> You're wasting a ton of tokens doing that though.
My time is worth more than tokens. I’m thinking of maybe creating some .md files to save me time in code review. If I do it right, it’s going to cost more in tokens because the robots will do more.
I think their current goal is to capture as much market as they can while they still have the best models, their only moat. Look at Anthropic, they are clearly trying to lock their users in their ecosystem by refusing to follow conventions (AGENT.md etc) and restricting their tools exclusively to their own services.
While some of the ideas in this do resonate with me (or at least they're entertaining), it's unfortunate that's it's so obviously LLM generated. And some parts of it, like the INTJ exceptionalism, reek of LLM sycophancy, which then turned into to some kind of god complex...
i just actually read that and it is possibly the most morally abominable screed I've come across in a long time. Shocking that its acceptable to share in polite company
That's really bad... I don't care if people (probably LLM here) do these kind of mistakes in their own personal tooling. But when you're going to distribute it as some sort of library, it becomes unacceptable.
Write public libraries for solving issues of domains you are an expert in. If your library is LLM generated, it is most likely useless and full of errors that will waste other people's time and resources.
Is burning the coal, delivering the electricity, and storing it in a battery that's then converted to mechanical motion more efficient than an ICE? What are the losses in delivery and storage?
there are yes, but it is still more efficient than an ICE engine. Not going to enumerate that here because that was a discussion to be had in 2010 and I am bloody tired of it.
I think curing GAD will mean changing your personality. There's always going to be a before/after you, that's the whole point. The important part is being able to reliably know what the "after you" will be so you can be sure that you want that change to happen.
Curing anything changes your personality. I stopped biting my nails to the quick after 50 years - that's a difference!
The Ship of Theseus argument should never be used to justify retaining mental dysfunction. "What if I can't paint sunflowers if I stop being suicidal?" is a question; more decades of Van Gogh paintings would inarguably have been better.
I took 99% reliable as meaning not having to repeat the command, which given that Siri is something like 50% reliable by that metric, 99% sounds like heaven.
In those cases yeah, 99% isn't reliable enough. I'm not going to tolerate having power down for 3 days out of the year. But in fairness, home automation is less critical than that so 99% reliability is still acceptable to me. I don't think LLMs are anywhere near that, though, nor is there any sign of them getting there any time soon. So it does concern me to use an LLM as the backbone of home automation.
It is an adjustment coming from deterministic software and adding non-deterministic software to it, which can be improved by the quality of language and input into it.
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