This is not a foregone conclusion. Machines have mostly always been stronger and faster than humans, because humans are generally pretty weak and slow. Our strength is adaptability.
As anyone with a computer knows, if one tiny thing goes wrong it messes up everything. They are not adaptable to change. Most jobs require people to be adaptable to tiny changes in their routine every day. That’s why you still can’t replace accountants with spreadsheets, even though they’ve existed in some form for 50 years.
It’s just a tool. If you don’t want to use it, that’s kinda weird. You aren’t just “debugging” things. You use it as a junior developer who can do basic things.
Sure, I agree. There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. However, I’ve seen no evidence that it won’t happen, or that humans hold any inherent advantage over AI (as nascent as it may be, in the rude forms of LLMs and deep learning they’re currently in).
If you want something to reflect upon, your statement about how humans have an advantage of adaptability sounds exactly like the previous generation of grasping at inherant human superiority that would be our salvation: creativity. It wasn’t too long ago that people claimed that machines would never be able to compose a sonnet, or paint a “Starry Night,” and yet, creativity has been one of the first walls to fall. And anyone claiming that ML only copies and doesn’t produce anything original has obviously never studied the history of fine art.
Since noone would now claim that machines will never surpass humans in art, the goals have shifted to adaptability? This is an even easier hurdle. Computer hardware is evolving at speeds enormously faster than human hardware. With the exception of the few brief years at the start of our lives, computer software is more easily modified, updated, and improved than our poor connective neural networks. It isn’t even a competition: conputers are vastly more well equipped to adapt faster than we are. As soon as adaptability becomes a priority of focus, they’ll easily exceed us.
I do agree, there are a lot of ways this futur could not come to pass. Personally, I think it’s most likely we’ll extinct ourselves - or, at least, the society able to continue creating computers. However, we may hit hardware limits. Quantum computing could stall out. Or, we may find that the way we create AI cripples it the same way we are, with built-in biases, inefficiencies in thinking, or simply too high of resource demands for complexity much beyond what two humans can create with far less effort and very little motivation.
I do have one notion where we can have edge over.
Human brain is quite optimized in energy usage, as a consequence of natural selection.
Meanwhile, IIRC computers are optimized for speed, and so it often wastes energy.
Now let’s see where this goes - will they be able to operate without gushing in energy?
creativity has been one of the first walls to fall
Uh, no? Unless you think unhinged nonsense without thought is “creative”. Right now, these programs are like asking a particularly talented insane person to draw something for you.
Creativity is not just creation. It’s creation with purpose. You can “create art” by breaking a vase. That doesn’t mean it’s good art.
This is not a foregone conclusion. Machines have mostly always been stronger and faster than humans, because humans are generally pretty weak and slow. Our strength is adaptability.
As anyone with a computer knows, if one tiny thing goes wrong it messes up everything. They are not adaptable to change. Most jobs require people to be adaptable to tiny changes in their routine every day. That’s why you still can’t replace accountants with spreadsheets, even though they’ve existed in some form for 50 years.
It’s just a tool. If you don’t want to use it, that’s kinda weird. You aren’t just “debugging” things. You use it as a junior developer who can do basic things.
Sure, I agree. There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. However, I’ve seen no evidence that it won’t happen, or that humans hold any inherent advantage over AI (as nascent as it may be, in the rude forms of LLMs and deep learning they’re currently in).
If you want something to reflect upon, your statement about how humans have an advantage of adaptability sounds exactly like the previous generation of grasping at inherant human superiority that would be our salvation: creativity. It wasn’t too long ago that people claimed that machines would never be able to compose a sonnet, or paint a “Starry Night,” and yet, creativity has been one of the first walls to fall. And anyone claiming that ML only copies and doesn’t produce anything original has obviously never studied the history of fine art.
Since noone would now claim that machines will never surpass humans in art, the goals have shifted to adaptability? This is an even easier hurdle. Computer hardware is evolving at speeds enormously faster than human hardware. With the exception of the few brief years at the start of our lives, computer software is more easily modified, updated, and improved than our poor connective neural networks. It isn’t even a competition: conputers are vastly more well equipped to adapt faster than we are. As soon as adaptability becomes a priority of focus, they’ll easily exceed us.
I do agree, there are a lot of ways this futur could not come to pass. Personally, I think it’s most likely we’ll extinct ourselves - or, at least, the society able to continue creating computers. However, we may hit hardware limits. Quantum computing could stall out. Or, we may find that the way we create AI cripples it the same way we are, with built-in biases, inefficiencies in thinking, or simply too high of resource demands for complexity much beyond what two humans can create with far less effort and very little motivation.
I do have one notion where we can have edge over. Human brain is quite optimized in energy usage, as a consequence of natural selection. Meanwhile, IIRC computers are optimized for speed, and so it often wastes energy. Now let’s see where this goes - will they be able to operate without gushing in energy?
Uh, no? Unless you think unhinged nonsense without thought is “creative”. Right now, these programs are like asking a particularly talented insane person to draw something for you.
Creativity is not just creation. It’s creation with purpose. You can “create art” by breaking a vase. That doesn’t mean it’s good art.