> AI will eclipse humans in every possible domain, leaving everyone without direct control over the most powerful models completely powerless, economically redundant, and at the mercy of the new AI hegemony
I disagree. I believe access to AI will shift the power balances of the world, but I wouldn't say people will be left completely powerless. But maybe our definition of powerless differs.
What is your definition of powerless? Unable to influence? Physically outmatched?
I like both. From an economic perspective I'm a little sad my programming skills give me less of an edge in the job market, but I still hand program here and there for fun.
> If you genuinely, genuinely, believed artificial superintelligence was coming, why would you want to work at the company that would be in the best position to replace its employees?
Just because the job becomes obsolete doesn't mean the employee has to. Some employees have adapted to different jobs and roles many times in their careers.
> I think I could have been a pretty formidable startup founder had I been born five or ten years earlier
I used to think this around 10 years ago. I eventually learned this kind of thinking is defeatist and figured if others are able to succeed in this environment then I can.
> there are only "AI startups", where you build a company that somebody else can write a prompt for in 30 seconds.
Just like how people think ideas are a dime a dozen, software will be. The value will be in polish, ongoing maintenance, feature development, and the incorporation of customer feedback.
> I can't think of a single piece of software I use that has gotten better
Users are notoriously bad at noticing small improvements over time. A more interesting thing way to see the impact of AI is to ask employees at big companies what it has allowed them to work on and release in a previously unimaginable time frame.
> Just because the job becomes obsolete doesn't mean the employee has to. Some employees have adapted to different jobs and roles many times in their careers.
But that employee will be on a treadmill and has to reinvent themselves in an ever-increasing pace because the AI is continuously hunting for their job, and its ambitions are growing exponentially.
Dating apps are a race to the bottom. They're collecting a tax on the lonely and desperate of dwindling populations. Ironically it's not sustainable over the long term.
> Ironically it's not sustainable over the long term.
The entire idea of just wanting MRR and be done with it is a huge, huge part why the world is so screwed. So much of the economy is just devolved into rich people seeking rents.
I think it's unlikely for your worst case scenario to be realized. Underspecified objectives can cause unexpected results, but it can also lead to desired results. Fortunately experimentation is relatively cheap and tuning optimization metrics is the norm for most apps.
> they would rather be single than pair with any of the options that are realistically available to them
I don't know if the matching problem has been fully explored enough to ascertain this is the case.
In the western world, people will go out with someone they find undesirable with the intention of reaping the benefits of short term relationships. I think this sometimes sets unrealistic expectations on those undesirable people and further muddies the water. I wonder if there's a way to impose a cost on those who are not in it for the long term.
The sentiment of the linked post is different than the one you describe. The post is explaining why it's ok to have a non-zero value for a metric seen as objectively bad (like fraud) if there's high confidence that the non-zero value can be traded for a disproportionately larger metric somewhere beneficial (user acquisition).
In this case the undesirable metric is divorce. If the parent comment's feature for measuring marriage lengths and estimating likelihood of divorce were implemented, what disproportionate benefit would allowing more matches with a nonzero likelihood of divorce bring? The app wouldn't be enforcing whether divorces happen, it would just use the estimation of it happening as a matchmaking metric.
> what disproportionate benefit would allowing more matches with a nonzero likelihood of divorce bring
I think one benefit would be the individual participants' self-determination (there may be others). It's ok if you don't find my previous example (abusive relationship) convincing, but in the absence of an objection I'll reuse that. If we could look through all the marriages with a 0% chance of divorce, my bet is that we'd find an abnormally high percentage of abusive relationships. I claim that if a match has _no_ chance of divorce, it probably indicates a lack of self-determination for one of the partners.
Taking a step back, it might be clearer to just argue that length / non-divorce is not what people really want from a marriage. I can't speak for everyone, but I want a happy and fulfilling life, and I seek a partnership to the extent that it supports my desire for a happy and fulfilling life. Yes, I do want the partnership to be long, and I don't want to get divorced. Of course I want my marriage to last forever. But this is not my primary goal in marriage. There are many boring or uninteresting people (apologies to them) who I'm sure I could live with forever, that I'd immediately discard as candidates. Alternatively (making the abuse angle more tangible), I also have a lot of international friends and family that would happily find me an international bride who would never divorce me, and would be happy to marry somebody with a US passport. In fact this is a somewhat common offer, though of course they never say it in those words. You can decide for yourself whether that is abuse, but at least I wouldn't feel comfortable with it.
> I also have a lot of international friends and family that would happily find me an international bride who would never divorce me, and would be happy to marry somebody with a US passport. In fact this is a somewhat common offer, though of course they never say it in those words. You can decide for yourself whether that is abuse, but at least I wouldn't feel comfortable with it.
I'm pretty sure in this specific case, they get an instant green card if abuse happens. So the incentives point in the opposite direction (pro-divorce)
That’s fair, but on the other hand they’re in a new country where they may not speak the language, and know almost nobody. To say nothing of religious/cultural views of divorce
> but in order to avoid serving you the best matches for a long-term relationship, they'd have to know what those are
No? With modern dating apps they can just serve you people who have already swiped left on you. Even if they made it a random presentation of candidates, they will never be incentivized to matchmake for free. If you're not paying then you'll get shown people in the area and that's it. That's all they need for their ad-revenue.
I think we're talking about different populations. You are talking about someone who gets zero matches at all but we are talking about people that get matches, but those matches never turn into relationships. To be fair, both populations of people have the same complaint that "dating apps don't work", but for extremely different reasons.
I don't think that dating apps are showing users profiles that have already swiped left, and if they do, it's not an attempt to get users to convert to a paid subscription. Consumer psychology doesn't work that way. People are far more willing to pay to upgrade a good experience than they are to pay to try to improve a bad one. Further, an unappealing profile that gets zero likes will continue to get zero likes after they upgrade to a paid subscription. This means that user will churn almost immediately after 1-2 months of paying for something that doesn't work. They typically don't stick around paying for years while getting zero matches all the while.
Dating apps DO derank unappealing profiles, but rather than doing it to try to get them to convert, it's instead done to try to prevent high bounce rates. Imagine a user downloads a dating app and is shown profiles in completely randomized order. This user is far more likely to get frustrated and uninstall after a few minutes than if they were to download the app and be shown profiles that are appealing. This rigged ranking may sound like its reducing relationship formation, but they never would have swiped on the unappealing profiles anyway; the counterfactual is they simply uninstall the app in frustration.
> You are talking about someone who gets zero matches at all
No, I'm not.
> People are far more willing to pay to upgrade a good experience than they are to pay to try to improve a bad one
This is an assumption and one I believe is false. My belief is that people are more risk-averse rather than they are risk-taking [1]. People don't care to upgrade when they're winning.
> Further, an unappealing profile that gets zero likes will continue to get zero likes after they upgrade to a paid subscription.
Not matching with someone does not mean they have 0 likes. The platform just isn't incentivized to show you who likes you for free. Concretely we can take Tinder as an example. They will show you that someone likes you even when they won't show you who. Swiping enough to find the person who likes you usually takes countless hours.
> This user is far more likely to get frustrated and uninstall after a few minutes than if they were to download the app and be shown profiles that are appealing
If you're extending this to anything past the first profiles shown, this is simply untrue. You just need to dangle a carrot in the form of "someone likes you," even when the person liking you is a bot account.
I agree with this. In my latest stint on dating apps as a woman looking for a man, I matched with dozens of profiles from guys average in terms of height and salary (when disclosed), and also in a niche of "attractive to me personally but not in the top 10% of conventionally-attractive dudes". So I know dozens of guys got at least one match, and most of the time they liked me first, I hadn't swiped in either direction when they were shown my profile.
Upwards of 90% of matches did not convert to dates, because many did not respond to messages at all, did not or could not carry on a brief "normal human" conversation, or if they did the first two things, never proposed meeting irl. I think you are correct in your assessment that the median user on a dating app is very non-committal.
I disagree. I believe access to AI will shift the power balances of the world, but I wouldn't say people will be left completely powerless. But maybe our definition of powerless differs.
What is your definition of powerless? Unable to influence? Physically outmatched?