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AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

economist.com

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Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#101

Post by chpatrick »

hermitcrab wrote: post #86
mindcrime wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, It doesn't matter anyway. The marquee sign reads "Artificial Intelligence" not "Artificial Human Being". As long as AI displays intelligent behavior, it's "intelligent" in the relevant context. There's no basis for demanding that the mechanism be the same as what humans do. And of course it should go without saying that Artificia…

Aircraft don't fly like birds, submarines don't swim like fish and AIs aren't going to think like a human.

Do you need to "think like a human" to think? Is it only thinking if you do it with a meat brain?

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#102

Post by westurner »

AI is probably more of an amplifier for technological change than fire or digital computers; but IDK why we would use a different model for this technology (and teams and coping with change).

Diffusion of innovations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations :

> The diffusion of an innovation typically follows an S-shaped curve which often resembles a logistic function.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42658336 :

> [ "From Comfort Zone to Performance Management" (2009) ] also suggests management styles for each stage (Commanding, Cooperative, Motivational, Directive, Collaborative); and suggests that team performance is described by chained power curves of re-progression through these stages

Transforming, Performing, Reforming, [Adjourning]

Carnal Coping Cycle: Denial, Defense, Discarding, Adaptation, and Internalization

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#103

Post by Workaccount2 »

GMoromisato wrote: post #25
sfpotter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floating point numbers aren't ambiguous in the least. They behave by perfectly deterministic and reliable rules and follow a careful specification.

So are LLMs. Under the covers they are just deterministic matmul.

Everything is either deterministic, random, or some combination.

We only have two states of causality, so calling something "just" deterministic doesn't mean much, especially when "just random" would be even worse.

For the record, LLMs in the normal state use both.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#104

Post by fsloth »

pessimizer wrote: post #37

I've come to the conclusion that it is a normal, extremely useful, dramatic improvement over web 1.0. It's going to 1) obsolete search engines powered by marketing and SEO, and give us paid search engines whose selling points are how comprehensive they are, how predictable their queries work (I miss the "grep for the web" they were back when they were useful), and how comprehensive their information sources are. 2) E…

"everybody can move to a Linux desktop now"

People use whatever UI comes with their computer. I don't think that's going to change.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#106

Post by some_guy_nobel »

jcranmer wrote: post #38

Well, for starters, it would make The Economist 's recent article on "What if AI made the world's economic growth explode?" [1] look like the product of overly credulous suckers for AI hype. [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/24/what-if-ai-mad...

Well, it's better the same publication publish views contradicting their past than never changing their views with new info.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#107

Post by CuriouslyC »

alexpotato wrote: post #98
CuriouslyC wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agents are going to change everything. Once we've got a solid programmatic system driving interface and people get better about exposing non-ui handles for agents to work with programs, agents will make apps obsolete. You're going to have a device that sits by your desk and listens to you, watches your movements and tracks your eyes, and dispatches agents to do everything you ask it to do, using all the information i…

The technology for this has been around for the past 10 years but it's still not a reality, what makes AI the kicker here? e.g. Alexa for voice, REST for talking to APIs, Zapier for inter-app connectdness. (not trying to be cynical, just pointing out that the technology to make it happen doesn't seem to be the blocker)

Alexa is trash. If you have to basically hold an agent's hand through something or it either fails or does something catastrophic nobody's going to use or trust it.

REST is actually a huge enabler for agents for sure, I think agents are going to drive everyone to have at least an API, if not a MCP, because if I can't use your app via my agent and I have to manually screw around in your UI, and your competitor lets my agent do work so I can just delegate via voice commands, who do you think is getting my business?

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#108

Post by jrm4 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #92
Kapura wrote: post #30

Digital spreadsheets (excel, etc) have done much more to change the world than so-called "artificial intelligence," and on the current trajectory it's difficult to see that changing.

Agents are going to change everything. Once we've got a solid programmatic system driving interface and people get better about exposing non-ui handles for agents to work with programs, agents will make apps obsolete. You're going to have a device that sits by your desk and listens to you, watches your movements and tracks your eyes, and dispatches agents to do everything you ask it to do, using all the information i…

This isn't likely to happen for roughly the same reason Hypercard didn't become the universal way for novices to create apps.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#109

Post by shakna »

chpatrick wrote: post #31
d3ckard wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof. The proof burden is on AI proponents.

It's more that "thinking" is a vague term that we don't even understand in humans, so for me it's pretty meaningless to claim LLMs think or don't think. There's this very cliched comment to any AI HN headline which is this: "LLM's don't REALLY have . I know this for sure because I know both how humans work and how gigabytes of LLM weights work." or its cousin: "LLMs CAN'T possibly do BECAUSE they generate text one ch…

Thinking is better understood than you seem to believe.

We don't just study it in humans. We look at it in trees [0], for example. And whilst trees have distributed systems that ingest data from their surroundings, and use that to make choices, it isn't usually considered to be intelligence.

Organizational complexity is one of the requirements for intelligence, and an LLM does not reach that threshold. They have vast amounts of data, but organizationally, they are still simple - thus "ai slop".

[0] https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/abstract/S1360-138...

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#110

Post by Mallowram »

wvbdmp wrote: post #4

Okay, so AI isn’t exceptional, but I’m also not exceptional. I run on the same tech base as any old chimpanzee, but at one point our differences in degree turned into one of us remaining “normal” and the other burning the entire planet. Whether the particular current AI tech is it or not, I have yet to be convinced that the singularity is practically impossible, and as long as things develop in the opposite direction…

[dead]
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