Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Problems that attract smart people

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 106 posts

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#11

Post by michaelt »

Simran-B wrote: post #6

Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy.

If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves.

If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its processing on board, without uploading recordings to the cloud. And you want your neighbour's doorbell to do the same.

And frankly, nobody goes after Microsoft Word when someone writes Xi Jinping satire using it, or ICE buy it - because people know it's a tool rather than a platform.

On the other hand, if you think ML technology is going to produce the next wave of fake amazon reviews and forum spam - you might be a lot less eager to see it in the hands of everyone.

If you think society will be slow to adapt to things like deepfakes; and that cops and corporations will immediately start using things like facial recognition technology - well, then wider access to ML might seem to have a great many downsides.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#13

Post by BiteCode_dev »

michaelt wrote: post #11
Simran-B wrote: post #6

Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves. If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its pro…

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part.

I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, planning logistics that our modern life impose on us...

Suddenly, like the CEO of today, every one will be able to have a secretary.

Yes, that can make a huge different.

Don't think about AI as the thing we have today. GPT the nokia 3310 of AI. Amazing, but very basic.

Think that one day, somebody will come out with the iphone of AI.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#14

Post by enlyth »

gmork13 wrote: post #3

Was that implementation confirmed to work or was it a bug? I saw people saying it only loads the weights necessary, but all the weights are necessary (unless the architecture is heavily modified). Does it stream or load only the currently necessary layers in a way?

Looks like it will be reverted because it introduced some regressions and as far as I understand, there was no magic in the end, but there was a ton of drama around it.

Most of the drama is contained in this thread, if you like reading this sort of stuff: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/711#issuecomment...

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#16

Post by tgv »

smrtinsert wrote: post #9
Simran-B wrote: post #6

Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...

If you're referring to this passage > democratising the means of digital production is the difference between a dystopian authoritarian future and an empowered (and admittedly chaotic) humanity The usage here means make accessible to everyone.

While I'm generally in favor of redistribution of wealth, power and knowledge, this doesn't seem an insight so trivial that it can be asserted without underpinning to me, nor congruent with history. Industrialization was essential or at least catalytic to democracy, which happened without public control over production production means (I'm ignoring the Marxist view in this).

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#17

Post by namaria »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13
michaelt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves. If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its pro…

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, p…

You're just extending the lines in a way you like to imagine. Kinda like wishing for flying cars when we can't even make them navigate 2D city streets autonomously.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#18

Post by Nihilartikel »

namaria wrote: post #17
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, p…

You're just extending the lines in a way you like to imagine. Kinda like wishing for flying cars when we can't even make them navigate 2D city streets autonomously.

Exactly! Nobody should imagine and articulate any possibilities unless they are sure they will be correct. It's so embarrassing.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#19

Post by paulcole »

> Of course, my referral to Graham in this context uses “smart” in a rather limited sense

Yes, limited in the sense that smart = can make computers do stuff.

> if it’s scammy, it will attract the kind of people who’d play in moral grey areas for personal profit; if it’s bureaucratic-authoritarian, yup, you know who you’ll find there

You don’t think smart people run scams or that only idiots want to be authoritarians?

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#20

Post by TimPC »

michaelt wrote: post #11
Simran-B wrote: post #6

Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves. If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its pro…

The relevant distinction isn’t being a tool it’s how it is built. If you use a bunch of copyrighted material in the design of your tool and some of the material leaks into your answers that’s very different from building Microsoft Word.
Post reply on HN