logoalt Hacker News

pear01yesterday at 4:39 AM1 replyview on HN

Just remember you don't need AGI to see massive societal change. Certainly not mass layoffs. AGI is not the bar. By the time we all agree AGI has come the world will have already changed.

You just need AI to be just good enough to win the tradeoff over a human employee. Just take your average office. Then ask yourself if the bar is really that high. AGI strikes me as an extremely nebulous concept. Better to just list everyone at your office and bucket them with a guess of how soon you think AI will replace them. Or weaken their market power. This is what every corporate boss in America is already doing. I'm merely suggesting rather than hope a graph curves in our individual favor we try to act more collectively as a species. Of course, I don't hold my breath.

I also don't find myself compelled by the notion that the danger to humanity is "AGI". The true danger is as it always has been - each other.


Replies

datsci_est_2015yesterday at 11:49 AM

> Just take your average office. Then ask yourself if the bar is really that high.

How many years away do you think we are from a “concierge” AI that can do the menial tasks handled by most personal assistants / program managers? Booking flights and hotels and coordinating employee availability?