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▲ 0c3ca83 a day ago

Education and intellectual work isn't really worth anything if AI succeeds, so keep in mind that anything you're teaching is a hedge against AI stalling or collapsing.

We're moving more slowly on physical robotics in varied environments, so it's going to take a while before we automate reaching under the sink and turning a knob. Or maybe your kids will have a bright future in janitorial work, who knows?

▲ChaseRensberger a day ago | parent | next [-]

> Education and intellectual work isn't really worth anything if AI succeeds

I feel like this is a crazy take. Smart (and motivated) people are better at adapting to a different world than not smart people.

▲nearbuy a day ago | parent | next [-]

If AI takes off, there will be nothing to adapt to. Anything a smart (and motivated) person can do, a smart (and motivated) AI will be able to do faster and cheaper. We might end up permanently retired and just spend our time entertaining ourselves.

▲ChaseRensberger a day ago | parent | next [-]

id still argue that (human) education and intelligence is not worthless even in this world. learning is fun, a joke is often funnier the more clever it is, movies are better when they are well thought out, reading is more interesting when you can acknowledge the parallels to things youve read before, etc...

still, i think getting ASI to distribute itself properly is going to be harder than people give credit. there is still a lot of problems to solve. i dont think im going to wake up one day and we are shuttling people to jupiter and back.

▲BoxwoodSeed 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Who was it that said he'd never let his education interfere with his learning? I'm in favor of learning, but what we think of as education isn't particularly conducive towards that.

▲nearbuy 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I feel the same way about education, but as someone who received an education, I'm biased. I like knowing things and understanding things.

Studies on education and well-being don't really validate us though. They generally find a positive correlation between education and happiness when you don't control for other factors. But better educated people are usually from a higher social class, have better income, are healthier, are less likely to have been abused, etc. When they control for these factors, the correlation often goes slightly negative.

(If ASI does all the labor, education would no longer cause better income or health, so we want to remove those confounders.)

There are a number of proposed explanations for this, and it doesn't prove causation. But the data isn't on my side.

Also, I think there are two kinds of learning, easy learning and hard learning, and most people will only do easy learning without extrinsic motivation.

Easy learning is fun. It's why there are so many edutainment videos on YouTube and TikTok. Learning cool facts, or reading an educational book (without doing exams or problems) fall into this category.

Hard learning requires more effort. An example would be learning Cal II. You have to study and practice, and you likely won't get it right away. People do hard learning all the time, but usually because they have to.

Before online courses were a thing, friends or family would sometimes tell me they wish they could go back to college and take some courses they were interested in. Now we can, for free, at our convenience. But they don't. We'll watch endless edutainment videos on YouTube, but we'll only enroll in Cal II if we think we may need it.

If future AI can do everything, the extrinsic motivation is going to disappear. People will naturally tend towards easy learning. Maybe that's good enough. Easy learning will help us get funny jokes, recognize references, and appreciate good movies. But you don't need school for this type of learning. It's everywhere, and people seek it out because it's fun.

> still, i think getting ASI to distribute itself properly is going to be harder than people give credit

I'm guessing you mean getting AI to allocate resources and distribute wealth fairly without employment? Assuming we don't get a doomsday scenario, I see two likely possibilities. If a democratic government has control, people will vote to give themselves wealth. We end up with something like UBI, and people vote with their wallets to decide what the market (controlled by AI) should produce.

The other option is we get a dictator. With ASI and robotic armies, the factors that normally protect us from dictatorships would be gone. Currently, if the president wanted to declare himself a dictator, he would need support from a lot of people. At the very least, the military would have to back him. And you need your citizenry to be productive. They make all your food and machines and services. But if the army is composed of deadly autonomous drones instead of people and one person has authority over the army, they basically have absolute power and they don't need other people for anything. The factories keep running. The drones gun down anyone who resists. We're left at their whim, and we better hope they aren't cruel.

▲vjk800 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd argue that even endless leisure is better if you're smart and educated. Gives you better decision making (even if the AI makes your decisions, you still have to make the meta decision of which questions to ask the AI) and something other to do than just mindless hedonism. More art exhibits and intellectual conversations, less drug abuse and trash food.

▲tarsierscripter a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We might end up permanently retired and just spend our time entertaining ourselves.

More likely we'll be permanently starving and fighting over the scraps in a dystopian world.

If AI doesn't take off but instead remains "spiky", then being smart and adaptable will be an advantage for those trying to stay ahead of AI.

▲gspr 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You are proposing we commit collective suicide as a species. My answer is no, I'm not joining you and your cult.

▲nearbuy 19 hours ago | parent [-]

The hell? Where did you get that from?

▲0c3ca83 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

If we have working AI, I'll be able to ask it what I should do to adapt.

▲ChaseRensberger a day ago | parent [-]

i think this is a bit naive unless youre letting a neural interface run opus 12.6 and shutting down the rest of your brain to redirect energy towards local compute.

smart people are better at taking action based on directive than not smart people (im assuming).

▲0c3ca83 a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, a little bit of intelligence would be necessary to follow directions, but not much education. We were discussing education.

▲ChaseRensberger a day ago | parent [-]

lmao

▲0c3ca83 a day ago | parent [-]

Go ahead, expand on that. If you have a functional AI that delivers on the majority of what AI companies promise, can you explain why you would not be better off asking it what to do in most cases?

It's certainly possible, and even likely, that AI companies will fail to deliver, but let's assume for a moment that they don't crash and burn.

▲jackie293746 a day ago | parent | next [-]

I am so confused by this. Why does the existence of an AI that can tell you what to do mean that knowledge is useless? This is like saying teaching calculus to children is useless because every integral they can solve has been solvable by WolframAlpha since 2009.

Why bother learning drawing at all, if an AI can draw better than you? Presumably because you, yourself, want to draw.

▲0c3ca83 14 hours ago | parent [-]

A lot of people want to draw because they enjoy it, but they also enjoy showing it to others and seeing them enjoy it.

AI art currently mostly sucks, but if we solve that, there's an infinite supply of art that will be more to your friends taste than anything you want produce.

And as to Wolfram alpha: people here, on this site, argue that mental math is unnecessary because of calculators.

▲jackie293746 3 hours ago | parent [-]

AI art doesn't mostly suck lmao what are you on about?

I draw myself. AI draws way better than me and will continue to draw way better than I do. I still go to live figure drawing sessions every other week and show people my work and they show me theirs and share criticism. I don't show my work to friends, it's mostly just to other artists.

These people, like you, are not the sharpest tools in the shed.

▲guitarlimeo 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is just alien thinking to me and probably many others. You are saying that you are willing to submit your whole agency to an AI because it makes better decisions? What makes the life worth living then?

▲0c3ca83 13 hours ago | parent [-]

AI is starting to outdo humans at forecasting events and trends. If you run a hedge fund, for example, and you have an AI that makes decisions that lead to 10% better returns, would you rely on your brain? What about a clothing company following fashion trends? A military predicting troop movement?

As long as there's an element of competition, you need to take advantage and remove the human from the loop if they're the bottleneck.

Add to that the tendency of people to take the solution that's easy in the moment, and not the long term best option, and yes, I think a lot of people will outsource their thinking.

As for what makes life worth living? Enriching the wealthy, if you look at the actions if the tech industry. The world we're heading to seems like a hell.

▲guitarlimeo 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah I failed to notice that we were talking about decisions on a company level. Sure, it will devolve into AI vs AI.

> Add to that the tendency of people to take the solution that's easy in the moment, and not the long term best option, and yes, I think a lot of people will outsource their thinking.

Hmm I don't agree with this, many people will want to live instead of longevitymaxxing like Bryan Johnson.

> The world we're heading to seems like a hell.

We agree.

▲0c3ca83 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I think any competitive or critical life decision is likely devolve to AI.

▲Planktonne 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> If you have a functional AI that delivers on the majority of what AI companies promise

A good education would let you realise how unlikely this is.

▲AngryData 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would not be betting on trade jobs for the future. Many people right now who are capable and skilled in trades left and stayed out of the industry because of crap pay and working conditions, im one of them. And not only are we likely to see a further reduction in pay because of everyone thinking trades is a good path right now and pushing it, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, if people start losing their jobs elsewhere even more people are going to try and get into trades and further depress wages.

Yeah you can point out a handful of people across the nation who do really well, but you can do the same thing for jobs that are all but obsolete and worthless. Blacksmithing and tailoring and paper making also has handfuls of well paid professionals, but 99% of people with those skills will never make any meaningful money from it and it would be a foolish path to guide people towards.

The best bet you can go for in trades is union work, but that is far from all encompassing. Go to any part of the poorest parts of the country and you will find swathes of people who can do trade work, and yet they are still poor.

Don't get me wrong, having trade and tool skills is still useful, but it is a long way from a slam dunk into a great future.

▲tarpitt a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

By the time they reach adulthood this aspect of robotics will be solved. I give it about 5 years.

▲vjk800 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a weird perspective, considering that university education was originally meant for the upper classes, who didn't have to do jack shit if they didn't want to.

▲jltsiren a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the same sense as being fit is not really worth anything today.

If AI succeeds and the future is good for the average person, education will probably improve your quality of life. Especially because it doesn't have to focus on all that boring stuff that only aims to increase your productivity.

If the future is bad, you should probably aim to be rich very soon. Preferably by owning something that is scarce and useful in the physical world. Financial assets could be unpredictable if consumer demand collapses.

▲0c3ca83 a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, it's likely that it could be a cute hobby.

▲Panton_123 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But if AI “succeeds” then everyone that used to hold a job that has now been replaced would flood the blue collar market. I am not so sure that is such a bright future either.

▲Der_Einzige a day ago | parent [-]

Oh no, the enormous amounts of deferred maintenance that everyone puts off is now cheap enough to do! Oh no, we have stronger incentives to build and employ blue collar workers! Oh no! The horror!

If far more Americans learn to do blue collar stuff, it will devalue the massive amounts of scammers, charlatans, grifters that we see in these professions. Construction has literally significantly declined in real productivity since the 80s. Racists say it’s cus of immigrants doing the building. I think it’s because of grift, fraud, and greed.

▲gspr 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Education and intellectual work isn't really worth anything if AI succeeds, so keep in mind that anything you're teaching is a hedge against AI stalling or collapsing.

Pure and utter nonsense. Good education teaches you how the (natural and human) world works, and how to think and reason systematically. Intellectual work is your own exercise in maintenance of those skills.

Those skills are the most valuable thing our species has ever possessed. They are what makes us us. You speak like some alien. Please don't pollute young humans with this bile.

What's next? Due to the existence of forklifts, everyone should stop lifting weights? Hell, due to the existence of cars and at-home delivery, people should infact aim for a vegetative lifestyle on their couches. They should also make sure not to think a single thought now that AI has you covered?

I swear I thought I was losing my mind over the cult of the cryptobros a few years back. You AI boosters are a hundred times worse.