Yes the world is overpopulated. However a lot of developed societies based their framework for budgets on permanent growth, for example the idea that the young paying tax will always pay for the benefits of the elderly. However with the population rate decreasing, suddenly there is lots of older population expecting things like healthcare and pensions to be paid for them. With less and less young people to cover the cost in tax, there is a looming defecit which is very worrying to a lot of economists.
What this video also shows is that if people pull off more or less at the same time and speed of the car in front then this is a complete non issue. Unfortunately most people are unable to watch a few cars ahead and be ready to pull of when the car in front does, and so we have this situation where each car takes around 5-10 seconds to pull away. multiply this by hundreds or thousands of cars and you end up with a phantom traffic jam.
I always pull away at the same speed as the car in front of me and maintain the same distance as when we were stopped. It is very easy to do and completely eliminates traffic build up if multiple people do it at the same time.
This is the same reason that we have amber lights on traffic lights, so that the drivers have time to get into gear and start pulling away so that when the light goes green they are imediately travelling through it, causing no excess traffic build up at the lights. Again unfortunately people dont concentrate when they are stopped at lights and so you have the situation where they see the light go green and then proceed to start changing into gear and remove the handbrake. By the time they are moving through the green light, they have already taken 10-20 seconds of green light time, eating well into the time alotted for cars to be travelling across the junction.
The only thing which will solve this is driverless cars, meaning that the cars can all talk to each other and move at the same time like a chain. I welcome this advancement to elimante human error in driving and get rid of traffic jams for good.
I prefer to see it as the automtion of the IT age.
All other professions had their time when technology came and automated things.
For example wood carvers, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, candlestickmakers etc etc. All of those professions have been mostly taken over by machines in factories.
I view 'ai' as new machines in factories for producing code. We have reached the point where we have code factories which can produce things much more efficiently and quicker than any human can alone.
Where the professions still thrive is in the artisan market. There is always demand for hand crafted things which have been created with love and care.
I am hoping this stays true for my coding analogy. Then people who really care about making a good product will still have a market from customers who want something different from the mass produced norm.
> For example wood carvers, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, candlestickmakers etc etc.
Very, very few of those professions are thriving. Especially if we are talking true craftsmanship and not stuffing the oven with frozen pastries to create the smell and the corresponding illusion of artisinal work.
They are thriving where I live. There is a huge artisinal market for hand crafted things. There are many markets, craft centers, art fairs, regular classes from professionals teaching amateurs etc. In most rural communities I have visited it is similar.
They're existing, not really thriving. Artisanal things have become more popular as a hobby, but even people who get into them commercially rarely make real money off of it. The demand exists, but purely as a novelty for people who appreciate those types of things, or perhaps in really niche sub-markets that aren't adequately covered by big businesses. But the artisans aren't directly competing with companies that provide similar goods to them at scale, because it's simply impossible. They've just carved out a niche and sell the experience or the tailoring of what they're making to the small slice of the population who's willing to pay for that.
You can't do this with software. Non-devs don't understand nor appreciate any qualities of software beyond the simplest comprehension of UX. There's no such thing as "hand-made" software. 99% of people don't care about what runs on their computer at all, they only care about the ends, not the means. As long as it appears to do what you want, it's good enough, and good enough is all that's needed by everyone.
The problem for software artisans is that unlike other handmade craftwork, nobody else ever sees your code. There's no way to differentiate your work from that which is factory-made or LLM-generated.
Therefore I think artisan coders will need to rely on a combination of customisation and customer service. Their specialty will need to be very specific features which are not catered for by the usual mass code creation market, and provide swift and helpful support along with it.
I think the issue at the core of the analogy is that factories, traditional factories, excel at making a ton of one thing (or small variations thereof). The big productivity gains came from highly reliable, repeatable processes that do not accommodate substantial variation. This rigidity of factory production is what drives the existence of artisan work: it can always easily distinguish itself from the mass product.
This does not seem true for AI writing software. It's neither reliable nor rigid.
What assembly lines and factories did for other manufacturing processes is to make it feasable for any person to be able to make those things. In the past only very skilled professionals were able to create such things, but mechanisation and breaking down manufacturing processes into small chunks made the same things be able to be achieved by low skilled workers.
IMO that is exactly what is happening here. Ai is making coding apps possible for the normal person. Yes they will need to be supervised and monitored, just like workers in a factory. But groups of normal low skilled workers will be able to create large pieces of software via ai, whic has only ever been possible by skilled teams of professinoals before.
Yes, I think that's how it will go, like all those other industries. There will be an artisanal market, that's much smaller, where the (fewer) participants charge higher prices. So it'll (ironically?) end up being just another wealth concentrator. A few get richer doing artisanal work while most have their wage depressed and/or leave the market.
LLM are not AI, but are a great context search tool when they work.
When people first contact ML, they fool themselves into believing it is intelligent... rather than a massive plagiarism and copyright IP theft machine.
Fun is important, but people thinking zero workmanship generated content is sustainable are still in the self-delusion stage marketers promote.
I am not going to cite how many fads I've seen cycle in popularity, but many have seen the current active cons before. A firm that takes a dollar to make a dime in revenue is by definition unsustainable. =3
I like coding AIs because they're plagiarism machines. If I ask you to do some basic data manipulation operations, I want you to do it in the most obvious, standard way possible, not come up with some fancy creative solution unless it's needed for some reason.
If I'm dockerizing an app, I want the most simple, basic, standard thing - not somebody's hand-rolled "optimized" version that I can't understand.
> Screens are very unlike addictive drugs and cannot directly alter neurochemistry
Screens are able to show you things which give you small short dopamine hits, enough to keep you engaged enough to try get more. This is exactly how addictive drugs, gambling etc all work.
Yes, but also often are not actively in control of them.
People are also in control of whether or not they gamble their last dollar instead of buying some food, or whether or not they put that needle into their veins.
History has shown human nature can be dangerously out of control and people will happily destroy their own lives given the opportunity.
Therefore society tries to protect those vulnerable people with legislation.
So when does it stop? Would you support the state intervening in other situations in which people make choices of which you disapprove? Which choices would you, in your magnanimity, allow them to make?
>Which peer choices would you, in your magnanimity, allow them to make?
Thats why we have voting and a legal system which builds upon previous laws. You and I do not need to decide where the line in the sand is drawn, the majority of the population does that via the political and legal framework society has created.
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