Yet another Hacker News

51 points barry-cotter 3 hours ago 81 comments

yubing025 3 hours ago | parent

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.

cheevly 3 hours ago | parent

Now THAT is a lot of fallacies.

HackerThemAll 1 hour ago | parent

Agreed.

eucryphia 2 hours ago | parent

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.

iuc1 1 hour ago | parent

poasts?

it's begun

hexjy 1 hour ago | parent

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.

kaffeeringe 1 hour ago | parent

Post-scarcity means post-nature, doesn't it? We have to turn all ressources into paperclips... computers.

simongray 1 hour ago | parent

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.

anfogoat 1 hour ago | parent

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.

simongray 1 hour ago | parent

The breakdown of social relations is pretty bleak.

SwellJoe 1 hour ago | parent

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.

arno_v 1 hour ago | parent

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.

lmz 1 hour ago | parent

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)?

AlecSchueler 1 hour ago | parent

What's driving the economy if not consumers? UBI isn't the same as economic inactivity.

mschuster91 1 hour ago | parent

> 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.

lynx97 58 minutes ago | parent

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.

lmz 1 hour ago | parent

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.

js8 1 hour ago | parent

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.

andai 1 hour ago | parent

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...

gherkinnn 1 hour ago | parent

It appears as if Mr Boretti here hasn't realised that there is a life beyond computers.

ShinyLeftPad 1 hour ago | parent

I read the article and I don't have the same impression

Nursie 1 hour ago | parent

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".

ShinyLeftPad 1 hour ago | parent

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.

gherkinnn 39 minutes ago | parent

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.

ShinyLeftPad 27 minutes ago | parent

Anything to keep shareholder value going up!

watwut 37 minutes ago | parent

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.

ShinyLeftPad 32 minutes ago | parent

> 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;)

Nursie 33 minutes ago | parent

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.

ShinyLeftPad 26 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

gherkinnn 18 minutes ago | parent

Then ask strangers about identifying birds instead of Linux.

hackersnooze1 1 hour ago | parent

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.

andai 1 hour ago | parent

> 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 :)

skrebbel 1 hour ago | parent

Srsly man join a volleyball club already

cush 1 hour ago | parent

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.

mschuster91 1 hour ago | parent

> 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.

tester756 1 hour ago | parent

That's just US perspective? Because I don't feel like that in Eastern/Central EU

whycombilater 1 hour ago | parent

USA / Russia

Same same

Myzel394 1 hour ago | parent

Hackernews is always way too centered around the USA unfortunately and people keep forgetting other countries exist lol

jurgenburgen 1 hour ago | parent

That’s a political choice.

cush 40 minutes ago | parent

While that may be true it’s completely unrelated to AI. AI could free up time to socialize

thin_carapace 1 hour ago | parent

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.

darkwater 1 hour ago | parent

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.

thin_carapace 1 hour ago | parent

for a forum of programmers i find it remarkably amusing how difficult it seems to discuss classes instead of instantiations

darkwater 41 minutes ago | parent

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.

planb 1 hour ago | parent

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.

veltas 1 hour ago | parent

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?

NewsaHackO 1 hour ago | parent

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.

cush 48 minutes ago | parent

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

watwut 41 minutes ago | parent

Plenty of highly intelligent extroverts out there.

cush 38 minutes ago | parent

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

honungsburk 1 hour ago | parent

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.

asmnzxklopqw 1 hour ago | parent

Yet another software developer pretending to be philosopher

BatteryMountain 1 hour ago | parent

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.

whycombilater 1 hour ago | parent

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?

Nursie 1 hour ago | parent

> 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.

pnt12 1 hour ago | parent

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?

mschuster91 1 hour ago | parent

> 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.

turbobutton 1 hour ago | parent

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?

ShinyLeftPad 1 hour ago | parent

> 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

jaxtracks 1 hour ago | parent

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.

strken 1 hour ago | parent

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.

barnabee 57 minutes ago | parent

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.

gherkinnn 5 minutes ago | parent

"I can't see anything for me in this hypothetical scenario" is fine.

Projecting that sentiment on everybody is fallacious.

andai 1 hour ago | parent

> 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!

tempestn 1 hour ago | parent

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.

kstenerud 1 hour ago | parent

> 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?

Human connection? Experiencing things in the world together? Physical contact?

whycombilater 1 hour ago | parent

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.

iperov 1 hour ago | parent

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.

jurgenburgen 1 hour ago | parent

Plenty of people doing meaningless work on antidepressants as well, no AI required.

zdc1 1 hour ago | parent

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.

Sol- 1 hour ago | parent

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.

Rapzid 1 hour ago | parent

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.

hbcdbff 1 hour ago | parent

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.

octoberfranklin 1 hour ago | parent

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.

octoberfranklin 1 hour ago | parent

What even is the point of cities in a world without work?

sex.

whycombilater 1 hour ago | parent

On that point, am I the only one that finds just the concept of AI sex avatars as viscerally revolting?

octoberfranklin 1 hour ago | parent

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.

gieksosz 1 hour ago | parent

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.

lynx97 1 hour ago | parent

> 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.

metalman 34 minutes ago | parent

Oh Ye mighty look upon my unsubstantiated forcasts and tremble, something like that?

so-cal-schemer 15 minutes ago | parent

"What even is the point of cities in a world without work?"

imwtk.