Ask HN: Why study anything if AGI is (supposedly) coming?

5 points by msvana 334 days ago | 10 comments

I had this question in my head for a few days. So far, I've been able to come up with 4 reasons:

1. It’s about optimizing the worst case. Maybe AGI isn’t coming that soon; we don’t know. So it might be worth being prepared for multiple scenarios.

2. AGI might replace average humans, but we would still need the top performers to be human. If this is the case, things still need to change. It might make less sense for most people to pursue careers in, say, software development, unless they are exceptionally talented, motivated, or passionate.

3. We can learn new things just because they are fun. Most people who learn how to play an instrument won’t ever make money from it. In the future, programmers and other mainly white-collar workers might end up in a similar situation. It will be a hobby, not a job.

4. Related to the previous point, learning is also a social activity. It’s about doing something together, meeting new people with similar interests, making new friends, and possibly even finding spouses.

Would you add anything else to this list? Or do you think studying anything is pointless?

palmfacehn 333 days ago |

Learn new things because it satisfies your curiosity and hones your intellect.

Concerning AI, how would you know the output is correct if you have no domain knowledge? Even without domain knowledge, how would you think critically about the AI's output if you haven't honed your critical thinking skills?

There are many cases where AI output is nominally correct under casual examination. This makes sense, because it is designed to generate the most probable output. There's a George Carlin quote that applies here.

When crowdsourcing knowledge, we can reasonably expect that the most probable result will be mediocre. Even if we qualify for domain experts as training input, the output will be mediocre among the domain experts. From there we can also ask about how the expertise is qualified or if political or toxic feedback mechanisms like institutional group-think play a role.

Without honing your mind, you'd be unable to best utilize AI as means to achieve your goal. Problem solving as a skill starts with being able to identify and describe the problem coherently. This is a prerequisite to choosing a goal or attempting to develop a solution. Even if AI is an amazing tool, it will only be as valuable as the ends you apply it towards.

austin-cheney 333 days ago |

I know AGI is more than LLMs, but the result will be the same. LLMs just prove what I already observed through my software career. Software people fall into 3 camps:

* People that can actually program. These are people who can write software.

* People that can do a little bit more than copy/paste. This is most people in software. These people cannot measure things or write software, but they can follow instructions and reproduce patterns provided to them. These are your React developers who perform a lot of mental arithmetic about stupid shit like state management and yet struggle to put text on screen.

* People that cannot write software.

LLMs clearly widen the gaps between those three camps. People that can write software will continue writing software. People that pretend to write software will become more reliant on LLMs. People that cannot write software will continue to make bullshit assumptions that don't apply to anything. AGI will just be LLMs + 1.

toomuchtodo 333 days ago |

Meaning is to understand. To understand, you must learn and be curious.

"Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." -- Ronnie Coleman

chrsw 333 days ago |

People still play chess competitively. Even though, as I understand it, SOTA chess machines can easily defeat the best ever human player.

msvana 333 days ago | |

I had this exact analogy in mind when writing point no. 3

sexyman48 333 days ago |

Why study anything if AGI is (supposedly) coming?

Gene line perpetuation. As underwhelming as it is, you still have a penis, which women, try as they certainly will, will have a difficult time replacing with silicon during your lifetime, and probably for a few generations more.

surprisetalk 333 days ago |

My father deliberately didn't invest in my education because "Jesus is coming back in the next few years anyway".

I was raised SDA; this mindset goes back hundreds of years. Leading up to the 1844, "Great Disappointment", people stopped learning, stopped growing, stopped saving, etc.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment

Even if AGI is inevitable, its timeline and effects on your life are unknown.

You are alive. You are alive. You are alive.

msvana 333 days ago | |

Thanks, sounds kinda similar to my first point.

fuzzfactor 333 days ago |

Well you don't study just anything in that case . . .

sherdil2022 333 days ago |

Did you stop learning because all the knowledge is readily accessible? AI doing this, doing that with only a prompt is also the same.