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Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

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Re: Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

#41

Post by gota »

RecycledEle wrote: post #32

AI is a personal tutor, amd the biggest change in education since the invention of writing. I imagine a day when it is socially unacceptable to hire someone to do something for you. You have AI and Amazon, why not learn, order the parts, and do it yourself? Imagine a world where we all work a few hours a week but occupy ourselves learning new skills and applying those skills to improve our environments. This would al…

I am afraid that AI tutors and teachers will slow down our progress in ethics and moral issues.

Model X trained on all our data thinks Y is ok and that permeates lessons here and there. Raising a generation that does not rightfully challenge Y as it should.

As a somewhat stupid example: had LLMs been invented in thr 1800's would they teach whatever topic with an underlying sentiment that slavery is a just and natural state?

Teachers and tutors have always been an influence in the formative years of younger minds. I am afraid of substituting that human influence bringing intellectual and moral challenges for a one-size-fits-all frozen in time pasteurized worldview.

To be clear: LLMs as educational tools; inevitable. LLMs as teachers - no, please

Let me know if this is a stupid feeling (and a feeling is all I have) or if it is too much of a Old Man Yells at Cloud thing

Re: Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

#43

Post by bodiekane »

jschveibinz wrote: post #9

I'm a boomer, so I see things differently than younger generations. Nevertheless, I think that solid, heartfelt advice to young people looking to advance in this rapiy changing environment should consider the following: 1. Become an expert in using and augmenting AI tools to accomplish your work, whatever that may be. There is a difference between average and expert in the results that can be obtained. AI expertise w…

Regarding your point 3, the challenge is that at present, so many incentives are aligned against that.

I'd love to do hard science, rather than my current meaningless consumer webapp job. But it'd mean... giving up 5-6 years of tech salary to go back and get a phD, and then post-phD my job prospects would be geographically limited to a couple locations where all the science/research jobs are, with worse hours, worse flexibility, less stability and drastically less pay.

It's hard to say "I should quit my fully-remote, wfh, $200k, low-stress, unlimited PTO software job to work in a lab in Boston for 50 hours a week for $90k". I don't have any solution here, kinda just venting through my golden handcuffs.

Re: Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

#44

Post by 0x45696e6172 »

PROGCRYPTO (programmable crypto) The capabilities of multiparty computations, fully homomorphic encryption and zero knowledge proofs are super interesting and will allow for new ways of using the internet. In the same way it was hard to imagine what the consequences of asymmetric encryption was at the time when it was conceived, it think the same is true for MPC and FHE today. These technologies are only recently getting feasible. Example use-case: Look for relatives (think ancestry) based on your DNA sequence with cryptographic guarantees, that everyone's DNA stays secret.

Re: Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

#45

Post by gene-h »

Atomically precise manufacturing, that is tech for building structures atom by atom. This is starting to be done regularly in labs. Machines for making single atom transistors are a commercial product now[0]. Forming covalent bonds at desired locations through positional control of reactants has been demonstrated[1]. This is potentially more scalable than the aforementioned approach. ML seems to be enabling too[2].

[0]https://www.zyvexlabs.com/apm/products/zyvex-litho-1/

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-021-00773-4

[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-024-00488-7

Re: Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

#46

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

Don't laugh. I am really, really excited about Bash and vanilla PHP.

I landed myself in a shop that sells, essentially, tiny locally-networked systems of specialized Linux boxes. Yes, our core offering is running on the JVM, but all along the edges there is just so much Bash and PHP.

I don't think I'll ever work in a place again where I have this much opportunity to become a genuine old school shell and webshell wizard again. I want to master the Primordial Arts, their endless exceptions to exceptions, and come out the other side as a true master of something completely fucking ridiculous.

I did it once with Microsoft PowerShell. I can do it again.

Re: Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

#49

Post by ipaddr »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #16

In my opinion, for the vast majority of people, and hence for society, we are past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to truly improving the world with technology. We should now switch from unfettered development to trying to be more sustainable with the tools that we have. Academia has become a game and tech development has become driven by pure consumerism in the race to replace human relationships with…

The Amish decided that a few hundred years ago.

Tech not invented but popular in sci-fi like transporters or replicators could end hunger or change how we move. 3d printing has reach a general price point on par with other manufacturing but when it does it could change things.

Plenty left that is good and necessary. Don't give up because llms and social networks are overhyped.

Re: Ask HN: What fields or technologies are you excited about?

#50

Post by ipaddr »

aelmeleegy wrote: post #33
zcw100 wrote: post #30

People say that I'm cynical but wow this is just off the charts. It also makes me really optimistic that something big is right around the corner. When people start with the "it's all been done" and "nothing good or better will ever happen again" it just means they can't see how things will change. Because they're blind they won't see the next big thing creeping up behind them and when it finally does become apparent…

No one said it's been done. There has been healthy debate about the fact that there hasn't been any (major) new social media networks since Snap (and Instagram before it). The cloud computing paradigm is now mostly dominated by 2 players (with GCP a distant third). here are 2 major desktop OSes, 2 major mobile OSes. etc. This isn't proof that it won't happen again, it just says that the rate at which new innovations…

The cloud paradigm is for players printing money that need a scalable way to catch all of those dollars by paying 1000 times more for compute on demand.

Create decentralized software and get ahead for the next shift.

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