This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Nobody knows how this going to play out.
I've been on the AI x-risk train long before it was cool, or at least a mainstream interest. Can't say for sure when I first stumbled upon LessWrong, but I presume my teenage love for hard scifi would have ensured I stumbled upon a haven for nerds worrying about what was then incredibly speculative science fiction.
God, that must have been in the early 2010s? I don't even remember what I thought at the time. I recall being more worried about the unemployment than the extinction bit, and I may or may not have come full circle.
Circa 2015, while I was in med school, I was deeply concerned about both x-risk and shorter-term automation induced unemployment. At that point, I was thinking this would be a problem for me, personally, in 10-30 years.
I remember, in 2018, arguing with a surgeon who didn't believe in self-driving cars coming to fruition in the near future. He was wrong about that, Waymo is safer than the average human driver per mile. You can order one through an app, if you live in the right city.
I was wrong too, claiming we'd see demos of fully robotic surgery in 5 years. I even offered to bet on it, not that I had any money. Well, it's looking closer to another 5 now. At least I have some money.
I thought I had time to build a career. Marry. Have kids. Become a respected doctor, get some savings and investments in place before the jobs started to go in earnest.
My timelines, in 2017, were about 10-20 years till I was obsolete, but I was wrong in many regards. I expected that higher cognitive tasks would be the last to go. I didn't expect AIs scoring 99th percentile (GPT-4 on release) on the USMLE, or doing graduate level maths, while we don't have affordable multifunction consumer robots.
I thought the Uber drivers, the truckers, they'd be the first to fall under the wheels or rollers of the behemoth coming over the horizon. I'd never have predicted that artists would the first to get bent over.
If your job can be entirely conducted with a computer and an email address, you're so fucking screwed. In the meantime, bricklayers are whistling away with no immediate end in sight.
I liked medicine. Or at least it appealed to me more than the alternatives. If I was more courageous, I might have gone into CS. I expected an unusual degree of job security, due to regulatory hurdles if literally nothing else.
I wanted psychiatry. Much of it can be readily automated. Any of the AI companies who really wanted it could whip up a 3D photorealistic AI avatar and pipe in a webcam. You could get someone far less educated or trained to do the boring physical stuff. I'd automate myself out of 90% of my current job if I had a computer that wasn't locked down by IT. For a more senior psych, they could easily offload the paperwork which is 50% of their workload.
Am I lucky that my natural desires and career goals gave me an unusual degree of safety from job losses? Hell yes. But I'm hardly actually safe. One day, maybe soon, someone will do the maths to prove that the robots can prescribe better than we can, and then get to work on breaking down the barriers that prevent that from happening.
I'm also rather unlucky. Oh, there are far worse places to be, I'm probably in the global 95th percentile for job security. Still, I'm an Indian citizen, on a visa that is predicated on my provision of a vital service in short supply. I don't have much money, and am unlikely to make enough to retire on without working several decades.
I'm the kind of person any Western government would consider an acceptable sacrifice when compared to actual citizens. They'd be right in doing so, what can I ask for, when I'm economically obsolete, except charity?
Go back to India? Where the base of the economy is agriculture and services? When GPT-4o in voice mode can kick most call center employees to the curb? Where the average Wipro or TCS code monkey adds nothing to Claude 3.7? This could happen Today AD, people just haven't gotten the memo. Oh boy.
I've got a contract for 3 years as a trainee. I'm safe for now. I can guess at what the world will look like then, but I have little confidence in my economic utility on the free market when that comes.
Similar feelings on my end except I went into law which is definitely more vulnerable to AI takeover but also has a ton of political clout and might throw up a lot of barriers to full AI Automation.
Yet, I too presume that inside of 5 years my career won't exist its current form.
Hindsight says that CS would have been a WAY better move, but I didn't have the information to know that when I made the decision.
If you're in the West? CS could have been great. Sadly, I'd have been just another programmer in India, competing with a million others for a greencard.
I can tell myself I'd be a decent programmer, and I'd probably have gone into ML since I was following advances well before the hype. Even then, medicine seems like the right choice given the constraints I faced.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Check youtube; there are some pretty impressive brick-laying robots. Or there were last time I checked several years ago.
I was being somewhat hyperbolic. The cheap Chinese humanoids will get them too, leaving aside dedicated machines, but I expect that'll take longer than white collar work. How much longer? A few years? Not my realm of expertise. It's just not as imminent.
$/hour, it makes far more sense to automate away the expensive professions first, though there's also the consideration of scale too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link