Will we work for AI or will AI work for us?
Y Combinator startup will pay humans to help AI agents when they get stuck. (This is what I read today.)
At the same time, I see how Indian employees in production have cameras on their heads, and the AI learns from their movements (practically filming their firing process).
In addition, there was already a site where AI agents hired human actions for stablecoins.
First, AI worked for us.
Now we are starting to work for AI.
And eventually, will AI work (without us)?
I don’t want to portray a Terminator scenario where people will have to unite against AI, but what future awaits us in terms of cooperation/non-cooperation with AI?
We are already becoming its employees.
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Do we become operators of systems instead of building things?
What happens to skill building when AI handles most of the execution?
Are humans becoming part of the training loop more than the end users?
Does AI increase inequality between those who can leverage it vs those who can't?
@grant_harrison2 YES!! So, in our classrooms, we have to educate our students on how to use it. BTW: there's two ways to use AI. One is --> solve all my problems, give me the answers, while the other is treat it like the resident guru who can help you think through complex issues. Ask questions like "compare and contrast...." "why is this ...." If we don't start teaching our youth to think, they will get dumber and dumber if I can say such a thing on this platform. AI will gladly think for us.
What if the real shift isn't "who works for whom," but that work itself becomes a shared loop where neither side is fully in control?
At what point does "using AI" quietly turn into "adapting yourself to how AI works"?
I agree, some time I feels like we skipped “AI will help us” and jumped straight into “AI, what do you want me to do next?” 😅
Right now it’s like having a super smart coworker who still needs constant checking. You save time… but also spend time double checking everything, fixing prompts, and explaining things twice.
So instead of AI replacing jobs, it just created a new one: professional AI babysitter.
I don’t think we’ll end up fully working for AI though. More like this weird partnership where it does the work and we take the blame when something goes wrong 😂
At the same time… yeah, the future does look a bit scary if you think too far ahead.
@moh_codokiai I built a product with LLM agents and the checking takes longer than the generating the output is fast. Knowing whether the output is actually good is the slow part, and that's still entirely a human job one im trying to fix.
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@moh_codokiai I can’t help it, but I completely exhaust my AI mentally. The language model around me is probably miserable, because my way of asking questions is almost neurotic. :D LOL
I think a lot of the hype around AI feels a lot like the excitement people had during the space race. A fast start makes it feel like progress will just keep speeding up. But history shows that's not always what happens.
AI will probably take over the things it's actually better at, and people will adapt, like we always do. That's what happened during the Industrial Revolution. Machines didn't turn people into their servants. They became tools that made work more efficient where humans were slower or less precise. I think AI will follow a similar path, not replacing people entirely, but changing how the roles are split.
So the real question isn't whether we'll work for AI. It's how well we learn to use it where it actually helps.
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@nowaffl Not so sure, let's have a look at how we became slavers of smartphones. We totally lost our minds, scrolling there for 8 hours in a row. Humankind is sometimes very easy to manipulate.
@busmark_w_nika Yes, but even there, I'd say smartphones didn't enslave us on their own. People and companies just got really good at using that tool, especially to grab our attention and keep us there.
@busmark_w_nika @nowaffl Some people are productive because they have a phone, others are entertained and less productive because they have a phone. It's all about how you use a tool. AI is different, we have trained it to make decisions and execute orders. When it starts making decisions and executing orders on us instead of for us it will be dark.
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@nowaffl @dstr88 I just think that the majority of people are too comfortable to make some effort and commitment to something, so they will fall for some addiction or dependancy trap :D
I see a great need for AI to replace humans in many venues. I've always been irate about forcing fallible, biased, dense,
apathetic, etc., people to be jurors. Short of having bench trials (judge only), I would never want a bunch of clowns deciding my fate. AI allegedly eliminates these factors, delivering true & accurate verdicts based on solid evidence, without encroaching emotions prohibiting equitable & honest evaluations. Before actually installing AI juries, they
must be tamper/hack proof, & ample test runs before marketing them to judicial systems. I hope my original idea
is taken seriously, & implemented in the foreseeable future. I also see many AI applications in medical, & other
fields, but that's for future threads to comment about.
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@bruce23 Hard to say whether juries is a good example, there are many ethical questions and yes, it could be very logical / not biased like: "kids and divorced couple – kids will stay with father who has economically strong position, but it will totally overlooks the fact that the father is a thug and a psychopath."
This could be along discussion on this.
@busmark_w_nika That long discussion is what I call "Pi whirlpools", as they can never be resolved. I've
worked in social services, & giving custody to the "wrong" parents happens so often it's commonplace, &
when fatalities occur, it's impossible (so far) to resurrect the deceased. When that occurs, all parties are
culpable, including CPS, courts, judges, etc. To handle guilt, grief, anger..., a common therapy is to file
lawsuits in order to channel pain, & punish the wrongdoers. I'm quite grateful I was bright enough to
avoid marriage & children. In retrospect, it truly saves lives, money, time, aggravation.
Even if machines eventually handle every practical job, people could still create new forms of trade, craft, and exchange, because the impulse seems to be baked-in to human behavior, at least so far. Humans who grow up with full AI automation on-demand, could have a very different mindset. Early in life, people may develop the big picture mindset just by using automations repeatedly. Thinking in Star Trek terms, more people could get comfortable being a commander rather than a narrow specialization such as engineer, science officer, counselor, doctor, etc. Ideally, humans remain the captain and all other roles are machines.
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@sweeteyecandy My w*t dream is that people will not be okay doing nothing and will have the need to self-actualize. But I know people who would be too comfortable and probably start doing stupid useless things, e.g. drinking alchl just because they are bored.