alt Hacker NewsI'm not sure why you say the analogy fails just because general AI has more applications than excavators. A tool is still a tool, regardless of how much human effort it replaces.
"Calculator" used to be a job title. Now it's a machine. In the same way, "construction worker" may one day be a machine. "Software engineer" may one day be a machine. "Engineer" in general may one day be a machine. This forum seems to think that if humans are not required to think hard about existing problem domains, something terrible will happen.
At the end of the AI revolution, thinking may become something like physical exercise -- something we do because it's fun, and keeps us healthy and attractive, not because it's required.
To be clear, I do think that AI poses a potential risk to humanity. But imo "we won't have to think as hard" is not a risk; it's a benefit.
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People already do a lot of thinking for fun. They read novels, they write software, they do crossword puzzles, they play chess.
My experience at home and work is the more “thinking” these tools do, the more it frees me up to think about something else, usually something harder.
The mention of exercise brought this to mind:
If people don’t use muscle power for work, and people don’t think for work, what are people going to fi?
Maybe the new scarce resource will be meaning, and we’ll kill each other for that
yes ... I do think that if humans stop thinking hard about existing problem domains .. they will lose that ability.
From which it then follows that _all_ technology and science become magical incantations dictated by a black-box oracle, whom everyone trusts and no one understands.
That could happen in a couple of decades.