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A new AI winter is coming?

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Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#201

Post by Jaygles »

ipdashc wrote: post #75
HardCodedBias wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two claims here: 1) LLMs have failed to live up to the hype. Maybe. Depends upon's who's hype. But I think it is fine to say that we don't have AGI today (however that is defined) and that some people hyped that up. 2) LLMs haven't failed outright I think that this is a vast understatement. LLMs have been a wild success. At big tech over 40% of checked in code is LLM generated. At smaller companies the proportion is…

> At big tech over 40% of checked in code is LLM generated. Assuming this is true though, how much of that 40% is boilerplate or simple, low effort code that could have been knocked out in a few minutes previously? It's always been the case that 10% of the code is particularly thorny and takes 80% of the time, or whatever. Not to discount your overall point, LLMs are definitely a technical success.

Before LLMs I used whatever autocomplete tech came with VSCode and the plugins I used. Now with Cursor a lot of what the autocomplete did is replaced with LLM output, at much greater cost. Counting this in the "LLM generated" statistic is misleading at best, and I'm sure it's being counted

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#202

Post by int_19h »

lm28469 wrote: post #159
Nevermark wrote: post #76

I am simply stunned at the negativity. Yes, there is hype. But if you actually filter it out, instead of (over) reacting to it in either direction, progress has been phenomenal and the fact there is visible progress in many areas, including LLMs, in the order of months demonstrates no walls. Visible progress doesn’t mean astounding progress. But any tech that is improving year to year is moving at a good speed. Huge…

There was value in leaded gas and asbestos insulation too, nobody denies that. You're blind to all the negative side effects, AI generated slop ads, engagement traps, political propaganda, scams, &c. The amount of pollution is incredible, search engines are dead, blogs are dead, YouTube is dead, social medias are dead, it's virtually impossible to find non slop content, the ratio is probably already 50:1 by now And t…

Ironically, if generative AI ends up killing social media, it might actually be a net positive. How do you avoid engaging with AI content? Why, go find an actual human IRL and speak with them.

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#203

Post by int_19h »

orwin wrote: post #125
rnxrx wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The development of steam technology is a great metaphor. The basic understanding of steam as a thing that could yield some kind of mechanical force almost certainly predated even the Romans. That said, it was the synthesis of other technologies with these basic concepts that started yielding really interesting results. Put another way, the advent of industrialized steam power wasn't so much about steam per se, but ra…

Its mostly metallurgy. The fact that we became so much better and precise at metallurgy enabled us to make use of steam machines. Of course a lot of stuff helped (Glassmaking, whale oil immediatly come to mind) but mostly, metallurgy.

I remember reading an article that argued that it was basically a matter of being path dependent. The earliest steam engines that could do useful work were notoriously large and fuel-inefficient, which is why their first application was for pumps in coal mines - it effectively made the fuel problem moot and similarly their other limitations were not important in that context, while at the same time rising wages in UK made even those inefficient engines more affordable than manual labor. And then their use in that very narrow niche allowed them to be gradually improved to the point where they became suitable for other contexts as well.

But if that analogy holds, then LLM use in software development is the "new coal mines" where it will be perfected until it spills over into other areas. We're definitely not at the "Roman stage" anymore.

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#204

Post by mritchie712 »

Barathkanna wrote: post #37

Interesting take. His argument is basically that LLMs have hit their architectural ceiling and the industry is running on hype and unsustainable economics. I’m not fully convinced, but the points about rising costs and diminishing returns are worth paying attention to. The gap between what these models can actually do and what they’re marketed as might become a real problem if progress slows.

claude code + opus4.5 does exactly what it says on the box.

Today I pasted a screenshot of frontend dropdown menu with a prompt "add a an option here to clear the query cache". Claude found the relevant frontend files, figured out the appropriate backend routes / controllers to edit, and submitted a PR.

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#205

Post by ako »

krupan wrote: post #191
marknutter wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These same questions could be asked about self driving cars, but they've been shown to be consistently safer drivers than humans. If this guy is getting consistently better results from ai+human than it is from just humans, what would it matter if the former results in errors given the latter results in more and costs more?

TFA's while point is that there is no easy way to tell if LLM output is correct or not. Driving mistakes provide instant feedback if the output of whatever AI is driving is correct or not. Bad comparison.

Many of the things that LLMs will output can be validated in a feedback loop, e.g., programming. It's easy to validate the generated code with a compiler, unit tests, etc. LLMs will excel in processes that can provide a validating feedback loop.

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#206

Post by DrewADesign »

buellerbueller wrote: post #87
DrewADesign wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the unsustainably cheap consumer-facing AI products are the spoonful of sugar getting us to swallow a technology that will almost entirely be used to make agents that justify mass layoffs.

And surveil and rat on us, sometimes incorrectly.

Yeah that’s a good point. I’m always astonished that people give anything even vaguely personal to a “free” saas service, but boy do they ever. Not that payments stop them but at least the incentives are a little different.

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#207

Post by LatencyKills »

youwatnow wrote: post #186
LatencyKills wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was an engineer on the original Copilot team, yes I understand how tech works. You don’t know how your own mind “understands” something. No one on the planet can even describe how human understanding works. Yes, LLMs are vast statistical engines but that doesn’t mean something interesting isn’t going on. At this point I’d argue that humans “hallucinate” and/or provide wrong answers far more often than…

[flagged]

> as someone who is a sociopath completely devoid of ethics

Ah yes... the hundred thousand researchers and engineers who work at MS are all evil. Many people who've made truly significant contributions to AI have either worked directly (through MS Research) or indirectly (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc) at MS. ResNet and concepts like Differential Privacy were invented there.

What about the researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT who receive funding from companies like MS? Are they all evil sociopaths, too? Greg Hinton's early research was funded by Microsoft btw.

I originally joined MS in the early 90s (then retired) and came back to help build Copilot. The tech was fantastic to work with, we had an amazing team, and I am proud of what we accomplished.

You seem slightly confused between the people who invent technology and the assholes who use it for evil. There is nothing evil about the transformer. Humans are the problem.

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#208

Post by [deleted] »

anthonypasq wrote: post #123
dangus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to point out a random anecdote. Literally yesterday ChatGPT hallucinated an entire feature of a mod for a video game I am playing including making up a fake console command. It just straight up doesn’t exist, it just seemed like a relatively plausible thing to exist. This is still happening. It never stopped happening. I don’t even see a real slowdown in how often it happens. It sometimes feels like the o…

is this supposed to be some kind of mic drop?

[deleted]

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#209

Post by LatencyKills »

6510 wrote: post #184
LatencyKills wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was an engineer on the original Copilot team, yes I understand how tech works. You don’t know how your own mind “understands” something. No one on the planet can even describe how human understanding works. Yes, LLMs are vast statistical engines but that doesn’t mean something interesting isn’t going on. At this point I’d argue that humans “hallucinate” and/or provide wrong answers far more often than…

Before one may begin to understand something one must first be able to estimate the level of certainty. Our robot friends, while really helpful and polite, seem to be lacking in that department. They actually think the things we've written on the internet, in books, academic papers, court documents, newspapers, etc are actually true. Where the humans aren't omniscient it fills the blanks with nonsense.

> Where the humans aren't omniscient it fills the blanks with nonsense

As do most humans. People lie. People make things up to look smart. People fervently believe things that are easily disproved. Some people are willfully ignorant, anti-science, anti-education, etc.

The problem isn't the transformer architecture... it is the humans who advertise capabilities that are not there yet.

Re: A new AI winter is coming?

#210

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

As illustrated by the top comment, it seems that "AI" relies on hype, i.e., careful manipulation of how it is perceived. Its continued existence depends on relentless fund raising because generally no one is going to pay fees to use it long-term

As with so much of Silicon Valley's output the past few decades, "AI" is not something people will pay for. It could be a new form of Trojan Horse for data collection, surveillance and ads, though, adopting a hyperfocus on "growth" at any cost (human, environmental, etc.) but this might not even be necessary^1

Time will tell

In order to raise funds in the absence of any clear business plan, "AI" cannot just be ordinary and useful. It cannot be "autocomplete on steroids". It must be "world-changing"

No one shall underestimate or discount the value of "AI". Overestimation is permitted, however. Speculation is encouraged, but only if it's wild and extreme

1. "AI" is not depending on being brought inside the gates of Troy by the city's inhabitants. It's being placed inside the gates by others. Companies with large numbers of users are installing "AI" on users' computers without the users' consent

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