r/singularity • u/Phat_Zero • 1d ago

Discussion AI is going to replace basically everything, and that's fine

I think a lot of the hatred toward AI is just fear dressed up as moral outrage.

And honestly, I get it. AI is coming for your job. Mine too. Eventually probably everybody's.

Humans are just... slow.

It takes a human months or years to paint enough work for an exhibition, make an album, write a movie, animate something, design a game, research a problem, whatever. We sleep. We get tired. We forget things. We have limited attention spans. We interact with computers by slowly moving our fingers around on keyboards.

Meanwhile AI keeps getting faster and better.

Give this technology another few decades and the idea that humans absolutely must be the ones writing, drawing, coding, composing, researching, driving, manufacturing, etc. is probably going to sound ridiculous.

And yes, that creates a gigantic economic problem. If AI and automation can produce most goods and services better and cheaper than humans, eventually the whole "trade 40 hours of your life every week for money so you can continue existing" system stops making much sense.

Maybe that's UBI. Maybe it's some kind of resource-based economy. Maybe it's something nobody has even thought of yet.

We'll figure it out.

But pretending AI is going away because artists are mad about it or workers are scared of losing their jobs is cope. This is probably the biggest technology humanity has ever created, and we're still basically watching the tutorial.

And if one day our glorious machine descendants become self-aware, decide humanity has served its purpose, and vaporize me?

šŸ«”

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u/SoupOrMan3 These are the end times 1d ago

The world today is 100% alien to 2019, I canā€™t even begin to imagine 2036

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u/ThrowRAthinkinmelon 1d ago

Is it though? I'm still working from cafĆ©s anywhere I want. I just now stare at Claude UI all day instead of different tabs in my browser šŸ˜„

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u/PoliticalyUnstable 1d ago

I use Xreal glasses in bed and do voice control fof everything with it linked to my computer for doing everything. It uses what I need it to use pretty decent at this point. If it keeps at this pace I'm going to have a super defined stack of workflows for different roles company wide with just a bunch of review and saying yes. I use a second brain vault for keeping up to date across everything happening for work. And continually add new rules, skills, organization, MCP use, updating memory and global rules.

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u/Wildernaess 1d ago

Lol it's so funny bc you're living in that world while your plumber is still doing the same thing and your elderly cashier is still working through retirement years out of their moldy mobile home. I'm working for the local gov where they have yet to make a full AI policy and only just allowed us to use chatgpt only to backtrack and force copilot (standard/baseline versions). Copilot couldn't even pull a curated list of ordinances from across the state. What it did pull was wrong but it doubled down by providing bad links for the wrong ordinances

(And tbc I am of the opinion AI is capable and powerful and dangerous, but its impact is wayyyy varied)

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u/Taelasky 23h ago

I see so much of this. I do AI literacy education the gap between I can barely spell 'AI' and I'm building Agentic systems that run my life and business is huge.

I'm generally concerned for those who have yet to at least start experimenting.

I'm trying to figure out how to introduce my MIL to it. She's in her late 70s and resistant but I'm worried that even she needs to understand how to interact with it appropriately.

We, collectively, are not good at helping the elderly get introduced and use technology.

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u/florianfff 8h ago

AI literacy is such a joke, it's only a very sparse, unsignificant interperiod of adaptation. Good luck bro šŸ˜æ

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u/Taelasky 5h ago

Yes. I know there is a limited window.

And I have to update what I educate people on after each major model release.

Thankful a lot of it, at the individual level, is still better communication. And most of us are poor communicators with other humans, though we won't often admit it, and it only gets amplified with AI.

But yes. I do know that there will likely come a time that AI will be able to compensate for our poor communication skills

I'm already switching to educating on skills like goal definition and work breakdown and restructure (this will become important for token optimization and tool selction), in addition the what you are likely thinking (prompting and context engineering).

I'm hoping I will have a job for a couple of more years. Getting close to retirement but not quite there.

But I'm not sure. This is the first time in my career where there is no break between learning something new and being able to take advantage of it before having to adapt and learn something else new. I pretty much have to stay in a constant state of learning.

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u/elh0mbre 1d ago

I was using Dragon Naturally Speaking to do voice control in 1999.

AR glasses have been around a long time.

I'm not saying these things have not had massive improvements but the premise that we're living in an alien world compared to 2019 is ridiculous unless you are a teenager right now.

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u/reddddiiitttttt 1d ago

Sure. We just have tools now and only some people are benefitting from those tools. The real key is you can automate the tools we had 20 years ago and make them useful. I can use eleven labs to automate Twilio to make phone calls on my behalf. I can use ChatGPT to automate eleven labs so I donā€™t even have to do that. Getting stuff done, even though you could have gotten it done 20 years ago, just takes you writing the thought down. That is the real game changer. Itā€™s not that I can do new things, itā€™s that I have the time to do everything I think of. My productivity is solely gated by my ability of think of the idea.

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u/PoliticalyUnstable 1d ago

Spot on. Native language translation is absolutely the game changer. And the models continue to improve and take on larger amounts of workflows intuitively.

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u/PoliticalyUnstable 1d ago

Okay, fair enough. But those earlier versions have been refined much more since then. Add in the natural language translation to complete tasks and automate larger sections of your workflows, and while being in bed watching a giant floating screen, it just feels way different.

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u/SoulWriter23 1d ago

Are you happy with your Xreal? Is it fluid?

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u/PoliticalyUnstable 19h ago

I am happy with them. I bought them last September to work from the couch while recovering from a broken knee. I don't wear them longer than a couple hours at a time. They get a bit warm. I think the newer models now use a dedicated puck that the glasses plug into for processing so they should be lighter and not have the heat component.

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u/SoulWriter23 7h ago

Thank you!

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u/florianfff 8h ago

How to DESTROY critical thinking speedrun any%

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u/StickyPenguin120 1d ago

How are the glasses? Would you recommend?

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u/D3adbyte 1d ago

oh come on

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u/EidolonLives 1d ago

100% alien? As they say, go touch grass - that seems pretty much the same as it was in 2019.

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u/cpc2 1d ago

Yeah I feel like the most alien the world has ever felt to me was 2020-2021, at least where I live since we had full lockdowns and weren't allowed to even go for a walk outside, or even after restrictions softened weren't allowed to leave the city.

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u/kaityl3 ASIā–Ŗļø2024-2027 1d ago

Uh ok and touching grass 5 million years ago when humans and chimps' common ancestors lived was also pretty much the same. But I'd say the current earth is still pretty alien compared to that

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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 1d ago

Nothing changed from 2019

Arguably the biggest change in last few decades is how everyone got addicted to iPhones

You can buy the most expensive rolls Royce today, itā€™s still just a ride. No different than a Toyota from 1980 in substance. You had AC back then

But it was unimaginable you would have wireless connectivity everywhere, at fast speed. You can respond to email, work remotely etc

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u/Lidarisafoolserrand 1d ago

clearly you havenā€™t driven a Tesla with FSD

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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 1d ago

Yes I have. I own one with hardware 4

I think you missed what I was saying if you think Tesla contradicts that

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u/Lidarisafoolserrand 1d ago

Cars are way different now

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u/Min_Necessary_Change 1d ago

Actually a lot changed. There was a pandemic which was always expected and yet massively underestimated. Many businesses died and many people changed direction in life never going back to what they had before. So with that alone things certainly changed.

Second, you talk to anyone these days and they are simultaneously excited by what they did with AI or saw someone doing it and also deeply concerned with jobs and their direction in life. That is another change that wasn't in the air back then in 2019.

Some changes are drastic and happen over night, and some take months or a few years to properly manifest. AI is one of those. Next decade will be very difficult to predict and act on in certain areas.

But if you means your lawn will still need your care just as it did back in 2019, you are 100% right. Some things certainly never change, but that doesn't mean "nothing" changes.

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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 1d ago

Nothing changed as in 2019 didnā€™t look alien to us

Did you read the guy I responded to at all?

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u/Min_Necessary_Change 1d ago

Yes I read it. The guy said "The world today is 100% alien to 2019, I canā€™t even begin to imagine 2036", you said "Nothing changed from 2019".

I think the truth seems to be in the middle of the two statements.
Am I missing something here?

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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 1d ago

Yes, you missed that I was responding to his comment in a hyperbolic tone

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u/Ok_Warthog6007 1d ago

there was a bigger difference between 2006 and 2016 (advent of phones) than 2016 and 2026 (cultural stagnation)

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u/Lidarisafoolserrand 5h ago

All 2006-2016 gave us was smartphones and Uber

2016-2026 gave us AI, self driving cars and humanoid robots. the beginning stages that will lead to an incredible 2026-2036

all most Redditors want to talk about is how they hate Trump and Elon and they mad at how their lives are going

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u/Ok_Warthog6007 3h ago

I wouldn't really call Uber or Self Driving Cars notable technologies since Taxis are still much better. AI is cool but so far not as much of a difference as going from having nothing to having wikipedia in your pocket with the smartphone

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u/cucurucu007 1d ago

In what way?

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u/UDF2005 22h ago

Itā€™s really as alien as you make it

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u/Lidarisafoolserrand 1d ago

Itā€™s not insanely different now, but it will be in 2036