One lens to view AI is as a prediction engine -- predict what color to make each pixel, predict what word to put next.

Whoever is first to applying this predictive skill to stock markets will probably make immense amounts of money. Then again, people are probably already trying to do this, which creates a situation unlike that from which we derive the historic data to train on, which might render it impossible?

On the gripping hand, large slow and powerful institutions want to make the numbers go up and to the right.

I've also never had an item I can imagine stomaching every day.

FWIW, this is likely to be a worse problem with a meal replacement than a protein bar, and a worse problem with a protein bar than a frozen option.

bring to work

That adds complexity. Are there social norms at work which necessitate eating with others? If so, having a shake or similar every day may not meet those needs.

I sure wish I could skip breakfast and/or lunch and only have one sit-down meal with my family in the evening

Are you aware of the concept of OMAD (one meal a day)? I don't think it's super likely that this is the right solution for you, but it seems like you'd learn useful things about the best solution for your food-is-inconvenient problem by considering it as an option and determining why you would rule it out. Basically unless you're diabetic or attempting to gain weight, you can just have all your day's calories in a single meal instead of spread across multiple. Again, there are many reasons why this might not be a good fit, but it seems worth making sure that it's in your overton window as an option that works for some people.

(edit to add)

packaged in sizes more suitable for full meals?

a "full meal" for someone who's smaller, sedentary, or pursuing weight loss can be a protein bar. A "full meal" for someone who's larger, more active, or pursuing weight gain can be 10x that amount, at the extreme. We sort of have a standard daily intake of 2,000kcal from nutrition facts, but not even food packaging attempts to prescribe how many meals an individual eats in a day, how they distribute their intake across those meals, and therefore asking whether an item is packaged in a size suitable for a "full meal" is like asking whether a piece of software will run on "a computer".

we do not have a robot that is perfectly capable of executing the "saving grandma" task

Do you mean to imply that humans are perfectly capable of executing the "saving grandma" task?

Opening a door in a burning building at the wrong time can cause the entire building to explode by introducing enough oxygen to suddenly combust a lot of uncombusted gases.

I'm not convinced that there exists a "perfect solution" to any task with 0 unintended consequences, though, so my opinions probably aren't all that helpful in the matter.

I notice that I am confused: I experience comparable price and convenience, and superior subjective experience of eating, by purchasing pre-made frozen meals and microwaving them. I experience comparable price and superior travel convenience by throwing a protein bar in my bag on the way out the door.

Possible reasons one might prefer a meal replacement over comparably easy "real" food include:

• less waste? a powder mixed into a drink would trade the hassle of washing a reusable bottle for the trash creation of discarding a disposable bottle
• Flavor/texture concerns? If you hate eating real food for sensory reasons, you may love some meal replacements and hate others
• Nutritional concerns? If there's a specific nutrition profile that you're seeking which can't be obtained through sufficiently easy conventional meals, that seems worth mentioning
• time savings? if you have special scheduling needs, or experience unusually high cognitive load from thinking about choosing meals, "meal replacements" might be superior?

Based on observing the eating behaviors of many friends and acquaintances, I'd speculate that the soylent-style "meal replacement" market has split between meal delivery services that offer better flavor/variety/nutrition for equivalent ease, and protein/supplement products that offer more optimized and targeted nutrition than the originals. In short, I suspect but cannot prove that demand for soylent/huel has decreased because options more pleasant to eat and otherwise cost/convenience equivalent have become more mainstream.

Anyways, could you clarify what successful meal replacement would mean to you, if you would like suggestions on how to get there?

Depth of specialization to the individual is an interesting question. I suspect that if this was a mature field, we'd have names for distinct subtypes of assistant skillset -- like how an android app dev isn't quite the same as an ios app dev, although often one person can do whichever skillset a situation demands.

I suspect that low-skill candidates would gravitate toward one assistance subtype or another, and lack of skill would show up in their inability to identify which subtype a situation calls for and then adapt to it. But on taskrabbit, we don't need the same tasker to be good at picking up groceries and also building furniture, as long as we're clear enough about which task we're asking for...

Oops! I only realized in your reply that you're considering "reliability" the load-bearing element. Yes, the hiring pipeline will look like a background noise of consistent interest from the unqualified, and sporadic hits from excellent candidates. You're approaching it from the perspective that the background noise of incompetents is the more important part, whereas I think that the availability of an adequate candidate eventually is the important part.

I think this because basically anywhere that hires can reliably find unqualified applicants. For a role where people stay in the job for 6 months, for instance, you only need to find a suitable replacement once every 6 months... so "reliably" being able to find an excellent candidate every day seems simply irrelevant.

Joining the few places that will have leverage over what happens.

I agree that this is good if one has sufficient skill and knowledge to improve outcomes. What if one has reason to suspect that joining a key AI lab would be a net negative toward their success, compared to if they hired someone else? For instance I interview disproportionately well compared to my actual efficacy in tech roles -- I get hired based on the best of my work, but that best work is a low percentage of my actual output (f which most is barely average and some is conterproductive), so it seems like someone in my situation might actually do harm by seeking greater leverage?

Could you share an example of a specific discussion that exemplifies what you're looking for? I'd hazard a guess that such an example might come from bluesky or mastodon at the moment. But starting from something concrete would give a first set of examples of how people actually benefit from discussing at your target level of abstraction without slipping out of it, as you've noticed that much discussion seems to do.

Counterexample: financially self-sufficient individual who is curious about the work that the thinker is doing, and wants to learn more of how it is done.

Interesting! I'm way out in the middle of nowhere, and experience suggests that the greatest benefits of intellectual co-location happen with physical co-location as well. I wonder if there would be interest in a program with some overlap across airbnb or farm stays, where one visits a spot out in the woods with decent internet but few distractions, and stays for a while (a week or two sounds like a plausible guess to start iterating from) with a host who assumes a metacognitive role in the project that one is working on. It seems quite appealing from a hosting perspective -- doing a short-term cognitive job-shadow role like that for an expert thinker would be deeply enriching, and hosting many thinkers over the years would build a fascinating expertise in pattern-matching between them, crafting an ontology of how folks in a given field get stuck and un-stuck, etc.

And I don't think I'm the only prospective host who prefers a remote location because dealing with strangers frequently (as one must to live richly in a city) gets exhausting, yet enjoys deeper small-group interaction when it's available. There's also a social dynamic where visiting someone in the middle of nowhere gives the host greater control over how time is used, since excursions outside the homestead cost more travel time and thus warrant more careful planning. This dynamic seems like it could be quite helpful if the host's primary priority is to advance the success of the guest's project.