Whether we like it or not, AI sits at the intersection of both Moravec's and Jevon's paradox. Just as more efficient engines lead to increased gas usage, as AI gets increasingly better at problems difficult for humans, we see even greater proliferation within that domain.
The reductio on this is the hollowing out of the hard-for-humans problem domain, leaving us to fight for the scraps of the easy-for-humans domain. At first glance this sounds like a win. Who wouldn't want something else to solve the hard problems? The big issue with this is easy-for-human problems are often dull, devoid of meaning, and low-wage. Paradoxically, the hardest problems have always been the ones that make work meaningful.
We stand at the crossroads where one path leads to an existence where with a poverty of meaning and although humans create and play by their own rules, we feel powerless to change it. What the hell are we doing?
Interesting point of view, didn't know about Jevon's paradox before. To me, the outcome still depends on whether AI can get superhuman [1] (and beyond) at some point. If it can, then, well, we will likely indeed see that suitable-for-human areas of the intellectual labor are shrinking. If it cannot, then it becomes an even more philosophical question similar to the agnosticism beliefs. Is the universe completely knowable? Because if it's not, then we might as well have an infinite more hard problems, and AI just rises a bar for what we can achieve by paring a human with AI compared to just human alone.
[1] I know it's a bit hard to define, but I'd vaguely say that it's significantly better in the majority of intelligence areas than the vast majority of the population. Also it should be scalable. If we can make it slightly better than human by burning the entire Earth's energy, then it doesn't make much sense.
Prioritize goals over the process and what AIs can do doesn't matter.
Want to make a movie? The goal should be getting the movie out, seen by people and reviewed.
Whether it's people captured by film, animations in Blender or AI slop, what matters is the outcome. Is it good? Do people like it?
I do the infrastructure at a department of my Uni as sort of a side-gig. I would have never had the time to learn Ansible, borg, FreeIPA, wireguard, and everything else I have configured now and would have probably resorted to a bunch of messy shell scripts that don't work half the time like the people before me.
But everything I was able to set up I was able to set up in days, because of AI.
Sure, it's really satisfying because I also have a deep understanding of the fundamentals, and I can debug problems when AI fails, and then I ask it "how does this work" as a faster Google/wiki.
I've tried windsurf but given up because the AI does something that doesn't work and I can give it the prompts to find a solution (+ think for myself) much faster than it can figure out itself (and probably at the cost of a lot less tokens).
But the fact that I enjoy the process doesn't matter. And the moment I can click a button and make a webapp, I have so many ideas in my drawer for how I could improve the network at Uni.
I think the problem people have is that they work corporate jobs where they have no freedom to choose their own outcomes so they are basically just doing homework all their life. And AI can do homework better than them.
Take this too far and you run into a major existential crisis. What is the goal of life? Most people would say something along the lines of bringing joy to others, experiencing joy yourself, accomplishing things that you are proud of, and continuing the existence of life by having children, so that they can experience joy. The joy of life is in doing things, joy comes from process. Goals are useful in that they enable the doing of some process that you want to be doing, or in the joy of achieving the goal (in which case the joy is usually derived from the challenge in the process of achieving the goal).
> Want to make a movie? The goal should be getting the movie out, seen by people and reviewed.
This especially falls apart when it comes to art, which is one of the most “end-goal” processes. People make movies because they enjoy making movies, they want movies to be enjoyed by others because they want to share their art, and they want it to be commercially successful so that they can keep making movies. For the “enjoying a movie” process, do you truly believe that you’d be happy watching only AI-generated movies (and music, podcasts, games, etc.) created on demand with little to no human input for the rest of your life? The human element is truly meaningless to you, it is only about the pixels on the screen? If it is, that’s not wrong - I just think that few people actually feel this way.
This isn’t an “AI bad” take. I just think that some people are losing sight of the role of technology. We can use AI to enable more people than ever before to spend time doing the things they want to do, or we can use it to optimize away the fun parts of life and turn people even further into replaceable meat-bots in a great machine run by and for the elites at the top.
When all we care about is the final product, we miss the entire internal arc, the struggle, the bruised ego, and the chance of failure, and the reward in feeling "holy shit, I did it!" that comprises the essence of being human.
Reducing the human experience as a means to an end is the core idea of dehumanization. Kant addressed this in the "humanity formula of the categorical imperative:
"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means."
I'm curious how you feel about the phrase "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way." What does it mean to you?
But the process _does_ matter. That is the whole point of life. Why else are we even here if not to enjoy the process of making? It’s why people get into woodworking or knitting as hobbies. If it was just about the end result, they could just go to a store a buy something that would be way cheaper and easier. But that’s not the point - it’s something that _you_ made with your own hands, as imperfect as they are, and the experience of making something.
The reductio on this is the hollowing out of the hard-for-humans problem domain, leaving us to fight for the scraps of the easy-for-humans domain. At first glance this sounds like a win. Who wouldn't want something else to solve the hard problems? The big issue with this is easy-for-human problems are often dull, devoid of meaning, and low-wage. Paradoxically, the hardest problems have always been the ones that make work meaningful.
We stand at the crossroads where one path leads to an existence where with a poverty of meaning and although humans create and play by their own rules, we feel powerless to change it. What the hell are we doing?