Ask HN: What is still hard to do?

4 points by lukehandcool 7 days ago | 6 comments

AI has made a lot of things a lot easier to do and there is a common perception, especially among non-tech people, that it's quickly solving all our difficult problems (math conjectures, protein folding, material engineering, etc). I wanted to make a list of things that are still genuinely difficult. What sort of academic / research projects are still hard to do?

megaloblasto 7 days ago |

Figuring out what problem to solve is still hard.

Also bringing a product to market (a non-software product).

Also having good taste and cooking great food come to mind, but they are not really research problems.

lucfranken 7 days ago |

Real world stuff, physical stuff, real services are still complicated.

Moving around papers, data and that kind of jobs becomes automated.

The real math problems etc: I think it will create many more interesting problems and challenges. It's not like something is solved and nothing is left. That's the wrong way to look at it I think.

JojoFatsani 6 days ago |

HVAC

rvz 7 days ago |

If almost everything in software is now easy to do, perhaps software engineers were just working on the wrong problems for years, such as creating hundreds of useless JS frameworks.

The software engineer's laziness to create better software and to disregard optimal solutions is the reason now they have found themselves to have automated their entire role and are now upset that most of them are no longer needed. That's good and it is deserved.

It's now time for them to find something else that is a lot harder to do, like hardware and getting people to pay for their 'free' software that anyone will just build for themselves.

ranger_danger 7 days ago | |

IMO This is actually the most positive way to frame the whole "slippery slope fallacy" of impending technological progress causing cascading "problems" in society. You know, the arguments that went something like:

Wait until the cotton gin arrives, all the hand weavers will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.

Wait until the printing press arrives, all the scribe monks will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.

Wait until the computer arrives, people will become obsolete and no one will have experience anymore.

Wait until the steam engine, automobiles, planes, calculators, telephones, etc.

---

But history shows that when such a "slope" appears... regulation steps in, technology evolves to solve the problem, or the culture shifts to reinterpret the tool.

In almost every case, the feared "bottom" of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way. And that's what progress is.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

allears 7 days ago | | |

This is certainly true in the long run. However, there's a lot of dislocation along the way. Disruption may be good for profits, but not so good for the people who get disrupted. Not saying that progress is wrong, but it's not always pleasant to live through.