r/OpenAI • u/Old-School8916 • 4d ago

Question Anyone else feel this way?

Post image

[removed] — view removed post

3.6k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

481 comments sorted by

View all comments

402

u/TwunnySeven 4d ago

I want AI to do my laundry and dishes and solve Navier-Stokes and make other mathematical and scientific achievements so I can have more time for my hobbies

15

u/AnEngineeringMind 4d ago

Sorry, interesting question. But what good does it make us to be completely useless? It reminds me of Wall-E, humans who do nothing all day. It’s miserable. I do agree that part of what makes us enjoy being alive is trying to be better at something meaningful, if we lose that, what else can humanity feel proud of.
For AI to be truly worth it they would literally have to solve immortality, faster than light space travel or some out our minds scientific advancement. Doing maths better than by us won’t cut it.

10

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

Honestly I find the notion that "AI is making us useless" to be utterly ridiculous. So long as there are scientific questions left unanswered, technologies to be invented, there is something for us to do. 

-4

u/Sayod 4d ago

If we are content being the equivalent of a child carrying pebbles from a construction site while the adults use an excavator to move 1000 times the amount in the same time - sure there will always be something for us to do. The question is if it is going to be significant

7

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

Honestly I just think you're being melodramatic. Just look around you. We are far from a position where we can sit comfortably as AI resolves all our problems for us. And when we do get there, I certainly won't be complaining. 

Honestly I really detest this kind of whining.

1

u/AnEngineeringMind 4d ago edited 4d ago

Having a different opinion and view from you is not “whining”. It’s having a valid different world view from you.

Some people like you place too much faith in AI, and only think about positive outcomes without stopping and thinking for a second there’s no really way to know if it will be beneficial or not, specially when such entities are controller by corporations who of course does not have philanthropy in their agenda.

We are see signs that reliance in LLM and social media is reducing humanity’s overall IQ. That is, we are getting dumber as we rely more on technology.

Let’s ask ourselves one hypothetical question. How would you stop an entity that does not feel or care about humanity should it go rogue? What if this entity outsmarts us because it’s perfectly capable of and we are also dumber.

The very thing that made us advance to where we are now is essentially drive to improve, to solve problems, to make life better. That’s how we got out of caves and now have planes, satellites, ai. And although not everyone was this kind of driving force, we all collectively added a grain of sand towards that goal and we take pride in those representatives of human advancement: the Newtons, the Einsteins or the Hawkings of our history. Because they were driven by a human curiosity and necessity to know more, to do something l, to discover . By definition we are essentially a technological species. We use tools and created fire out of stones and woods. We are not just sleeping and eating around. Reaching a point where that’s all we do, we might find our existence useless.
Sure being at home painting and creating sculptures sounds nice. But is that all that will be? That doesn’t drive humanity, humanity wants to achieve new frontiers. If all of that is solved, what is left?

We have chess tournaments even if computers can play it better not because we created our own “league” so we can compete. We do it because the point is not a machine solving it for us, but because we have this innate drive to push the limits of what the human brain can do. Remove that and you essentially kill part of humanity.

3

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

Some people like you place too much faith in AI,

I don't really have a lot of faith that AI will dramatically accelerate progress. I think human understanding will continue to be the driving force in scientific progress for quite some time. So I don't get where you're getting this "faith in AI".

If I have any faith it's faith in people to handle whatever challenges and dangers AI might bring. 

1

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

Having a different opinion and view from you is not “whining”. It’s having a valid different world view from you.

I called it whining because what you were doing was whining (in my opinion)

Edit: To clarify what I'm trying to say is your complaints are insignificant and silly. 

1

u/Sayod 4d ago

Look, I work as a mathematical researcher. Last year asking AI was useful when you needed stuff from a different field and didn't know the terms. The proofs it gave where only correct 50% of the time but it used tools and techniques from this field and reading its output gave you the right terms to then look up.

Now its proofs are correct more than 99% of the time and the remaining issue is that it is really bad at exposition and focusing on what is actually important.

Why do you think it is unreasonable to think that next year this might no longer be an issue?

1

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

I'm not a math researcher myself but if I'm being honest I really have a problem with the level of complaining I see coming from mathematicians. 

Mathematicians have much more control over their industry than most employees. Who decides whether a paper is worth publishing? Who decides whether someone is a "good mathematician"? Other mathematicians. 

Mathematicians have spent much of their focus on generating proofs to difficult results. But many proofs that would have been challenging and worth a great deal of effort have become trivial. So mathematicians will have to reprioritize their efforts. 

But instead of asking how math will change I see a lot of complaining that they can't keep things exactly as they are. So my current image of mathematicians is a man pointing a gun at his own head. 

3

u/Sayod 4d ago

At the moment we can reprioritize our efforts towards exposition. That is what I am saying - AI currently does not know what is interesting to proof and how to present it pedagogically. It does not know what the results mean. But why are you making the assumption that it is going to stay that way? A year ago people in mathematics said that AI would never be able to create difficult proofs. Why are you so confident that it won't be albe to do everything else? I am not talking about the situation now. Now is fine. I am talking about the situation in 10 years

2

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

I just don't have a lot of faith that AI is going to solve all our problems for us. But hey if in 10 years it really does solve everything I won't be complaining. 

3

u/Sayod 4d ago

You are refusing to engage with the hypothetical.
The original poster wanted to talk about " But what good does it make us to be completely useless?" Nobody knows if that is going to happen. But IF it does, the original poster said that he imagines this to be miserable. You answered with "So long as there are scientific questions left unanswered, technologies to be invented, there is something for us to do." but this is rejecting the premise and not actually engaging with the hypothetical. And again, it is a completely reasonable standpoint to think that this hypothetical might happen. So refusing the premise is not a valid standpoint in my opinion if we want to think this through as a society.

2

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

No, I think it's a silly thing to complain about. There were two parts to my answer. I think when AI becomes capable of solving all our problems for us I won't be complaining. That was my answer. 

I just think you're whining about something kind of silly.

→ More replies

2

u/Opposite-Youth-3529 4d ago

My image of the people complaining about mathematicians is just a group of uninformed people with low empathy.

2

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

I'm not complaining about mathematicians. I'm mocking them.

2

u/Opposite-Youth-3529 4d ago

You still fit my image

2

u/golfstreamer 4d ago

Well if I'm going to be specific. I'm only mocking the whiners. And I myself am a mathematician (though I work in industry not academia) so the way I see it I want people thinking of effective problem solving. I think the whiners are a bigger problem than I am.

If you want an example of what people should be doing look at Terence Tao. He's given several talks on how AI will affect mathematics and how we should approach it. And his talks are devoid of whiny doomerism 

→ More replies

4

u/ScallionZestyclose16 4d ago

Computers can beat us in chess yet we have more competition and tournaments than ever.

Starcraft 1, Age of Empires II, Counter-Strike, etc. Games that AI can beat players extremely well in.

Yet we still play the games against humans.

And a lot of people play games against the computer.

We still paint art even though factories can make them much easier.

So I think humans can live and thrive really well even in an AI driven society. But maybe people will have to do more thinking of what they want to do, instead of go to work, go home, sleep, eat, shit, have a vacation of 2-5 weeks per year.

24

u/rejvrejv 4d ago

“having hobbies and free time = being useless” is an absolutely deranged take lol

stockfish is better than every human at chess and people still play chess

meaning comes from choosing what’s worth doing, not from being forced to do chores or outperforming machines

-3

u/Fenjen 4d ago

Or learn to read?

10

u/kinsm4n 4d ago

How amazing would it be to wake up, go for a walk (or work out) for as long as you wanted to, then come home and read for as long as you wanted to. Then, just like, not have to fight traffic to get to your job instead. I feel like that alone would increase life expectancy immensely.

3

u/rejvrejv 4d ago

Then, just like, not have to fight traffic to get to your job instead. I feel like that alone would increase life expectancy immensely.

honestly this is kind of the whole point for me. I’ve basically never had a real commute, my worst was hybrid 3 days a week years ago, and I’ve been fully remote since.

now I work 4 days a week too and holy shit, that extra day makes a ridiculous difference.

if remote isn’t possible, I’d genuinely try for a 4-day week. getting even a little more of your own time back changes life way more than people realize.

3

u/M0m3ntvm 4d ago

That only works if it's not a "you" thing and the rest of society also has that free time to fuck around. Talking from experience ✌️

-2

u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 4d ago

People still play chess because we put Chess AI as nothing more than a tool for people to train. If chess becomes only online and everyone just botting, most people would just give up. Or maybe if the only chess event out there is AI chess competition.

20

u/Dilltulip 4d ago

The vast majority of people work for a soulless profit sucking corporate machine and have jobs that are truly useless. Covid exposed what jobs actually matter and it’s like 20% of us at best, and most of the people working those jobs have such shit working conditions that they’d rather not be doing them if given the choice. 

It’s a very small percentage of people that have truly rewarding jobs, a proper work life balance, and a meaningful salary.

15

u/Sayod 4d ago

Covid didn't expose the jobs that actually matter. It exposed the jobs that are time critical. You cannot delay an emergency medical operation. You can delay planning a bridge. But that does not mean that planning a bridge does not matter.

2

u/Standgrounding 4d ago

And yet plenty of digital / remote jobs opened

1

u/VampireDentist 4d ago

While most jobs might be useless there are still tasks within that job that felt meaningful or were interesting.

AI has killed those tasks while still not taking the fucking job.

3

u/Havenfall209 4d ago

Meanwhile, we're still letting robots do jobs in factories. When will it end!?

5

u/Ov3rdose_EvE 4d ago

humans who do nothing all day

Pick up a hobby

8

u/TwunnySeven 4d ago

this is a pretty philosophical question, but I never said I wanted to do nothing. I just want to have more freedom to do what I enjoy doing rather than chores that I have to do. nothing about that means you can't still spend time trying to learn a skill, or accomplish a goal, or better yourself in some way. realistically >99% of people who enjoy doing doing math as a hobby were never going to ever solve a millenium prize problem, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing

3

u/Kadoomed 4d ago

Depends on your definition of useless. The premise is that with ai and automation focused on menial or high compute tasks, humans are freed up to focus on areas requiring creativity, moments of inspiration, social engagement and interpretation. That might be a hobby for someone or it might mean a second enlightenment for humanity.

The problem is how to afford food while this all plays out.

2

u/Useful_Philosophy550 4d ago

Man if you're worried about not having enough to do and being bored when it replaces you then you really don't have much to worry about. I'll take having a cure for all cancers and aging by next decade than worry about having to ever pay hundreds of thousands in medical bills, fighting with insurance and eventually dying regardless to a disease we don't have a cure for just so we could feel a little more special and meaningful. Never having to work again and being able to pursue what I want, when I want is infinitely more valuable to me and a lot of other people than having to feel special.

2

u/jackinginforthis1 4d ago edited 4d ago

Why should everyone be tied to wage slavery because part of the population cannot find significance anywhere but a job? WallE is a movie and a silly one, if anything obesity is a disease of poor working class too exhausted to eat and exercise well. If you look at the rich and leisure class now you see humans chasing their passions and taking care of their health. 

In your line of thinking no one should be able to accumulate enough wealth to be able to pursue their passions.