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LLM Inevitabilism

tomrenner.com

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#31

Post by visarga »

> I’m certainly not convinced that they’re the future I want. But what I’m most certain of is that we have choices about what our future should look like, and how we choose to use machines to build it.

While I must admit we have some choice here, it is limited. No matter what, there will be models of language, we know how they work, there is no turning back from it.

We might wish many things but one thing we can't do is to revert time to a moment when these discoveries did not exist.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#32

Post by _carbyau_ »

mrtesthah wrote: post #19
paradite wrote: post #11

I think you are confusing "I don't like it" with "It's not going to happen". Just because you don't like it, it doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Observe the world without prejudice. Think rationally without prejudice.

Things “happen” in human history only because humans make them happen. If enough humans do or don’t want something to happen, then they can muster the collective power to achieve it. The unstated corollary in this essay is that venture capital and oligarchs do not get to define our future simply because they have more money.

> do not get to define our future simply because they have more money

I don't like it, but it seems that more money is exactly why they get to define our future.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#33

Post by jolt42 »

It's as inevitable as the cotton gin, which ironically I just saw some news on how the Chinese continue to improve it, which will be the same for AI.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#34

Post by tehjoker »

This is the same strategy Hillary Clinton supporters tried to use too. The author is right, it's just a framing technique. We can choose the future we want.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#35

Post by mlsu »

HPsquared wrote: post #10
mlsu wrote: post #6

I hate AI. I'm so sick of it. I read a story about 14 year olds that are adopting AI boyfriends. They spend 18 hours a day in conversation with chatbots. Their parents are worried because they are withdrawing from school and losing their friends. I hate second guessing emails that I've read, wondering if my colleagues are even talking to me or if they are using AI. I hate the idea that AI will replace my job. Even if…

Just remember that machines already do most of the work. Nobody ploughs fields anymore.

Yes, of course. What is AI freeing us of? Communicating with other human beings?

Ah what a chore. Other human beings. Wish I could just enter into a cocoon of solitude for the rest of my life. I mean I'm kind of being glib here but the ~amazing future~ we all seem to take as inevitable has me playing solo orchestra conductor, prompt pupettering a massive fleet of hyper intelligent code bots, prompting an AI to make prompts for its sub AIs in a giant scintillating cyberprism. Talking to an AI customer service agent. Having an AI secretary. Having an AI lover.

All alone, in the middle of it all.

Sorry, I actually like talking to my real human colleagues!

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#36

Post by godelski »

mlsu wrote: post #6

I hate AI. I'm so sick of it. I read a story about 14 year olds that are adopting AI boyfriends. They spend 18 hours a day in conversation with chatbots. Their parents are worried because they are withdrawing from school and losing their friends. I hate second guessing emails that I've read, wondering if my colleagues are even talking to me or if they are using AI. I hate the idea that AI will replace my job. Even if…

It's insane too. Because many of us working on AI were working on it for different reasons. To me, it was to liberate us. To let me go spend more time outside, to stare at trees, and ask people "can I pet your dog?"

We use language and images because they are easier to evaluate. Because we don't know what to actually evaluate. So it's as good of a direction as any, right?

I'm not sure if another direction would have had a different result. But it feels like now we're trying to create AGI by turning humans into robots. It can create works of art, poetry, music, but it has no soul, no depth.

This should tell us that we've still have a long way to go to make AGI, that this ineffable depth needs further exploration. To learn what it truly means to be human (which definitely requires time outside). But I feel many of my peers do not want to see this. It feels like I'm being gaslight. It's like everyone is raving about the genius of Rauschenberg's White Paintings [3 panel], and I see a canvas waiting to be filled. Am I really so out of touch? To think it weird to talk about the "gospel" of Ilya or Karpathy? It seems everyone has found religion/god, but me.

I can see the beauty of a sunset, of a crashing wave, of the complexity of the atom so delicately constructed, the abstraction and beauty of math, but maybe I just do not have a refined enough taste to appreciate the genius of a blank canvas with no soul. Is not the beauty in what it can become? Because I thought the point was to make life. I thought the point was to give it a soul.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#37

Post by mattigames »

delichon wrote: post #2

If in 2009 you claimed that the dominance of the smartphone was inevitable, it would have been because you were using one and understood its power, not because you were reframing away our free choice for some agenda. In 2025 I don't think you can really be taking advantage of AI to do real work and still see its mass adaptation as evitable. It's coming faster and harder than any tech in history. As scary as that is w…

For the way you speak you seem to be fairly certain that they still gonna need you as it's user, that they aren't going to find a better monetization than selling it to people like you (or even small companies in general), I wouldn't be so sure, remember we are talking about the machine that is growing with the aim of being able to do do every single white-collar job.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#38

Post by mlsu »

freshtake wrote: post #30
mlsu wrote: post #6

I hate AI. I'm so sick of it. I read a story about 14 year olds that are adopting AI boyfriends. They spend 18 hours a day in conversation with chatbots. Their parents are worried because they are withdrawing from school and losing their friends. I hate second guessing emails that I've read, wondering if my colleagues are even talking to me or if they are using AI. I hate the idea that AI will replace my job. Even if…

The issue, unfortunately, is that society has failed to recognize the real dangers of social technologies (social media, social AI, perhaps AI in general). 30 years from now if we're lucky, we'll be watching senate hearings with AI billionaires being asked how they didn't realize their products were so harmful.

These senate hearings are happening right now.

There is no moment in history when we all look back and go, ah, that was a mistake. Nope. That only happens right now, we're all creating the world we want to live in today.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#39

Post by mbgerring »

delichon wrote: post #2

If in 2009 you claimed that the dominance of the smartphone was inevitable, it would have been because you were using one and understood its power, not because you were reframing away our free choice for some agenda. In 2025 I don't think you can really be taking advantage of AI to do real work and still see its mass adaptation as evitable. It's coming faster and harder than any tech in history. As scary as that is w…

I’ve tried to use AI for “real work” a handful of times and have mostly come away disappointed, unimpressed, or annoyed that I wasted my time.

Given the absolutely insane hard resource requirements for these systems that are kind of useful, sometimes, in very limited contexts, I don’t believe its adoption is inevitable.

Maybe one of the reasons for that is that I work in the energy industry and broadly in climate tech. I am painfully aware of how much we need to do with energy in the coming decades to avoid civilizational collapse, and how difficult all of that will be, without adding all of these AI data centers into the mix. Without several breakthroughs in one or more hard engineering disciplines, the mass adoption of AI is not currently physically possible.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#40

Post by Sabinus »

mrtesthah wrote: post #19
paradite wrote: post #11

I think you are confusing "I don't like it" with "It's not going to happen". Just because you don't like it, it doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Observe the world without prejudice. Think rationally without prejudice.

Things “happen” in human history only because humans make them happen. If enough humans do or don’t want something to happen, then they can muster the collective power to achieve it. The unstated corollary in this essay is that venture capital and oligarchs do not get to define our future simply because they have more money.

Would you say the industrial revolution would have been able to be stopped by enough humans not wanting to achieve it?

>The unstated premise of this essay is that venture capital and oligarchs do not get to define our future simply because they have more money.

AI would progress without them. Not as fast, but it would.

In my mind the inevitability of technological progress comes from our competition with each other and general desire do work more easily and effectively. The rate of change will increase with more resources dedicated to innovation, but people will always innovate.

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