For me? Handling data like private voice memos, pictures, videos, calendar information, emails, some code etc. Stuff I wouldn't want to share on the internet / have a model potential slurp up and regurgitate as part of its memory when the data is invariably used in some future training process.
I've always wondered, what fraction of the decline could be attributed to indoor pet dogs?
Ok, this is half humorous and half serious. But I'd wager that the answer is non-zero.
This is all just anecdotal, obviously, but I think childless humans with pet indoor dogs could have less of a desire to procreate for various reasons, but perhaps mainly because the instinctual thirst to care for a living thing is quinched to some extent when you have a pet indoor dog.
Obviously not every or most or even many. But perhaps _some_.
Dog as child replacement fits too well for many western couples. There is very light care aspect included. Even bad illnesses happen and one must go to vet. With a dog you don’t need to do homework for two hours after hard workday. Nor plan children birthdays or vacations. Nor read primitive children books for hours on weekend. It’s perfect substitute without much effort.
Children are long term gain, first decade is rather hard. Teaching and training every day, hour, minute. If one wants to do it right.
On other hand dog might be better that a child hooked to a smartphone from an age of 2 years.
I had a dog, then kids and now just got a puppy and I think there is perhaps some truth to it, dogs are certainly much much lower effort/stress/cost but provide a good amount of companionship. It wasn't enough for us, obviously, but we also have minimal family connections outside our household, for others the equation may add up that a dog/cat is enough and if it was then all the power to you.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. It's an interesting thought.
I will add that us having children completely erased the desire to get a dog. We almost got one just before our first born. Now we can't imagine. I think it's a combination of what you're suggesting, and also because a dog requires a lot of time we just don't have now.
Where I work someone wrote a system to allow one to save every command they ever typed and make it available for searching via cli or web app. I opted in. It's probably one of the most useful tools I've ever used.
In my experience over the past 5 years in EU and Asia: Increasingly many companies wont even talk to you unless you have ‘a’ PhD. You dont need this piece of paper, but it is one hell of a life hack getting one.
Are you trying to apply cold? The way it usually works is that someone you have worked with before vouches for you and that gets you past that screening.
I'm self-taught. My first job I got lucky (or the grace of God, depending on your perspective). After that, it never mattered. I had experience, references, a track record.
And the older you get, the longer the track record, and the more it outweighs the piece of paper.
I'm primarily an embedded guy, though. If you're doing web apps, or desktop, or games, or phones, or high performance, or finance programming, your mileage may vary.
I'm sorry that that has been your experience. (Or maybe I shouldn't be sorry - FAANGs pay pretty well.) But what you say surprises me, for two reasons.
First, FAANGs get far more resumes than they have openings. Demanding a degree seems like an easy, lazy way to eliminate some. I'm kind of surprised that they don't take it. (I mean, they shouldn't take it, but I'm still kind of surprised.)
Second, many engineering organizations that are not FAANGs are trying to model their hiring on FAANG approaches. So I'm surprised that, if FAANGs would hire you, others won't - especially after you have experience at a FAANG.
Took 1-2 years before I went a single day without thinking about tinnitus after I gave it to myself playing drums. I was so happy to be smashing those punk drums in the first rehearsal of this band. I remember exclaiming afterwards to one of my bandmates, "Wow my ears are ringing! That was awesome!" He said, "Ya, mine have been ringing for 30 years." My heart immediately sank knowing what I had just done.
I spent a lot of days/months totally devastated about it. I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I thought that was going to be my story. I thought it was inevitable.
But I met a lot of people who lived completely normal lives and described their tinnitus as so much worse than mine. I eventually got used to it. I wouldn't say the actual ringing is better or worse than it was. I have no idea how to measure it anyways. But life has gotten so much better. And I almost never think about it any more -- maybe once every few weeks I'll have the thought, "Oh ya, I have ringing in my ears" and a few seconds later I forget about it again. I think it gets better for most people, thankfully.
I've had multiple times when my tinnitus has gotten noticeably worse. The path is always the same: some panic and desperation first, followed by some examinations and attempts of alleviation that do nothing, and finally familiarization and acceptance about 9-12 months afterwards that makes everything pretty much fine.
I'm sure it will happen again, and I can only hope that the acceptance phase keeps working.
When I'm very focused I can be in complete silence, but these moments are very few, once I notice the silence the ringing comes back again.
Mostly I'm at a point i don't hear it at all unless I get very distracted or see anything that mentions it. Like right now reading this post and the comments LOL.
That's how it is for me too. I don't hear it until someone mentions it. Then it's pretty noticeable. I went to an audiologist thinking I gave myself hearing loss at a point but he said my hearing is beyond exceptional, and that I should be very careful with it to preserve it. So I think I have an infection induced, or neurological cause.
Not useful for you now AFAIK, but there's some evidence that n-acetylcysteine has a protective effect if taken before or shortly after loud noise exposure.
Tinnitus is sometimes neurological, seemingly caused by the brain compensating for a loss of sensation. I can imagine a horror story in which this just makes it a thousand times worse, on top of permanently losing all hearing.
Now, being able to use a hot-swappable audio sensor instead of an ear made of tissue would be pretty dope.
I hear that theory but I don't believe it - I have tinnitus. Nothing else in the nervous system behaves that way - lack of light doesn't suddenly make you see blinding light etc. It's much more likely the sound sensor in the ear is jammed in the on position.
There are various explanations about the genesis of the sound for T sufferers, and it obviously depends on the kind of T that one has (this chart [1] helps navigate the variants).
But if you are one of the "common kind", which is typically an insult to your hearing apparatus that damaged your cochlea, then the work from Susan Shore [2] is a reasonable explanation of what could actually be going on (genesis by the fusiform cells of the dorsal cochlear nucleus). You may be interested in checking out her publications listed in the wikipedia article quoted.
Amputees have phantom limb sensations including pain. I believe this is more than theory. Certainly medical science has collected at least some case studies over the past century about people who have had their auditory nerve severed for one reason or another. And, as I recall, the auditory system actually does behave unlike other parts of the nervous system like vision which is more mechanical and less dependent on the brain for basic functionality.
Well, perhaps some but I don't think it's the usual cause. Phantom limb isn't just loss of sensation, it's also having part of the body chopped off. Just having part of your body go numb doesn't usually cause that.
It does and it is called neuropathic pain. Phantom limb is just an extreme case of it, but malfunction or damage to nerves can cause all kinds of phantom “pain”. Experiencing phantom sensations due to nerve damage is well known and widely documented, so phantom sound in the ear due to nerve damage is well in line with that.
There is, audio nerve can be surgically cut, but this means complete hearing loss in one ear. The whole inner ear can be removed. You don't want it without a good reason.
From what I've rad tinnitus can be caused by a) shift in small transmission bones, can be age related. 2) inner ears sensors mess up, can be from loud sound. 3) something else, like infection, inflammation, inner ear pressure build up (may be Ménière's disease).
Hope technology develops fast, some sort of implant talking directly to the audio nerve. I think they already exist or are in development. This can give in theory ultra- and infra-sound sensitivity too, as a bonus.
I've read about an experimental surgery sometime in the past doing this, and the patient had no reduction in their tinnitus. Their sound wasn't generated in the ear.
I guess there might be ethical issues doing the surgery. Also it'd be quite hard to do as the nerves are in the skull up against the brain so basically brain surgery. But I was thinking if there was some way to figure which nerves were firing and kill those that could maybe fix it.
Maybe if you could stick something like a neuralink in there?
As other posts point out, leaving out the third takes away the major-ness.
It's also worth mentioning the way Kurt often played power chords, using his index for the bass note and barring the rest with his ring finger. This often leads to major chords when the root is on the A string and non-major ambiguous-sounding chords with the root is on the E string. It's obvious as early as the 3rd chord in the intro to Teen Spirit; it has the notes Ab Eb Ab Db (NOTE: Db, not C). It's inconsistent in Kurt's playing (edit: whether or not his strumming makes that 4th string, 4th interval sound come out), but the subtlety is a signature part of Kurt's guitar sound.
Also some of the chord analysis in the site (ex. In Bloom verse) is just flat out wrong.
I'm getting a little tired of hearing this quote at this point.
What about humoring the opposite?
I want AI to automate art so I can spend more time doing dishes and doing laundry. Dishes and laundry are purely analog human experiences. Art, at this point, is essentially digital, and digital is the domain of machines so we can let machines do that now.
What's to humor here? Do you have a passion for laundry and dishes? Do you spend your free time gleefully dirtying dishes just so you can wash them again? Is art or music something you feel forced to do but don't want to?
I am struggling to understand what's really the opposite here. I don't think anyone views art as the same sort of burden as people view dishes. It's not something you're forced to do (even in the situations you do need it it's pretty trivial to buy).
I keep coming back to this thought. Maybe it’s how I was raised, but knowing that I’m doing something useful to other people / humanity is the entire point.
When a machine can do everything better than we can, then what do we derive meaning from?
I usually get out of the existential dread by thinking that we’re still some time away from the issue, and that there will still be some pursuits left, like space colonization. But it’s not fully satisfying.
He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry, or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real people. They seemed less like servants and more like customers who’d taken a notion to help out for a while.
“Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle-aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.”
He agreed that the table was clean.
“Usually,” the man said. “I work on alien – no offense – alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that’s my specialty… like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalog, evaluate, compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But… the job’s never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get reevaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled… but” – he slapped the table – “when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.”
“But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table.”
“And therefore does not really signify anything on the cosmic scale of events?” the man suggested.
He smiled in response to the man’s grin, “Well, yes.”
“But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important either? I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway” – the man laughed – “people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And,” the man said with a smile, “it’s a good way of meeting people. So where are you from anyway?”
It definitely is (and I would encourage that even).
But such resistance cannot be luddite if it actually wants to win. Therefore, its goal cannot be "no AI", but rather "AI used for the benefit of society".
I'm not worried about controlling ASI acting on its own behalf.
What we need is to prevent humans in position of power from using the fledging AI that they control to entrench themselves and stomp on the rest of us.
My grandmother-in-law especially enjoyed our visits, engaging her in conversation, she delighted in serving us a lovely hot pot of tea. We would give her a few days notice so she could bake a cake, later she just bought one.
Thanking of yourself as "redundant" limits your view of a human to that of a machine, and in doing so you are doing humanity a great disservice. I'd recommend reading the Culture series for a vision of a future where AI has essentially taken over and humans can live out their lives as they want instead of as they need to.
You don't need "companies". You need enough customers to buy/support your work so that you get a living out of it.
Being a software developer is a _facet_ of your work. You (unconsciously perhaps) do many other things around/with it that the most efficient AI today cannot do alone. And AGI is still far on the horizon, if not a mirage.
Hey we're talking about a future scenario where AGI actually exists and is vastly better at software development than any human, and can do it much cheaper than current developer salaries.
We're talking about science fiction which may become true much sooner than most people expect.
I would be competing with cheap AGI services so it makes no difference whether I am a freelancer or not.
> Being a software developer is a _facet_ of your work. You (unconsciously perhaps) do many other things around/with it
The non-development parts of my job are not interesting at all. If that's gone then my career is finished. I'm done.
> scenario where AGI actually exists and is vastly better at software development than any human
then humans deservedly should no longer be doing software development, and those who were doing it would necessarily be the economic sacrifices. This has happened to many industries before, and shall continue to happen to others. I don't think there's any necessity to stop it - just ease the transition via taxpayer funded schemes.
However, none of this stops anyone from persuing an artisanal craft - because otherwise, they would be persuing it for economic reasons rather than artistic reasons.
> then humans deservedly should no longer be doing software development
Then you could argue that humans won't "deserve" to exist when aliens show up with superior military technology. This isn't a matter of technology becoming obsolete. It's a matter of human beings becoming obsolete.
No need to call to aliens for that, this happened within human history several times... towards other humans, and towards other species (which some were considered as pest, until it was discovered they were crucial to the ecosystem balance).
That's definitely where the danger of some AI builders is, one more example of how technology _is political_ and the reason it's not so surprising some tech leaders are totally aligned with Trump/Project 2025 (if not funding it).
(all while there is a _real_, _documented_, _non fictional_, _short term_ ubiquitous threat that is global climate change)
You sound really jaded and close minded to me in your posts. If AI replaces software development, the only reason you are "done" is because you are jaded and close minded and seemingly unwilling to adapt to the world and life.
You are totally misunderstanding the point.
I am talking about the hypothetical AGI/ASI scenario where ALL jobs are replaced by machines. Not just software development. The economic value of human labour drops to zero. This is not just about me and my own little career. It would impact everyone.
This is a serious topic that is being discussed and debated at a high level. It is an existential threat to human society. It could be catastrophically disruptive. No one knows how it would play out. There could be severe economic inequality and stratification of society unlike anything we have seen in the past.
I am actually not worried about my situation. ASI is unlikely to arrive that soon.
HN is a place for nerds to discuss technology and its future impact. Nothing has more disruptive potential than AI.
"Governments worldwide (e.g., US AI Executive Order, UK AI Safety Summit, EU AI Act), international organizations (UN), leading AI researchers (including pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio who have voiced strong concerns), major tech companies, and dedicated research institutes (like the Future of Life Institute, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) are actively discussing, researching, and debating the implications and safety of advanced AI."
"If ASI concentrates wealth and power in the hands of those who own or control it, while simultaneously rendering most human labor economically valueless, the resulting inequality could dwarf historical examples based on land, capital, or industrial technology ownership. It raises fundamental questions about resource distribution and societal structure in a post-labor world."
> What if you WANT to have a career or a job which is now done exclusively by AGI?
> If AGI takes my job as a software developer, my career is finished. I don't know what else to do.
Do you want to have a software developer career for the sake of having a software developer career (because you enjoy it), or are you worried about your livelihood?
Use your imagination a little... There are endless things you can do. I don't understand this mindset. Especially if you are intelligent enough to be a competent software developer, you have the capacity to do a LOT or at least in my experience you probably do.
It depends; if you do that job or career for fun, then keep doing it!
If you do that job because you like contributing to society and not because you like the job itself, then find another way to contribute to society.
Even in a scenario where all jobs are taken by AGI (a utopia if we can get rid of capitalism and wealth, but a dystopia if the billionaire class is the only one that benefits), you could do something as profound as raising children, or something as social as organizing music and art festivals.
But there are people who already doing what you are currently doing. Also they do it waaaay better. If this does not make you redundant, why would AI do it?
No they don't. There is a very limited supply of developers who are better than me.
I am talking about a future where we have a practically infinite supply of cheap AGI software developers that are vastly superior to the smartest human being who ever lived.
And where do you find the energy technology required for that to happen?
Hint: it's not on the radar, but if you account for several fundamental breakthroughs in energy production, storage and transport, and all that while having positive side-effects on Earth's ecosystem, within the next 50 years.
Totally agree, IF an AGI can fully replace/improve on the work of developers, it's definitely cheaper.
But: 1/ cheaper isn't always affordable either.
2/ who will engineer/maintain/steer AGI once AGI takes the job? once you make that leap, there's no way back, no one to understand the machine that makes the stuff we rely on.
And that circles back, in some way, with the debate about AI-generated art: there's no human component in it, there's no understanding, no feedback loop, no conversation.
> who will engineer/maintain/steer AGI once AGI takes the job?
Yeah that's the question. A reduced number of human developers may be privileged to work in these companies.
It's hard to imagine a world with cheap artificial super intelligence. It's like we are introducing a new artificial life form into society, whether it's actually conscious or not.
> debate about AI-generated art
I hope there will always be a majority of people who reject AI generated music.
Does digital art reduce analog art in the world? Not even. There’s still more and more, courses, workshops, live performances and physical artefacts.
> and digital is the domain of machines so we can let machines do that now.
Art by machines for machines to understand machines (to the extent they would have a notion of self and of other), fine, do your thing as long as the energy you need does not deprive humans needs.
As for me and many others, life happens in the analog realm, so does art.
I go to art museums regularly and look at framed canvas hanging on the walls. It’s an entirely analog experience minus the occasional digital exhibition. I use this experience as an escape from the digital world and hope it stays this way.
You don't need AI for that. Just come to my house, I can allow you to spend time in analog human experiences like dishes and laundry for free. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
"essentially" is, regrettably, a misplaced word. I meant "basically" or "generally".
But if the art is expressed as a sequence of bytes/tokens (ex. a song on spotify, a movie on amazon prime, a png, etc.), then it is by definition digital. I think it's reasonable to assume this is how most art is produced and consumed today.
I mean I guess In this obtuse, maybe someone's joy In life is doing dishes and that is their art, then idk maybe but not even then.
First, this just misunderstands what is being said here. For most people, chores like the dishes is a menial task that we will be happy for any reduction in time/effort. In addition, dishes and laundry are considered necessary for modern life.
By contrast, art like music and visual mediums is often associated with joy and the creative act of building something out of making art rather than getting a task done.
To misunderstand this contrast is to misunderstand why we automate things in the first place, to minimize the unnecessary toil and maximize human flourishing. This does the opposite frankly.
A nice thing about doing dishes over creating art is that it's something you can work hard in and get a predictable amount of work done which is gratifying. Meanwhile you can stare at a blank sheet of staff paper in frustration for an hour not knowing the best way to evolve your music composition and it's a really bad experience. That's my experience often. Personally, it's not too difficult for me to invert it / humor the opposite. My context is that I got a degree in music composition and also had several jobs washing dishes. It often goes with having a music degree :)
Obviously the original quote deliberately creates an unfair fight in the arena by matching a conventionally dull-sounding analog task such as "washing dishes" with a sophisticated digital task such as making art (digital since LLMs do it, and that's what the complaint is about).
I could also create an unfair fight by saying "I'd rather have machines organize my spreadsheets (boring digital task) so I can have more time to hang out with other humans I love (appealing analog task)."
For me, by inverting it, I've come to realize it's not about art or dishes, but more about analog and digital. If one is partaking in any digital activity, then the trend of machines entering and taking over that space is inevitable. I think humans will revert more towards prioritizing and finding meaning in purely analog endeavors. Human art will shift back to analog. That's just my personal prediction.
I love your perspective here. I don't agree with all of it, but it really made me think.
I do a lot of photography as a semi-amateur hobby (semi because I occasionally get paid but my goal is not to be a professional.) Often when I'm going out shooting in a city, thousands, maybe even millions have observed the same sight I'm seeing. I'm not snapping the first picture of the Hindenburg or the unveiling of the Empire State Building. But it's my unique perspective that makes my art. People like and recognize my pictures because of my personal composition. In general I think most portrait and street photographers have come to terms with this, and an increasing number of landscape and event photographers in the age of smartphones.
With art there's no "right answer", it's the soul found within the work.
I pranked someone (probably not on April Fools) at an office job I had in High School decades ago. I had a summer job digitizing documents.
I discovered that I could access the Startup folder on other employee's machines on the network via Windows Explorer. I put a script in one of my very rule-following co-worker's folder that was something like: dir dir dir dir (x100) echo All files have been deleted.
I watched them from around the corner when they booted up, saw the flood of file names flash across the screen, and flipped out when they read the message at the bottom. They reached for phone immediately to call the IT admin and I rushed out from around the corner explaining the joke. Never got in trouble. Good times.
