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password54321 • yesterday at 8:33 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

"slowly change things in 20 years"

Yeah, it is not going to be slow. Progress compounds, everything is being built on top of fast computers and fast widespread internet connection. You are not at the beginning of the curve like you were in the 20th century when people didn't even know how to use a keyboard and we are already seeing widespread disruption in security.


Replies

tracerbulletx • yesterday at 8:38 PM

Literally the entire premise of the article is that it's going slow everywhere but in software. To think otherwise is to be really myopic about how the rest of the world outside of tech operates. And in any case 20 years isn't that slow. The only things that happen faster that that will be things like adobe goes out of business. And let's say AI helps us develop medicine and robotics and better factories and all the other things that would have a big impact a lot faster.. just human trials could take a decade before you really see that much change. Will it have a wider impact faster than computing its self, or the internet? Maybe? Maybe not.

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ben_w • yesterday at 8:52 PM

Both things can be true.

I expect to be surprised by specific headlines, but I don't expect "software engineer" to be any more common a job opening than "steam locomotive engineer" in 10 years time.

Conversely, I would be very surprised if the robotics startups turn out to have solved general-purpose AI models that work in the real world, both fast enough and cheap enough (currecy or joules) to be significantly labour-displacing in 10 years.

Where I'm about 50-50 on which of "AI does it" or "AI does't do it" is more surprising, is specific physics research from AI. LLMs can do a lot of hard maths, there's lots of open problems in physics due to hard maths questions. So:

  Consider the Alcubierre metric. The original is impossible. Can an LLM either design something in the same broad category which is physically instantiable but still useful (e.g. "yes it's sub-light but it manages 0.01c and you weren't getting that otherwise"), or prove this is impossible when limited to matter made from normal electrons, protons, and neutrons?
10 years? I'd be equally surprised if this is or isn't done by AI. Mainly depends on how long the growth continues looking exponential.
williamtrask • yesterday at 8:40 PM

"You are not at the beginning of the curve like you were in the"

Note: on an exponential, you can always say this. People will look back on today with the same "aww cute" eyes.

card_zero • yesterday at 9:08 PM

Progress is future knowledge. You don't know what future knowledge is, yet. When you know, it will have become present knowledge. You don't know that any particular ongoing change is progress. LOL predictions.

aDyslecticCrow • yesterday at 9:26 PM

Disruption in security is still software field though. The topic is "the rest of the economy".