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A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

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Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#31

Post by timmy-turner »

mandevil wrote: post #24
worik wrote: post #16

> It blows Google out of the water at being Google That is enough for me.

I sincerely wonder how long that will be true. Google was amazing and didn't have more than small, easily ignorable ads in 1999, and they weren't really tracking you the way they are today, just an all-around better experience than Google delivers today. I'm not sure that it's a technology difference that makes LLM a better experience than search today, it's that the VC's are still willing to subsidize user experienc…

They will sell "training data slots". So that when I'm looking for a butter cookie recipe, ChatGPT says I'll have to use 100g of "Brand (TM) Butter" instead of just "Butter".

Ask it how to deploy an app to the cloud and it will insist you need to deploy it to Azure.

These ads would be easily visible though. You can probably sell far more malicious things.

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#32

Post by cglace »

The thing I can't wrap my head around is that I work on extremely complex AI agents every day and I know how far they are from actually replacing anyone. But then I step away from my work and I'm constantly bombarded with “agents will replace us”.

I wasted a few days trying to incorporate aider and other tools into my workflow. I had a simple screen I was working on for configuring an AI Agent. I gave screenshots of the expected output. Gave a detailed description of how it should work. Hours later I was trying to tweak the code it came up with. I scrapped everything and did it all myself in an hour.

I just don't know what to believe.

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#33

Post by demaga »

usaar333 wrote: post #30

Author also made a highly upvoted and controversial comment about o3 in the same vein that's worth reading: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ao4enANjWNsYiSFqc/o3?comment... Oh course lesswrong, being heavily AI doomers, may be slightly biased against near term AGI just from motivated reasoning. Gotta love this part of the post no one has yet addressed: > At some unknown point – probably in 2030s, possibly tomorrow (bu…

I would expect similar doom predictions in the era of nuclear weapon invention, but we've survived so far. Why do people assume AGI will be orders of magnitude more dangerous than what we already have?

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#34

Post by hattmall »

csomar wrote: post #25
kiratp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not using the best tools. Claude Code, Cline, Cursor… all of them with Claude 3.7.

Nope. I try the latest models as they come and I have a self-made custom setup (as in a custom lua plugin) in Neovim. What I am not, is selling AI or AI-driven solutions.

Similar experience, I try so hard to make AI useful, and there are some decent spots here and there. Overall though I see the fundamental problem being that people need information. Language isn't strictly information, and the LLMs are very good at language, but they aren't great at information. I think anything more than the novelty of "talking" to the AI is very over hyped.

There is some usefulness to be had for sure, but I don't know if the usefulness is there with the non-subsidized models.

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#35

Post by tibbar »

LLMs make it very easy to cheat, both academically and professionally. What this looks like in the workplace is a junior engineer not understanding their task or how to do it but stuffing everything into the LLM until lint passes. This breaks the trust model: there are many requirements that are a little hard to verify than an LLM might miss, and the junior engineer can now represent to you that they "did what you ask" without really certifying the work output. I believe that this kind of professional cheating is just as widespread as academic cheating, which is an epidemic.

What we really need is people who can certify that a task was done correctly, who can use LLMs as an aid. LLMs simply cannot be responsible for complex requirements. There is no way to hold them accountable.

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#36

Post by amoss »

demaga wrote: post #33
usaar333 wrote: post #30

Author also made a highly upvoted and controversial comment about o3 in the same vein that's worth reading: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ao4enANjWNsYiSFqc/o3?comment... Oh course lesswrong, being heavily AI doomers, may be slightly biased against near term AGI just from motivated reasoning. Gotta love this part of the post no one has yet addressed: > At some unknown point – probably in 2030s, possibly tomorrow (bu…

I would expect similar doom predictions in the era of nuclear weapon invention, but we've survived so far. Why do people assume AGI will be orders of magnitude more dangerous than what we already have?

Nuclear weapons are not self-improving or self-replicating.

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#37

Post by usaar333 »

demaga wrote: post #33
usaar333 wrote: post #30

Author also made a highly upvoted and controversial comment about o3 in the same vein that's worth reading: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ao4enANjWNsYiSFqc/o3?comment... Oh course lesswrong, being heavily AI doomers, may be slightly biased against near term AGI just from motivated reasoning. Gotta love this part of the post no one has yet addressed: > At some unknown point – probably in 2030s, possibly tomorrow (bu…

I would expect similar doom predictions in the era of nuclear weapon invention, but we've survived so far. Why do people assume AGI will be orders of magnitude more dangerous than what we already have?

More ability to kill everyone. That's harder to do with nukes.

That said, the actual forecast odds on metaculus are pretty similar for nuclear and AI catastrophies: https://possibleworldstree.com/

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#38

Post by swazzy »

I see no reason to believe the extraordinary progress we've seen recently will stop or even slow down. Personally, I've benefited so much from AI that it feels almost alien to hear people downplaying it. Given the excitement in the field and the sheer number of talented individuals actively pushing it forward, I'm quite optimistic that progress will continue, if not accelerate.

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#39

Post by blitzar »

andsoitis wrote: post #18

This poetic statement by the author sums it up for me: ”People are extending LLMs a hand, hoping to pull them up to our level. But there's nothing reaching back.”

When you (attempt to) save a person from drowning there is ridiculously high chance of them drowning you.

Re: A bear case: My predictions regarding AI progress

#40

Post by spaceman_2020 »

The impression I get from using all cutting edge AI tools:

1. Sonnet 3.7 is a mid-level web developer at least

2. DeepResearch is about as good an analyst as an MBA from a school ranked 50+ nationally. Not lower than that. EY, not McKinsey

3. Grok 3/GPT-4.5 are good enough as $0.05/word article writers

Its not replacing the A-players but its good enough to replace B players and definitely better than C and D players

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