It seems as if the frontier labs are walking a tightrope of tightropes ... they need to move fast to stay ahead of the competition but need to be careful that users come along for the ride. They need to manage politics and optics as their tech displaces and causes fundamental shifts. They need to be ruthless with their competition while sensitive to their users/customers. What an interesting dynamic.
It’s fascinating to me. The gap between logical displacement and the emergence of new work seems like such an obvious reality, yet there’s this default to one side or the other with little to no discussion of what they mean together. I appreciate the argument that augmentation will curb displacement, but there are millions of jobs that have natural limits to augmentation in both capability and amount of work within the company or division. It’s also not obvious to me that the same people can flex from routinized work to orchestrative work.
I love the power grid and roadway analogies, and they made me think of something immediately: both of those systems are currently underfunded and operating on outdated models.
The US grid was barely keeping up even before the AI boom. And our roadways (at least in the states I've lived in) are constantly crumbling.
Of course, neither is actually operating under free market mechanisms, though I'm not sure that would improve things.
What I'm curious about is how we as a collective will choose to come together to support these large, vital parts of modern life. How can we choose to relate to them so that things work for everyone?
There are lots and lots of, at least temporary, jobs available to improve the power grid -- from thinking jobs to manual labor -- should we ever choose to invest there.
The other question I have is on whose values will we be operating all of these technologies. Our community is currently fighting against a new, massive natural gas plant that would destroy native farmland. We're not against new power; we're for doing it in a way that minimizes (maybe even improves!?!) the impacts on land, wildlife, and people's lives around it.
Seems like publicly traded companies, especially utilities they way they're currently organized, don't take that too much into account right now.
I know you're talking about jobs and this inspired way more than that for me. :)
It’s definitely bigger than jobs. Everything you mention here is connected and interdependent. What I didn’t mention is that our major infrastructure buildouts (railroads, electricity, highways) all had a detrimental effect on the economy on the way to becoming utilities. It appears that our progress always comes at a steep cost before it distributes benefit.
Your question about how we choose our path and live in our values has an answer in what you’re doing at home. Standing up for what’s best for a community against a powerful, wealthy corporation can seem like a David and Goliath battle, and yet it’s how this whole system finds its equilibrium points. Silence about what matters cedes all choice about that equilibrium to larger entities. Even the smallest acts can ripple outward.
I'd say that the abstraction layer only works if the layer beneath it is clear. AI can execute faster, but it still needs to know what a human actually means, what matters, what is off-limits, and who is accountable when the system acts.
That’s what SHシFT is for: capturing declared intent, context and constraints before systems guess.
It seems as if the frontier labs are walking a tightrope of tightropes ... they need to move fast to stay ahead of the competition but need to be careful that users come along for the ride. They need to manage politics and optics as their tech displaces and causes fundamental shifts. They need to be ruthless with their competition while sensitive to their users/customers. What an interesting dynamic.
It’s fascinating to me. The gap between logical displacement and the emergence of new work seems like such an obvious reality, yet there’s this default to one side or the other with little to no discussion of what they mean together. I appreciate the argument that augmentation will curb displacement, but there are millions of jobs that have natural limits to augmentation in both capability and amount of work within the company or division. It’s also not obvious to me that the same people can flex from routinized work to orchestrative work.
I love the power grid and roadway analogies, and they made me think of something immediately: both of those systems are currently underfunded and operating on outdated models.
The US grid was barely keeping up even before the AI boom. And our roadways (at least in the states I've lived in) are constantly crumbling.
Of course, neither is actually operating under free market mechanisms, though I'm not sure that would improve things.
What I'm curious about is how we as a collective will choose to come together to support these large, vital parts of modern life. How can we choose to relate to them so that things work for everyone?
There are lots and lots of, at least temporary, jobs available to improve the power grid -- from thinking jobs to manual labor -- should we ever choose to invest there.
The other question I have is on whose values will we be operating all of these technologies. Our community is currently fighting against a new, massive natural gas plant that would destroy native farmland. We're not against new power; we're for doing it in a way that minimizes (maybe even improves!?!) the impacts on land, wildlife, and people's lives around it.
Seems like publicly traded companies, especially utilities they way they're currently organized, don't take that too much into account right now.
I know you're talking about jobs and this inspired way more than that for me. :)
It’s definitely bigger than jobs. Everything you mention here is connected and interdependent. What I didn’t mention is that our major infrastructure buildouts (railroads, electricity, highways) all had a detrimental effect on the economy on the way to becoming utilities. It appears that our progress always comes at a steep cost before it distributes benefit.
Your question about how we choose our path and live in our values has an answer in what you’re doing at home. Standing up for what’s best for a community against a powerful, wealthy corporation can seem like a David and Goliath battle, and yet it’s how this whole system finds its equilibrium points. Silence about what matters cedes all choice about that equilibrium to larger entities. Even the smallest acts can ripple outward.
This is the first explanation of the state of work that makes any sense at all. Can I borrow your x-ray glasses? 👓
We can trade. I’ve been blown away by your work lately.
Thanks Joseph!
I'd say that the abstraction layer only works if the layer beneath it is clear. AI can execute faster, but it still needs to know what a human actually means, what matters, what is off-limits, and who is accountable when the system acts.
That’s what SHシFT is for: capturing declared intent, context and constraints before systems guess.