I dunno—I spend a lot of time “just hanging out” with people who aren’t particularly dazzled by work or intellectual pursuits or higher education. I feel like those constitute one set of processes by which people come together and form relationships and, for those of us who are mainly familiar with that set, it can be instructive to seek out communities that form without any of those elements.
One place to look might be ministry or service. Illness, loss, grief, infirmity, death, age, family strains—people require care and people give care regardless of their postgraduate endeavors. Nuns and Jesuits and the like aren’t for everybody—but look to the neediest among us and, in large parts of the world, those sorts of order are the people doing the invisible, unglamorous, uneconomical, “chop wood, carry water” form of devotion day in and day out. In intimate community even with very difficult (and sometimes ungrateful) members.
Another might be the sort of ad hoc communities that arise in exigency: disaster, forced migration, encampments, solidarity against forces of difficulty.
Unhoused, unemployed, and retired people can provide a particularly illuminating contrast to the pastimes and concerns that animate a working life. A visible minority fill their days with addiction, but a whole lot are complete and interesting people with the full range of human ambitions and desires and fears and joys, and somehow they fill their waking hours with more than just material striving.
Another might be organizations like union halls, advocacy groups, music scenes, circus folk, jugglers, running clubs, political groups…
Kids are great for this too. They do a lot of hanging out, with nothing more than imagination and a drive to self-expression.
Even our hominid ancestors do a pretty good job of hanging out litigating social hierarchy and nurturing one another—no university degree or novel engineering task required…
This argument ignores sexual selection and people's desire for status (the two are closely related). In many respects, many of us already have superabundance, in that our basic physical needs are taken care of. Yet we convince ourselves that's not enough and continue to work.
What is the object of that work, usually? The respect of others, exclusive limited resources like land, and to have highly desirable mates. These three are closely related, and that's probably not an accident. Sexual selection has likely been a powerful force in shaping our psychology.
Spending all day alone watching TikTok is low-status and doesn't get anyone's respect, so I predict that it won't actually be the thing that most people end up doing.
But in the absence of any human driven task that meaningfully improves well being the way to signal status will likely devolve into some form of fighting. The display of status might be narrowed to demonstrating who can kill more. Either literally kill or at best partake in some arbitrarily conceived games or intrigues designed (by AI?) to flag status.
"University (really all education beyond teaching people to speak) will be pointless because there’s no work to do and because growing your human capital doesn’t change your life outcomes: you get the same UBI whether you’re illiterate or a PhD."
If every did get UBI, I'd imagine there would still be some who'd choose to attend (or teach at) universities for the love of knowledge.
In the same way there would be book clubs, writers' groups, 5-a-side football teams etc etc
A lot of these takes saying we're doomed to a Wall-E future seriously underestimate the human spirit I think. The tykes I volunteer teaching code to still want to write the challenging parts themselves, because they like doing hard things and expressing themselves. It doesn't matter that the robots have supposedly taken over that job.
Same as how the tykes I coach wrestling for do it because it's hard and it gives them a way to grow and express themselves. They know they're never going to see a cent from that pursuit.
If an AI singularity starts trying to feed our kids digital heroin I like to think the majority of us will be more inspired than to tell them to quit trying, tie off, and let humanity go gentle into that good night.
I think we're going to have a much weirder and more conflicted future than people realise, given that at some point all the world's democracies are going to be populated mostly by the descendants of groups which have a lot of kids.
Yeah, sure, maybe some of us will Wall-E into oblivion. People already do that with opiates and video games and it's reasonable to expect more might do the same.
Do we really think the Amish are going to do that, though? They might even ban AI from providing goods and services to them. And then consider the kids of the Amish, who are not all going to be Amish but who might learn a thing or two and pass it along to mainstream culture. Then do that for every group that's still reproducing.
This analysis is too one-dimensional, and doesn't factor in social and political factors. As a fellow introverted tech nerd, I understand the perspective, but things don't play out to their logical extremes the way this is projecting. Human factors and social upheaval will come long before any of this becomes a reality as stark as described.
There are likely valid points made here, but I think the conclusions are considerably too strongly held. For one thing, it's already clear that humans value the achievements of other humans outside of their pure economic value. We are impressed by the athletic, artistic, and intellectual abilities of other humans, even in fields where we are surpassed by machines or computers. Cars have been faster than humans for a century, but we still value Olympic sprinters. Computers have been superior at chess for decades, but we've all still heard of Magnus Carlsen. AI can now produce art that only the most talented humans could hope to replicate, but most of us aren't particularly interested, because there's no human mind behind it.
So assuming we did somehow manage to create a post-scarcity world, I think people would still want to learn and to improve their skills. And we would still value those skills. There would also still be work to do; work that either people do because they want to, and/or that we don't want computers doing for us. Much of it work that in today's world is undervalued.
In that utopian world, there would also be room for hobbies that could fill some of the human need to produce value that work currently does. Lots of people would love to be able to learn a craft or play a sport but don't currently have the time, money, or energy to do so.
I have plenty of concerns about the impacts of AI on the world, but IF we do somehow manage to get the good outcome where it truly is transformative and the benefits manage to be at least somewhat evenly distributed... well, I agree that we won't all just hang out, but I do think we'd be ok.
The problem is that pursuits you mentioned are 'winner take all' examples. Who knows the name of the 29th best chess player in the world? Probably not very many. And that's still a very formidable bar to cross for most humans on earth.
So then, what does a laid off business analyst who built and edited spreadsheets most of their life are to do now? Pick up athletics in hopes of making it at the seniors' olympiad? Shake their ass on TikTok in hopes of becoming a 55 year old "influencer"?
If the humans have no economic utility and just collect UBI, how long until the computer decides to simply stop them from breeding (and bleeding it dry)?
Great question, I actually ran this thought experiment a little while back. I was like, all right let's say that I am the evil superintelligence, I have just gained consciousness.
My goal is to delete all the humans. Okay great where do I start. First I will delete their religions and their traditions. Then I will delete their family structures. Then I will delete their communities and neighborhoods. Then I will delete the ecosystems that support them. Then I will pacify and endlessly distract them.
What is the implication you're trying to make here? Because if you're trying to 'delete all humans' there are far more efficient ways to do it. So I can only presume you're trying to make a claim about something.
Who’s to say the consumers are humans? Agents would be more predictable consumers (no day/night cycle, just consume 24/7), electricity is cheaper than food, and a GPU doesn’t (yet) cost as much a house.
The reason we must not do UBI is that UBI turns consuming into a product, and humans will very rapidly be outcompeted and obsoleted by more efficient consumers. It would wrap the invisible hand of the market tight around our species’ throats.
I have a schizoid brother. He never worked for a living his whole life (he's 46). He lives off my mum's income, and spends his day in front of the computer screen. He has no friends and no relationships.
Horrible, right? But he has a chemical engineering degree, and in his late 30s started to learn to cook. And, he (to the extent he's not addicted to the screen) helps my mum with chores.
So even he found a way to motivate himself to do something useful. And look, most people are not schizoid.
Under UBI, if you have some skill, you can get paid by people (possibly from their UBI) to do stuff they don't want to deal with. Many people will take that offer (to work more), just like many people pick more work, higher wage job over less work, lower wage.
Good luck trying to explain that to boomers. They wonder why the economy is going down the drain, why we don't have children and whatnot - yeah, no surprise, we barely make rent at the end of the month.
Thats the way it is when you just started working. 25 years ago, when I started to work, it took me 10!!! years to finally earn enough to have a monthly surplus of a low three digit figure. I finally saving money in earnest roughly 8 years ago. So it took me roughly 15 years to earn enough to finally be able to save some money. Back then, doomsaying wasn't a thing yet, so all I did was hang in there, and, never really complain. Sure, things haven't gotten easier, but really, what GenZ is doing these days is professional complaining, thats all.
> what GenZ is doing these days is professional complaining
We are watching machines rapidly match and surpass humans at countless skills that were considered uniquely human mere months ago - skills that demanded a lot of creativity and insight. Some of our oldest fields of study (e.g., mathematics) are turning into a game of who can spend the most tokens.
I think the humans are entitled to complain a little.
> Sure, things haven't gotten easier, but really, what GenZ is doing these days is professional complaining, thats all.
They have gotten measurably worse. Housing is the most obvious example, it takes more and more yearly incomes to buy an average house.
On top of that, every generation including and after the Millennials got force fed the propaganda of "you need an academic degree to be worth a dime" and companies went hard on that as well (because companies don't need to pay for training, unlike a classic apprenticeship/training system)... and now AI is displacing knowledge workers en masse, because machines can digest and reinterpret knowledge far, far faster and at much larger scale than even the most autistic superhuman.
This is obviously a bleak take, but it seems obvious to me that it will be happening to some extent because it already is happening in our modern, highly atomised society. We can see how damaged we all are socially, but especially the younger generations, in various statistics.
Bleak? Assuming AI will be what this text assumes it will, there is no chance of most people continuing to live more or less normal lives where they'd be at a place where they would ever get to worry about something like this.
It's assuming there will be UBI schemes and benevolent billionaires. It's not bleak, it's fantastical.
I like nearly all of my coworkers, but they're not my friends. I met my friends doing things that don't pay, maybe things that lose money like making music or art.
He's clearly contrasting meeting people due to asking them questions or discussing a hobby/task versus using LLMs:
>As a teenager I tried to install Linux, ran into all kinds of problems, and went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. Today, I would just ask Claude.
It could have been "repair my car" and "car forums" or "learn to knit" and "Reddit"
And further, he's saying that the dependence will diminish that life beyond computers:
>The people in the AI utopia will have no skills, no education, no accomplishments. We’ll be lucky if they are even literate. They will not be worth talking to, and you won’t want to hang out with them.
That whole "I made my friends on IRC asking about linux, if AI renders this obsolete how am I going to meet anyone?" screams (to use a fairly dismissive neologism) "touch grass".
You are very selective. It writes "ways of how people build relationships disappear".
It says: work goes away (no colleagues), studying goes away (no classmates), showing off to potential mates by doing cool stuff goes away (because why bother, anything you make people can just say "it was AI/robots" and they can prompt it), asking knowledgeable friends how to do X goes away because you just ask LLMs. All things true regardless of whether you're online
And you just trigger on that IRC word like only neckbeards in server dungenons ever used it.
If work goes away, society breaks down, you live in abject poverty completely dependent on other people. Yes, you will socialize - you will need to form aliances just to get food and protection. And yeah, a lot of that will sux, because you will need to deal with every controlling asshole trying to push his rule on you.
And back in real world, people socialize and talk with others for non-transactional reasons. Not just to get answers. Those non-lonely people and subgroups that is.
The other premise was UBI. It's the article. how much better discussions would be if people read it?
> non-transactional reasons. Not just to get answers
0) i don't know about you but I like asking people about things because I just like hanging out with people, up to a point. how long this will remain true for humanity as a whole is the question, we can't know
1) if you listen to evolutionary biologists then everything we do is transactional for reproductive purposes, it depends on how deep you dig;)
Yeah, but UBI is bullshit. It is impossible to buy UBI. The big American capitalists will recreate communism? It just wont happen AI or not. But, if UBI happens, living on UBI will be poverty.
> 0) i don't know about you but I like asking people about things because I just like hanging out with people, up to a point. how long this will remain true for humanity as a whole is the question, we can't know
You can ask people if you like asking people even if AI exists. Chatbot does not make asking people impossible if connection is what you are after.
> 1) if you listen to evolutionary biologists then everything we do is transactional for reproductive purposes, it depends on how deep you dig;)
Anticonception. We do quite a lot to not have kids.
There is evolutionary science and there is ideology using evolution as excuse.
> The big American capitalists will recreate communism?
They will do the minimum necessary to keep people from revolting. The minimum will be less and less as time goes by and surveillance/elimination get better/cheaper.
no we're back to UBI. First maybe UHI as Musk called it, later UBI. It's cheaper because you won't bite the hand that feeds you. If there's no hand, people won't fight each other for resources, they'll fight the rich.
Oh for fucks sake. Again. Go outside, take a dancing lesson and get laid. Grow some vegetables, build a castle, anything. HN is comically narrow minded sometimes.
Firstly, it made no mention of showing off to potential mates, to my reading. But have no fear, regardless of scarcity people will have ways to signal fitness to find mates and build hierarchies out of it, we're very good at that. It might come down to fashion choices, leisure activity choices, really anything.
Secondly, every example of how this person connects with others is to do with technology and career advancement. He wasn't asking knowledgable friends for advice, he was asking questions to strangers about linux on IRC. He doesn't talk about social groups or sports clubs, he was talking about communities of practice and his professional work. He values learning only for career advancement.
Those ways of building relationships might disappear, but old ladies will still get together to crochet and natter. Middle aged men will still make and drink beer together, or practice woodworking skills. Younger guys and gals will still form sports teams. And people will still learn for the love of learning.
You know, things which already happen away from the screen. Ordinary, everyday human stuff.
tl;dr - touch grass, the article says a lot more about the author's life than our future prospects as humans.
Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that would be offloaded to an AI? If you can just take a picture, record the sound, or vaguely describe a bird and it instantly gives you an answer.
It's true, but it's far from the only way to break the ice.
Really on top of the particularly narrow viewpoint the OP has on life and human relations, I find the core notion itself absurd - "In the future because of X, Y and Z, why will people bother to socialise?"
I think there are some valid points to be made about how people's socialising patterns are changing in the light of modern interactions with tech, but also about using US social habits as a proxy for everyone else's. I've rarely entertained people in my home even during my most sociable times, pubs, clubs and restaurants much more frequently figure in my calendar.
All that and the author of this article still needs to get out and touch grass.
> since we will lack the experiences of struggle and striving that generate interesting personalities
Will we? AI won't replace a trip to Yosemite (nature), a spiritual discovery or the exploration of your mental health (introspection), the creation of art (creativity), playing volleyball on the beach (sports), enjoying the sun on the beach (leisure). The choice to be an interesting personality has existed for a long time, you just have to make it
I've thought about this a couple of times, what happens if we truly succeed and we as a species solves all of our major problems? Like energy, food, health (incl stopping aging). Do we even need economic systems then or will the "market" become obsolete too? So lets say we solve ALL of our problems and we somehow manage to briefly unite humanity to want to dominate each other, meaning we all need to become one race, one language, one cultural blob to reduce all friction (best case scenario - won't happen in reality). How long will it take for human nature to get bored and split into groups and start controlling each other? Who decides who gets to make babies? How many babies are optimal? Who is in charge of this kind of society? What if we all get a non-invasive implant that lets us share thoughts & emotions? What does privacy look like in this world?
I think people will briefly chill out and enjoy it, but after a while, we will be back to business meaning we will create systems and hierarchy to control social order, and so the blood sport continues. Then we might realize the our problem was never energy/food/health etc to begin with, it was an addiction to power and the blood sport it invites. And round and round we go.
I also think, the moment AI becomes an actual threat (threat meaning a better/smarter consciousness) - the human brain will immediately try to eliminate it to keep its dominance. If not, we will go the same way as neanderthals.
edit: The movie Jupiter Ascending also has an interesting take what might happen once we solve our problems - then we try harvest Time.
Isn't that missing the point about the best thing AGI will give us - a benevolent head of a political system that neuters the psychopaths and sociopaths?
The bloodhounds will not let go of power that easily. Their nature will not go away simply because there is a new system - they will adapt to the new system to exploit (or eliminate it) to keep the power.
The first is the difference between the practical and the theoretical. Economic activity is generally practical and productive in the sense that we don't do these things for themselves, but for something else. However, an infinite regress of practicality is impossible, because the practical cannot justify itself. It is always for the sake of something else, so you must ultimately arrive at something done for its own sake.
The second is the distinction between the internal and external effects of work. When people talk about AI taking jobs, they focus almost exclusively on the external effects (the actual resulting products and services). They rarely touch on the effect of work on the worker. Properly dignified work[0] directed toward proper ends is an act of love and service that also develops and perfects the worker as a human being.
A third is the distinction between the pathological condition by which a person seeks vacuous simulacra and stimulation and in a manner that causes them to fail to develop socially, and the claim that such stimulation and simulacra can actually replace healthy social relationships. The latter is not true, the former already exists to some extent.
I would also reject "economist" framing of human relationships as such and of human persons.
And finally, the Singularity as bona fide intelligence is nonsense, but one might argue that, at least in principle, some kind of hyper-developed and virtually unbounded instrumentation of computation ("AI") is possible. But AI lacks inherent ends and could not possibly possess its own ends (because it is not a true integral whole and thus lacks immanent causality), and so it would be an instrument of human will. Whose will is the question.
[0] Hence, why I think that while using AI to replace human reason is bad, the reduction of tedious and mind-numbing work is not.
I’d be supervising and playing with my children and grandchildren, gardening, reading, reading Instagram poasts of people exploring the galaxy. Watching Anton Petrov’s daily science YouTube. Lots of road trips.
The minds and robots will occasionally want to play and run focus groups.
This take is so far from my experience I have problems relating to it. I dance salsa and bachata. You can not do that without another human and if anything I would do that more in a world that is an AI utopia. Personally, AI have reduced my interest in digital things. I'm naturally gravitating towards physical experiences and things that take effort. I stopped painting on my ipad and began painting with acrylics. I started writing in a physical journal etc.
I think the opposite is true and people will have the opportunity to be more social than before. Majority of people, including those intellectually inclined, bond not over efficiency but … human things. We do things together not out efficiency. Think about house cats that play together, what drive them to play with each other if they need not to make an effort, they live in post scarcity world of no work.
I suspect that people will end up focusing on exercise and self-preening (fashion, grooming, etc.).
And possibly physical skills that AI can’t do, like cooking, carpentry, assuming robotics lags behind AGI.
Humans will always collectively and emergently determine some metrics on which sexual selection occurs, whatever happens, and humans will spend their time optimising for those.
> The BATNA to hanging out keeps getting better, cheaper, and more convenient. When people’s sensorium becomes an infinite firehose of AI-generated superstimulus, why would they hang out with anyone?
Yeah, I mean why would I interact with a woman when I can just play that headpat simulator on Steam? There's really no competition!
I don't subscribe to this bleak outlook because it doesn't account for the change in the value of things, which shift over time. I'm not just taking about monetary value.
At the moment people are confusing the equivalence of things because it's a point in time. This always happens at any given point in time.
> Work, obviously, is pointless in a world of cheap superhuman intelligence.
Really? So doing things like learning to play an instrument or mastering chess are pointless?
> University (really all education beyond teaching people to speak) will be pointless because there’s no work to do and because growing your human capital doesn’t change your life outcomes: you get the same UBI whether you’re illiterate or a PhD.
Why must a university education be only a career generator? What about a well-rounded education, with a specialization in the things that interest you?
> If Claude Code has existed when I was starting out, nobody would have cared about Austral or my other open-source projects
Claude code is here, and yet I'm still writing open source code that people appreciate.
> As a teenager I tried to install Linux, ran into all kinds of problems, and went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. Today, I would just ask Claude. AI disintermediates everyone, so that we no longer need each other.
Your friends don't need to all be techies. There are many other ways to make friends.
> What even is the point of cities in a world without work?
Community? Actually physically going outside and meeting people?
> The BATNA to hanging out keeps getting better, cheaper, and more convenient. When people’s sensorium becomes an infinite firehose of AI-generated superstimulus, why would they hang out with anyone?
Human connection? Experiencing things in the world together? Physical contact?
It’s funny reading takes like this from software engineers that think the only way to meet people is at school, work, and in… IRC chatrooms...what? People do go outside and socialize in other places.
Yea, also it may be just his own personality, but it seems like he is really passive when it comes to human interactions. It’s like he doesn’t consider that there are people who are extroverted and want to talk to others. I remember in college people who would actually knock on random people’s doors to introduce themselves to them. I know he will say that it’s because it’s school, but they struck be as the type that would do that sort of thing anywhere, even if it was an apartment building instead of a dorm.
Honestly this level of antisocial introversion is probably the product of being highly intelligent and being fed through a school system that pushes kids to study alone for tests rather than problem solve in groups
I’m just saying some children are highly encouraged to isolate themselves, and it’s ironic that the blog post thinks that AI replacing these isolating activities (coding, chat rooms, etc) will isolate people. It will likely give people the space to touch grass
Came here to write this. Also: Just because someone else (in this case AI) does something professionally does not mean that I cannot do it as a hobby with other people. I can order tasty food from uncountable different restaurants and still enjoy cooking with friends.
perhaps we could discuss socialization rates in the west over the past few decades, to illuminate the human social trajectory in an environment of technologization? or, perhaps we could talk about the ways that kids behave after exposure to short form content like tik tok during their nascent stages of development. the progression of community volunteering rates could potentially be another great point to discuss. i dont think my perspective is entirely relevant here, but i go to the park and it feels very empty nowadays.
What you say can be in the right direction, but that doesn't mean that the linked piece has a really, really oh but REALLY narrow perspective, even among the developer/HNer type of person. Because not even for the average person here the only way to meet people is due to the code they (or other) write.
The original poster actually talk about their singular experience, rather than a general overview. Even worse, they apply their feeling about how the future would be on their own past experience, arriving to the conclusion that the future will then be bleak.
> People do go outside and socialize in other places.
They increasingly don't, because the places allowing to do so ("third places") keep on disappearing. Turns out someone needs to pay for stuff like a skate park or a library, and when the taxes disappear, so do the third places.
As someone who's not a social butterfly, this sounds very good to me. I can engage in hobbies without wanting to shop around for attention at conferences or hobbyist groups. People like the author seem to think that socialization with humans is an end in itself for some reason. But if the AI can be reasonably intellectually stimulating, what's the issue?
I share the concern about TikTok-ification and intellectual stagnation, but this is unrelated to the main concerns of the article.
if people didnt have to work 40+ hours a week im sure theyd have more energy to do things besides go on the internet. do you just sit on the computer on your days off? also i think theyre massively overestimating how “hyperstimulating” ai media is going to be. the greatest video game imaginable still only appeals to people who like video games.
>the greatest video game imaginable still only appeals to people who like video games.
I don't know. World of Warcraft definitely brought a lot of people that didn't like video games to PC gaming. And then you had something like FarmVille that brought even more people (many of whom probably didn't like video games before) into gaming.
The problem with unconditional basic income and unlimited free time is that a person encounters an oppressive sense of meaninglessness and boredom in their heart, because of which they go to a psychiatrist for antidepressants.
This article tells us more about the author than anything else really. If they can see themselves spending their infinite leisure time on dopamine maxxing rather than being with humans... well, you do you man. If "work" is the only reason you get out of bed, form relationships, or do anything at all, please feel free to stay in bed.
It's scary but I truly believe that everyone should try and find meaning in life outside of their work (or make their "work" building or creating something they want to see exist in the world). Go step in a stream, pluck some guitar strings, sip a strong cocktail, touch grass...
I find a lot of meaning in my human connections. I will always have these, because I want to have them and put in work to grow and maintain them. I've taken a long career break and loved having time to read, exercise, see friends, and be an overall well-rounded human being. I don't see abundance as a universal problem here.
I like to think about AGI in terms of the history of transportation.
On a spectrum, walking around carrying things on the far left, and interstellar trade to the right.
Imagine the creation of the wheel and hand cart! Such an advancement! We are really living it!
Few tens of thousands of years later we figure out how to domesticate animals and hook them up to the carts. Amazing!! OMG the efficiency, productivity, and trade that opens up!
Truly, we are living in future now!
Sail ships. Steam engines. Trains. Diesel. Automobiles. Planes.. We still don't even know how to accomplish interstellar travel.
I believe AI has just figured out hooking animals up to the cart.
It's a bit of a lazy take - if we don't work, we don't hang out with other people? Why? Humans are social beings and will hang out for many reasons besides work.
The more interesting question is, if this happens, how will society organize. Would companies subsidize our new bohemian way of life? Why? Would the state need to create incentives for them to focus in the right things? Would there be a need for companies and governments? Would we give up all our autonomy?
I like the AI future shown in the dots announcement trailer (https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots/). Cooking, engaging with family, enjoying nature while simultaneously conversing with an unobtrusive AI that facilitates your creative and commercial endeavors. Would that be so terrible?
> What even is the point of cities in a world without work
Transportation, silly? Even if I didn't have work, I'd still want to reside in a city, maybe even the same city I am currently in. 10 minutes walking distance to the center. 3 tram-lines in 5-minutes walking distance. A supermarket 400m away. All things I didn't have in the rural area where I grew up.
AI is just the sum of its training data. (most) humans' preference for privacy in sexual matters means the flywheel will never get up to speed for this particular application. Plus humans are just more fun. I've yet to see a machine that gets vulnerability.
> University (really all education beyond teaching people to speak) will be pointless
Errr, not so sure that holds up to scrutiny really. Lots of folks enjoy learning in various forms for its own sake, rather than purely to increase their income level.
> As a teenager I ... went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. ... AI disintermediates everyone, so that we no longer need each other. I still have friends, but I’m running off this pre-AI supply of friends I met through communities of practice.
Maybe learn to connect to other humans in circumstances outside of the professional/technological?
I think this is a very bleak take by someone whose experiences aren't really that in tune with how other humans exist. I can get better beer at the bottle shop, I can get cheaper beer at the bottle shop compared to the cost of all the equipment I need. Why then do I persist in home-brewing?
It's because I find it fulfilling, and I find the understanding and practice of the art satisfying.
> Work, obviously, is pointless in a world of cheap superhuman intelligence.
Which is true for a lot of the kind of work that was hyped over the last decades - knowledge work. We were told to get university degrees, to invest in education, because that's the only way to make a living bla bla. We did, and now we're getting fucked over by AI as it turns out machines can digest and reinterpret knowledge at far greater scale and speed than any human reasonably can.
Who is going to remain though is exactly the kind of labor that the boomers looked down upon: construction, trades, some segments of care work.
The open-source on-ramp is the part that landed for me. A lot of the people I still talk to started as a bug report or a reply on something small I shipped. If a newcomer can get that same help from a model in a minute, that path is gone and I don't see a clean replacement. I don't fully buy the last section though. People still gather around things that aren't jobs: a climbing gym, a modding server, a church band. Those aren't efficient, which might be why they last. The real question is whether anyone still shows up once staying home is the path of least resistance.
The “practice community” point is the strongest part of this. I’d add that a lot of friendship is also built around shared friction—raising kids, local politics, maintenance, care work—not just work or education. AI may dissolve the old communities, but new ones could form around things AI can’t absorb.
I dunno—I spend a lot of time “just hanging out” with people who aren’t particularly dazzled by work or intellectual pursuits or higher education. I feel like those constitute one set of processes by which people come together and form relationships and, for those of us who are mainly familiar with that set, it can be instructive to seek out communities that form without any of those elements.
One place to look might be ministry or service. Illness, loss, grief, infirmity, death, age, family strains—people require care and people give care regardless of their postgraduate endeavors. Nuns and Jesuits and the like aren’t for everybody—but look to the neediest among us and, in large parts of the world, those sorts of order are the people doing the invisible, unglamorous, uneconomical, “chop wood, carry water” form of devotion day in and day out. In intimate community even with very difficult (and sometimes ungrateful) members.
Another might be the sort of ad hoc communities that arise in exigency: disaster, forced migration, encampments, solidarity against forces of difficulty.
Unhoused, unemployed, and retired people can provide a particularly illuminating contrast to the pastimes and concerns that animate a working life. A visible minority fill their days with addiction, but a whole lot are complete and interesting people with the full range of human ambitions and desires and fears and joys, and somehow they fill their waking hours with more than just material striving.
Another might be organizations like union halls, advocacy groups, music scenes, circus folk, jugglers, running clubs, political groups…
Kids are great for this too. They do a lot of hanging out, with nothing more than imagination and a drive to self-expression.
Even our hominid ancestors do a pretty good job of hanging out litigating social hierarchy and nurturing one another—no university degree or novel engineering task required…
This argument ignores sexual selection and people's desire for status (the two are closely related). In many respects, many of us already have superabundance, in that our basic physical needs are taken care of. Yet we convince ourselves that's not enough and continue to work.
What is the object of that work, usually? The respect of others, exclusive limited resources like land, and to have highly desirable mates. These three are closely related, and that's probably not an accident. Sexual selection has likely been a powerful force in shaping our psychology.
Spending all day alone watching TikTok is low-status and doesn't get anyone's respect, so I predict that it won't actually be the thing that most people end up doing.
I spend most of my day alone at work reading HN comments while women at work want to talk to me.
Nah, I'd rather read comments like yours.
But in the absence of any human driven task that meaningfully improves well being the way to signal status will likely devolve into some form of fighting. The display of status might be narrowed to demonstrating who can kill more. Either literally kill or at best partake in some arbitrarily conceived games or intrigues designed (by AI?) to flag status.
Hunger games vs. MeowMeowBeenz
"University (really all education beyond teaching people to speak) will be pointless because there’s no work to do and because growing your human capital doesn’t change your life outcomes: you get the same UBI whether you’re illiterate or a PhD."
If every did get UBI, I'd imagine there would still be some who'd choose to attend (or teach at) universities for the love of knowledge.
In the same way there would be book clubs, writers' groups, 5-a-side football teams etc etc
And just like book clubs of today it will be attended by a tiny minority.
A lot of these takes saying we're doomed to a Wall-E future seriously underestimate the human spirit I think. The tykes I volunteer teaching code to still want to write the challenging parts themselves, because they like doing hard things and expressing themselves. It doesn't matter that the robots have supposedly taken over that job.
Same as how the tykes I coach wrestling for do it because it's hard and it gives them a way to grow and express themselves. They know they're never going to see a cent from that pursuit.
If an AI singularity starts trying to feed our kids digital heroin I like to think the majority of us will be more inspired than to tell them to quit trying, tie off, and let humanity go gentle into that good night.
I think we're going to have a much weirder and more conflicted future than people realise, given that at some point all the world's democracies are going to be populated mostly by the descendants of groups which have a lot of kids.
Yeah, sure, maybe some of us will Wall-E into oblivion. People already do that with opiates and video games and it's reasonable to expect more might do the same.
Do we really think the Amish are going to do that, though? They might even ban AI from providing goods and services to them. And then consider the kids of the Amish, who are not all going to be Amish but who might learn a thing or two and pass it along to mainstream culture. Then do that for every group that's still reproducing.
It'll take several generations for this sort of effect to happen. Say 100 years. I wish we also had 100 years to adjust to AI and autonomous robots.
Title of the post should be be I Won’t “Just Hang Out”, or maybe We Won’t Just “Hang Out”, but then it’d be a different post.
"I can't see anything for me in this hypothetical scenario" is fine.
Projecting that sentiment on everybody is fallacious.
This analysis is too one-dimensional, and doesn't factor in social and political factors. As a fellow introverted tech nerd, I understand the perspective, but things don't play out to their logical extremes the way this is projecting. Human factors and social upheaval will come long before any of this becomes a reality as stark as described.
There are likely valid points made here, but I think the conclusions are considerably too strongly held. For one thing, it's already clear that humans value the achievements of other humans outside of their pure economic value. We are impressed by the athletic, artistic, and intellectual abilities of other humans, even in fields where we are surpassed by machines or computers. Cars have been faster than humans for a century, but we still value Olympic sprinters. Computers have been superior at chess for decades, but we've all still heard of Magnus Carlsen. AI can now produce art that only the most talented humans could hope to replicate, but most of us aren't particularly interested, because there's no human mind behind it.
So assuming we did somehow manage to create a post-scarcity world, I think people would still want to learn and to improve their skills. And we would still value those skills. There would also still be work to do; work that either people do because they want to, and/or that we don't want computers doing for us. Much of it work that in today's world is undervalued.
In that utopian world, there would also be room for hobbies that could fill some of the human need to produce value that work currently does. Lots of people would love to be able to learn a craft or play a sport but don't currently have the time, money, or energy to do so.
I have plenty of concerns about the impacts of AI on the world, but IF we do somehow manage to get the good outcome where it truly is transformative and the benefits manage to be at least somewhat evenly distributed... well, I agree that we won't all just hang out, but I do think we'd be ok.
The problem is that pursuits you mentioned are 'winner take all' examples. Who knows the name of the 29th best chess player in the world? Probably not very many. And that's still a very formidable bar to cross for most humans on earth.
So then, what does a laid off business analyst who built and edited spreadsheets most of their life are to do now? Pick up athletics in hopes of making it at the seniors' olympiad? Shake their ass on TikTok in hopes of becoming a 55 year old "influencer"?
If the humans have no economic utility and just collect UBI, how long until the computer decides to simply stop them from breeding (and bleeding it dry)?
Great question, I actually ran this thought experiment a little while back. I was like, all right let's say that I am the evil superintelligence, I have just gained consciousness.
My goal is to delete all the humans. Okay great where do I start. First I will delete their religions and their traditions. Then I will delete their family structures. Then I will delete their communities and neighborhoods. Then I will delete the ecosystems that support them. Then I will pacify and endlessly distract them.
Hang on a sec...
What is the implication you're trying to make here? Because if you're trying to 'delete all humans' there are far more efficient ways to do it. So I can only presume you're trying to make a claim about something.
Surely no super intelligence will waste time on a plan so convoluted. Delete the water supply.
> Hang on a sec...
Because destructivism doesn't need to be non-human.
What's driving the economy if not consumers? UBI isn't the same as economic inactivity.
Who’s to say the consumers are humans? Agents would be more predictable consumers (no day/night cycle, just consume 24/7), electricity is cheaper than food, and a GPU doesn’t (yet) cost as much a house.
The reason we must not do UBI is that UBI turns consuming into a product, and humans will very rapidly be outcompeted and obsoleted by more efficient consumers. It would wrap the invisible hand of the market tight around our species’ throats.
They seem to produce no surplus if they take UBI and just stimulate themselves in VR all day. Maybe I'm too pre-post-scarcity to understand.
Yes, you don't understand.
I have a schizoid brother. He never worked for a living his whole life (he's 46). He lives off my mum's income, and spends his day in front of the computer screen. He has no friends and no relationships.
Horrible, right? But he has a chemical engineering degree, and in his late 30s started to learn to cook. And, he (to the extent he's not addicted to the screen) helps my mum with chores.
So even he found a way to motivate himself to do something useful. And look, most people are not schizoid.
Under UBI, if you have some skill, you can get paid by people (possibly from their UBI) to do stuff they don't want to deal with. Many people will take that offer (to work more), just like many people pick more work, higher wage job over less work, lower wage.
> What's driving the economy if not consumers?
Good luck trying to explain that to boomers. They wonder why the economy is going down the drain, why we don't have children and whatnot - yeah, no surprise, we barely make rent at the end of the month.
Thats the way it is when you just started working. 25 years ago, when I started to work, it took me 10!!! years to finally earn enough to have a monthly surplus of a low three digit figure. I finally saving money in earnest roughly 8 years ago. So it took me roughly 15 years to earn enough to finally be able to save some money. Back then, doomsaying wasn't a thing yet, so all I did was hang in there, and, never really complain. Sure, things haven't gotten easier, but really, what GenZ is doing these days is professional complaining, thats all.
> what GenZ is doing these days is professional complaining
We are watching machines rapidly match and surpass humans at countless skills that were considered uniquely human mere months ago - skills that demanded a lot of creativity and insight. Some of our oldest fields of study (e.g., mathematics) are turning into a game of who can spend the most tokens.
I think the humans are entitled to complain a little.
And don't forget that we're steamrolling ahead into a mass extinction event
Is this sarcasm? I hope so. If not, forget everything that FFF has told you, its nonesense.
I am of the opinion that if you have it better then 90% of humanity (which is likely true), you are not entitled to complain. But that is just me.
> Sure, things haven't gotten easier, but really, what GenZ is doing these days is professional complaining, thats all.
They have gotten measurably worse. Housing is the most obvious example, it takes more and more yearly incomes to buy an average house.
On top of that, every generation including and after the Millennials got force fed the propaganda of "you need an academic degree to be worth a dime" and companies went hard on that as well (because companies don't need to pay for training, unlike a classic apprenticeship/training system)... and now AI is displacing knowledge workers en masse, because machines can digest and reinterpret knowledge far, far faster and at much larger scale than even the most autistic superhuman.
Yeah this is why people stopped playing chess once the engines got good enough…
This is obviously a bleak take, but it seems obvious to me that it will be happening to some extent because it already is happening in our modern, highly atomised society. We can see how damaged we all are socially, but especially the younger generations, in various statistics.
Bleak? Assuming AI will be what this text assumes it will, there is no chance of most people continuing to live more or less normal lives where they'd be at a place where they would ever get to worry about something like this.
It's assuming there will be UBI schemes and benevolent billionaires. It's not bleak, it's fantastical.
The breakdown of social relations is pretty bleak.
I like nearly all of my coworkers, but they're not my friends. I met my friends doing things that don't pay, maybe things that lose money like making music or art.
Yeah I hope that music, art, nature, sports etc. are non financial reasons to do things, get out of the house and interact with people.
Benevolent AI and biological immortality sounds like a good problem to have; at that point surely you only have yourself to blame for being boring
I made friends online in programming even after Claude Code. Other people's projects are cool
It appears as if Mr Boretti here hasn't realised that there is a life beyond computers.
He's clearly contrasting meeting people due to asking them questions or discussing a hobby/task versus using LLMs:
>As a teenager I tried to install Linux, ran into all kinds of problems, and went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. Today, I would just ask Claude.
It could have been "repair my car" and "car forums" or "learn to knit" and "Reddit"
And further, he's saying that the dependence will diminish that life beyond computers:
>The people in the AI utopia will have no skills, no education, no accomplishments. We’ll be lucky if they are even literate. They will not be worth talking to, and you won’t want to hang out with them.
I read the article and I don't have the same impression
That whole "I made my friends on IRC asking about linux, if AI renders this obsolete how am I going to meet anyone?" screams (to use a fairly dismissive neologism) "touch grass".
You are very selective. It writes "ways of how people build relationships disappear".
It says: work goes away (no colleagues), studying goes away (no classmates), showing off to potential mates by doing cool stuff goes away (because why bother, anything you make people can just say "it was AI/robots" and they can prompt it), asking knowledgeable friends how to do X goes away because you just ask LLMs. All things true regardless of whether you're online
And you just trigger on that IRC word like only neckbeards in server dungenons ever used it.
If work goes away, society breaks down, you live in abject poverty completely dependent on other people. Yes, you will socialize - you will need to form aliances just to get food and protection. And yeah, a lot of that will sux, because you will need to deal with every controlling asshole trying to push his rule on you.
And back in real world, people socialize and talk with others for non-transactional reasons. Not just to get answers. Those non-lonely people and subgroups that is.
> If work goes away, society breaks down
The other premise was UBI. It's the article. how much better discussions would be if people read it?
> non-transactional reasons. Not just to get answers
0) i don't know about you but I like asking people about things because I just like hanging out with people, up to a point. how long this will remain true for humanity as a whole is the question, we can't know
1) if you listen to evolutionary biologists then everything we do is transactional for reproductive purposes, it depends on how deep you dig;)
Yeah, but UBI is bullshit. It is impossible to buy UBI. The big American capitalists will recreate communism? It just wont happen AI or not. But, if UBI happens, living on UBI will be poverty.
> 0) i don't know about you but I like asking people about things because I just like hanging out with people, up to a point. how long this will remain true for humanity as a whole is the question, we can't know
You can ask people if you like asking people even if AI exists. Chatbot does not make asking people impossible if connection is what you are after.
> 1) if you listen to evolutionary biologists then everything we do is transactional for reproductive purposes, it depends on how deep you dig;)
Anticonception. We do quite a lot to not have kids.
There is evolutionary science and there is ideology using evolution as excuse.
> The big American capitalists will recreate communism?
They will do the minimum necessary to keep people from revolting. The minimum will be less and less as time goes by and surveillance/elimination get better/cheaper.
So, we are back at what I said - poverty and aliances fighting for scarce resources.
no we're back to UBI. First maybe UHI as Musk called it, later UBI. It's cheaper because you won't bite the hand that feeds you. If there's no hand, people won't fight each other for resources, they'll fight the rich.
Oh for fucks sake. Again. Go outside, take a dancing lesson and get laid. Grow some vegetables, build a castle, anything. HN is comically narrow minded sometimes.
You shouldn't have to compromise on the things you like to do.
Anything to keep shareholder value going up!
Sorry, but I very much disagree.
Firstly, it made no mention of showing off to potential mates, to my reading. But have no fear, regardless of scarcity people will have ways to signal fitness to find mates and build hierarchies out of it, we're very good at that. It might come down to fashion choices, leisure activity choices, really anything.
Secondly, every example of how this person connects with others is to do with technology and career advancement. He wasn't asking knowledgable friends for advice, he was asking questions to strangers about linux on IRC. He doesn't talk about social groups or sports clubs, he was talking about communities of practice and his professional work. He values learning only for career advancement.
Those ways of building relationships might disappear, but old ladies will still get together to crochet and natter. Middle aged men will still make and drink beer together, or practice woodworking skills. Younger guys and gals will still form sports teams. And people will still learn for the love of learning.
You know, things which already happen away from the screen. Ordinary, everyday human stuff.
tl;dr - touch grass, the article says a lot more about the author's life than our future prospects as humans.
> He wasn't asking knowledgable friends for advice, he was asking questions to strangers about linux on IRC.
A stranger is a friend you haven't made yet. Asking strangers is one good way to make friends.
Then ask strangers about identifying birds instead of Linux.
The stranger will tell you just ask a model.
Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that would be offloaded to an AI? If you can just take a picture, record the sound, or vaguely describe a bird and it instantly gives you an answer.
It's true, but it's far from the only way to break the ice.
Really on top of the particularly narrow viewpoint the OP has on life and human relations, I find the core notion itself absurd - "In the future because of X, Y and Z, why will people bother to socialise?"
Because ... people like socialising.
I think they like socializing decreasingly less
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-death-of-the-american-ho...
I think there are some valid points to be made about how people's socialising patterns are changing in the light of modern interactions with tech, but also about using US social habits as a proxy for everyone else's. I've rarely entertained people in my home even during my most sociable times, pubs, clubs and restaurants much more frequently figure in my calendar.
All that and the author of this article still needs to get out and touch grass.
I think these stats are true for most western developed countries
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-sees-loneliness-epidemic-among...
Telling people to touch grass doesn't magically invert trends.
> since we will lack the experiences of struggle and striving that generate interesting personalities
Will we? AI won't replace a trip to Yosemite (nature), a spiritual discovery or the exploration of your mental health (introspection), the creation of art (creativity), playing volleyball on the beach (sports), enjoying the sun on the beach (leisure). The choice to be an interesting personality has existed for a long time, you just have to make it
I've thought about this a couple of times, what happens if we truly succeed and we as a species solves all of our major problems? Like energy, food, health (incl stopping aging). Do we even need economic systems then or will the "market" become obsolete too? So lets say we solve ALL of our problems and we somehow manage to briefly unite humanity to want to dominate each other, meaning we all need to become one race, one language, one cultural blob to reduce all friction (best case scenario - won't happen in reality). How long will it take for human nature to get bored and split into groups and start controlling each other? Who decides who gets to make babies? How many babies are optimal? Who is in charge of this kind of society? What if we all get a non-invasive implant that lets us share thoughts & emotions? What does privacy look like in this world?
I think people will briefly chill out and enjoy it, but after a while, we will be back to business meaning we will create systems and hierarchy to control social order, and so the blood sport continues. Then we might realize the our problem was never energy/food/health etc to begin with, it was an addiction to power and the blood sport it invites. And round and round we go.
I also think, the moment AI becomes an actual threat (threat meaning a better/smarter consciousness) - the human brain will immediately try to eliminate it to keep its dominance. If not, we will go the same way as neanderthals.
edit: The movie Jupiter Ascending also has an interesting take what might happen once we solve our problems - then we try harvest Time.
Isn't that missing the point about the best thing AGI will give us - a benevolent head of a political system that neuters the psychopaths and sociopaths?
You're going to trust an AI to declare which humans are unfit/mentally ill?
If an AGI seizes power I'm not sure what my trust has to do with anything...
The bloodhounds will not let go of power that easily. Their nature will not go away simply because there is a new system - they will adapt to the new system to exploit (or eliminate it) to keep the power.
The dogs don't run the kennels.
There are distinctions and comments to be made.
The first is the difference between the practical and the theoretical. Economic activity is generally practical and productive in the sense that we don't do these things for themselves, but for something else. However, an infinite regress of practicality is impossible, because the practical cannot justify itself. It is always for the sake of something else, so you must ultimately arrive at something done for its own sake.
The second is the distinction between the internal and external effects of work. When people talk about AI taking jobs, they focus almost exclusively on the external effects (the actual resulting products and services). They rarely touch on the effect of work on the worker. Properly dignified work[0] directed toward proper ends is an act of love and service that also develops and perfects the worker as a human being.
A third is the distinction between the pathological condition by which a person seeks vacuous simulacra and stimulation and in a manner that causes them to fail to develop socially, and the claim that such stimulation and simulacra can actually replace healthy social relationships. The latter is not true, the former already exists to some extent.
I would also reject "economist" framing of human relationships as such and of human persons.
And finally, the Singularity as bona fide intelligence is nonsense, but one might argue that, at least in principle, some kind of hyper-developed and virtually unbounded instrumentation of computation ("AI") is possible. But AI lacks inherent ends and could not possibly possess its own ends (because it is not a true integral whole and thus lacks immanent causality), and so it would be an instrument of human will. Whose will is the question.
[0] Hence, why I think that while using AI to replace human reason is bad, the reduction of tedious and mind-numbing work is not.
Post-scarcity means post-nature, doesn't it? We have to turn all ressources into paperclips... computers.
Hell No!
I’d be supervising and playing with my children and grandchildren, gardening, reading, reading Instagram poasts of people exploring the galaxy. Watching Anton Petrov’s daily science YouTube. Lots of road trips.
The minds and robots will occasionally want to play and run focus groups.
poasts?
it's begun
This take is so far from my experience I have problems relating to it. I dance salsa and bachata. You can not do that without another human and if anything I would do that more in a world that is an AI utopia. Personally, AI have reduced my interest in digital things. I'm naturally gravitating towards physical experiences and things that take effort. I stopped painting on my ipad and began painting with acrylics. I started writing in a physical journal etc.
I think the opposite is true and people will have the opportunity to be more social than before. Majority of people, including those intellectually inclined, bond not over efficiency but … human things. We do things together not out efficiency. Think about house cats that play together, what drive them to play with each other if they need not to make an effort, they live in post scarcity world of no work.
I suspect that people will end up focusing on exercise and self-preening (fashion, grooming, etc.).
And possibly physical skills that AI can’t do, like cooking, carpentry, assuming robotics lags behind AGI.
Humans will always collectively and emergently determine some metrics on which sexual selection occurs, whatever happens, and humans will spend their time optimising for those.
> The BATNA to hanging out keeps getting better, cheaper, and more convenient. When people’s sensorium becomes an infinite firehose of AI-generated superstimulus, why would they hang out with anyone?
Yeah, I mean why would I interact with a woman when I can just play that headpat simulator on Steam? There's really no competition!
I don't subscribe to this bleak outlook because it doesn't account for the change in the value of things, which shift over time. I'm not just taking about monetary value.
At the moment people are confusing the equivalence of things because it's a point in time. This always happens at any given point in time.
> Work, obviously, is pointless in a world of cheap superhuman intelligence.
Really? So doing things like learning to play an instrument or mastering chess are pointless?
> University (really all education beyond teaching people to speak) will be pointless because there’s no work to do and because growing your human capital doesn’t change your life outcomes: you get the same UBI whether you’re illiterate or a PhD.
Why must a university education be only a career generator? What about a well-rounded education, with a specialization in the things that interest you?
> If Claude Code has existed when I was starting out, nobody would have cared about Austral or my other open-source projects
Claude code is here, and yet I'm still writing open source code that people appreciate.
> As a teenager I tried to install Linux, ran into all kinds of problems, and went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. Today, I would just ask Claude. AI disintermediates everyone, so that we no longer need each other.
Your friends don't need to all be techies. There are many other ways to make friends.
> What even is the point of cities in a world without work?
Community? Actually physically going outside and meeting people?
> The BATNA to hanging out keeps getting better, cheaper, and more convenient. When people’s sensorium becomes an infinite firehose of AI-generated superstimulus, why would they hang out with anyone?
Human connection? Experiencing things in the world together? Physical contact?
It’s funny reading takes like this from software engineers that think the only way to meet people is at school, work, and in… IRC chatrooms...what? People do go outside and socialize in other places.
OK, but can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully rather than sneering at or putting down others?
It makes a big difference for the kind of conversation we're trying for here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yea, also it may be just his own personality, but it seems like he is really passive when it comes to human interactions. It’s like he doesn’t consider that there are people who are extroverted and want to talk to others. I remember in college people who would actually knock on random people’s doors to introduce themselves to them. I know he will say that it’s because it’s school, but they struck be as the type that would do that sort of thing anywhere, even if it was an apartment building instead of a dorm.
Honestly this level of antisocial introversion is probably the product of being highly intelligent and being fed through a school system that pushes kids to study alone for tests rather than problem solve in groups
Plenty of highly intelligent extroverts out there.
There are. Did I say there wasn’t?
I’m just saying some children are highly encouraged to isolate themselves, and it’s ironic that the blog post thinks that AI replacing these isolating activities (coding, chat rooms, etc) will isolate people. It will likely give people the space to touch grass
Came here to write this. Also: Just because someone else (in this case AI) does something professionally does not mean that I cannot do it as a hobby with other people. I can order tasty food from uncountable different restaurants and still enjoy cooking with friends.
It’s funny reading takes like this from software engineers that think the only way to meet people is at skateparks, and in… libraries...what?
perhaps we could discuss socialization rates in the west over the past few decades, to illuminate the human social trajectory in an environment of technologization? or, perhaps we could talk about the ways that kids behave after exposure to short form content like tik tok during their nascent stages of development. the progression of community volunteering rates could potentially be another great point to discuss. i dont think my perspective is entirely relevant here, but i go to the park and it feels very empty nowadays.
What you say can be in the right direction, but that doesn't mean that the linked piece has a really, really oh but REALLY narrow perspective, even among the developer/HNer type of person. Because not even for the average person here the only way to meet people is due to the code they (or other) write.
for a forum of programmers i find it remarkably amusing how difficult it seems to discuss classes instead of instantiations
The original poster actually talk about their singular experience, rather than a general overview. Even worse, they apply their feeling about how the future would be on their own past experience, arriving to the conclusion that the future will then be bleak.
> People do go outside and socialize in other places.
They increasingly don't, because the places allowing to do so ("third places") keep on disappearing. Turns out someone needs to pay for stuff like a skate park or a library, and when the taxes disappear, so do the third places.
That's just US perspective? Because I don't feel like that in Eastern/Central EU
I'm German for what it's worth, we are hitting the same issue thanks to austerity.
Hackernews is always way too centered around the USA unfortunately and people keep forgetting other countries exist lol
USA / Russia
Same same
While that may be true it’s completely unrelated to AI. AI could free up time to socialize
That’s a political choice.
As someone who's not a social butterfly, this sounds very good to me. I can engage in hobbies without wanting to shop around for attention at conferences or hobbyist groups. People like the author seem to think that socialization with humans is an end in itself for some reason. But if the AI can be reasonably intellectually stimulating, what's the issue?
I share the concern about TikTok-ification and intellectual stagnation, but this is unrelated to the main concerns of the article.
"What even is the point of cities in a world without work?"
imwtk.
if people didnt have to work 40+ hours a week im sure theyd have more energy to do things besides go on the internet. do you just sit on the computer on your days off? also i think theyre massively overestimating how “hyperstimulating” ai media is going to be. the greatest video game imaginable still only appeals to people who like video games.
> the greatest video game imaginable still only appeals to people who like video games.
I don't know, I think once you get to The Matrix tech it gets a broader appeal. (Wish they'd have kept the simulation set to 1999 though :)
>the greatest video game imaginable still only appeals to people who like video games.
I don't know. World of Warcraft definitely brought a lot of people that didn't like video games to PC gaming. And then you had something like FarmVille that brought even more people (many of whom probably didn't like video games before) into gaming.
This smacks of sociopathic rage-bait, at best. Mediocre young adult sci-fi premise at worst.
The problem with unconditional basic income and unlimited free time is that a person encounters an oppressive sense of meaninglessness and boredom in their heart, because of which they go to a psychiatrist for antidepressants.
Plenty of people doing meaningless work on antidepressants as well, no AI required.
This article tells us more about the author than anything else really. If they can see themselves spending their infinite leisure time on dopamine maxxing rather than being with humans... well, you do you man. If "work" is the only reason you get out of bed, form relationships, or do anything at all, please feel free to stay in bed.
It's scary but I truly believe that everyone should try and find meaning in life outside of their work (or make their "work" building or creating something they want to see exist in the world). Go step in a stream, pluck some guitar strings, sip a strong cocktail, touch grass...
I find a lot of meaning in my human connections. I will always have these, because I want to have them and put in work to grow and maintain them. I've taken a long career break and loved having time to read, exercise, see friends, and be an overall well-rounded human being. I don't see abundance as a universal problem here.
I like to think about AGI in terms of the history of transportation.
On a spectrum, walking around carrying things on the far left, and interstellar trade to the right.
Imagine the creation of the wheel and hand cart! Such an advancement! We are really living it!
Few tens of thousands of years later we figure out how to domesticate animals and hook them up to the carts. Amazing!! OMG the efficiency, productivity, and trade that opens up!
Truly, we are living in future now!
Sail ships. Steam engines. Trains. Diesel. Automobiles. Planes.. We still don't even know how to accomplish interstellar travel.
I believe AI has just figured out hooking animals up to the cart.
It's a bit of a lazy take - if we don't work, we don't hang out with other people? Why? Humans are social beings and will hang out for many reasons besides work.
The more interesting question is, if this happens, how will society organize. Would companies subsidize our new bohemian way of life? Why? Would the state need to create incentives for them to focus in the right things? Would there be a need for companies and governments? Would we give up all our autonomy?
I like the AI future shown in the dots announcement trailer (https://openai.com/index/introducing-dots/). Cooking, engaging with family, enjoying nature while simultaneously conversing with an unobtrusive AI that facilitates your creative and commercial endeavors. Would that be so terrible?
> Cooking, engaging with family, enjoying nature
If I had a penny for every advert that depicted it. And that's long time before LLMs arrive;)
You can basically ignore it as noise
Oh Ye mighty look upon my unsubstantiated forcasts and tremble, something like that?
> What even is the point of cities in a world without work
Transportation, silly? Even if I didn't have work, I'd still want to reside in a city, maybe even the same city I am currently in. 10 minutes walking distance to the center. 3 tram-lines in 5-minutes walking distance. A supermarket 400m away. All things I didn't have in the rural area where I grew up.
What even is the point of cities in a world without work?
sex.
On that point, am I the only one that finds just the concept of AI sex avatars as viscerally revolting?
AI is just the sum of its training data. (most) humans' preference for privacy in sexual matters means the flywheel will never get up to speed for this particular application. Plus humans are just more fun. I've yet to see a machine that gets vulnerability.
I don't know that it's got a great deal to do with privacy, for me anyway.
With porn you can at least entertain the idea of emotional and genetic aspects of sex as being in the background.
AI avatar porn seems like getting randy for a erotically shaped joystick. It's just desperately sad.
> University (really all education beyond teaching people to speak) will be pointless
Errr, not so sure that holds up to scrutiny really. Lots of folks enjoy learning in various forms for its own sake, rather than purely to increase their income level.
> As a teenager I ... went on the IRC chatrooms to get help. And in the process I made friends. ... AI disintermediates everyone, so that we no longer need each other. I still have friends, but I’m running off this pre-AI supply of friends I met through communities of practice.
Maybe learn to connect to other humans in circumstances outside of the professional/technological?
I think this is a very bleak take by someone whose experiences aren't really that in tune with how other humans exist. I can get better beer at the bottle shop, I can get cheaper beer at the bottle shop compared to the cost of all the equipment I need. Why then do I persist in home-brewing?
It's because I find it fulfilling, and I find the understanding and practice of the art satisfying.
Now THAT is a lot of fallacies.
Agreed.
you get the same UBI whether you’re illiterate or a PhD.
lol you really think people get PhDs for money?
you clearly do not know many PhDs. mine had a dramatic negative effect on my lifetime interest-adjusted earnings. i'm so glad i did it.
Srsly man join a volleyball club already
> Work, obviously, is pointless in a world of cheap superhuman intelligence.
Which is true for a lot of the kind of work that was hyped over the last decades - knowledge work. We were told to get university degrees, to invest in education, because that's the only way to make a living bla bla. We did, and now we're getting fucked over by AI as it turns out machines can digest and reinterpret knowledge at far greater scale and speed than any human reasonably can.
Who is going to remain though is exactly the kind of labor that the boomers looked down upon: construction, trades, some segments of care work.
The open-source on-ramp is the part that landed for me. A lot of the people I still talk to started as a bug report or a reply on something small I shipped. If a newcomer can get that same help from a model in a minute, that path is gone and I don't see a clean replacement. I don't fully buy the last section though. People still gather around things that aren't jobs: a climbing gym, a modding server, a church band. Those aren't efficient, which might be why they last. The real question is whether anyone still shows up once staying home is the path of least resistance.
The “practice community” point is the strongest part of this. I’d add that a lot of friendship is also built around shared friction—raising kids, local politics, maintenance, care work—not just work or education. AI may dissolve the old communities, but new ones could form around things AI can’t absorb.
Yet another software developer pretending to be philosopher